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the humble "like" is oft mocked despite what it does for us. "like, three people" is a vastly different statement from "three people". "and i was like 'what the fuck'" is vastly different from "and i said 'what the fuck'". i love you "like" and anyone who says you make people sound stupid will be killed on sight

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#does anyone have pictures of this 600ft tall overpass?

Taken from street__spotter's instagram story and cropped.

Our local newspaper ran a story about the legendary graffiti artist who recently passed away and. Literally everything about it is fucking insane. I'm insane about it.

So this guy has been extremely active for around fifteen years, during which he spread these beautiful, high quality pieces all over the country, way over a thousand of his standard signature, and probably thousands more. He did completely batshit stuff like literally spray painting an entire train from top to bottom or leaving his signature at the top of a 600ft tall overpass and this whole time, only five people from his crew know who he really is. To everyone else it's a complete mystery.

And then he dies at the age of 35. A few weeks after his death, his crew shows up at his completely unassuming parents' doorstep, reveals who they are and asks if they can host a memorial exhibition of his art.

Turns out, this dude has been leading an insane double life. In the daytime he was a meek little office worker with a partially paralyzed arm and no social life to speak of. In the nighttime he was a fucking legend. Not only did he climb that fucking 600ft overpass, he did it WITH A PHYSICAL DISABILITY. THE MADLAD. And throughout the entire time, fifteen years, he got caught once. ONCE. HE DID ALL THAT UNNOTICED. THAT'S INSANE.

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Suddenly struck with a need to explain to you how boat pronouns work (I work in the marine industry).

When you're talking about the design of the boat, you say "it".

When the boat is still being built, your say "it".

When the boat is nearing completion, you can say "it" or "she".

When the boat is floating in the water you probably say "she", unless there is still a lot of work to be done (e.g. no engine yet) then you say "it".

When the boat is officially launched and operating, you say "she". If you continue to say "it" at this point you are not incorrect but suspiciously untraditional. You are not playing the game.

If you are referring to a boat you don't really know anything about you may say "it" ("there's a big boat, it's coming this way"). But if you know its name, it's probably "she" ("there's the Waverley, she's on her way to Greenock").

If you are talking about boats in general, you say "it" ("when a boat is hit by a wave it heels over")

If you speak about a boat in complimentary terms, it's "she" ("she's a grand boat"). If you are being disparaging it may be it, but not necessarily ("it's as ugly as sin", "she's a grotty old tub").

If she has a boy's name, she's still she. "Boy James", "King Edward", "Sir David Attenborough"? The pronoun is she.

If it's a dumb barge (no engine), you say it. But if it's a rowing boat (no engine), you say she.

I hope this has cleared things up so that you may not be in danger of misgendering floating objects.

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There's definitely only one "n sound" in all the words usefuljesbian listed, at least in every variety of English I'm aware of.

As well as the [ŋ] in words like bank, some speakers (I don't think I'm among them) also have a palatal (with the whole blade of the tongue touching the roof of the mouth, not just the tip) [ɲ] where an n is followed by a y sound as in onion, and some have a labiodental (bottom lip on top teeth) [ɱ] where it is followed by an f or v, as in invite.

Nyugen is also not, to my knowledge, a Vietnamese name. Nguyen is. Nguyen starts with the [ŋ] sound. In English, [ŋ] only appears at the ends of syllables, but again, not any of the syllables listed above, nor in Ncuti's name.

The trouble with Ncuti for English speakers is that English doesn't allow the cluster /nʃ/ 'nsh' at the beginning of a syllable, so it might be helpful to add a vowel before the name, like usefuljesbian suggested. Working from 'innnshootee' towards 'nnshootee'. Fun tidbit 1: English does allow those two sounds at the start of a syllable ...as long as they're in the other order, as in schnozz.

Fun tidbit 2: in Rwanda-Rundi (the two closely related languages which the name is from), the 'underlying form' is /in.t͡ʃu.ti/ (p. 47, consonants transcribed as if they're English), but the presence of the /n/ turns the /t͡ʃ/ 'ch' into [ʃ] 'sh', and the /i/ at the start of the word can be dropped (p. 90), leaving [nʃu.ti]. A bit similar to how the underlying form of 'invite' is /ɪn.vɑe̯t/ (HCE transcription), but the presence of the /v/ turns the /n/ into [ɱ], leaving [ɪɱ.vɑe̯t] (for some speakers). So in a way (that way being morpho- or perhaps lexico-phonemically), those languages don't allow /nʃ/ at the beginning of a syllable either, but they do of course allow it in practice (phonetically).

Zorc, R. D. & Nigabwire, L. (2007). Kinyarwanda and Kirundi Comparative Grammar. Dunwoody Press.

okay okay I know the point of this is “White people need to put as much effort into learning how to pronounce Black people’s names as they do foreign European names” and 100% I totally agree, absolutely good point

but this tweet becomes hilarious in the context of this clip:

anyways, absolutely put effort into learning how people pronounce their names. just don’t feel bad if it takes you some time to get it right 😅

(also in case you didn’t watch the video it’s “N-SHOO-tee” not “SHOO-tee”)

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AU$100 was worth US$103 on the 11th of November 2011.

We literally cannot let them start charging 80 dollars for video games 70 dollars was already outrageous 60 was pushing it. 80 fucking dollars. ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR DAMN MIND. For MARIO?!?!?!?!?

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What most people don't get about clones, at least in the popular conception of them, is that they DON'T carry any mental memories from their "parent" (this is genetically impossible), and also that there is no known method (and probably will never be one) to have a perfect 1:1 same-age clone of yourself. Biological clones start out as babies and grow up like any other being (as least as animals are concerned) and there are no way to 'accelerate growth' without incredibly deletereous consequences with current technology and I'm very very willing to bet it would be the same with any future technology.

In essence, a clone is another individual who just happens to have the exact same genome of their parent. Like a twin but born with delay. Clones do carry any epigenetic changes their parent genome might have had, like Dolly the Sheep, so that's where the pereception that clones are born "older" came from, but there is also a good chance this is because of experimental cloning methods that damage the genome, it's a science in progress.

And in any case, besides the unusual source of the DNA, there would be no reason why a clone would be any different from any other individual. You don't call "test-tube babies" souless beings, do you? A human clone would be implanted in a surruogate mother and be born and grow and be like any other human being shaped by their experiences rather than any genes their donor or parent might have left them.

This means that if I went all mad scientist and decided to clone myself, I wouldn't have a 1:1 copy of myself, I would have a baby with my genetic code, something between my son and my little brother. And if I found out I was a clone of someone, it literally wouldn't matter to me at all. I would be just have another absent father. Who cares.

Anyways, clones aren't something mystifying to me, the only weirdoes are those who treat the whole process as monstrous.

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Most humans died before they were twenty.

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Since the release of HTML5 in 2008, tags such as <b> (bold), <i> (italic) have been softly deprecated for the benefit of users of screenreaders*; instead, it is preferable to use the semantic tags <strong> and <em> (emphasis) respectively, with style defined in CSS. If for some reason they aren't appropriate, it's still preferable to use CSS style attributes within a <span> container to ensure that your text will be interpreted correctly in modern (and future) browsers.

That's why the only tone tag I accept is '/span'. /span

* also to clarify the division between content (HTML) and style (CSS)

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@gendercensus

Uk peeps!! Let’s get this going! 🏳️‍⚧️🇬🇧

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There are memes/jokes online about blue-eyed people needing brown contacts, or blue eyes in general being unnerving.

We ask your questions anonymously so you don’t have to! Submissions are open on the 1st and 15th of the month.

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That's really interesting! It seems like a lot of people eat Moreton Bay bug, so maybe my 'technically edible' conclusion should be just 'edible' or maybe something a bit more complicated. It's a good reminder that the work I did only scratches the surface.

Tools like Word2Vec and corpus collocate data (words that are found next to the word in question much higher than chance, or that appear more than chance anywhere in texts that include the word in question) are very very useful for semantics research.

Something that I didn't explicitly spell out but probably should have is that the approach often used in semantics is investigating why the word in question is chosen over other words that might also fit. Why "a stupid bug entangled in a spider's web" and not "a stupid fly..." or "a stupid insect..."? Maybe because bug is associated with powerlessness or badness or etc. And so while 'what are the potential referents for the word' (technically, 'what is the word's denotation') is a valid, worthwhile and interesting question, to get the whole picture, you also have to ask 'under what conditions will a potential referent actually be referred to with this word'

I got annoyed by the polls that ask this question but fuck it up every time by either putting the options out of order or excluding reasonable options for delineating what is and is not a 'bug.' I work in a zoology lab, so this is, to my knowledge, only probably not going to piss off the entomologists too bad. The only thing I'm not confident about is where I placed the (wrong) paraphyletic 'all terrestrial arthropods' option, because it's silly to begin with and anyone who calls a spider a bug but not a shrimp should reconsider their anti-crustacean biases.

If you have some other strange perspective on what should or should not be a bug, put it in the tags. I will only judge you a little