pedz
@pedz@lemmy.ca
- Comment on Languages 2 weeks ago:
Indeed. According to a literary website from Lyon’s library, the s was not pronounced in certain words well before we stopped writing them. Apparently it took a few centuries to introduce the circumflex.
Bien que la graphie ait longtemps gardé la présence de ce /s/, on ne le prononçait plus depuis bien avant qu’on ne décide, au XVIIIe siècle (dès l’édition de 1740 du Dictionnaire de l’Académie française), de noter cet amuïssement par le recours systématique à l’accent circonflexe. L’amuïssement du /s/ en position appuyante date pourtant d’après 1066.
Or in English
Although the spelling retained the /s/ for a long time, it had ceased to be pronounced well before the decision was made in the 18th century (starting with the 1740 edition of the Dictionary of the French Academy) to systematically indicate this elision through the use of the circumflex accent. The elision of the /s/ in stressed position, however, dates back to after 1066.
That would be very typical of French. Spoken French is well in advance on the written form. Hence the jokes at its expense.
Maybe in a few other centuries we’ll have made a few other reforms to match what’s written with what we’re saying, but I think most of us kind of like that. The written form is the glue that holds all the varieties of French together and writing formal French also makes one feel a bit smug.
- Comment on Languages 2 weeks ago:
And when the letters are removed, French still lets you know there was a letter at some point by putting a little hat on top of the preceding letter. It makes learning it even funnier.
Forêt and forest. Arrêt and arrest. Hôpital and hospital.
As a native French speaker this may be the laziest part to me. We still say someone was hoSpitalisé, in a hôpital. People can be défeneStrés through fenêtres. Someone can be arrêté through arrestation.
Lots of hidden pains and treasures. When I was a kid I thought learning all this shit was pointless. We should just reform everything and spell like we speak. But then I also learned to appreciate the evolution of the language and why wasp and guêpe have the same roots.
- Comment on Languages 2 weeks ago:
Yes it is sceau
- Comment on My 23 year (so far) experience with Linux distrohopping since first install 3 weeks ago:
Apt blew my mind. It was becoming increasingly difficult to install and maintain a lot of software on Slackware, just for my personal computer. So when a friend showed me Debian and apt, everything was suddenly much much easier.
- Comment on My 23 year (so far) experience with Linux distrohopping since first install 3 weeks ago:
I can upvote this one in spirit. I started with a distro based on Slackware around 1998. I tried different ones like Mandrake, but went back to Slackware for a while. Then I tried Debian 2.2 in the early 2000 and stayed with it ever since.
I do have other distros installed on other computers, but I usually prefer those based on Debian.
- Comment on French village is switching their computers to Linux. They will no longer purchase Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office 1 month ago:
C’est que des produits français.
Quelqu’un va devoir aviser Torvalds qu’il est maintenant Français. Blague à part, je comprends le choix de vocabulaire car la majorité de ce qu’ils doivent utiliser doit être des logiciels maison, mais reste que le système d’exploitation lui-même n’est quand même pas français.
- Comment on Settle a debate can potato's and noodles go together and taste great with sauce and other things? (I say it can) However my mother says two starches should never be cooked because it's too much. 1 month ago:
There’s some hikers and campers that like to make a thing called a ramen bomb. Just instant noodle with instant potatoes. It works, for some.
- Comment on Their name is Spike. 2 months ago:
This looks like a shadow vessel from B5.
- Comment on How do you pronounce 'Niche'? 3 months ago:
- Comment on Robotaxis can break traffic laws without fines under new California rules 3 months ago:
TBF kids are already getting killed by other cars and society deems it an acceptable loss for being able to take cars everywhere.
In 2023, there’s been 12 fatalities of kids under 4 years old in Canada, and 48 fatalities between 4 and 14 years old. All ages, it’s a total of nearly 2000 dead in a year in Canada alone for 2023.
When a kid dies in a pool we nearly ban them and strengthen regulations. Cities pay inspectors to make sure people have fences around their pool.
When a kid gets clipped by a fast moving cyclist it makes the news. Dangerous cyclists are roaming the streets at high speed, nearly killing children! What an outrage!
But when cars kill a few thousand people every year, one every 30 seconds on the planet, it’s the price we have to pay for this convenience. We can’t stop the world turning. Our economies would collapse without cars so we can’t really impose any regulations on them. They’re EsSeNtIAl.
- Comment on Thanks for coming to my TED talk 3 months ago:
My parents live in a rural area and they have hundreds of multicoloured Asian lady beetles crawling in their windows and in the house.
I have a cabin in the same region and the inside of the walls are filled with their corpses. They agglutinate by thousands in fire wood and I burn so many. They are everywhere and kind of annoying.
- Comment on Subaru brothers, unite! 4 months ago:
This is nice but not an option for me. This won’t pass through any chicane of the cycling network and I wouldn’t be able to leave my town. I also wouldn’t have any space to store it when not in use. Plus, I’m usually doing multi day trips that amounts to more km than what an electric bike can do on a single charge in a day. I travel further than what an electric bike can do, and pulling a camper behind would reduce even more the possible range.
I fantasized a lot about campers like this, thinking I could leave it at my parent’s and tour my native region. But again, chicanes… chicanes everywhere.
I would have to use the roads, with cars, and be very limited in range compared to what I’m used to. So unfortunately, as nice as this seems, it’s not really an option.
- Comment on Subaru brothers, unite! 4 months ago:
You can physically live in a car but depending where you live, this might me illegal or difficult to do legally. You don’t have an address and governments usually don’t like that. And it’s also not always possible/legal to park a car somewhere a sleep in it.
Still, motonormativity makes living in a car much easier than just roaming around with a tent. There are exceptions here called “relay villages” where people can legally park and sleep in their car or RV for the night. I love touring on my bike and some rail trails are going through those villages. And obviously you can sleep in a car there, but not pitch a tent for the night if you just have a bike. I’m so jealous of the privilege of people with RVs and cars sometimes.
- Comment on Turbines are our friends 4 months ago:
I know this is a meme community but I was curious about this. It seems some birds do get burned, but not blasted. It varies a lot depending on the installation and it can also be mitigated. Also, the amount of birds dying from this is significantly lower than just the amount of birds hitting windows. For the benefit of other curious people, I’ll try to condense the relevant information from wikipedia and the sources.
In more general terms, a 2016 preliminary study assessed that the annual bird mortality per MW of installed power was similar between U.S. concentrated solar power plants and wind power plants, and higher for fossil fuel power plants.
How it was calculated for fossil fuel
Sovacool estimated avian mortality from fossil fuel power plants across the United States as a result of collision with infrastructure, electrocutions, pollution and contamination, and climate change. In addition, Sovacool estimated climate change-induced avian mortality (in terms of habitat loss and changes in migration) predicted to be the result of fossil fuel power plant operations.
A preliminary assessment of avian mortality at utility-scale solar energy facilities in the United States: www.sciencedirect.com/…/S0960148116301422?via=ihu…
Review of Avian Mortality Studies at Concentrating Solar Power Plants: www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1364837
- Comment on 4 months ago:
AFAIK there’s no equivalent word for alien in French. The concept is different. Everything coming from space is automatically extraterrestrial. If it’s coming from earth, it’s just a strange/different species or a different form of life. The vagueness of alien doesn’t translate well in French, unless we use the word ‘alien’.
- Comment on 4 months ago:
This is interesting as a language quirk. Alien can just mean “different” in English. It doesn’t need to come from space. But English also has extraterrestrial.
As a non native speaker, I had to pause and wonder a bit about “alien”.
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 4 months ago:
I have an old Realme GT NEO 3 with the stock ROM. There was no LineageOS ROM for it when I got it but there’s been one for two years now, so I may give it a try eventually.
The camera is not good but apart from that, it works. I have Google apps installed on this one and use mainly Gmail and Maps. Maps is shitty but I also use openstreetmaps on the web through Firefox. I don’t have the YouTube app and watch videos in Firefox, with uBlock Origin, Sponsor Block and Video Background Play Fix. I tend to use the websites, or FOSS apps if possible through F-Droid. No weather app, I just go on the website with ads blocked. But I don’t mind paying for some apps that I use if they are useful and don’t have ads. Ads are the devil.
And my backups are simple, using FolderSync connecting via SSH on my headless Orange Pi.
- Comment on Great Tits 5 months ago:
Apparently horses sometimes eat small birds. They shouldn’t but it seems it can happen if they are hungry, or bored and/or curious.
- Comment on Can't click my app controls! 5 months ago:
Mild guess. The dev(s) don’t know about navigation buttons. Gestures have been “standard” for a while now so maybe someone forgot about this as a possibility?
- Comment on The HOA isn't going to be happy about the colour, though. 5 months ago:
So we’re just spreading trash in the environment and feeling good about it because it can be reused by other animals?
This just made me look up and learn about how tennis balls are an environmental problem.
- Comment on YouTube Blocks Background Listening Workaround for Free Users 5 months ago:
So far it’s still working for me with Firefox and the “Video Background Play Fix” extension.
- Comment on Humanity has “lost the fight against climate change” 5 months ago:
The pandemic really killed off any hope I had that we would do anything against climate change. The environment got better for a few days and weeks while we were all working from home, and everyone around me was like “I can’t wait to go back to my commute”. People were eager to go back to the way they were. Pollution, inequalities, and all.
If a pandemic didn’t budge us from overconsumption and the hyper capitalism that is slowly condemning humanity, nothing will. The threat was immediate and we didn’t change the system. So with a threat that is “far” in the future… the outlook is grim.
- Comment on Got bad news for ya bud 6 months ago:
Yeah, about that.
My province just had a very dry summer with very low water levels. Some wells dried up.
At some point farmers were wondering how they would be watering their crops if it got any worse.
Or what about flash flooding, either on flat ground, or in mountain towns? Or wild fires?
There’s certainly places safer than others, but a lot more people are going to be affected than just coastal inhabitants.
- Comment on Kira asks Sisko for a runabout... again 6 months ago:
I was wondering about the instances when she borrowed a runabout and when the terrorism happened but someone’s gonna have to remind me.
Once she brought back a few Bajorans that were still prisoners since the war, including Li Nalas.
Another time she kidnapped a single Barojan scientist to force him find a cure against a terrorist bioweapon.
What am I missing?
- Comment on Why do they turn Federation into a dystopia? 6 months ago:
No, but since you’re mentioning it I might try. I’ve been so disappointed by the franchise that I didn’t bother looking into SNW, but just having someone that seems to be on the same page suggest it makes me want to at least give it a try.
Thanks for the suggestion, and the detailed rant!
- Comment on Why do they turn Federation into a dystopia? 6 months ago:
I’m on the same boat. Apart from Lower Decks, I can’t watch the new shows. I keep hoping a new show might fix it, and be for me, but the longer it goes, the less I’m interested in Star Trek.
Lately I’ve been thinking about unsubscribing from all the Star Trek communities, as all the discussions and hype about the new shows is making me think I’m no longer a trekkie. I loved TNG, DS9, VOY and tolerated ENT, but the new shows are clearly not made for me.
- Comment on Australians banned social media. Now they are worried about teenagers going outside with e-bikes 6 months ago:
The article doesn’t mention any “miles per hour”. Do people in Australia use mph?
In December, the NSW premier, Chris Minns, announced a plan to halve ebikes’ power – and therefore reduce their top speeds – to 250 watts…
- Comment on London stabbing rates vs X posts about London crime 6 months ago:
This reminds me of a Republican politician interviewed on TV being told that crime rates were down, and him replying “but I don’t FEEL safe”.
Reality doesn’t matter.
- Comment on its a 1999 nissan actually 6 months ago:
Oh yeah. A car shows your social status and you want to impress others. If you drive an expensive car, of course women will want to be your girlfriend.
I wonder what his father drives? Did he also give his mother cookies because he didn’t have the correct car to impress?
- Comment on 6 months ago:
Same but with the current geopolitical situation.
