I’d like to point out that the dialect-language-family distinction is really a continuum. As dialects drift apart from each other, there is no point where God comes in and declares a dialect has graduated into its own language. Mutual intelligibility simply decreases continuously.

For instance, Portuguese and Spanish are widely considered to be different languages, although they are partially mutually intelligible, particularly in written form. Cantonese and Mandarin are less so, but still a bit. My uncle-in-law speaks Canto but can still understand my Mandarin (however, he can’t respond). I won’t deny that there is a political reason to want to refer to the Chinese/中文 languages as a single “language,” but the classification is honestly quite arbitrary. My understanding is that linguists generally place the category of “Chinese” somewhere between “language” and “family.”

Is Scots a different language than English? I don’t think I could understand someone speaking Scots without incredible concentration. (However, it’s still considered a “linguistic variety” of middle english.)

They made the product they want, they’re free to do that.

But they aren’t free – Disney has total executive control. This is nothing new though; they used to use this power to censor queerness in shows before (e.g. Gravity Falls). They may still perhaps, and may do so again. Disney in general reigns in everything to make it a sterile corporate product and the artists involved have to swim upstream to make something they want.

We should all boycott Disney and take its capitalist grip off our culture. Then we can have vastly more diverse media, certainly with more queerness.

Out of curiosity, did you like Andor? Because it had all that stuff too but it was well written instead. Just think about how many women are lead roles on Andor for a second.

those are the people 1984 is talking about, or rather to, I believe.

Edit: nvm, 1984 is among them perhaps.

there’s no “but” – this is exactly the point the author is making.

The article is NOT satire – it’s provocative. The author argues that world hunger benefits the rich. Capiche?

I hope the UN restores the article.

Interview with author: https://fee.org/articles/un-deletes-article-titled-the-benefits-of-world-hunger-was-it-real-or-satire/

that’s not satire. He unironically, disapprovingly, argues that this is the real state of the world.

https://fee.org/articles/un-deletes-article-titled-the-benefits-of-world-hunger-was-it-real-or-satire/

I just want to remind you all that Gary Bowser, switch modder, owes 30% of his income to Nintendo for the rest of his life. He also is in a wheelchair and has kids.

Please don’t post hearsay. If you want to post something incriminating, take a second to verify it first. This is how bad rumors propagate, and as a society today it’s a problem we’re facing like never before. Do your part!

In this case you’re completely wrong.

What does BLOB stand for?

what’s underage for hrt? like… 12?

The conversation was not originally about OSD; I had just mentioned it.

You do too by using the term FOSS instead of FLOSS

Touchée. But FLOSS the term only emphasises even more: there’s open source software, and then there’s free/libre open source software – note the distinction.

machine learning?

If this were true, we wouldn’t need the term “FOSS.”

You’re talking about the OSD presumably. Stallman’s definition differs, and I think his terminology seems to be widely used.

U.S. vehicles currently emit 2 billion tons. So that’s very bad news.

However – I think 2030 is waaay too far in the future to predict anything about AI.

I usually use open source to mean open source and free as in lunch, but in this case I assume kovarex is talking about open source but commercial and restrictively licensed. I could be wrong.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the source code of the Java version open for modding?

i like the last one

i think this is a good idea in 95% of cases. Some jobs obviously require being on call. In some cases, it’s necessary to have meetings with people in +/- 8h timezones. there should be appropriate compensation naturally.

Charitably, the frog is actually saying “I don’t like discussing our looming annhilation.”