Could the English language die? “English could of course die, just as Egyptian died,” says Max Planck linguist Martin Haspelmath The more interesting questions are: when and how?
You know that old bit from Chaplin's "The Kid", where the titular kid throws rocks through windows to make work for The Tramp's window replacement business?
Yeah, that's this, except modern business doesn't have to share profits with a window-breaking kid because they can just deliver a pane of glass that looks intact but automatically breaks itself as soon as the transaction is complete.
Yes, it's illegal. That hasn't stopped Big Tech yet.
chatonsky.net/le-remplacement-… La critique anthropocentrique de l'IA reproduit le cadre conceptuel qu'elle dénonce en opposant humain et machine. Cette approche manque la dimension anthropotechnique constitutive et l'altérité radicale de l'intelligence artificielle. Une xénocritique permettrait de penser les reconfigurations induites par ces technologies sans présupposer une finitude humaine menacée.
Google Gemini potrebbe potenziare Deep Research con il cariocamento di file, ispirandosi a NotebookLM. Ecco come cambierà la ricerca AI personalizzata.
While I agree with Nesrine Malik's criticisms of the 'hostage politics' of the Labour Party's claim that they remain the best of a bad bunch on political parties, once again, the only 'alternative' is presented as a shift to the right by voters.... here she only mentions the Greens once - as an example of how Labour uses Farage as a threat on the doorstep - and seems to completely discount the wide range of left-shift potential Green voters;
First it was the Conservatives and now Reform. The only thing the government has to offer is that it’s the least worst option, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik
I think pretending the similar alternatives don't exist is actually a strategy that I see at local level where I live. The LDs have done very well with the "its us of the Tories" campaigning, but if you look at the numbers here the threat is the Greens who's numbers are growing quickly and yet you never see them mentioned.
Equally though the Green messaging here is lame and abstract, "the LDs are too powerful so vote in a few green councillors".
the Green messaging here is basically nonexistent, which is thoroughly frustrating.
I keep hearing from the regional party that they need people to go leafleting, which I physically cannot do. I don't here from the local party at all.
I *want* to get involved. I *want* to go to the odd meeting, do a bit of background admin, maybe. But there doesn't seem to be anything happening that I can actually get involved with. If there is, they're not sharing it anywhere I can hear about it.
We would very much benefit, up and down the country, from the Greens being more visible. We would benefit *here* from them being visible at all. The main reason my council didn't go Reform is because we didn't happen to have elections this time. Something needs to change before the next one.
Labour insiders “see a silver lining in the rise of Reform”, because it means the government can terrorise Green voters on the doorstep and say “it’s fine if you want to vote Green, but you’ll have Nigel Farage in Downing Street”.
Ask them how well that worked in Runslip. The total votes for Reform + Conservative went up by about 500 from 2024 to 2025. The total votes for Labour dropped by 10,000. Labour lost by six votes. If they'd managed to convince seven former Labour voters that they were actually better than Reform, they'd have won the by election.
That's the kind of thing that should cause a leadership contest. If it doesn't, I hope the Greens manage to capitalise on it by showing that the choices are an indistinguishable mix of Labour, Conservatives and Reform, or them.
If the choices are Farage, or someone doing a second-rate Farage impression, voters won't bother to turn up. Being very slightly less bad than the alternative is not a vote winner.
The Democrats in the USA have shown this repeatedly. Their policies are basically 'do what the Republicans are doing, but a bit more slowly'. People don't look at that and see an alternative worth putting effort into campaigning or voting.
they don't need to be "better than Reform," though.
There's flow of voters in all directions, there always is. But a good number of Tories are now voting Reform, while a good number of Labour voters are *not voting*. "Less bad than the other lot" is not getting people to the polling station for anyone.
@david_chisnall @jetlagjen Yes. It’s interesting how left wing policies under Corbyn, despite all the antisemitism nonsense, won more votes than right wing Starmer twice. #Labour
@david_chisnall "Being very slightly less bad than the alternative is not a vote winner. The Democrats in the USA have shown this repeatedly. Their policies are basically 'do what the Republicans are doing, but a bit more slowly'."
TOTALLY. And if we in the #USA ever get back anything even vaguely resembling a real electoral system, we CANNOT tolerate the continued existence of the #JackassParty in its current form. It will need to be either transformed beyond recognition, or replaced with a very different party. For the last three decades, Bill "NAFTA" Clinton, Barack "fake hope, counterfeit change" Obama, and Joe "Nothing will fundamentally change" Biden have been teaching the public that there is no real hope for anything better than fascism, and that any non-fascist they vote for will just continue letting the nation's wealth go to corporations and billionaires.
Maybe a better way to deal with Reform, would just be to bring in some laws forbidding foreign funding of UK political parties (and requiring all parties to disclose funding sources) ?
57 mila alpini mandati in Russia da Mussolini e dal fascismo.
Solo 11 mila tornarono.
E al loro raduno cantano Faccetta Nera.
Evidentemente gli piace essere carne da macello per dittatori.
Cosa ho imparato da questo post? Intanto di evitare threads come la peste. Il livello medio dei messaggi letto è infimo, gente che si insulta come se fosse allo stadio.
Avrei dovuto saperlo, ma mi sono fatto fregare, la prossima volta sto più attento.
E avrei dovuto capirlo già da questo post. Cosa mi vuole dire? Che tutti gli alpini sono fascisti? Come se tutti gli 11 mila che tornarono erano tutti li al raduno a cantare faccetta nera. L'assurdità della discussione inizia già dalle premesse.
@Alessandro @Diego Roversi però devo dire che anche io leggendo il primo post avevo interpretato che quegli 11 mila dopo essere tornati si erano radunati e avevano cantato faccetta nera (non avevo aperto il link)
nel weekend non c'è stato tempo per leggere i giornali, si era impegnati a coltivare le terre del Marchese (due cassette di pomodori e quattro di erbe aromatiche, ma dovevamo ancora andare anche a comprare le cassette e il terriccio e tutto quanto 😁 )
Canadian SMR (small modular nuclear reactor) costs €11,000 per kW: just as expensive as France's Flamanville-3. But that's if you build 4 at the same place. One alone would have higher infrastructure cost. And it's just the initial budget, without overruns. wattisduurzaam.nl/48976/energi…
Ontario Power Generation start de bouw van eerste small modular reactor (SMR) in Canada. Het Amerikaanse GE Hitachi levert de reactor van het type BWRX-300, met een vermogen van 300 megawatt. Oplev…
Ορισμένοι χρήστες είναι ενοχλημένοι με τον έντονο μπλε και ροζ κύκλο που είναι πλέον πανταχού παρών στις εφαρμογές της Meta, κυρίως λόγω ζητημάτων προστασίας δεδομένων.
»Pope Leo XIV called for a #ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the war in Ukraine on Sunday (…). He spoke from the loggia of St. Peter's Basilica.
"I am deeply pained by what is happening," said Leo, referring to the war in Gaza. "Let the fighting cease immediately, let humanitarian aid be provided to the exhausted civilian population, and may all hostages be released.“«
While it can be easy to overlook implementation and enforcement of new tech and digital rules once they have been adopted by EU lawmakers, recent experience underlines the need to keep a close eye on these important final steps in the process.
Sinner Victorious At Italian Open Return Following Doping Ban Men's tennis World number one, Jannik Sinner, was ecstatic after a victorious return following a three-month doping ban, with a 6–3 6–4 win over Argentina von.gov.ng/sinner-claims-victo… #doping #cleansport #antidoping #datajournalism
Men's tennis World number one, Jannik Sinner, was ecstatic after a victorious return following a three-month doping ban, with a 6–3 6–4 win over Argentina's Mariano Navone in the second round of the Italian Open.Sinner agreed a settlement with the Wo
Do you use the kSuite/kDrive cloud productivity suite or migrated your Google data there? How do you like it? What about support? I'd appreciate your feedback on the product and your experience.
"In papers to the court, the UK has acknowledged that its supply of F-35 components for potential use in Israel is in breach of its own arms export control laws."
Against a backdrop of mounting geopolitical tensions and a deepening climate crisis, a new policy brief urges that climate policy be firmly embedded in European security strategy. The report, "Mainstreaming 1.
When I was in the hospital recovering from a shattered leg bone a machine near my bed kept beeping all night. This made the pain much worse somehow, the combination of the beeping, the lights which weren't fully off and the horrible pain really broke me down. I've never felt worse.
I was so happy when my husband brought my noise canceling earbuds from home. But really this guy is right we ought to think about if we are designing hell-like soundscapes in such places.
@futurebird 99percentinvisible.org/episode… Sleep deprivation from noise in hospitals contribute to high rates of delirium, especially in older patients. ICUs are even worse than wards.
Alarm fatigue from constant machine alerts can cause nurses to miss emergencies.
@futurebird with any luck, our children’s children will look back on the late 20th, early 21st century noise background the same way we look back at Victorian coal-fired smog and horse-crap filled streets.
Which reminds me that I should do something about the local street lanterns beaming most of their warm light up into space and over the bushes🙃
So true. My big labor and delivery discovery was how powerfully a white noise generator can change the experience. When we left after c section post op it was the last thing we unplugged and it turned our little nest into the alienating experience of beeps and bloops modern hospital care.
Many people that visit China remark on how much better cities are with the quieter electric vehicles.
The West has gone the opposite direction, with rat bastards removing their catalytic converters and modding their exhausts. I blame Ebay for selling and promoting the tools to do illegal mods.
I’ve lived in my current neighborhood for 9 years, and am still surprised at how quiet it is, compared to my old one near downtown Colorado Springs where there was a constant drone from the interstate two miles away. Now if we could also do something about light pollution.
We switched to a microwave that lets us mute all beeps a few years ago and it's so much better than the constant beeps. On the flip side, a bluetooth speaker we have has a very loud/elaborate tune (which definitely sounds engineered) that plays on power off that I really, really wish could be disabled. Why would "I want to stop making noise now" be the time to make more noise?
We moved from a somewhat small craftsman house to a quite large (mostly) modern house a few years ago. The soundscape is hugely different. Now I am trying to sacrifice its clean lines for some soft audio instead: installing audio panels and rugs, and planning for other ways of breaking up the soundscape.
Man I wish more people thought about this stuff.
The endless thread podcast discusses a solid rant on this, too:
Hosts Ben Brock Johnson and Amory Sivertson dig into the internet's vast and curious ecosystem of online communities to find untold histories, unsolved mysteries, and other jaw-dropping stories online and IRL.
Son dakika: Terör örgütü PKK tarihi kararı duyurdu: Geçen hafta kongresini topladığını duyuran terör örgütü, kongrenin sonuç bildirgesini yayımladı. Terör örgütü, kendini feshettiğini ve silahları bıraktığını resmen duyurdu.
Terörsüz Türkiye sürecinde tarihi bir adım atıldı. Terör örgütü PKK kendini feshettiğini duyurdu. Kongre sonuç bildirgesini yayımlayan terör örgütü, silahları bıraktığını açıkladı.
Peter Motte
in reply to Max-Planck-Gesellschaft • • •