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It's possible; the peak of the Green Sahara period was ~8000 BCE, while the Epic of Gilgamesh is from 2100 BCE. As the desertification of the Sahara and Levant went on, it's possible that small pockets of greenery remained for longer, becoming the target of oral traditions, that eventually the Epic and other myths borrowed from.
I just find a bit unlikely because those myths typically have something to do with humans or human-like gods doing something and, as a consequence, either spoiling or leaving the garden:
- Hebrew - humans develop morality, so they're kicked out
- Sumerian - humans distance themselves from nature, as they try to wrestle control over it (that's how I interpret it at least - the man vs. nature theme is common in Sumerian myths).
- Ugarit tablets - god El has a tree of life, god Horon transforms it into a tree of death
Then in the Greek myth I don't think that they give the garden of the Hesperides some end or similar. It's simply there.
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My prediction:
It'll reach a profitability peak some months from now, then start dropping again. That drop will prompt Reddit Inc. to introduce further changes to the platform, and they'll get a new profitability peak - smaller than the older one. This pattern will repeat a few times, until the focus is back from "maximising profits" to "cut down the losses".
Investors will be pissed and try to find someone to blame, potentially even suing Greedy Pigboy - seeking to get their money back, as the amount that they invested in the platform became nothing. This will fail, but Greedy Pigboy's reputation will be ruined among investors, just like it is among users.
In the meantime, users will flee in flocks from the platform. Most of them will go to Discord, with only a handful hitting Lemmy - as by now Lemmy already has its own culture aside from the one of the "leftover" in Reddit. (I expect that "fuck off back to Reddit" will become a common scene here.)
In the meantime, it'll be an open secret that the very changes promoting short-term net profit caused long-term losses. Because it'll be stuff like:
- Targetted ads further encouraging users to use ad blockers, and to avoid the app altogether.
- Disruption of the mobile site to "encourage" users to use the app. Some will use it for a while, then ditch it altogether.
- Making ads less and less distinguishable from genuine content. You click it once by accident, get pissed but give Reddit some money; you do it twice, and you leave.
- Removing features only used by a small fraction of the userbase - but the fraction differs each time, so users in general get pissed.
- Removing the ability to customise the old.reddit page of each subreddit with CSS, under some bullshit claim like "someone might abuse it, think on the children!", but the actual reason will be brand awareness.
- Introducing changes that, while desirable for larger subreddits, either neglect or outright harm smaller subreddits. Even if the main reason why people stay in Reddit is the smaller subs.
- Copying features from social media platforms strictu sensu. That'll promote Reddit in the short term, but in the long term it becomes pointless to stay in Reddit instead of a bigger platform (like Facebook).
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And also the cousin of Sam Neuman. Another con artist, but this one relying on novel techniques.
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Conservatives be like: "they lied to us! We didn't know that transitioning could be as cool as getting a leg upgrade in Mega Man X!"
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it's a tool that various apps can use to run Windows games on Linux, acting as a copy of the Steam Runtime Tools and Steam Linux Runtime that Valve uses for Proton to allow Proton to properly run outside of Steam.
I'm installing this now because I didn't know that I needed it.
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Following that interpretation, what Yahweh said is a half-truth - because it implies that the fruit itself would cause their death, when it doesn't. They would eventually die because Yahweh would revoke their immortality, but the fruit itself does what Serpent said that it would, granting them knowledge.
In the Sumerian story of the gardens of Dilmun, Enki and Ninhursanga, Enki eats of the eight forbidden plants so as to gain knowledge of them
Great catch - I completely forgot about this myth. I've seen a different, but still related version, might as well explore it here:
- Enki sleeps with Ninhursag, they have Ninšar.
- Then with Ninšar, they have Ninkurra.
As they do it Sweet Home Alabama plays in the background. - Then with Ninkurra, and they have Uttu.
- Then, as Enki sleeps with Uttu, Ninhursag removes Enki's semen from Uttu's body and throws on the ground, creating the eight plants that you mentioned.
- Isimud (Enki's assistant) uproots those plants and give them to Enki, who eats them - so now he knows the heart and determines the destiny of each plant.
- Ninhursag gets pissed and then curses Enki, withdrawing her "life-giving eye" from him, so he falls sick.
Ninhursag governs over the mountains, while the other three goddesses govern human activities (Ninšar and meat cooking, Ninkurra and sculpting, Uttu and weaving). And the later was probably not considered as important as the others, due to the absence of the prefix Nin- "Lady, Mistress".
As such, Ninhursag likely governed over wild plants too, like the ones that Enki ate; and, once Enki to control those plants, he was invading her realm. Or, alternatively, by knowing better those plants Enki had a reason to control the mountains, instead of sticking to the wetlands.
Either way, if the Hebrew myth of Adam and Eve was influenced by this one, suddenly it makes sense why Yahweh punishes Adam and Eve - Yahweh's realm would be morality, and the couple invaded it.
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I think that you are reading it right. And while I personally wouldn't associate obedience with moral "good", whoever wrote this myth clearly did.
In fact the whole myth feels like Yahweh creating a successful trap for the couple - the tree is in the garden, but they aren't supposed to eat from it; the snake was in the garden, but they weren't supposed to listen to it; and the serpent speaking the truth while Yahweh was being a liar ("you'll die"... except they didn't.)
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I've translated it to Portuguese on a whim, might as well share it here.
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Põe umas uvas junto. No mínimo sete. C'as sete na goela, vai que é uma beleza.
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Tem gente que diz que banana no cuque é bom, mas prefiro o meu de farofa mesmo.
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The odd part is that in the wild, the kitten doesn’t stay with the mother all that long.
That reminds me Cruela.
My cat Kika once got pregnant. We were able to give all kittens new homes, except one - that stayed with us. She grew into adulthood, not only pampered by the humans but also by her mum Kika.
Cruela would find an open window, take a walk, then come back after a few hours. And then when she was back, she'd ask Kika to be licked. And every single time Kika would lick her manchild womanchild catkitten daughter for a few minutes, then meow angrily and paw her once or twice, as if saying "you're clean now you adult baby, now sod off!". Every single time.
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Siegfrieda: self-heating pillow, food bringer, good companion.
Kika: "it's a human so of course it's disgusting. But it slaps my butt so good~ A shame that it's too stupid to understand that it should be massaging me 25h/day."
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Then as you ask "provide sources.", it says simply "Source: Tech Review Websites". If this came from an actual person I would genuinely ask it "do you take me for gullible trash?".
It's still somewhat useful, due to Google Search crumbling away into nothingness, if you ask "link me five sites with info about [topic]".
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more [with a higher pitch]
Yes, I can. /me leaves the room
Serious now, this sentence is a great example because, even if phrased as a yes/no question, you'll typically see it being used as a request - "please tell me more". And as such you'll often hear it without the higher pitch associated with yes/no questions.
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Well, Old English baggs to differ. English lost its case markings on articles early on and kept them on nouns a while longer while German kept them on articles and simplified nouns much more early on.
That sē is still the determiner, now with an additional function as an article, not an independent article. What I said applies to the article as its own thing, i.e. when "the" and "that" were already independent words - in fact their decoupling is directly tied to the same loss of the endings that caused the morphological case system to go kaboom.
Again, German didn’t dump anything into articles but rather lost it everywhere else.
I'm talking about the informational load, you're talking about the phonetic changes.
There is this idea that this fostered the process of using der/die/das much more often (which made it from a demonstrative to an article) but I disagree because it was a widespread process, not only in German but in huge parts of Europe, including beside Romance languages also English were this reasoning doesn’t work (as shown above).
It's actually both a shift promoted by interactions between languages in the Western European Sprachbund and the result of simple sound changes. Much like a vicious cycle:
- noun endings get slightly muddier due to syncretism →
- people rely more on a default word order to convey case →
- higher usage of demonstratives as "poor man's article" (definiteness might not be the same as topic, but in a pinch it's close enough) →
- poor man's article becomes an actual article →
- there's less pressure to keep the noun endings distinct, thus against sound changes that would merge them →
- noun endings get slightly muddier due to syncretism
Higher usage of demonstratives as articles might be also caused by interference of other languages - that guy spamming "that" and "one" in a language will eventually do the same if speaking some another nearby language. And it also explains roughly why German ended as the exception, as it's right in the middle of the way between "case endings, no articles" Polish and "articles, no case endings" Romance.
Then, in German you got that weird middle ground where word order still conveys topic, but the noun endings already weren't conveying the case any more. The info gets dumped in the article - and that prevents further sound changes and regularisation processes from attacking them.
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Another layer of racism that I notice is how much of those culinary traditions ended segregated from what your typical person eats in Canada/USA. In a way that I don't even think that they notice.
The very fact that your typical Canadian/American needs a Native American restaurant to experience their cultural impact shows that all babble about "melting pots" is nothing but a farce over a bunch of segregated bowls. They never ate each others' culture until they stopped caring who's who.
(You probably get it though, based on your other comment.)
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It could be worse. You could speak a minority language. Then this shit stops being "mildly infuriating" to become "frankly depressing".
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Seriously, English has its flaws, but the simplification of article adjectives is one area where it shines.
When it comes to the articles themselves, it's less that English simplified them and more that it never developed case marks for them. For example, when se→þē split into what's today "the" and "that", that "the" was already invariable.
In contrast, not only German repurposed the demonstrative "der" (that, which, who) into an article in a cleaner way, but it's also dumping most grammatical case info into the article - so it's bound to preserve a lot more forms for them. (It still simplified them a bit though. Compare this with this).
[Sorry for hopping in to nerd out about language.]
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Do you really pronounce those with a higher pitch? Or do you pronounce them louder?
EDIT: that is a genuine question given that a lot of people conflate stress (louder; more dB) with pitch (higher tone; more Hz), and the examples provided hint prosodic stress, not prosodic intonation, since in English prosodic stress is often used for emphasis.
[Idea] If you don't want to see huge flags taking space over actual drawings in the Canvas, pick the biggest flag that you can find to deface. As long as a lot of people are doing that, the ones templating larger flags will be forced to reduce their layouts and give more room for actual drawings. __________________ [Reasoning] When it comes to country flags, I think that the immense majority of the users can be split into four groups: 1. The ones who don't want to see country flags at all. 2. The ones who are OK with smaller flags, but don't want to see larger ones. 3. The ones who want to see a *specific* large flag taking a huge chunk of space. 4. The ones who want to see the whole canvas burning, like the void. I'm myself firmly rooted into #1, but this idea is a compromise between #1, #2 and #4. Typically #3 uses numbers (and/or bots) to seize a huge chunk of the canvas to their flags. Well, let's use numbers against it then. As long as #1, #2 and #4 are trying to wreck the same flag, we win. ___________ [inb4] >But what about identity flags? Not a problem. They're typically bands instead of thick squares, and people drawing them are fairly accommodating. >But what about [insert another thing] Even if [thing] is a problem, it's probably minor in comparison with huge country flags. >What should be the template? None. We don't need one, *as long as everyone is working against the same large flag.* Just draw something of your choice over the flag, preferably over its iconic features. >But I'm not creative enough for that! No matter how shitty your drawing is, it's probably still way more original than a country flag. So don't feel discouraged. That said, you can always help someone else with their drawing. Or plop in some text. Or just void. >Why are you posting this now, you bloody Slowpoke? I wish that I thought about this *before* Canvas 2024. But better later than never. (And better early by a year for Canvas 2025.) ____________________ **EDIT:** addressing on general grounds some whining from group #3 (the ones who want to see a specific large flag taking a huge chunk of the canvas space). You do realise that this sort of "war against the largest flag" should benefit even you, *as long as the biggest flag is not the one you're working with*, right? Even for you, this makes the canvas a more even level field. Let us not forget that you love to cover *other* flags with your own.
www.livescience.com
I'm sharing this here mostly due to the alphabet. The relevant region (Tartessos) would be roughly what's today the western parts of Andalucia, plus the Algarve. [Here are the news in Spanish](https://www.csic.es/es/actualidad-del-csic/el-csic-investiga-un-abecedario-hallado-en-la-tablilla-de-pizarra-del-yacimiento-de-casas-del-turunuelo), for anyone interested. The number of letters is specially relevant for me - 32 letters. The writing system is [a redundant alphabet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Paleohispanic_script), where you use different graphemes for the stops, depending on the next vowel; and it was likely made for a language with five vowels, so you had five letters for /p/, five for /t/, five for /k/. Counting the "bare" vowels this yields 20 letters; /m n s r l/ fit well with that phonology, but what about the other seven?
Context: some days ago, I commented in a topic about *Argiope bruennichi* that I had a similar spider living on my kumquat tree, later identified to be *Argiope argentata*. And [@quinacridone@lemmy.ml](https://lemmy.ml/u/quinacridone) asked for an update, if she laid eggs. So, here they are. Sadly I couldn't even notice that she laid eggs, let alone photograph the egg sac. But hey, I got little cute spiders~ Here's their mum, Kumoko: 
This recipe is great to repurpose lunch leftovers for dinner. It's also relatively mess-free. Loosely based on egg-fried rice. Amounts listed for two servings, but they're eyeballed so use your judgment. Ingredients: * **Cooked leftover rice.** 200~300g (cooked) is probably good enough. It's fine to use pilaf, just make sure that the rice is cold, a bit dry, and that the grains are easy to separate. * **Two eggs.** Cracked into a small bowl and whisked with salt, pepper, and MSG. Or the seasoning of your choice. * **Veg oil.** For browning. * **Water.** Or broth if you want, it's just a bit. * [OPTIONAL] **Meats.** Leftover beef, pork, or chicken work well. Supplement it with ham, firmer sausages, and/or bacon; 1/2 cup should be enough for two. Dice them small. * [OPTIONAL] **Vegs.** I'd add at least half raw onion; but feel free to use leftover cooked cabbages, peas, bell peppers, etc. Or even raw ones. Also diced small. * [OPTIONAL] **Chives.** Mostly as a finishing touch. Sliced thinly. Preparation: 1. Add a spoonful of veg oil to a wok or similar. Let it heat a bit. 2. If using raw meats: add them to the wok, and let them brown on high fire, stirring constantly. Else, skip this step. 3. If using raw vegs: add them to the wok, and let them it cook on mid-low fire. Else, skip this step. 4. Add the already cooked ingredients (rice, meats, vegs). Medium fire, stirring gentle but constantly; you want to heat them up, not to cook them further. Adjust seasoning if desired. 5. Spread the whisked egg over your heated rice mix, while stirring and folding the rice frenetically. You want the egg to coat the rice grains, but they should be still separated when done. If some whisked egg is sticking to the wok and/or the rice is too dry, drip some water/broth and scrap the bottom of the wok; just don't overdo it (you don't want soggy rice). Anyway, when the egg is cooked this step is done, it'll give the rice grains a nice yellow colour and lots of flavour. 6. If using chives, add them after your turned off the fire (they get sad if cooked). Enjoy your meal. I was going to share a picture of the final result, but I may or may not have eaten it before thinking about sharing the recipe. Sorry. :#
I got a weird problem involving both of my cats (Siegfrieda, to the left; Kika, to the right). Kika is rather particular about having her own litterbox(es), and refuses to use a litterbox shared by another cat. Frieda on the other hand is adept to the "if I fits, I sits, I shits" philosophy, and is totally OK sharing litterboxes. That creates a problem: no matter if properly and regularly cleaned, the only one using litterboxes here is Frieda. We had, like, five of them at once; and Kika would still rather do her business on the patio. How do I either teach Kika "it's fine to share a litterbox", or teach Siegfrieda "that's Kika's litterbox, leave it alone"?
Context: my mum got some keikis of this orchid from a neighbour. She managed to grow them into a full plant, it even flowered (as per pic), but she has no idea on which species of orchid it is. I am not sure if it's a native species here (I'm in the subtropical parts of South America), but it seems to be growing just fine indoors in a Cfb climate. Disregard the vase saying "phal azul" (blue phal), it used to belong to another orchid; it doesn't seem to be a Phalaenopsis. If necessary I can provide further pics, but note that it has lost the flowers already. Any idea? _____________ EDIT: thanks to [@jerry@fedia.io](https://fedia.io/u/jerry)'s comment, we could find it - it's a Miltoniopsis. Likely from Colombia or Ecuador, not from my area.
I feel slightly offended. Because it's true. (Alt text: "Do you feel like the answer depends on whether you're currently in the hole, versus when you refer to the events later after you get out? Assuming you get out.") [xkcd source](https://xkcd.com/2390/)
Link to the community: !isekai@ani.social Feel free to join and talk about your favourite series. The rules are rather simple, and they're there to ensure smooth discussion.
archive.org
I'm sharing this mostly as a historical curiosity; Schleicher was genial, but the book is a century and half old, science marches on, so it isn't exactly good source material. Still an enjoyable read if you like Historical Linguistics, as it was one of the first successful attempts to reconstruct a language based on indirect output from its child languages.
www.sci.news
[Link for the Science research article](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aav3218). The observation that societies without access to softer food kind of avoided labiodentals is old, from 1985, but the research is recent-ish (2019).
theconversation.com
[Même texte en français ici.](https://theconversation.com/quand-les-ia-sattaquent-a-nos-accents-197240) I'll copypaste the English version here in case of paywall. *Accents are one of the cherished hallmarks of cultural diversity.* ## Why AI software ‘softening’ accents is problematic Published 2024/Jan/11\ by Grégory Miras, Professeur des Universités en didactique des langues, Université de Lorraine “Why isn’t it a beautiful thing?” a puzzled Sharath Keshava Narayana asked of his AI device masking accents. Produced by his company, Sanas, the recent technology seeks to “soften” the accents of call centre workers in real-time to allegedly shield them from bias and discrimination. It has sparked widespread interest both in the English-speaking and French-speaking world since it was launched in September 2022. Far from everyone is convinced of the software’s anti-racist credentials, however. Rather, critics contend it plunges us into a contemporary dystopia where technology is used to erase individuals’ differences, identity markers and cultures. To understand them, we could do worse than reviewing what constitutes an accent in the first place. How can they be suppressed? And in what ways does ironing them out bends far more than sound waves? ### How artificial intelligence can silence an accent “Accents” can be defined, among others, as a set of oral clues (vowels, consonants, intonation, etc.) that contribute to the more or less conscious elaboration of hypotheses on the identity of individuals (e.g. geographically or socially). An accent can be described as regional or foreign according to different narratives. With start-up technologies typically akin to black boxes, we have little information about the tools deployed by Sanas to standardise our way of speaking. However, we know most methods aim to at least partially transform the structure of the sound wave in order to bring certain acoustic cues closer to a perceptive criteria. The technology tweaks vowels, consonants along with parameters such as rhythm, intonation or accentuation. At the same time, the technology will be looking to safeguard as many vocal cues as possible to allow for the recognition of the original speaker’s voice, such as with voice cloning, a process that can result in deepfake vocal scams. These technologies make it possible to dissociate what is speech-related from what is voice-related. The automatic and real-time processing of speech poses technological difficulties, the main one being the quality of the sound signal to be processed. Software developers have succeeded in overcoming them by basing themselves on deep learning, neural networks, as well as large data bases of speech audio files, which make it possible to better manage the uncertainties in the signal. In the case of foreign languages, Sylvain Detey, Lionel Fontan and Thomas Pellegrini identify some of the issues inherent in the development of these technologies, including that of which standard to use for comparison, or the role that speech audio files can have in determining them. ### The myth of the neutral accent But accent identification is not limited to acoustics alone. Donald L. Rubin has shown that listeners can recreate the impression of a perceived accent simply by associating faces of supposedly different origins with speech. In fact, absent these other cues, speakers are not so good at recognising accents that they do not regularly hear or that they might stereotypically picture, such as German, which many associate with “aggressive” consonants. The wishful desire to iron out accents to combat prejudice raises the question of what a “neutral” accent is. Rosina Lippi-Green points out that the ideology of the standard language - the idea that there is a way of expressing oneself that is not marked - holds sway over much of society but has no basis in fact. Vijay Ramjattan further links recent collossal efforts to develop accent “reduction” and “suppression” tools with the neoliberal model, under which people are assigned skills and attributes on which they depend. Recent capitalism perceives language as a skill, and therefore the “wrong accent” is said to lead to reduced opportunities. Intelligibility thus becomes a pretext for blaming individuals for their lack of skills in tasks requiring oral communication according to Janin Roessel. Rather than forcing individuals with “an accent to reduce it”, researchers such as Munro and Derwing have shown that it is possible to train individuals to adapt their aural abilities to phonological variation. What’s more, it’s not up to individuals to change, but for public policies to better protect those who are discriminated against on the basis of their accent - accentism. ### Delete or keep, the chicken or the egg? In the field of sociology, Wayne Brekhus calls on us to pay specific attention to the invisible, weighing up what isn’t marked as much as what is, the “lack of accent” as well as its reverse. This leads us to reconsider the power relations that exist between individuals and the way in which we homogenise the marked: the one who has (according to others) an accent. So we are led to Catherine Pascal’s question of how emerging technologies can hone our roles as “citizens” rather than “machines”. To “remove an accent” is to value a dominant type of “accent” while neglecting the fact that other co-factors will participate in the perception of this accent as well as the emergence of discrimination. “Removing the accent” does not remove discrimination. On the contrary, the accent gives voice to identity, thus participating in the phenomena of humanisation, group membership and even empathy: the accent is a channel for otherness. If technologies such AI and deep learning offers us untapped possibilities, they can also lead to a dystopia where dehumanisation overshadows priorities such as the common good or diversity, as spelt out in the UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity. Rather than hiding them, it seems necessary to make recruiters aware of how accents can contribute to customer satisfaction and for politicians to take up this issue. Research projects such as PROSOPHON at the University of Lorraine (France), which bring together researchers in applied linguistics and work psychology, are aimed at making recruiters more aware of their responsibilities in terms of biais awareness, but also at empowering job applicants “with an accent”. By asking the question “Why isn’t this a beautiful thing?”, companies like SANAS remind us why technologies based on internalized oppressions don’t make people happy at work.
[Source.](https://xkcd.com/1483/) Alt-text: «God was like, "Let there be light," and there was light.»
phys.org
Small bit of info: Charles III still speaks RP, but the prince William (heir to the throne) already shifted to SSBE. [Geoffrey Lindsey](piped.video/watch?v=mgPRqjJCUyE) has a rather good video on that.
[Source](https://leftoversalad.tumblr.com/post/102245409302)
Links to the community: * [/c/linguistics@mander.xyz](/c/linguistics@mander.xyz) * !linguistics@mander.xyz The community is open for *everyone* regardless of previous knowledge on the field. Feel free to ask or share stuff about languages and dialects, how they work (grammar, phonology, etc.), where they're from, how people use them, or more general stuff about human linguistic communication. And the rules are fairly simple. They boil down to 1) stay on-topic, 2) source it when reasonable, 3) avoid pseudoscience. Have fun!
This is a rather long study, from the Oxford Studies in Ancient Documents. Its general content should be clear by the title, and it focuses on three "chunks" of the former Roman empire: Maghreb and Iberia, Gallia and Germania, and the British Isles.
I've recreated a Linguistics community here in mander.xyz. As the sidebar says, it's for everyone, regardless of previous knowledge over the field, so even if you're a layperson feel free to drop by. Here's the link: !linguistics@mander.xyz In case that you're in a Kbin/Mbin instance and the above doesn't work, try /m/linguistics@mander.xyz instead.
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Lvxferre
lvxferre@ mander.xyzThe catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.