RT @scalzi: Today’s phrase of the day is “Cis-Trans Test.” It means something specific in biology, and I’m also using it to see just how imprecise Dear Leader’s latest attempt to give shitty bigots a tool to boot people they don’t like from this service actually is
Quotes
Weird jet-black deep-sea “footballfish” washes ashore.
Weird jet-black deep-sea “#footballfish” washes ashore.
LA Times (paywall):
Ultra-rare, bizarre fish that washed ashore near San Diego is California’s third this year
Birdsite:
Rare find‼️ A Pacific #footballfish, one of the largest species of #anglerfish, washed ashore near Encinitas last Friday. Lifeguards notified scientists about the unique #deepsea creature, and Scripps scientist Ben @Frable was able to collect it for research and preservation.
— Scripps Institution of Oceanography (@Scripps_Ocean) December 14, 2021
“The decision not to call further witnesses will not be evaluated in the context of what we know at this moment. It will be evaluated in the context of what we know in the future.”
“The decision not to call further witnesses will not be evaluated in the context of what we know at this moment. It will be evaluated in the context of what we know in the future.”
“The public should understand fully that the Republican Party has become the authoritarian party…unlimited executive power, executive domination of the other branches and selling our democracy to the highest foreign bidder.”
“The public should understand fully that the Republican Party has become the authoritarian party…unlimited executive power, executive domination of the other branches and selling our democracy to the highest foreign bidder.”
I hate that the EPA is still run by someone who thinks it stands for Economic Pandering Agency or something similar. But props to The Hill for choosing a photo of the aftermath of a fire to illustrate the article.
I hate that the EPA is still run by someone who thinks it stands for Economic Pandering Agency or something similar. But props to The Hill for choosing a photo of the aftermath of a fire to illustrate the article.
EPA finalizes rule easing chemical plant safety
— The Hill (@thehill) November 21, 2019
I love the tone in this bit from the Long Beach Comic-Con FAQ
To complete my costume, I carry a large battle-axe that I hone to razor sharpness every day. It’s cool for me to bring that, right?
Ummm, seriously? Props are one thing, but anything that could take an eye out, could hurt someone, or make the cops (or my mother) take it away from you, is not allowed. Please refer to our policies for more clarification.
Boosting gamehawk@mastodon.social: This Mexican restaurant has the best WiFi network name.
This Mexican restaurant has the best WiFi network name.
Wait Peter Quill?
peterparkerdd:
On TumblrQuill: I’m Peter Quill. People call me Star Lord.
Peter: wait Peter Quill?
Quill: yeah? what?
Peter *who watched a buzzfeed unsolved about his disappearance*: oh my god.
What is Yoda’s syntax in other languages?
What is Yoda’s syntax in other languages?
Sometimes people ask the best questions on Reddit:
What does Yoda’s syntax look like in non-English versions of Star Wars? For those who aren’t familiar with Star Wars (all two of you), Yoda is an alien who, when speaking English, uses what seems to be an OSV syntax instead of the traditional SVO syntax.
So how do foreign translations of the script handle this? I am particularly interested in what it looks like in non-SVO languages. Are there any translations where Yoda’s incorrect syntax is emulated by using an English-like syntax? Or are other languages’ syntax so free that mistakes in the use of case or verb conjugations must instead be used to emulate Yoda’s “alien” speech?
And some answers so far:
- Czech: Free word order. Yoda speaks consistently in SOV. Interestingly enough, putting an object before a verb does sound unusual to most speakers of Czech.
- Estonian: Free word order language. Yoda retains the English OSV order. This is grammatical in Estonian, but does make it seem as though Yoda is constantly stressing the object phrase as the main point of his statements. This gives his speech an unusual quality.
- French: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
- German: A SVO or SOV language. Yoda brings the Object to the front (OSV), like in English.
- Hungarian: A free word order language. There is nothing unusual about Yoda’s speech.
- Italian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: OSV is also the syntax used in the Italian of the less-proficient speakers of Italian from the region of Sardinia.
- Japanese: An SOV language. Yoda seems to use a more or less correct syntax, with a more archaic vocabulary.
- Korean: An SOV language. Nothing is unusual about Yoda’s grammar.
- Norwegian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
- Romanian: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV. He also places adjectives before the noun instead of after the noun, and uses an archaic form of the future tense.
- Spanish: An SVO language. Yoda speaks in OSV.
- Turkish: An SOV language. Yoda speaks in OSV. Note: This order is also used in classical Ottoman poetry, so the syntax may have been chosen in order to emphasize Yoda’s wisdom or age.
Seriously, though, check out this thread by @AstroKatie on how the image was produced and why the ring looks the way it does, plus simulations of different viewing angles.
Seriously, though, check out this thread by @AstroKatie on how the image was produced and why the ring looks the way it does, plus simulations of different viewing angles.
Here's a paper talking about the history of black hole images, with a detailed discussion of what you should expect for the "shadow" image we've just seen. Check Fig 12, with renderings of shadows for disks at different angles https://t.co/UfZeUny77e pic.twitter.com/J083Ajv6ZD
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) April 10, 2019
And this article by @BadAstronomer on the science behind the image.
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-first-image-of-the-event-horizon-of-a-black-hole
Article by Phil Plait explaining the science behind the Event Horizon Telescope’s ground-breaking image of …
Article by Phil Plait explaining the science behind the Event Horizon Telescope’s ground-breaking image of the supermassive black hole in M87 – the world’s first-ever actual image of the event horizon (or, more precisely, silhouette) of a black hole.
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-first-image-of-the-event-horizon-of-a-black-hole
Birdsite thread by @AstroKatie on how the image was produced and why the ring looks the way it does, plus simulations of different viewing angles.
First ever direct image of a black hole! The supermassive black hole in the galaxy M87 — 6.5 billion times as massive as the Sun! #EHT #BlackHole The image is better than I expected! pic.twitter.com/Tv7I36v4xQ
— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) April 10, 2019
alenxa: Valuing low character count may lead to higher visceral response
RT @alenxa:
So I found this list of intellectual vs emotional words and the emotional ones are all shorter. Suggests that valuing low character count may lead to higher visceral response to that communication. Meaning, Twitter is designed so that we get worked up over it. Studies? Plz?
@alenxa Ooh, that’s an angle I hadn’t thought of before!
I’ve seen a lot of discussion of anger driving more engagement (which ad-supported services love) and someone suggested that it’s hard for most people to convey emotion in writing without exaggerating.
Now adding this factor…
I wonder if there’s a way to isolate other factors that have driven up the general anger level and compare the 140-character era to the 280-character era.
It does seem like the general level has been getting worse, but if that change decelerated things, it could support it.
Field Museum: Too. Much. Coffee! 😆 ☕☕☕☕☕
@sohkamyung@mstdn.io wrote:
Bwhahaha! More ‘coffee emotions’ in the twitter thread. 🙂
“Field Museum @FieldMuseum
Too. Much. Coffee. 😳”“These watercolors were painted by Chinese artists during the mid-19th century and sold to Western customers in port cities of Hong Kong, Macao, and Canton. They’re imaginary birds but with some real #MondayMood feelings.”
These are great!
Yep. Whenever someone complains about newer #StarTrek being “ruined” by social justice or progressive issues, …
Yep. Whenever someone complains about newer #StarTrek being “ruined” by social justice or progressive issues, unlike the older series…I have to wonder whether they ever actually *watched* the show they claim to remember so fondly.
Thread:
I still find it amazing that the alt-right thinks Star Trek Discovery is all SJW n shit, but TNG had an episode about a transgender woman falling in love with Riker and then being lobotomized for it.
— Apple Mackintosh Phone (@dineenporter) December 14, 2018
Thread on why it’s important to have multiple browser implementations, including at the engine level and not just the UI.
Thread on why it’s important to have multiple browser implementations, including at the engine level and not just the UI.
No single company should control the future of the web platform.
— Anne van Kesteren (@annevk) December 5, 2018
Boosting brion@mastodon.technology: Found them! Five photos, taken in fading dusk light after panickingly searching for my camera …
Found them! Five photos, taken in fading dusk light after panickingly searching for my camera during what I sincerely hoped was a _test_ missile. 😉
This was the October 3, 1999 antiballistic missile system test described here http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/03/news/mn-18259
Files scanned October 14, 1999, and sat around for aaaaages. 🙂
New college courses by a neural net…
KelsonV shared a status by janellecshane:
New college courses by a neural net trained on the @UCSanDiego course catalog. I would at least read the syllabus for some of these.
http://aiweirdness.com/post/178311759162/college-courses-of-the-future-courtesy-of-a
@janellecshane Syllabus, nothing, I’d sign up for several of these!
Spiders blamed after broken siren played creepy nursery rhymes randomly at night to UK townsfolk
Spiders blamed after broken siren played creepy nursery rhymes randomly at night to UK townsfolk
This headline gets better one word at a time.
And the article does not disappoint.
vintagerpg:Serious nerd history lesson incoming.The first Dungeons & Dragons videogame came out in …
Serious nerd history lesson incoming.
The first Dungeons & Dragons videogame came out in 1982
for the Intellivision, but the burgeoning industry was already under the tabletop
game’s influence. By 1980, two games represented a kind of fork in the
philosophical road for computerized RPGs. Rogue focused on the dangers of
dungeon crawling and complex rule sets that verged on the mystical – it was
essentially a simulation of D&D mechanics where stories emerged from the
action without narrative guidance. Down the other path lay Zork.Zork was developed by students at MIT from 1977 to 1979. It was
inspired by Will Crowther’s 1975 mainframe game Colossal Cave Adventure that,
though it lacked monsters, was directly inspired by Dungeons & Dragons
sessions (which included Zork writer and Infocom founder Dave Lebling). Zork
was definitely fantasy, though, with a vast underground empire to explore,
treasures to find and monsters to fight (or be eaten by, if we’re talking about
the darkness dwelling Grue).Zork is an interactive fiction, that is, everything is
presented as text. You direct your actions by typing them into the command line
and a bit of code known as a text parser acts as a kind of dungeon master (Zork
III’s subtitle actually is Dungeon Master, come to think of it), interpreting
your commands and telling you their consequences. If the Dave Arneson school of
D&D thought sought to have players inhabit the fantasy stories he read and
loved, then Zork is perhaps the closest we’ve come to that Platonic ideal.I love Zork. It is as old as I am, has no flashy graphics,
and yet remains my favorite videogame of all time. It stoked my imagination as
no other videogame has, but in ways similar to D&D. As a kid, peering at
the green monochrome screen, trying (and mostly failing) to work out the devious
puzzles. I didn’t make much of a distinction between Zork and Dungeons &
Dragons. Even though they didn’t share a brand name, I knew they were both
facets of a larger world.Interactive fiction mostly died out in the late 80s, leaving
the mechanical influence of D&D to dominate videogames until recent years,
when technology has allowed complex narrative to remarry rules systems in
something that approximates the experience of telling a story with friends
around the gaming table. Sort of. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
Found this tweet from the previous time I read Les Miserables, back in 2013. I …
Found this tweet from the previous time I read Les Miserables, back in 2013. I took several breaks to read other books, including the environmental dystopia The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi:
I’ve been reading The Windup Girl. It’s very good, but I’m ready to go back to Les Miserables for something more cheerful.
— Reading Les Mis (@ReadingLesMis) September 29, 2013