Oceans Yet to Burn

ranma-official

Source: lesbianrey shtpost

Still, this implies the first LARP Hotel is arriving sooner than I anticipated.

Singularity’s back on, lads!

shtpost mitigated future

ranma-official

Source: lesbianrey shtpost

To get rid of the spelling idiosyncrasies of the English language while allowing for artistic flourishing, we will be switching the entire country over to Japanese.

The full transition will be occurring in two years, so make sure to start learning your three kanji per day now.

shtpost

house-carpenter

missalsfromiram

Even newscasters and politicians are pronouncing “folk” with an /l/, I’ve noticed. In fact I can hardly remember the last time I heard somebody pronounce it without an /l/ aside from my parents and grandparents. Certainly every damn person at college who ever said they were gonna play some /fɔlk/ music at the open mic said it with an /l/. I’m sure it’s just an inevitable countdown till the day someone makes a snarky comment about my pronunciation - probably they’ll say “You know, the way you say ‘folk’ is kind of…/fɔlksi/!” Is there any hope left for the original* pronunciation of “folk” among college-educated Americans?

And I swear to god sometimes I hear people saying “yolk” with an /l/ too

*original in that, afaik, all English speakers had already dropped the /l/ centuries ago before it was reinserted as a spelling pronunciation the last few decades

yeli-renrong

Oh, spelling pronunciations. The absolute worst thing is people pronouncing ‘often’ with /t/. Everyone does that nowadays.

While I’m here, the days of the week end in /i/, not /ej/, but that battle is already lost. I’ve never heard the correct pronunciation from anyone under 50.

(Actually, I’m starting to think it’d make sense to analyze final unstressed [i], the happY lexical set, as /əj/, and final [o], the potatO lexical set, as /əw/. This makes diachronic sense: diachronically, happY used to be [əj], and potatO is, in native words, mostly from word-final Cx/Cɣ clusters, so it’s not hard to imagine schwa epenthesis followed by the standard development of /x/ to an offglide. Then all you need is the laxing rule in absolute word-final position.)

house-carpenter

Some spelling pronunciations which are now pretty much universal (from Dobson, 1956):

lots of words used to have th pronounced /t/ (after French), but now have a voiceless dental fricative (after Modern Greek): Arthur, author, authority, Catherine, diphthong (this word also used to have /p/ for the ph, and many people still use that pronunciation), lethargy, orthography, throne; also sphere used to be a homophone of spear
bankrupt used to be pronounced “bankrout”
baptism used to be pronounced “baptime”
corpse with a /p/, not homophonous with course (however the /s/ has always been pronounced; the Old French word was cors, and final esses weren’t silent in Old French)
perfect used to be pronounced “perfit” or “parfit”; verdict used to be pronounced “verdit”
schedule—both modern pronunciations (“skedule” and “shedule”) are spelling pronunciations; the older pronunciation was just “sedule” (likewise for schism although some people still pronounce that one as “sizzum”)

There is one /l/-restoring spelling pronunciation which is very very widespread: very few people still pronounce falcon as “fawken”, like walk, talk, etc. I wonder if Malcolm was ever pronounced Mawkem? Unfortunately personal names don’t get entries in the OED… Balkans always has /l/ but maybe it was borrowed too late (attested 1785 according to OED).

mitigatedchaos

Isn’t that all to be expected in a language where spelling varies from pronunciation, and thus each person has to carry two units of information per word, as more and more people spend more time interacting with language primarily through text rather than the spoken word?

- non-linguist

Source: missalsfromiram

squareallworthy

argumate

I have a vague hunch one can sketch out a proof that extreme libertarian slash ancap economics is suboptimal without adding some additional centralised coordination to resolve the inevitable crises caused by speculative bubbles

garmbreak1

If it could be done, the market would’ve done it by now.

argumate

without speculation you hobble your economic growth, with speculation and absolute inviolable property rights I think you run the risk of [fill in blank]

shlevy

Ah, yes, [fill in blank], the primary objection libertarians have had to contend with since time immemorial.

argumate

I mean the obvious starting point is currency, which is either restricted to a fixed amount (ushering in the Great Depression?) or issued by a single authority (giving that authority too much power?) or issued by anyone who cares to, the most interesting case.

shlevy

Oh snap, we forgot about currency! No way to handle that one without government. Back to the drawing board.

voxette-vk

You know, that’s the one thing I never hear libertarians talking about: how to privatize currency.

squareallworthy

Libertarians are required to have a complete program for rebuilding society from the ground up, along with an exacting proof that the program would work. They are not allowed to simply say “the state will whither away” like the communists are. Much less are they allowed to get away with simply having a bagful of policies, like mainstream, democratically-elected parties. No.

No, libertarians can’t just say “hey, how about no minimum wage” or “how about no drug war,” because if you do, someone like @argumate will come along with a vague hunch about a sketch of an argument that an extreme form of libertarianism is less than perfect. And then you’d be so embarrassed.

So get on it. Argumate’s got a smidgen of doubt that libertarianism isn’t immediately and obviously perfect. Can’t let that stand.

mitigatedchaos

Actually, Communists aren’t allowed to say that “the state will whither away”, and as someone that does not and has never liked Libertarianism, I have called Communists on this on multiple occasions and demanded that they provide a full plan for rebuilding society from the ground up, since “let’s abolish private ownership of the means of production” basically requires that.

And Communists complain that they aren’t allowed to just say that, and talk about how you aren’t supposed to pre-define the revolution so it doesn’t get locked in.

(But I don’t need to worry, since nothing hurts Libertarianism quite like Libertarian immigration policies.)

Source: argumate the yellow black snake

rtrixie

altrightbot

bluepill: superficial and commodified weeb idea of animeland japan
“redpill”: balanced and informed perspective on japan
redpill: tradweeb who fully embraces esoteric state shinto and pilgrimages to yasukuni shrine from akihabara and recognizes karafuto and chiishima as primordially japanese

zog-agent

Wired: paleoweeb fetishizing Jomon era pottery and lacquerware, thirsting after brow ridged waifus

steel-kun

exalted: jomon irredentist ainu cartoon enthusiast who understands that the only tradnat path for japan is the physical removal of all bearers of yayoi genetics, all traces of rice cultivation, and all political systems not founded on bear worship

Source: altrightbot

ranma-official

deuslock:
“ but-call-me-kat:
“ Sorry to break the news, but you did not report the person behind that blog. Instead, you reported me. And I am still suffering the consequences.
I did not run that blog. Yes, they used my image. All my pictures from...

Source: kat-the-dog-trainer

argumate

if copyright was abolished in Libertarian Paradise, it could be quickly replaced by an equivalent contractual scheme whereby major conglomerates require you to enter into an agreement before accessing their products, with penalties for breaking the agreement.

anyone who wished to access Star Wars, Pokemon, Harry Potter, or any other popular franchise would need to agree to copyright or find someone willing to break it, and experience suggests that most people would go along with it.

shieldfoss

Depends.

To start with, I will say that I agree with the general gist of your post. However, I suspect we would still end up with a licensing scheme much different from current IP law.

Imagine going into a store to buy a CD with software (I know, so nineties, I work with what I know) and at the cashier, before paying, you’re handed a 200-page contract (That is, the EULA plus all currently applicable IP law) that you must (a) read and (b) agree to before they will take your money.

A couple of things would happen

1) Some people would not purchase the software

2) Others would purchase equivalent but license-free software from your competition

3) In an effort to capture some of that market, publishers would create an extremely streamlined contract; the main difference - looking at what has happened in other fields - would generally be that a lot of cruft would get cut out.

3A) The hard-to-enforce cruft (E.g. “not allowed to resell”) would be cut out because: If the state subsidizes your enforcement you might as well have as many terms as possible and put the burden on the customer - they cannot really go to a competitor because that competitor will have the same burdens because it is law. If you have to pay for your own enforcement, you might as well cut it out - the contract will be less confusing to your customer and that might give you a leg up over the competition.

3B) The hard-to-understand cruft would also be cut. E.g. “Not allowed to modify this software” You see this in e.g. the CC license - in an effort to make people use that license, it is very easy to understand. A private court of arbitration could create an equivalent Easy To Understand IP Contract, a service they do not provide today because they’re in direct competition with the government enforcement monopoly.

You’d end up with licenses that individual people could make educated decisions about. You’re absolutely right that people would still agree to these contracts, but I expect the contracts to be much better. And it is easier to explain to the customer “you’re not allowed to sell or give away copies of this because we needs to get paid” than “you aree allowed to create copies of this for backup purposes only unless we have used copy-protection, unless that copy protection is easily automatically circumvented by standard software in which case it doesn’t count” which is the current state.

argumate

I expect that a proliferation of licenses would quickly congeal together into a single conglomerate, which you could opt into once via an easy process.

Then you really would just walk into the store, pay your money, and walk out.

People negotiating hundreds of little contracts on an individual basis seems much less likely than the convenience of a standardised option, much in the same way as you would expect people to standardise on a small number of currencies and other common standards.

mitigatedchaos

Honestly, I find ShieldFoss’s response here to be a bit naive.

If all the record companies and movie studios get together (and it makes sense for them to do so), they can make their standard contract include those supposedly-hard-to-enforce clauses, and their standard contract will be harsher than real IP law.

They simply setup the situation such that any breach which would cause the copyrighted item to escape the containment field means someone violated the contract, and pursue people the few who didn’t and who did not immediately turn over who was responsible under the contract for some kind of conspiracy.

They don’t need to enforce it perfectly, just enough to scare people, and they can flat-out specify the prices in ways that courts will not dispute.

“This contract says you agreed to pay a $1,000 fee for every song you copied,” and oh hey, it’s civil court, so the standard of evidence is still not “beyond reasonable doubt”.

And since everyone will have to sign the contract to participate, it doesn’t really matter if a few copyright freegans on the edges of society don’t.

So no, the contracts will not be much better. In fact, they will be worse.

politics