Hi, I'm just making my about page into a pinned post.
L-Serine is a proteinogenic amino acid.
…
I always feel weird talking about myself, I guess I worry that it makes me seem conceited or something, but I like learning about people through their About pages and pins so I guess I should talk more… so.
Hi! I’m Emily. I’m a huge nerd, which is mostly what this blog is about.
“I’m a huge nerd” means, among other things, I’m infatuated with the Chinese and Japanese languages, and can seriously infodump at you for hours about them. I’m also like this about a lot of other school-related and generally-nerdy stuff (like amino acids, if you couldn’t tell from the blog name/URL).
This blog is probably approximately 50% linguistics.
Popular posts I’ve written include:
- Kanji, an overview of how weird Japanese kanji is
- Racist map projections, the story of the Gall-Peters projection
- Names in Japan, an overview of how people name their kids in Japan
- The Book Test, an opinion on whether viruses are alive
- How to credit card, a practical guide on how to credit card
- Diacritics in English, about how accents like “é” exist in English, too
Sometimes, this blog veers into politics (not anymore! all politics are now in the sideblog). I’m left-libertarian: I think markets are a good way to reduce suffering, but the important part is reducing suffering, not protecting property rights or anything like that.
Other things… I’m Chinese and blog about being Chinese sometimes. I’m approximately utilitarian. I’ve lived all across the world and blog about the differences of living in different places. I’m probably a LW-style rationalist. I don’t really talk about myself much but if you’re curious, you should feel free to ask me about me.
I have a sideblog at @serinemisc – a mix of stuff that I think are too spammy for the main blog, including hot takes on programming, quiz results, really casual chatter, and contentless reblogs of stuff I like.
got jumpscared by your latest urbanism post bc i cut across that exact southdale parking lot all the time. wading through cars upon cars upon cars just ugly as fuck and theres not even a potato corner
(context)
Minnesota high five! Gray duck, uff da, you betcha, etc.
Yeah, wading through cars was definitely my Minnesota experience too. When I moved to Tokyo it was incredibly eye-opening, even though I'd been arguing we need to be more like Tokyo since before visiting.
A lot of the people in the notes are Minnesotan; it's nice to see so many of my people. I'm glad I chose a Minnesotan mall instead of some other mall.
A lot of people don't realize just how much space car infrastructure takes up. So I've decided to provide everyone a visual aid!
I've presented two maps at the exact same zoom level, as indicated by the big red arrow. They also each have a red area circled, of approximately the same area.
In the first image, I've circled one of eightish parking lots at a US mall. A normal amount of distance for even Americans who drive everywhere to walk through.
In the second image, I've circled:
a subway station
a park
like twenty apartment buildings
like twenty restaurants
three convenience stores (which, being Japanese, can also handle banking, copying/printing, and a variety of governmental paperwork)
one grocery store (another two right outside the circle)
seven medical clinics, two pharmacies
a fire station
a post office
two preschools and three cram schools
a Shintō shrine
a Buddhist temple
multiple parking lots and a car dealership
This wasn't even a particularly cherry-picked part of Tokyo! I just picked the area around my house.
In case anyone thinks by "a park" I'm talking about the green area not circled, I'm not, I'm talking at this area at the southeast end of the circle:
Here's another angle on the area I circled, with a lot of the things I mentioned in view.
The shrine, just because I have a soft spot for Tokyo neighborhood shrines:
Anyway, I suppose I'll end on what the mall parking lot looks like.
Remember, this is one of eightish parking lots at this mall.
Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.
(Context: it's April 1)
For a long time, it was Touhou Hisoutensoku (Soku, for short), a really obscure fighting game that doesn't play like a normal fighting game. In addition to really loving the way they made a fighting game feel like a bullet hell, I also enjoyed the opportunity to play as my favorite Touhou character (Yuyuko).
I don't play Soku as much these days, though. I'm not really in a community that plays it anymore.
Now I mostly play StarCraft 2's co-op mode, it has a weekly challenge mode which I play every week.
I'm a lot less of a gamer than this makes me sound, though. When I talk to actual gamers it's pretty clear I'm not really a gamer. At least partly because 3D games that aren't top-down make me motion sick, and that's nearly every modern game. And the exceptions are roguelikes which I don't really play either.
so a thing i often think about while showering is that controlling the temperature of the water is tricky, right? how hot the water is when it comes out of my showerhead is going to depend on a lot of factors like what temperature the water is before going through the water heater and how much gas the heater is burning and how much water is flowing and how much cold water is getting mixed in. and i have no control over some of those factors, limited control over others (I can't change my water heater settings if i'm already in the shower) and for the ones i do control more-or-less directly (flow of water from the 'hot' and 'cold' parts of the system) it takes some amount of fiddling and the system has some inertia and if i get it too wrong it can be very unpleasant because i am physically there getting water at the wrong temperature thrown at me.
and like if i had to design the magical perfect shower system, the two dials would not be 'hot water' and 'cold water' but rather 'temperature' and 'flow' that can be adjusted independently with small movements of the dial corresponding to small, predictable changes in the relevant physical variable and you might even imagine presets per person or something.
and like. there are practical difficulties with that sort of thing ofc (e.g. water famously has a pretty big heat capacity, so there's gonna be some inertia if you're trying to change its temperature quickly) but it doesn't seem beyond our abilities as a species, right? expensive, I am not surprised I don't have this at home, but. Does someone?
I have no idea how the showers of rich people work but are they remotely like this or are they just doing something entirely different and presumably-better-by-their-preferences or do they also have to deal with fiddly showers? i am curious.
Yes, there are fancy showers with digital controls that do this, and they are expensive. Although now I'm wondering if this is feasible with a traditional water heater setup or if this is only practical with hot water on demand.
and like if i had to design the magical perfect shower system, the two dials would not be 'hot water' and 'cold water' but rather 'temperature' and 'flow' that can be adjusted independently
This exists and is called a "thermostatic mixer" faucet. @nia--san has probably seen ones with digital screens, but the tech is completely mechanical and are usually sold without any electronics at all. They're also not expensive; here's one for USD$20.
Basically every Japanese shower works like this, and, I repeat, it has zero electronics:
As you can see, the right knob adjusts temperature, and the left knob adjusts pressure. There's also a button on the showerhead to turn it on and off, so once you set the temperature and pressure you like, you can just press the showerhead button before and after every shower.
I've seen these controls in a few luxury hotels (and airport lounges) outside of Japan, but it's pretty rare rare.
adjusted independently with small movements of the dial corresponding to small, predictable changes in the relevant physical variable
You can see from the pic that this one has a bunch of temperatures marked on the dial. You can literally just select the exact temperature you want.
(e.g. water famously has a pretty big heat capacity, so there's gonna be some inertia if you're trying to change its temperature quickly)
Not actually a problem. As you can see, the mixer bar has hot water and cold water going directly into it, so you're not changing the temperature of the water itself, so much as changing what percentage of the mixture is coming from hot water.
In my experience, feeling the change happens pretty quickly, but that's also true of every other shower I've used (which also work this way), so I don't know what's up with your showers.
I have no idea how the showers of rich people work but are they remotely like this
Nope, I've been to a lot of pretty rich people's houses and seen some ultra-luxury showers and they may be huge and made of marble and have rain showers, but the controls seem optimized for artistic value rather than convenience.
I'd much rather use a Japanese shower. It's not like thermostatic mixers are expensive (the first one I found on Amazon Japan was USD$20). They just haven't caught on in the rest of the world for whatever reason.
Okay, so, obviously, scallops are not plant-based.
But imagine you're an EA and many of your friends are EAs. And many of them are vegan for animal suffering reasons.
You might say, "oh, scallops don't have brains so they won't suffer if you eat them". And they might say, "oh, yeah, that's a thing I've heard! I haven't eaten them since before I went vegan but I'd be happy to have some if you made it". And you might say, "yeah, sure, I'll make some".
Don't. Even if they say yes. This is a trap. They will not like it. People who haven't eaten meat usually have adapted. Even if they like imitation meat just fine. They probably will not like scallops. Shellfish taste very strong, even scallops which are pretty mild for seafood.
You can make some for them to taste, but don't make it the centerpiece of your meal or everyone will have a bad time.
So apparently the government wants to force Anthropic to break their contract and make killer robots and spy on Americans. ACX wrote about it, linking to MattY, linking to @skluug's essay on why AI risk is like Terminator.
(I believe this is all directionally correct, but I have zero relevant expertise.) When the concept of catastrophic risks from artificial in
My reaction: "No way, I have two major objections". But the essay proceeded to respond to my objections, which made me stop and think a bit. But I don't think it really satisfies me.
Terminator is the story of a military robot that wages war on humanity, and humanity manages to put up a decent resistance by sometimes outsmarting a time-traveling robot.
None of these words have anything to do with the scenarios Big Yud is worried about. [1]
The essay responds, (paraphrased) "no one thinks the time-traveling robot is realistic; when they say 'like Terminator' they're talking about Skynet".
But the idea that it's going to resemble an actual war in any way is also unrealistic. Big Yud's fear isn't war (I'm pretty sure he's said in the past that if it's a relatively even war, that's a massive success for AI alignment), it's an AI crushing us like humans against smallpox. The smallpox probably isn't even aware that humans are trying to wipe it out!
The essay responds, (still paraphrased) "okay, so say it's worse than Terminator". I do!
And the idea that it's going to be a military AI rather than just any random AI with internet access is also missing the point. There's a reason the ACX article is like "I have mixed feelings about the killer robots; it's the surveillance that's the bigger issue". Any AI, military or not, could hard takeoff before we solve alignment. The problem is that we don't know how to get AIs to care about humans at all. [2] That's why the usual example is an AI trained to make paperclips, not an AI trained to wage war.
The essay also says, (still paraphrased) "don't avoid the Terminator comparison just because it sounds crazy". That's not why we don't like it! The paperclipper sounds even crazier and no one objects to that one!
It's true that Terminator and Big Yud's fear have one thing in common, that in the future an AI will try to kill humanity. But, like, if I say "in the future an AI will try to kill humanity", and you say "like Terminator?" presumably you are asking if the prediction will be like Terminator in any other way than trying to kill humanity, and, no, it is not.
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[1] I'm deliberately not saying anything about whether I personally believe in the Yudkowsky AI risk scenario because I don't want an argument about that, and I don't think it matters to the question of whether Terminator resembles it.
[2] "Chatbots seem to care". Chatbots are trained to pretend to care. Hard to say if that's real. Anyway I think a lot of the AI risk people are worried about other forms of AI than chatbots, but I would not call myself the right person to ask about that.
Thank you for the thoughtful critique! I have a different overall opinion of AI risk than when I wrote this essay a few years ago but I still stand by the substance of it.
I think you are missing the forest for the trees.
Terminator is the story of a military robot that wages war on humanity, and humanity manages to put up a decent resistance by sometimes outsmarting a time-traveling robot. None of these words have anything to do with the scenarios Big Yud is worried about. [1]
I disagree. I think if you change the context it's obvious that these words have a lot to do with with what Big Yud is worried about.
It is clearly the case that different levels of conflict and capabilities "have anything to do with each other". The threat of someone beating you up with their fists is clearly related to the threat of someone blowing you up with an airstrike. These are just very similar things at a high level of abstraction, and someone new to the very concept of conflict between humans is going to be more misled than led if you say they have nothing to do with each other.
But, like, if I say "in the future an AI will try to kill humanity", and you say "like Terminator?" presumably you are asking if the prediction will be like Terminator in any other way than trying to kill humanity, and, no, it is not.
I have two objections to this:
One, I don't think that's a straightforward reading of the question "like Terminator?". I think the most plausible interpretation of this question is just "let me make sure I understand what you literally mean by an AI trying to kill humanity". This is how I read Matt Yglesias's discussion with Kelsey Piper--he's not trying to ask if Terminator is a good template for what Kelsey is worried about, he's just using it as a bare starting point to understand what she's saying.
Two, the kind of AI risk Yudkowsky is worried about does have many details in common with Terminator!
Single AI system
Fast takeoff
Superhuman intelligence
Instrumental convergence (no hatred of humanity)
Near extinction of humanity
I'd like to emphasize that this is specifically about communicating AI x-risk to a mass audience, and you should consider yourself very lucky if you can get them to understand the above five bullet points. A Terminator comparison gets you them for free!
---
Let's imagine an alternate universe where the Terminator franchise doesn't exist. In this world, when you mention AI x-risk, everyone says, "you mean like The Matrix?"
The Matrix is even less similar to the kinds of scenarios Yudkowsky is worried about than Terminator. Even so, I think the right answer to this question is "Yes!" If you are worried about a big existential conflict between man and machines, what you are worried about is like The Matrix. You can use words two through infinity to explain "...except that AI will kill humanity instead of keeping us around, and won't care about us one way or the other, and [blah blah blah]". But you start with the word "Yes" because people already understand the kernel of what you are talking about from watching a movie, and you need to proceed from there instead of starting from scratch.
In this alternate universe, I probably wouldn't have written an essay called "AI Risk is like The Matrix; Stop Saying it's Not". But I would still be irritated every time someone says "No no, nothing like that. I'm talking about a totally different kind of [existential conflict between AI and humanity]."
But in our universe, I got lucky. The movie everyone references actually is like a Yudkowskian doom scenario! So it makes even less sense to start with "No, you are as a little baby. We'll have to start with Reality 101 before you can even pretend to know what I am talking about."
Thanks for responding! I feel very seen to get a response from skluug himself.
So MattY actually did write an entire essay on his interpretation of the Terminator analogy, which is how I found yours:
Skynet (not the killer androids) is a decent introduction to the AI risk problem
There's a lot to like about this essay (he points out that T3 has a good explanation of why unilateral disarmament doesn't work, and to be honest I like how much he pays lip service to the ways Terminator is a bad analogy). But I do notice the reason it works better for Matt is that he has a different model of AI risk than EAs.
Matt is afraid of "someone will put war robots in charge of the military, and then those robots will turn around and kill us". This is a how a lot of people think about it, and it leads to very different responses (like "you can make AIs, just don't give them to the military" and "it's fine as long as the rest of the world combined is more powerful than the killer robots, just don't put the killer robots in charge of the entire US military"). Big Yud's worry is, on the other hand, afraid of "someone will make any AI at all for any task at all, even not embodied in a robot at all, and it will turn around and annihilate us before we even notice".
So I think Matt is correct to say he thinks it's like Terminator. But I don't think EAs are.
Looking at your list:
single AI, fast takeoff, superhuman intelligence, instrumental convergence, near extinction of humanity
I don't think Skynet is fast takeoff. Humans give it control of nukes, and it uses those nukes to kill off most of humanity. This strikes me as, like, staying on the ground because you have no need to takeoff at all.
When I see "superhuman intelligence", I don't really think this is very noticeable in Terminator. Outsmarting the robot happens a decent amount. It may be technically superhuman but not in a very salient way. It might even fuel the "AIs are dumb" crowd. I'm not a stickler for the precise boundary between "superintelligence" and "very smart", but I really don't think Skynet is smart enough that moviegoers think of it as "very smart".
I do think it has instrumental convergence but it's just very muddied by already being a war AI. I really think people's takeaway is "don't put AIs in charge of wars and weapons" and I really think this is the wrong takeaway. Like your essay starts with "you think Skynet hates humans but you're wrong, it just instrumentally wants humans dead". There's a reason people think that and I think that makes it a bad analogy.
My knee-jerk reaction to "near extinction of humanity" is that it's very different than "instant 100% extinction of humanity", but after thinking about it, I don't think the difference matters here. What I do think is that the EAs who are saying "it's not like Terminator" are also very clearly saying "the AI is going to kill us all" so I really don't think it's misleading to say it's not like Terminator in other ways.
So I admit the single AI part is indisuputable. But I still think that if you say "yes, it's like Terminator", it will not actually lead anyone to understand instrumental convergence or fast takeoff. I think "a lot of humans will die" is really all people are getting out of it, and like, I don't think anyone is unclear on "a lot of humans will die" and needs the Terminator analogy to help them with that.
I think Matt makes an argument "we want people to watch Terminator and go 'hey, I should get a job preventing that', and saying it's not like Terminator discourages this" and, like, I guess that makes sense. I don't very like it as a reason to bend the truth.
So I still think the best I can get to from "so it's like Terminator?" is "sort of; it has an AI that kills a lot of humans... BUT".
So apparently the government wants to force Anthropic to break their contract and make killer robots and spy on Americans. ACX wrote about it, linking to MattY, linking to @skluug's essay on why AI risk is like Terminator.
(I believe this is all directionally correct, but I have zero relevant expertise.) When the concept of catastrophic risks from artificial in
My reaction: "No way, I have two major objections". But the essay proceeded to respond to my objections, which made me stop and think a bit. But I don't think it really satisfies me.
Terminator is the story of a military robot that wages war on humanity, and humanity manages to put up a decent resistance by sometimes outsmarting a time-traveling robot.
None of these words have anything to do with the scenarios Big Yud is worried about. [1]
The essay responds, (paraphrased) "no one thinks the time-traveling robot is realistic; when they say 'like Terminator' they're talking about Skynet".
But the idea that it's going to resemble an actual war in any way is also unrealistic. Big Yud's fear isn't war (I'm pretty sure he's said in the past that if it's a relatively even war, that's a massive success for AI alignment), it's an AI crushing us like humans against smallpox. The smallpox probably isn't even aware that humans are trying to wipe it out!
The essay responds, (still paraphrased) "okay, so say it's worse than Terminator". I do!
And the idea that it's going to be a military AI rather than just any random AI with internet access is also missing the point. There's a reason the ACX article is like "I have mixed feelings about the killer robots; it's the surveillance that's the bigger issue". Any AI, military or not, could hard takeoff before we solve alignment. The problem is that we don't know how to get AIs to care about humans at all. [2] That's why the usual example is an AI trained to make paperclips, not an AI trained to wage war.
The essay also says, (still paraphrased) "don't avoid the Terminator comparison just because it sounds crazy". That's not why we don't like it! The paperclipper sounds even crazier and no one objects to that one!
It's true that Terminator and Big Yud's fear have one thing in common, that in the future an AI will try to kill humanity. But, like, if I say "in the future an AI will try to kill humanity", and you say "like Terminator?" presumably you are asking if the prediction will be like Terminator in any other way than trying to kill humanity, and, no, it is not.
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[1] I'm deliberately not saying anything about whether I personally believe in the Yudkowsky AI risk scenario because I don't want an argument about that, and I don't think it matters to the question of whether Terminator resembles it.
[2] "Chatbots seem to care". Chatbots are trained to pretend to care. Hard to say if that's real. Anyway I think a lot of the AI risk people are worried about other forms of AI than chatbots, but I would not call myself the right person to ask about that.
what are your thoughts on D-amino acids? I got really into that rabbit hole for a little while, specifically the process of engineering tRNA/tRNA synthase pairs for using a D-amino acid in place of the amber stop codon, so you could use them in protein synthesis.
idk if I’ll get notified if you respond, so feel free to tag me or message me please so I see it?
(You get notified, same as a tag.)
Okay, I looked into this and I'm pretty sure I'm just completely unqualified to talk about this. The, uh, concept of enantiomers is interesting. Like, "isn't it interesting that you can flip a molecule horizontally and sometimes get a molecule that does completely different things, because of the chirality of other molecules in your body". But I don't really have much to say other than that, sorry.
Have you ever read Serina (the world of birds speculative biology work)? If so, what did you think of it?
~~~
Imagine, if you will, a hypothetical world much like our own, seeded with life as an experiment by an aloof and ancient creator. While
I can't say that I have. It's a cool worldbuilding concept and I'd love to read a story in the setting or something, but I'm gonna be honest, I don't really want to read this many pages of a pure worldbuilding doc.
I've seen a lot of people complain about "umami" when English already has "savory" which means the same thing. But, like. "Savory" also just means "delicious". I like how "umami" unambiguously refers to a specific flavor, and I assume that's why it's so popular.
Umami is actually also the Japanese word for deliciousness. But, you know, if you use it in English, it's unambiguous.
If your app has notifications I need (e.g. I am about to be towed, someone stole my shit, etc) and also marketing notifications, and no way to shut one off without the other, I shall turn every earthly hand against you. and you shall never know rest
I'm gonna try a new thing, where I post my song translations here. I usually don't post them on Tumblr, but I was a little inspired by how much I liked haru-dipthong's Utena translation notes. Do tell whether or not you want more of this sort of content!
This one is one of my recent favorites, Kawaikute Gomen. It's a fun little song about the importance of self-care and loving yourself and not letting others get you down. @hybridzizi listened to me sing it at karaoke and was like "the only word I recognized was 'sorry' and you sure are saying it a lot but you don't sound very sorry" and all of these are true statements.
The official YouTube video does have English subs, which aren't bad, but there were a few translation choices I felt like I could do better on.
届きませんね そのリプライ uses reply which in Japanese refers to social media comments. I used "not reading your comments" to make it clear these are internet comments and not irl comments or replies to something said in conversation.
ハーフツイン is half-twin as in "half-twintails". ( @hybridzizi: "like a ponytail?" me: "hehe but no, like normal twintails but with only the top layer of your hair"). Noting this because honestly I don't know what this hairstyle is called in English either.
幸せだもん has that hard-to-translate mon (etymology 1.2.2) particle at the end. It gives the sentence ("I'm happy") a sort of cutesy defiant tone which the translations I saw didn't bother including. I tried to capture the defiance with "But I have all I need to be happy".
Chu is probably a kissing sound, and also a reference to the singer character's name (Chū-tan). Most translations leave it untranslated. I considered translating to "mwah", but it's just ambiguous enough, and Japanese uses this kind of sound just differently enough from English, that I thought it was best to leave it untranslated.
ムカついちゃうでしょ? ざまあw has an added w in some lyrics which I think is neat (which I translated to 😆).
軽い女 is usually translated as "easy". But Japanese does not quite have the same concept of a swear word, and it feels like the situation where an English speaker would say "slut", so that's what I went with.
虜にしちゃってごめん is a cool line. It means "make you my captive" but I hear it metaphorically meaning in love (think "willing captive") way more than literally. I had to think a really long time before coming up with "Sorry you can't stop thinking about me". Toriko ("captive") is, incidentally, how "Helpless" from Hamilton the musical is translated into Japanese.
あんたらごとき uses gotoki which is "people like you" but insulting and not subtle about it, especially the way it's stretched out syllable-by-syllable "an-ta-ra-go-to-ki". I love how it sounds, and other translations don't get across how unsubtle it is. I think "especially people like you" really helps with that.
Everything else is just minor differences that I think make it sound more fluent in English. Stuff like "serves you right" which I think sounds punchier than "you deserve it", or starting the song with "I love myself" rather than "What's wrong with that".
I put on my favorite clothes
I put on my favorite makeup
I do my trademark half-twintails
It's time to go out
Parasol in hand, I'm by myself
But I have all I need to be happy
Chu! Sorry for being so cute
Sorry for being born
Chu! Sorry for being cunning
Sorry that that bothers you
Chu! Sorry for being so cute
Sorry for being a hard worker
Chu! Sorry for being precious
Sorry for being a girly girl
Does it get on your nerves? Serves you right 😆
貴女は貴女の事だけどうぞ
私に干渉しないでください
類は友を呼ぶと言うけど
届きませんね その陰口
Go ahead and mind your own business
And leave me out of it, thanks
They say my friends are losers like me
But that gossip can't get to me
I put on my thick-soled boots
I put on my favorite backpack
I comb my stubborn bangs
It's time to go out
Did you just call me a slut? How dare you
You've gone too far!
Chu! Sorry for being so cute
Sorry for breathing your air
Chu! Sorry for being stunning
Sorry for drawing your attention
Chu! Sorry for being so cute
Sorry for working on myself
Chu! Sorry for acting cutesy
Sorry you can't stop thinking about me
Does it get on your nerves? Serves you right 😆
You say I have bad taste
And that I'm weird
But I'm not going to change, I'm not afraid
Especially not of people like you
I can look out for myself just fine
I'd rather put myself first
I won't tank that hit without a good reason
That's what makes me me
Chu! Sorry for being so cute
Sorry for being born
Chu! Sorry for being cunning
Sorry that that bothers you
Chu! Sorry for being so cute
Sorry for working hard
Chu! Sorry for being precious
Sorry for being a girly girl
Does it get on your nerves? Serves you right 😆
I wanna hear if you and Floofshy have considered "copyright infringement is punished not by fines but by public shaming" in your discussions.
(probable context, also @floofshy mention)
I'm pretty sure it's come up, although at this point it's been years... This actually isn't too far from how pirating TV works in modern society. (I know there used to be torrenting lawsuits but they're pretty rare, and have never affected pirate streaming/download sites which are common now.)
For the most part I don't think it's a horrible way to do things. But, you know, I lean towards copyright abolitionism.
When they refer to Zheng He as "Sanbao", is that an innocent reference to one of the various religious concepts, or is it a double-entendre regarding the number of body parts that were cut off of him?
*hurriedly googles*
Uh. It's a reference to the religious concept. Like sure probably at least one person has used it as a eunuch joke I don't think that is a common thing to do.
When I was a kid I was a little grossed out by Pocari Sweat's name. Like, I knew it wasn't actually sweat, it was just Japanese Gatorade, but it looked like sweat and sounded just off-putting enough that I just avoided it.
Anyway I was looking it up on Wikipedia (slightly paraphrased) "Pocari Sweat sounds off-putting to English-speakers. But it's actually just called that because it contains the electrolytes your body loses when you sweat."
...and I was like, hey, that just means it contains the exact same things as sweat. You can even look it up. Sweat: Water, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium... Pocari Sweat: Water, sugar, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium...
So yeah. It's sweetened sweat. The English speakers weren't even wrong! Child me feels vindicated. Adult me is still gonna drink it because this sort of thing doesn't gross me out anymore.
So I've been learning Toki Pona recently. It's very similar to a different conlang I know, Foodtongue, but it's spoken by a lot more people. I'd been missing Foodtongue so I figured Toki Pona would be a good substitute.
Turns out, Toki Pona just made me miss Foodtongue even more. The differences aren't big (they're both minimalist languages that mostly make words by combining simpler words), but the main thing I remember loving about Foodtongue was the way I learned it.
You see, Foodtongue has one rule: you must teach Foodtongue in Foodtongue. In practice, this involves lots of gesturing, like:
friend: *points at self* apple! *points at you* pear!
you: *points at self* pear?
friend: spinach! :(
you: *points at self* apple?
friend: banana! :)
But then we eventually made a Foodtongue wiki! I actually learned Foodtongue mostly from the wiki. There's drawings for the most basic words, and then once you know those, you usually figure out the others. It's great fun, trying to puzzle out the meaning of a word from a definition full of words you're only 90% sure you know the meaning of.
Anyway, that was ages ago, and the wiki mostly stopped working, so I spent the past week setting it back up on MediaWiki! Introducing the new Foodtongue wiki! Featuring plenty of art drawn by me!
