That’s a great journey you’re on. Takes a lot of guts to re-evaluate our worldview, even when the old one is making us miserable.

If you can remember anything more about that I’d be really interested, as langauge reform is a big interest of mine. As far as I’m aware, there’s been no successful langauge reform in Britain, and even the few attempts (George Bernard Shaw’s simplified spelling society and a labour MP in the 50s who failed to pass a bill in Parliament) were all for simplyfing and regularising English spelling (so that ‘give’ would become ‘giv’, because it doesn’t rhyme with five, hive, dive, etc) not re-Latinizing anything.

The last significant change in English spelling I can think of was when Webster introduced his “American” spelling in the 19th century and changed ‘honour’, ‘centre’, etc to their US versions.

I totally agree that this is something that happens naturally, and probably shouldn’t be interfered with by a government. When it has been successful, it has been about giving permission for official langauge to reflect current usage. Telling people they must write ‘hav’ instead of ‘have’ is not going to work because even if it’s illogical it’s such a high frequency word that it is minimal effort to add, and then ignore, the ‘e’. But allowing school children to start writing ‘thru’ instead of ‘through’ might actually work.

Managed to get to the stage with my job, where I just kinda resent having to go to work because I’d rather be doing other things, as opposed to deeply hating it because I’m freaking out constantly. This is a big step for me, I had to leave my last career after crashing and burning, due undiagnosed ADHD. Had a couple of years off getting myself sorted out and correctly medicated, and started back in a new role, but with a genuine question about whether I could have a professional career again.

The first couple of years were really hard, just so stressful and I needed to see a therapist at points to keep going. But I did, and now in my 3rd year I’ve hit a very manageable level of stress that seems normal and bearable. Interestingly, this isn’t because I finally started being organised and stopped leaving things to the last minute. Nope, I just embraced my terrible work habits, stopped beating myself up about them, and changed my expectations for work so that paperwork was minimized and doing all my prep at the last minute was fine. Much less mentally horrific for me and, despite ‘lowering my standards’ the quality of my work probably increased, because I was doing what I could actually achieve not pushing to do something amazing that never materialised.

Quite right! Never trust the English! But what do you mean, they “keep intentionally fucking with their dialect”? All languages, dialects, sociolects, etc are constantly changing in different ways, do you feel like the dialects of England change more than other? Or that they do it more purposefully?

Mmm Arran gold is great stuff. I’m planning on trying out a home made whiskey cream recipe I came across. Basically a bottle of jamiesons, condensed milk and some other stuff.

I think there’s a way that society represents “what sex is” that is very different from most people’s experience of it. For various reasons, Hollywood/advertising/porn all promote skinny and heavily made up women. And even if they find those kinds of actresses or models hot on the screen, that’s not the kinds of women most men actually crush on.

The reality is most people have a fairly limited number of sexual relationships, and they’re often with people who do not meet some abstract societal idea of ‘hotness’. A lot of the time people are attracted to people because they like them, and they have good chemistry. Sometimes it’s more of a ‘type’ or whatever (knew a guy who was really into short girls, and then I met his tiny mother…)

Same with relationships or sex or whatever. People learn a bunch of expectations and assumptions growing up, and then as theynget older they realise that most people don’t actually fit that arbitary standard. Sure, some guysnare horny all the time and just want emotionless sex, and so do some women. But it’s not as ‘normal’ as some media would suggest.

Ahh, I didn’t know that Americans* called dictionaries ‘lexicons’. In most forms of English I’ve heard, and in the field of linguistics, ‘lexicon’ is the complete set of vocabulary in a language, or subject. A dictionary is an alphabetical list of a lexicon, often with definitions.

*I’m presuming it’s Americans because mirriam webster lists the dictionary definition first, while OED and Cambridge only list that as archaic usage.

Kneel down and see which one comes to me first

Yeah, but it isn’t impressive avoiding a letter if you can use any word you want, and it doesnt matter what it means. “Without employing the second most frequent letter of English.” would make sense or “the vowel which is commonly listed first” or some sort of thing. I suspect they just didn’t know what lexicon meant and thought it sounded smart.

In what sense is it the first letter of the English lexicon? Lexicon ≠ alphabet

If it’s a message to the household, shouldn’t the writing face the other way?

Just started playing this again for the first time in years. Trying out the texture upgrades from tfix, and they seem pretty good. Still feels very retro!

I generally play at least one of the Ultima games every year, mostly the late 80s and early 90s ones.

Crossherd #278.
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crossherd.clevergoat.com 🐐

More of an app than a website but meow meow beenz from Community.

If it has to be lactose free then I’d probably agree with you. I’d rather do laundry.

France. It’s great and i love being here, but I teach English so there’s a lot of having to speak English and not a lot of push to speak French. Things should quite down in six months and I hope to be able to focus more on French and start actually gaining confidence in talking.

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Given that almost everyone in the world speaks one of a tiny fraction of world languages, there’s less than 0.1% chance that anyone you ever meet will be able to understand you. Google Translate only covers 250 of more than 7000 world languages, so there’s a 97% chance I can’t even use online tools to get my message across.

If it was weighted it would still suck as I’d need to travel to other countries based on what i happen to speak (if it changes each year). That doesn’t sound worth it, especially not for the rest of my life. If it changed after every sentence, it would be like having an awful speech impediment. Trying to have a conversation would involve repeating myself half a dozen times until I hit the right language, and only if I’m in top 5 langauge areas. If I was trying to speak french I’d need to repeat myself 20 times before I was likely to be understood.

And what’s the benefit? That I can understand lots of langauges but can’t functionally communicate?

I’m not a fan of that change, but I don’t really see it as an attempt to be more ‘politically correct’.

Han Solo was going to marry Leia, and you look back and say, “Should he be a cold-blooded killer?” Because I was thinking mythologically—should he be a cowboy, should he be John Wayne? And I said, “Yeah, he should be John Wayne.” And when you’re John Wayne, you don’t shoot people [first]—you let them have the first shot. It’s a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to."

I think Lucas is wrong, because even if he shoots first Han is being threatened with kidnap and death, so he’s not a cold-blooded murderer to shoot the guy threatening him. But unless we’re rolling all ideas of heroism and morality into woke/PC then I don’t think that example works at all.