luciferofastora
@luciferofastora@feddit.org
- Comment on The most unrealistic part of Odyssey is the journey taking 20 years 15 hours ago:
- Comment on Peak Fiction 🐐 6 days ago:
No god is gonna set foot down here if they wanna keep it
- Comment on Badge of Honor 6 days ago:
The person you’re talking to operates on a different definition of leftists that explicitly requires them to be anticapitalist. Given how common that phenomenon is, and how we can’t ever seem to agree on any other points, I propose a new definition of Leftist:
A leftist is someone who argues about what is and isn’t leftist.
The implication of that definition, of course, is that the right wing talking heads calling every form of human decency “communism” are also leftists.
(Actually, do dbzer0 users even see this comment? They defederated us because our admins also failed their purity test. No animosity from my side, for whatever that’s worth.)
- Comment on Badge of Honor 6 days ago:
It’s Orkish
- Comment on How Come Latin Didn't Spread in the Middle East as Much as it did in Europe? 1 week ago:
In short: Administrative pragmatism meant that Latin never took as much hold in the east as it did in the west.
The central influence of Rome runs was constrained by a fundamental difficulty of premodern logistics and communication: When the fastest way to deliver a message on land is “messenger on horseback” and the only way to move large armies is along major routes in well-populated territory you can
plunder“acquire” food from, the ability to effectively administer a region diminishes with distance. Naval transport and supply can extended that range, to the degree that territories are navigable. Thus, it is essential to have local structures to facilitate administration.In western and middle Europe, such structures were largely absent, so Rome had to build its own, more or less by transplantation of Roman (educated) citizens via land grants to soldiers, creating a local military reserve and elite that could enforce Rome’s laws. However, Rome rarely bothered to stamp out local customs or enforce a strict cultural dominance: Whatever kept the locals content and compliant was good enough. This wasn’t progressive respect or inclusion or anything, just a pragmatic way to save on manpower.
That led to a form of bidirectional cultural blending: Romans would adopt customs from those around them, while those seeking social status would adopt customs and learn the language of the Roman administration (particularly if they hoped to become citizens themselves). This blending of cultures and identities meant that, even as Rome’s central power crumbled, the emerging local elites still spoke Latin, or some locally flavoured variant thereof.
In the east and south, the Macedonian conquest and successor states had already established an administrative system, staffed with a strongly separated Greek-speaking upper class. The same pragmatism that had led to the laissez a faire approach in Europe led to instead taking over the existing system, including Greek as dominant administrative language.
The Roman Empire was eventually separated into two sub-empires, each with their own subordinate emperor, because a single administration became unfeasible due to various conflicts and the sheer size of it. As the western half started collapsing, the eastern empire almost exclusively used Greek for official matters, eventually supplanting local languages. However, it had to contend with (and lost some land to) the Arab Empire, which brought its own family of semitic languages, then eventually fell to the Ottoman Empire, which also brought its own Turkish languages.
To sum it up, the reason it spread across Europe is the fact that it was a valuable language to learn for social and political reasons, while the reason it didn’t spread in the east is the existing of structures that made learning it obsolete, and its stand-in (Greek) didn’t survive the assault of other, powerful empires with enough administrative capacity to impose their own language.
- Comment on You can't unsee him 1 week ago:
There’s some joke to be made about quadriplegic people with more spine than able-bodied people with a stick up their ass, but I’m not clever enough to figure out how to phrase it.
- Comment on You can't unsee him 1 week ago:
Fuck off, why’d you remind me
- Comment on A box of buttholes 1 week ago:
I think the relative concentration of nerds with niche knowledge is higher here, yeah. I’ll take a creative insult over generic slurs any day though.
- Comment on A box of buttholes 1 week ago:
A nonentity calling a schmorpAI-sales-spinster “dag” over an asshole-typo. This day is off to an interesting start.
- Comment on Alternative medicine 1 week ago:
Never heard of it so probably not a great recreational drug.
I like the implication that you’re familiar with all the good recreational drugs
- Comment on Zebra!! 3 weeks ago:
Ooh, I’d forgotten that one! I gotta add that to my “ask young people about memes before their time so I can feel even older” list
- Comment on More chickens! 3 weeks ago:
A fuck ton is a thousand kilofucks. Traditionally, a fuck is supposed to be the mass equivalent of the chemical and potential energy expended by an individual during an act of intercourse. The origin of “giving a fuck” is thus the figurative expense of mental energy afforded to a topic. Since the definitions and intensity of intercourse vary so wildly, the exact amount of investment a given person may associate with it is highly individual.
Several efforts were started to determine and define a standard fuck. To date, none of these have concluded, as the involved scientists are still exploring all the different forms of kinks and constellations to gather representative samples. Critical voices have suggested that these studies are being intentionally dragged out for personal benefit.
This is further hamstrung by various external influences attempting to limit or expand the definitions of intercourse. For instance, some groups are attempting to pressure researcher teams and their funding institutions into excluding all intercourse not performed by a heterosexual, wedded couple for the purpose of procreation. Others have campaigned for relaxing or abolishing the standards of consent, but Ethics Boards have largely blocked such efforts, most of them also forbidding the inclusion of data offered by proponents.
As for physical representations of that mass equivalent, there is plainly no consensus. Some of the suggestions decay too quickly to be useful, while others have been hard to use. There’s just no realistic way to make any given solution fit all applications.
In short, the topic is highly contentious still.
Fun to research though.
- Comment on More chickens! 3 weeks ago:
Because you need a place to stick all the assholes with a control complex that didn’t even cut it by police standards.
- Comment on More chickens! 3 weeks ago:
Had a neighbour who generally wasn’t fit for pets. Whoever gave her a first dog to live in her tuna can of a smoker’s apartment ought to be sued for cruelty. Whoever gave her a second one should be forced to live with the lot.
One or her dogs didn’t get along with the other. No clue why or what she tried, but I’m inclined to assume “nothing” and it sure didn’t work. Poor thing got locked out on the balcony instead. Whole neighbourhood got to hear his persistent cries of dismay. You’d think he’d accept his fate, but no, he’d bark hours on end. The hag had the nerve to be pissed at noise complaints too. Don’t recall if he was taken from her, but I think it stopped eventually.
- Comment on More chickens! 3 weeks ago:
My childhood neighbour (great aunt or whatever around some corners, we called her auntie even if she technically wasn’t) had hens. Their rooster was fairly chill, but unfortunately mortal and eventually supplanted by a younger. That cunt was a genuine asshole, about what you’d expect from a young cock without anyone to trim his wings (figuratively, but also literally - mate could jump up to a kid’s eye level with them things).
Where his predecessor had come to know us and tolerated us near the hens, the young punk was out for fucking blood. Whether he was jealous that the hens would come running to us, whether he thought he needed to protect them from what they clearly didn’t see as threat or whether he was trying to play the tough guy in front of his chicks, I don’t know. Bottom line, we stopped visiting the hens.
And I’d still take him over geese.
- Comment on Keeping my promise to Zephyr 3 weeks ago:
When I was a kid, there was a food truck we’d occasionally visit, where the vendor would address us as Chief. “Good afternoon, chief, what’ll it be?” “Coming right up, chief” “Here you go, chief” “Have a great day, chief!”
I loved it as a kid. Not sure how I’d feel about it today, but it absolutely was an effective contribution to us going back there frequently.
- Comment on Do you know examples of mistranslations of in-game dialog from cutscenes via subtitles whilst playing in another language? 3 weeks ago:
I stopped playing games in German for that exact reason, at least initially. I didn’t even care about lip sync initially (that was more a thing with movies).
By now, it has become a matter of habit, with very few exceptions that are originally German-made and have reasonable texts (like the X series of space sims or the older Anno titles). For a time, I also held on to games I’d played in German initially because I couldn’t bring myself to trade away nostalgia (like Skyrim, which I eventually switched to English for mods).
By now, I wonder how many translations might be shoddy AI slop without any native or at least deeply immersed editor to look it over.
What little contact I do have these days is because my wife tends to play in German and I occasionally catch a translation. I’ll have to check the game she’s currently playing again to look for examples, but I recall shaking my head a few times.
- Comment on "influencers" are setting us back 4 weeks ago:
I have a Spinnie-sense for when people are confused about our language, but whether you were curious was a lucky guess. Volltreffer (“Full hit”; bullseye), it seems.
- Comment on "influencers" are setting us back 4 weeks ago:
For the non-Germans who want to know the source of the confusion: It’s basically the same sentence structure in German meaning something different than in English.
to has distinct meanings in “I want to listen to them” and “you should stop to listen to them”. In the first sentence, it’s effectively an article for the activity “listen to them”. In the second sentence, it implies an intent, which could be made explicit like “stop in order to listen to me”.
English uses the progressive (“stop listening”) to disambiguate with words like stop. German instead uses an additional preposition “um” for the intent meaning of to.
(In this case, the meaning difference between “interrupting something” and “stop for good” also has different words, “anhalten” and “aufhören”).
Word for word, “Aufhören zuzuhören” would mean “stop to listen”, but actually means “stop listening” while “stop to listen” would be correctly translated as “anhalten, um zuzuhören”.
- Comment on This week on Windows... 4 weeks ago:
I guess there is a kind of disaster affinity that keeps people watching out for the newest ways in which it is?
- Comment on 4 weeks ago:
I mean, there’s no real individual contract negotiation. The conditions are standardised by the framework agreement. They use a standard format where they note what pay class you’re paid by according to that agreement and that’s that.
I understand the desire and reasoning to separate into “deserves the benefits of our negotiaton” and “doesn’t support us, doesn’t get anything”. For my employer, the potential advantage of individual contracts doesn’t seem to offset the added effort, so they just throw the rest in with the majority.
As for negotiating power, last time they announced a one-day warning strike after a round of negotiations failed, our CEO was quick to pay out a lump sum to everyone and assure us that they’re committed to finding a fair solution and all. Allegedly, he wasn’t actually opposed to the union’s proposition, but as I said, it’s sector-wide so other employers have to agree as well and apparently didn’t. Still, that even the threat produced a reaction (and there was no full strike after it either) indicates that the union has plenty of power.
I think many of us are aware that, member or not, we wouldn’t have these benefits if we didn’t have the union and just sign up on principle. Most of the sector is blue-collar, and I assume that a majority of them are indeed members.
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
Idk, isn’t arranging different employment contracts for employees and non-employees kinda difficult? You’d have to set up a new contract when someone joins or leaves the union.
To be clear, the overarching part the union is responsible for is a framework agreement defining paygrades, holidays and such for all the employees in the sector.
I fudged and conflated the workers’ council with the union, because ultimately, they have similar objectives in protecting workers and my point was to emphasise that good worker representation makes for a stable and pleasant enough working environment.
- Comment on 5 weeks ago:
Unions are awesome.
I’m working in the IT department of a heavily unionised non-IT company. The contracts the union negotiates with that company (and others in the same sector) apply to all employees in those companies, including those who aren’t themselves union members.
I gotta say, pay might be better elsewhere, but I don’t have to fight for a yearly salary increase. I also don’t worry about being sick. I don’t worry about performance, because they’re not allowed to monitor it. I don’t worry about getting everything done in time either. If I’m overworked, I tell my boss and he has to see about reducing my load. Sure, might just be a good boss, but I’m pretty sure it’s also a workplace culture resulting from knowing we can’t be fired without good reason, and poor performance isn’t one (and might also land you in trouble for monitoring performance).
Many of my coworkers have been there for 20+ years, through ups and downs and management changes and structural changes and all. It’s a good, reliable employer, and a solid union helps keep it that way.
- Comment on What's a word for "I actively endorse it for others even though I dislike it”? 5 weeks ago:
- Comment on What's a word for "I actively endorse it for others even though I dislike it”? 5 weeks ago:
Maybe try German.
Not sure I could construct a “plausible” single word either. The best two-word-phrase I could come up with would be “Gönnendes Desinteresse”.
Apparently “Gönnen” has no simple, positive translation when applied to others. To yourself, it’s indulging in something, allowing oneself to have something. Applied to others, it means anything from a lukewarm “I don’t begrudge you (thing)” over “I’ll let you have (thing)” (in the sense of “I’ll let you have that victory”), a more explicitly approving “I think you deserve (thing)” to a cordial “I’m happy for you to have (thing)”.
So basically, it means some form of “Disinterest while approving of others having something”. I suppose the missing piece is having a single word for “I think others should have this thing”.
- Comment on Men against bush 5 weeks ago:
Right? It grows if you don’t do anything about it. That’s basically the definition of natural.
If they don’t find it attractive, they could just say so. It’s a subjective taste. Stand by it.
- Comment on Men against bush 5 weeks ago:
I mean, according to a research paper published by Brandeis University and its sources, the whole “women need to be shaved” thing was started by Gillette to sell razors, correlates with perceiving women as younger and a tendency to fetishise youth
Considering the evolutionary roots, men should feel attracted to female body hair, as it is a secondary sexual characteristic, such as breast size and waist to hip ratio, and hence a sign of sexual maturity and ability to procreate. […]
Biologically, sexually mature females have body hair, but society has made femininity more connected to youth and pre-pubescence than to a woman’s ability to reproduce.
So if you like them unshaved, that’s natural (but no longer normal). If you like them shaved, that’s normal (but not natural).
And if you don’t like them at all, you’re lucky to sidestep that question.
- Comment on Hbd 2 uu 5 weeks ago:
I wonder what they worship there…
Coleus Sanctus, in the heart of the night
Coleus Sanctus, mighty arm in the fight
Coleus Sanctud, holy sanctum of men Ave Maria— Powerwolf, Coleus Sanctus (2013); a song about the Holy Scrotum
- Comment on Me after Jerboa announced it is ending support 5 weeks ago:
asking a little much of users to start direct dowloading apks or whatever to get their leftist shitposting app
I mean, if you’re serious about ideology, you probably won’t mind taking a few extra steps for it. If the status quo pisses you off, why not do something that’s ultimately still free and only takes a little more time?
- Comment on Aha! 1 month ago:
I’m not sure many people were dental guinea-pigs though. Sucks that you got fucked by it though.