Zompist Bboard Again

well yeah... if one saw the us as some benevolent hegemon instead of the evil empire i see it as then sure, we see the world differently enough that we're not likely to agree on any of the details: for example, the notion that the us empire wants other countries (with the likely exception of its cor...

China does seem to be less interested in imperialism than the states: it does not have a military base in every corner of the planet, nor does it seem interested in it, but even if China was exactly as interested in a globespanning empire as the US, it simply cannot have one: it's not that storng. s...

well, yeah, but without the international and public pressure would there have been a solution at all? the "solution" might have been "south africa has a right to exist as an afrikaaner white ethnostate" without it.

The solution to the Middle East conflict will not be found on Threads, or TikTok, or in the streets of any city that isn’t within a 2-hour car ride from downtown Jerusalem. street protests and popular disapproval of the whole thing were important in the dissolution of the south african apartheid re...

Those are mostly neoliberal traits from the 80s after ww2 and before the collapse of the USSR so not necessarily relevant. notice how i said "since the start of the decline of the soviet union, say andropov on" instead of "since the official dissolution of the soviet union". The...

oh, shit you know the guy's gonna sign up for the elon musks's upcoming "upload your mind" business. it's gonna be called "eternity" or whatever.

so called AI is excellent for some things, I routinely use GPT to code, but I can't think of a use for it in conlanging: maybe something like asking it what is triconsonantal roots or sth?

I'd say so, yeah: much of those difference I know through youtube videos that make it as a joke (haha americans say elevator or sth) as opposed to reading a british source and going "lolwut?", which is what happens if you're, say, a spanish and read some mexican guy.

possibly it has bought zero allies, but according to the IMF it is the largest trading partner and also the largest lender for african countries, which is different from getting nowhere. its conceivable china's power has peaked, though, time will tell.

we don't have any different orthographies than our spanish cousins that i can think of: it's mostly a matter of lexicon: they say judías where we say porotos or frijoles, they say guindillas for our ajies or our chiles, they say ordenador for our computadores/as, that kind of thing. oh, and of cours...

agreed on the more peaceful front: I don't know about "freer", but because I probably have a thicker concept of freedom here: since the start of the decline of the soviet union (let's say from andropov on) wages are stagnant vis a vis, inflation, productivity, and housing prices meaning a ...

it's common for people to think they're rulers are good: a lot of being a ruler is convincing the ruled that you're good, after all. A multipolar world would be one with an increased amount of violence as the various poles jockey for position with one another. I really hope I don't have to convince ...

on this I am with rammstein. or, well, the song, I actually don't know, lindemann might be fash himself for all i know? you get the point, though, we're all living in america.... yeah, we live in the us empire, the most powerful empire in the history of the planet, and the only one to ever be the s...

One key thing is that global telecommunications has allowed speakers of the English standard varieties to be familiar with one another's speech, which over time likely would reduce the impact of the drifting apart of the English standard varieties more than it would actually put a damper on said dr...

You support a US fascist and you support a Russian fascist. You are a fascist. and legally antisemitic too, I suppose. but seriously now, i support neither: i just care to a similar degree about americans and non-americans, and so if something is going to be bad for americans but good for the rest ...

so you do think the vote for women, the 40 hour week, the vacation, were won by asking nicely? no, sir, sometimes there is no way to protest without some base level of violence I’ve been considering my thoughts on this post and, I think, it ultimately comes down to a basic philosophical disagreemen...

you're right, i don't want those things, and i'm not super firm on any of this (it is a repugnant-feeling position that i find myself in, i admit) but climate change looks like a lost cause, and I don't feel like biden is less WW3ish than trump: sure, trump has a wacky rhetoric , but on the level of...

Does anyone know of studies which aim to synthesise just the pitch content of English speech, or just its rhythmic content, and test for intelligibility? i don't, but i do know we do this all the time. like, when the gf is telling you a story and you're brushing your teeth so you want to ask "...

I'm tempted to say the collapse of global telecommunications, or else a future where all of it occurrs by text, something like that.... then again, I wonder if the different big dialects of english (you know, brit, american, australian... not so much norfolk vs suffolk) have grown more or less inter...

I had noticed that the prose of it was to my mind unusual yet i had not quite noticed it till it was pointed out. I have the feeling that strong and clear segmentation might be an artifact of writing as opposed to something speakers "are doing under the hood", mostly cause people who are o...