Untitled

[tecnobabushka]

Russian handwriting

[notcrazyiswear]

I’ll forever be amused at the Russian word “deprived” (лишили) in cursive, which looks like

[esoanem]

for people wondering how the hell that works

[shieldfoss]

I still don’t know how the hell that works.

[counterclockworkminds]

See, to me it looks a lot like ‘minimum’ in English cursive:

Ok not so bad right? But it gets worse…

Like… what even is this?

Can’t tell me that’s a word right? But it is! Sure you could dot the i’s, but would it really help?

source here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Handwriting/comments/1hgsc8/write_minimum_in_cursive_without_dotting_the_is/

[shieldfoss]

Yes. Yes it would.

[squareallworthy]

Wikipedia: Minim (palaeography)

[nid--hogg]

Why the fuck would language evolve in such a completely illogical way like this

[kyraneko]

fuck every last bit of this

[tuulikki]

Humans invented writing as a way of communicating information and it’s pretty great on the whole but we maybe did not adequately prepare for depreciation in legibility

[pudimdosubmundo]

@official-linguistics-post ?

[sztupy]

[tecnobabushka]

Wtf guys ten years

[alexseanchai]

Why the fuck would language evolve in such a completely illogical way like this

because a primary objective of cursive handwriting, from inception to the abandonment of dip pens, has always been to avoid getting inkblots on the page from lifting the pen when it doesn’t yet need refilled, which is also a problem familiar to the monks copying manuscripts in Gothic calligraphy

(that said, the mimi numinum writer is unambiguously fucking with us, same as the Buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo writer and the Lion-Eating Poet writer, and with much the same sort of point to make to readers; the mimi numinum writer won that argument eventually, which we know because J and V are now written differently from I and U, and because lowercase i and j now have dots on top)

something similar is probably what’s going on in these probably-Chinese-calligraphy scribbles, since the brush also needs dipped in ink every so often; no idea what Doctor Textable thinks they’re doing, though

[stjohnstarling]

A solid 30% of discussion about genre tropes on this website boils down to, "I wish this piece of genre fiction was a completely different genre, or not genre fiction at all," and boy I don't know what to tell you. You're buying clothes at the soup store.

[stjohnstarling]

I think the battle is long since lost on what the “-coded” suffix means, but I (old movie guy specifically invested in queer coding) seem to be unable to let go of how annoying I find the fuzzy popular use of the term. This is probably a flaw in my character.

[stjohnstarling]

Coding is intentional, it’s a way of communicating indirectly with the audience through a shared language of signs. That’s why it’s called coding, because it’s communicating in code. It isn’t when a thing reminds you of another thing.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

Excellent way to start a letter. That will be going into my stock phrases for emails.

[kaiserin-erzsebet]

The most relatable part was the "but (insert rant)" that immediately followed this

[soappbar]

i love these colors on him theyy are great

[automatuck9]

-And Then There Were None, Agatha Christie

The sheer power of shifting language meaning is encapsulated so beautifully in this sentence

[teathattast]

[thememedaddy]

[pierogiy]

Caught Up On My Stories BTW. Handling It

[uss-edsall]

At 1 PM on a Friday I get an email from my boss. I'm busy as hell so I don't check it immediately. Then I get a phone call from my boss, which has almost never happened before. I'm a white collar worker, a historian. There's never a 'historical emergency' requiring a phone call to kick me in the ass and get to work.

The request is so urgent my boss needs it by the end of the work week. Which, y'know, is 5 PM on a Friday. So I have four hours to do it.

It's a forwarded request. Somebody contacted a member of the donation team asking for help, "I need a map from the Vietnam War to use for a presentation." It's somebody she's trying to coax into giving a five figure donation to the museum.

The request was asked to the donation team member, who then emailed my boss, who then emailed and called me urgently.

This map required:

North and South Vietnam in it

All four areas that South Vietnam was divided into for military purposes ('Corps') clearly delineated

Four cities, all of them horrifically misspelled, and only identifiable because I know what battle the requester is asking about (it’s in III Corps on the border with Cambodia) (the requester danced around the battle but I’m knowledgeable enough to identify it)

Has Laos and Cambodia in it

Has the Ho Chi Minh Trail in it

So. I was mad about the 'you have literally four hours to find a map with a lot of requirements.'

I was then mad at myself about finding a copyright free map from Texas Tech University within half an hour, proving her right for asking me to do it.

Then, after I found a map that perfectly met the requirements, I was equally amazed, baffled, and horrified when I read further into the forwarded email chain.

The donation team team member they were speaking to used AI to generate a map.

The above put half of North Vietnam in South Vietnam, made the Ho Chi Minh Trail a country, made 60% of Cambodia part of South Vietnam, put the DMZ extremely high up in North Vietnam, completely disconnected the southern tip of Vietnam, misplaced all of the Corps zones, etc etc

At the very last second the donation team member had a moment of divine clarity, remembering there's three historians on payroll to ask for this kind of thing from. So she contacted my boss while saying, "I had fun with this, but I decided I should check for accuracy before I send it to the donor! I need a fact check by the end of the day, then I send it"

My boss, while not the most knowledgeable on the Vietnam War, does know her geography. She took one look, and knew it was so off she called me to tell me how urgent it is that I look at the email and respond

good fucking god, jesus tap dancing goddamn christ, I'm glad I was asked to look at it and then find a real map

[prokopetz]

It's actually a bit surprising to me that we haven't seen contemporary meta brainfuck indie games do more than they have with 1990s point and click adventure games' penchant for developer-intended softlocks. That feels like something you could very easily spin as Saying Something.

[prokopetz]

Honestly, having grown up with this bullshit is probably a big part of the reason I'm fascinated with player-hostile game design. Giving a puzzle three different solutions with fully voiced and animated reactions to each, except two of those solutions render the game unwinnable in ways that won't become apparent until hours later is a level of "fuck you" that most modern games with pretensions of player-hostility can only dream of!

[prokopetz]

@lunchm34t replied:

what adventure games softlock you like that?

I'm usually loathe to suggest TV Tropes as a resource, but given that only a person who's entirely unacquainted with the genre would be asking that question, a primer is probably warranted. Check out the Unwinnable By Design article and read the preamble for context on the types of softlocks we're discussing, then hit either the "Sierra" or "Infocom" links (yes, those two publishers each have their own dedicated sections!), pop open the "Cruel" tab, and get ready to read some stuff that makes you mad.

[sd-d0-l1y]

There really is only one correct way to play some of these games huh.

[prokopetz]

A critical piece of context that a lot of modern gamers completely miss is that Douglas Adams' adventure games are works of parody not only in terms of their narratives, but also in the sense that they're rather vicious parodies of adventure games as a genre. Each of their absurdly obtuse puzzles is lampooning some puzzle design trope or set of tropes that was legitimately commonplace at the time they were made, and many of the really nasty bits are crafted specifically to piss off experienced adventure game fans who otherwise wouldn't get caught out by that sort of thing. They're outliers in the genre only in the sense that they're putting forth extra effort to be annoying about it – most games of the type pull the exact same shit entirely without remark!

[prokopetz]

(Honestly, the player-hostility of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tends to be tremendously overstated owing to a combination of effective marketing and the fact that it's the only adventure game from that era that any significant number of current-gen gamers have ever actually played. In terms of sheer fuckery it's considerably friendlier than stuff like, say, Codename: ICEMAN.)

[dana-ategina]

were these like, rented out blockbuster-style and the devs got a cut out of said rent, or

[prokopetz]

It helps to understand that point and click adventure games are one of the first genres the Git Gud crowd really fixated on, and a lot of these early design trends revolved around catering to that crowd. It only got reframed as a genre for filthy casuals in the wake of a demographic shift in the mid 1990s that saw the genre's player base skewing strongly female; it's practically the only example of a video game genre's reputation flipping directly from "hardcore" to "casual", and one of the most striking illustrations of the fact that which kinds of games are considered "real" games is more about identity politics than mechanics.

[captain-price-returns]

Soldier your mission is to be a seat filler at our 80 year old president's big birthday fight! Strong sexy hunks ONLY! Absolutely NO uggos!

[bailesu]

This may well the most pathetic moment in the history of the Presidency.

[pyrchance]

And I'll tell you another thing: I'm sorry you and Gus McCrae ever met. All you two done was ruin one another, not to mention those close to you. Another reason I didn't marry him was because I didn't want to fight you for him every day of my life."

This part literally took my knees out.

[aevarswall]

men would rather put their son born out of wedlock whom they never claimed in charge of their Montana ranch in order to carry the body of their fallen comrade 3000 miles to an orchard in Texas ignoring the pleas of all the living surrounding them instead of going to therapy

[docholligay]

@automatuck9

[automatuck9]

Lonesome Dove

Non-spoiler thoughts: First Western novel I've ever read and possibly I've set myself up for disappoint with future ones since this was really, REALLY good. Great characters, great prose, great atmosphere, great tension. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Spoiler thoughts below:

What is sticking with me most right now is how ambiguous the ending is for most of the characters. What does Call end up doing with himself, does Newt run the ranch successfully/get over his daddy issues, does Lorena move past her depression etc, etc. Really only the dead characters are left with a real sense of closure, everyone else is left in place trying to pick up some kind of pieces of their life before they let it burn them up like Xavier in the inn. Very good and satisfying despite the extreme lack of finality.

I love the way Gus and Call are polar opposites who make each other's problems worse while still being close friends. And I love that neither of them ever changes and that there are consequences to that lack of change. Gus finally gets himself killed with his carelessness when he had every opportunity for a happy life that he claims to want so much and Call ruins every relationship he has left with his inability to get over himself or be vulnerable in any way. That kick in the teeth where you think he'll finally say something and then just leaves Newt in the cold is perfect.

I love the never escaping dread that the landscape they travel through almost feels post apocalyptic for all its beauty with the lingering on the emptiness left behind by the decimation of the tribes and the buffalo (to say nothing of the many literal buffalo bone grounds they pass through). Gives an overwhelming feeling of loss to the setting and fits with the question the characters ask themselves of what the heck they're doing going more and more into it and what it says about them.

Also such great tension from all these these would be enforcers of order being both little more than vigilantes and also shameless thieves themselves. I cracked up at Newt's brief moment of "wait...aren't we stealing horses from the Mexicans? Weird the Captain always shows no mercy to horse thieves. Guess that's different.... anyway!" It was a very funny moment of the more modern sensibilities of the author poking through with the characters feeling out of their own time.

Minor Complaints:

I think the manuscript could have used one more run-through because there were some really blatant continuity errors. None major, but always jarring. The number of murder victims of the Suggs gang, Clara's first born son is suddenly her third born son. Weirdest was one within three pages of each other regarding Clara's tucked away money:

"p. 592 The first of the money she spent was on the two-storey frame house they had built three years before..." p. 595 "She wouldn't give it up or let him use it no matter how poor they were...she wouldn't even use the money on the house, although she had wanted the house."

The circumstances that led to Lorena's kidnapping were very contrived and I could feel the author behind the scenes more than I should have. He tries to dismiss it as Gus' flaw of not taking danger seriously, but he both took it too seriously and too little for either to make sense. This is an outlaw that he himself is uncertain he could kill one on one. What exactly was the point of assigning Newt as a bodyguard? How did he imagine this playing out if Newt had been in camp?

Danger of a large rotating cast, some are more interesting than others. I never cared about Roscoe's Three Stooges routine and July's self pity started out kind of tragic but went on so long I got really sick of whenever we switched back to him.

[dailynarnia]

is jake gyllenhaal gay??

why would you ask us, a narnia blog, this

[helloitsbees]

happy pride month to this post specifically

[only-cat-memes]