loon call, table of nonsense

just trying my best

[machine-unlearning]

My flu isn't all that bad, but I had a super weird flu dream about a world where if you died and your body hadn't been found yet, all your online accounts would keep posting in a mildly annoyed tone from the pov of the corpse. None of the posts were creepy, just stuff like "Stuck laying facedown in my bed forever #mybedforever," and because it happened somewhat regularly it was all treated pretty normally, some kind of “the spirit hasn’t moved on yet” schtick. And it'd be a little tragic to find out grandma died from her facebook post "the cat is sniffing my face... he can tell I'm not breathing but is so very polite and not eating me yet... 🤣🐈😿" but it'd kind of be last words in a way and at least more personal than hearing she died over the phone from some coroner.

The main awkward thing was sometimes the person behind a big tumblr would die and their tumblr would start corpse posting, but none of their mutuals know them irl to recover the body, so you're all stuck waiting as days pass and their account keeps corpse posting, with the knowledge that nobody from real life has checked on them, and that when someone eventually does they'll find a decaying corpse

[kristina100000]

incredible picture found on the interwebs i had to share with everypony

[cryptid-deity]

[Image description: in a public square, a person sits in front of a table where two chess games have been set up. Attached to the table is a sign that reads, "I never lose. I either win or learn." End description.]

[specialagentartemis]

I’m getting really irritated with “people have always been people” type posts where 90% of examples come from ancient Rome or medieval Europe and use this to act like the way people act in Cultures That Trace Their Cultural Histories From Rome And Medieval Europe are universal. Doubly so when it’s exclusively about city life in these time periods and places. People were people even when they did Kula rings in 19th century Papua New Guinea and lived in Hohokam courtyard group settings in 10th century Arizona and herded cows in 11th century Zimbabwe and didn’t have pizza or newspapers or birth control or lewd graffiti. Why are your examples of the universality of humanity only interested in what people were doing in the Bronze/Iron Age Mediterranean and medieval Europe. Learn about the Mesoamerican ballgame and Brithawon’s shitty pots and the egalitarian infrastructure of the Indus Valley Civilization and the lovingly fired and kept children’s pottery in 15th century New Mexico and gambling games played in Nevada 12,000 years ago as a method of social levelling and all the wild stuff Shihuangdi did. And then learn about how they thought about things very differently than you do too, and that’s okay.

[elexuscal]

A Personal Ranking to Different Ways Spec Fic Handle Languages

Everyone speaks "Common", which is the normal, default-language (probably associated with humans), with each other species/race having their own [weird sounding] languages At best, basic and functional. At worst, speaks to some really euro/Anglo-centric perspectives on how language works. Fine for your personal D&D game, but both unrealistic and uninteresting in terms of worldbuilding. (1/10)

Everyone just speaks the same language but no explanation is given as to why Again, basic and functional. Makes very little sense unless you're in a very small setting, so you'd think I'd dock that for being unrealistic. But this says 'this story doesn't have the scope to handle translation logistics' and I respect that honesty. 3/10

Earth (or future Earth or AU Earth) where everyone just speaks different real world languages By default, the most realistic! Perfectly respectable. Can be very easily used to explore the real-life politics of language. But by dint of being realistic, also a little boring, though it's ultimately all in execution. (5/5, +/- 2 depending)

Scientifically-created perfect instant universal translator For when you need your cast of international/intergalactic characters to I appreciate this one for giving me a willing suspension of belief for how all these characters can understand each other. However, introduces a new belief to suspend because i Do Not Believe we could invent this under real world physics. I find this fun but think writers could get weirder about this one. (6/10)

Magically-or-psychically-powered (etc) perfect instant universal translator The last one, but make it magic. Which sure is just a rebrand in the techno babble but works better for me. Again, I think writers could get weirder (6.5/10)

Characters speak "Common" as a lingua franca, deconstruction remix Okay, now we're cooking. You're actually exploring what would cause a so-called "common" language means, the history that would cause it to take root, and the interspecies/racial/group politics and tensions that exist. Fun! (7/10)

Look at me, I made a conlang! Okay, cool, impressive. but like... did you do anything with it? (7.5/10)

I made a conlang (or conlangs PLURAL) and it's relevant to both characters and plot! Damn, fair enough man. Respect. Tolkien would be proud. however, i personally am jack shit at languages, so if it's relevant enough to the plot I need to understand it, I'll struggle. it's not you, it's me. (8/10)

Characters speak many languages in this setting, which is a major political theme My personal catnip. It's like speculative linguistics and anthropology and politics and all this bullshit i love. <3 <3 (9/10)

Speculative evolution LANGUAGE EDITION you made an alien and it's weird and it has a language but it's not like any HUMAN language because the species doesn't have a mouth or it's psychic or it communicates purely through colour. my absolute fave. (10/10) [disclaimer: this is just my opinion not objective fact. i am not a linguistic i just think this stuff is Neat. i want to hear other peoples' opinions on this too]

[starlightandtears]

Finding out that Frances Dana Barker Gage, a white woman, rewrote Sojourner Truth’s famous speech to be more stereotypically “Southern slave” (complete with slurs and misspellings like dat, dere, dey) when Sojourner Truth was actually from New York and spoke only Dutch until she was almost ten and wouldn’t have actually sounded that way linguistically and decidedly did not use the phrase “Ain’t I A Woman?” at all is…whew. And on top of everything, she embellished details about Sojourner Truth’s life (like the number of children she had/how many of them were sold into slavery), wrote that ST said that she could take beatings like a man, and the reception of the speech in the room (she claims ST was called a n*gg*r, earlier accounts say the room was welcoming).

Lmaooo peak white feminist antics.

[deermouth]

You can read the most accurate transcript here, alongside the racist edited one.

[unthrifty--loveliness-deactivat]

I was already disgusted just reading about this but looking at the side-by-side comparison of the real speech and the rewrite really brought it home.

See the two versions of her first line below:

[ai-yo]

Yeah I remember a few years ago when I found this out through Feminista Jones and was mad but not that surprised because white woman so….

[enchantedpencilcomics]

This sent me down a bit of a research rabbit hole and I found a cool thing where afro Dutch women read Sojourner’s speech aloud in their contemporary Dutch dialects in hope of offering a more truthful rendition of her authentic Dutch voice.

[official-linguistics-post]

uh oh

"etymologynerd" is at it again and this time i do feel i have to say something. the disability advocates have it covered on addressing the impact, but there's also a serious problem with the linguistics.

in a video shared on may 16, adam aleksic begins by saying: "i think we have to accept the fact that the 'r-word' [retard/retarded] is permanently coming back and it's functionally changed meanings to no longer directly refer to disabled people."

this first sentence alone betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of language change in several points.

this word never went away. what we're seeing now is an attempt at re-normalization by people who sense that they will not be socially punished by openly using this term.

we actually don't have to "accept" its return to mainstream use. for decades, disability advocates have worked to inform the public of the harm caused by casual use of this term. the harm has not disappeared, and neither will this advocacy and its impacts.

now i'm just mad. how tf does it NOT refer to disabled people? the entire point of a pejorative term is that it negatively invokes comparison to a person, group, etc. the assertion that the r-word has changed meanings is categorically false. at most, its primary context has changed from clinical to casually pejorative, but the insult fundamentally rests upon the original reference.

he goes on to refer to the "euphemism treadmill," another concept he misrepresents by extending the metaphor to say that terms which have been sufficiently distanced from their original reference are no longer pejorative. to quote: "...once we sufficiently distance a word from its historical usage, it stops taking on the same offensive power and just becomes colloquial instead."

which... what? what the fuck is he talking about? the words he uses as examples – idiot, imbecile, and moron – are definitely still offensive, if perhaps less impactful. "just becomes colloquial instead" is a nonsense phrase. are offensive words not colloquial? the only english word that comes to mind as having changed so much in definition as to no longer be offensive is "nice," which has been shifting in meaning for more than 700 years and was never a weaponized clinical term.

he ends by saying, "it is undeniably true that the people who are afraid to say the r-word right now are going to get old and die out, while younger generations keep saying it with no knowledge of where it came from." again, fundamentally misunderstanding language change in society over time. it rests on the assumption that we're all going to start or re-start using this slur and never have a conversation about its harms, which just completely ignores both the abovementioned disability advocacy and the fact that people tell each other not to use offensive words. you think i'm just not gonna teach my kids that using slurs is bad??

the whole video is devoid of both empathy and an understanding of long-term semantic change.

tl;dr etymologynerd is wrong, we do NOT "have to accept that the 'r-word' is coming back," and we all need to read more crip linguistics.

[official-linguistics-post]

after continuing to stew about this during my lunch break, i'd also like to point out that framing this sort of thing as "inevitable" is some fascist bullshit.

don't fall for it.

[official-linguistics-post]

LORD HELP ME I ACCIDENTALLY DELETED THE REBLOG. anyway,

this is to apologize for using the phrase "devoid of empathy." it was a bad choice on my part because i framed the lack of empathy as malicious, which dehumanizes and demonizes people who lack empathy as part of their neurotype.

if i'd thought through those implications, i should have said something like "the video is devoid of care or respect for the disabled community."

[aretasreads]

[no-chair]

finished call down the hawk and had to scribble my girly with so many issues

[64mpg]

i hate when things aren’t my business #whatisgoingon #dontleavemehanging #tellmesomethingplease

[entities-of-posts]

The Beholding

[bardace]

Shut Up, I Don’t Care

[lawbreaker13]

Oh I hate this so much, incredible job OP

[shoezuki]

obsessed with the canadian ghoulmaxxing acecel

[ami-the-shamrock-deactivated202]

[fairweathermyth]

RUSSIAN DOLL 1.01 Nothing in This World is Easy + 2.01 Nowhen

[benchofindigo]

[ID: Gifset from Russian Doll. The first gif is from S1 when Nadia is in Maxine’s kitchen saying, “The universe is trying to fuck with me, and I refuse to engage!”

Second gif is from S2 when Nadia is in the pub in the past, holding up a drink and saying, “When the universe fucks with you, let it.” End ID]

[plain text: Russian Doll - 1.01 Nothing in This World is Easy + 2.01 Nowhen. end plain text]

[hers-deactivated20210629]

Greta Lee as Maxine in Russian Doll (2019)

[benchofindigo]

[ID: Gifset of Maxine from Russian Doll.

Maxine waving a spatula saying, “It’s your party and I’m making you a fucking birthday chicken.”

Her looking at two pieces of art hanging on the wall with another guest saying, “I’m interested in plagiarism as an art form.”

Maxine saying to Nadia, “I love that you’re a cunt. It makes me feel morally superior.”

Maxine yelling at Nadia and Alan “I don’t know what’s going on here, but either you two suck each other’s dicks or get the fuck out of my apartment.”

Maxine holding a mason jar saying, “I’m really into dads.”

Her standing in front of her chicken holding a joint, “If no one eats my chicken, I’m gonna fucking kill myself.” End ID]

[sycamorality]

turns out i have a lot of opinions on subtitles

[sycamorality]

theres a youtuber ive watched before he ever hit 1k. hell, before he hit 800. he had subtitles on his first video. manual ones, not auto-generated ones. IF HE CAN DO THAT THEN SO CAN SOME FUCKASS WITH THOUSANDS OR MILLIONS OF SUBSCRIBERS. OR AT LEAST FUCKING PAY SOMEONE TO DO THE SUBTITLES

[sycamorality]

and i hate the autogenerated subtitles so much. if the person swears or says a slur and it isnt censored, DONT CENSOR IT IN THE SUBTITLES. if its censored in speech, then censor it in subtitles. but if someone says a slur outright, no censoring? put it in the damn subtitles, i dont care, subtitles are for telling you what someone says

[sycamorality]

if your guy says "motherfucking bitch" then the subtitles should not say "motherf*cking b*tch", "mother******* b*****" or void forbid "[_] [_]" like youtube's autogenerated subtitles do. your subtitles should be saying "motherfucking bitch", UNLESS the guy's speech was censored like motherf[dolphin noise] b[dolphin noise], then you subtitles say "motherf[dolphin noise] b[dolphin noise]"

[sycamorality]

youtube's autogenerated subtitles are maybe some of the most ableist and infantilising ones ever and i think im gonna kill someone

[capricorn-0mnikorn]

In This Post, I linked to a video about how horse riding can be used as a tool for physical therapy for people with certain disabilities. And the narrator of that video was using technical, clinical, words to describe the effect of the horse's movement on the rider's body.

The video has auto-generated closed captions.

At the 8 minute, 10 second mark, the narrator says that the motion of the horse's back "may decrease tone in spastic muscles" (which is a good thing; clinically speaking, "spastic" means a muscle has way too much tone).

But because YouTube's algorithm has flagged "Spastic" as a slur (with no understanding that words can have different meanings in different contexts), it simply removed the word altogether, and the closed caption was:

"may decrease tone in muscles,"

(not even giving a clue that a word was edited out).

Generally speaking, decreasing tone in (normal) muscles is a bad thing, 'case it means you're making someone weaker.

So not only is the automatic censoring of words infantilizing of disabled people, it also renders what's actually being said to gibberish.

(I once watched a video on the origin of animal / pet words, and when talking about cats, the word "Pussy" was likewise just removed from the captions)

[the-big-mood]

In 1997, local television in Kharkiv accidentally filmed one of the most iconic rave moments in history.

[mtf-the-gathering]

"gender is a social construct": fairly easy for leftists to understand

"race is a social construct": a bit harder to swallow for some but still reasonable

"mental illness is a social construct": this one gets you hate mail in your inbox

[mtf-the-gathering]

the effects and symptoms of mental illness do in fact have material consequences but "disorders" as clinical categories are not real in any metaphysical sense; they are terms created for the purpose of describing lived experiences. you can't see or hold onto a person's depression any more than you can hold their gender in your hands. western psychology may have legal definitions of and ramifications for being diagnosed with illnesses but they do not physically exist outside of that context. any opposition to behaviors like self-diagnosis in therefore invalid when viewed in this structural context

[pusong-mangga]

Tags by @smoreofbabylon:

[ID by @cursedwithcaution: Screenshot of tags: #i was talking with a professor once about feeling ambivalent about having an adhd diagnosis #and he (the most adult adhd man i have ever known) said #'stars are real. constellations are not.' #and i think about that a lot in relation to my own mental health diagnoses #these names and meanings we give to clusters of observable phenomena (in this case symptoms) #the stars are real! #but the constellations are socially constructed. /End ID]

Tags by @annabelle--cane:

[ID by @larks-and-katydids: Tags saying: #another way to get your head around this is to think about the concept of 'subclinical' disorders #where someone needs to meet idk 7/10 criteria for a diagnosis and they meet 5 #someone out there drew that boundary that said '7 of these things mean you have a diagnosable disorder but not 6 #and those boundaries get routinely re-drawn as people decide every few years that actually x is a disorder but y isn't #therein lies the social construct. classifications of mental illness are Constructed based on what makes sense for Society at a given time. End ID]