Zompist Bboard Again

Bibi seems to think he can permanently destroy Hamas and its capacity to commit atrocities. Most analysts seem to think this is impossible, given that leaders of Hamas are safely holed up elsewhere (primarily in Qatar), but even if it were, why does he think that it (or some equally extremist organ...

That Welsh-language entry is unexpected. I wonder if maybe it was used in a video game or something, in addition to the movie? Equating "song" with a manifestation of a work (to use FRBR terminology ) also skews the numbers in a particular way, away from traditional tunes and old standards...

I also am of the view that the Israeli gov't and the factions in control of Gaza do not effectively represent the Israeli and Gazan peoples. That, frankly, sounds like wishful thinking to me. On the Israeli side, yes, right now, Netanyahu personally isn't that popular because October 7th happened o...

Somehow I seemed to have drawn the ire of some rando on Wiktionary, which I edit regularly. His latest criticism is that I "have no affinity" for some of the languages I edit which is...unhelpfully vague? It's gotten to the point where today I looked up what Wiktionary's harassment polici...

But I don’t think there’s a total moral equivalence here. It is true that Gaza is currently controlled by factions with nasty and near-genocidal ideologies… but there is a huge diversity of opinions in the territory, and many Gazans find that ideology repugnant. It is possible to support the aims o...

Somehow I seemed to have drawn the ire of some rando on Wiktionary, which I edit regularly. His latest criticism is that I "have no affinity" for some of the languages I edit which is...unhelpfully vague? It's gotten to the point where today I looked up what Wiktionary's harassment policie...

Raphael wrote: ↑Sat Feb 10, 2024 1:11 am Just read Ed Zitron's piece The Rot Economy, ( https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-rot-economy/ ) which brilliantly sums up a lot of stuff that some of us might have been thinking for a while.

Echoes here of Dan Olson's Line Goes Up.

Just started to read the Wikipedia article on the whole Post Office scandal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal Wow. That's really very fucked up. Ian Hislop of Private Eye has made bringing this to light something of a personal crusade and has delivered several blistering sc...

It's hard to enjoy the mild weather in Chicago in February without thinking of how much we've fucked the climate.

Just in case you didn't hear it yet, Northern Ireland seems to have an Executive again, because they somehow managed it to get the DUP to temporarily stop sulking. I must be extra thick these days because I've read over the new agreement and still don't quite understand what concession from the Bri...

Zju wrote: ↑Mon Feb 05, 2024 7:28 amAre all /aks-/ words learned borrowings? Is there anyone more knowledgeable to sheld light on the issue?

Are you asking about English, about Romance, or about both?

Why, for instance, should a Hebrew word for 'lion' have anything to do with a similar-sounding Italian word for something entirely different , namely a particular kind of passage in an opera? Nobody could mistake them for cognates! I think "nobody" is a little optimistic. I could easily s...

This one from NPR is kind of a crash blossom: New 'Washington Post' CEO accused of Murdoch tabloid hacking cover-up

From the Beeb: Japan: Man sentenced to death for Kyoto anime fire which killed 36

Could we have a new Board rule against posting something and then immediately announcing that you won't read responses to your post? The whole point of online forums is to facilitate discussions. If you don't want to discuss, you've got no business posting here. I don't see what purpose this would ...

Could it be someone who knows malloc, knows about his anxiety issues, and is playing a cruel prank on him? I suppose that's possible, but it's more plausible that this is one of the many known phone scams in which someone impersonates a law-enforcement official and demands money for "legal fee...

Has anyone else come across the proposal that qhapaq simi, the "noble language" of the Inca elite, was a Macro-Arawakan language related to Pukina? I just stumbled across this last night and I'm curious what the evidence is.

For Japanese, the polite copula です desu is generally considered a contraction of であります de arimasu , where the first element is a locative particle and the latter is a verb of existence. But other contractions have been proposed, such as で‎ する de suru , with the light verb generally used to verbify n...

I'm annoyed that my housemate wants to wait until Christmas Eve to go through our stockings. They're St Nicholas Day stockings, not Christmas stockings, dammit! They've been filled for a week already and I want some of the tasty chocolate inside. (Actually, I've already begun snitching.) Next year, ...

4) Optionally, use Italian-style plurals (-o and -e to -i, and -a to -e, nouns ending in consonants could still add -es) instead of Spanish-style plurals. The reason for that is the difficulty in maintaining the final -s in the real world, causing many Spanish speakers to lose the distinction betwe...