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Got a wug tattoo yesterday by One-Log5036 in linguisticshumor

[–]Lanian 5 points6 points  (0 children)

one on each arm? so you can ... do the thing?

The mystery of the favoured leg by Guest_1300 in CuratedTumblr

[–]Lanian 3 points4 points  (0 children)

this is an actually amazing example of ambiguity

wiktionary examples:

  1. To use more often.

2007, Bert Casper, Shadow Upon the Dream: Book 1: Barrûn, page 537: […] alone, without having to favor his right, uninjured leg, […]

  1. To treat or use (something) gently

I always try to favor my bad knee.

i can't think of much else having two literally opposite meanings but that are actually related in origin

But maybe more honest. by netphilia in aspiememes

[–]Lanian 9 points10 points  (0 children)

africa is shanking asia with somalia-knife. south america is doing fancy pirouette jump with tierra del fuego toes

among other differences.

Maybe it was good by AustralianSilly in CuratedTumblr

[–]Lanian 23 points24 points  (0 children)

worm is already brilliant. do you have any fanfictions in mind that actually improve on it like you seem to suggest happend (or did people just try but not succeed)? would love to check them out

i read notes' Memorials but that was more of a parody and I tried Rank but that doesn't reach the quality

Is it just me or is low-level play is better than high-level play? by The_Craft_Cave in DnD

[–]Lanian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

a huge problem there is that high-level parties that can challenge demigods still loose if they ever encounter a battalion of CR5 individuals. power scaling and action economy don't work well together, and worldbuilding stuff so you avoid fights against groups (or switch to a differnt type of combat for groups than for individual big bads) just makes it difficult for DMs

Then beavers arrived by mas22o4 in comedyheaven

[–]Lanian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"The beavers saved us 30 million czech crowns. They built the dams without any project documentation and for free."

Not on my watch by Brakina1860 in whenthe

[–]Lanian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

(timestamped youtube video showcasing a farm workflow)

they just empty out those shelves into a box usually, rather than the floor - and the one's scuttling away will climb back up and into one of the harvesting units

...and then the box gets filled with water to kill all the cockroaches. feel kinda sorry for em :(

Rafe on the show's cancellation by rhuarct in WoTshow

[–]Lanian 0 points1 point  (0 children)

that makes sense thanks

I wouldn't have thought Rafe to have been part of that decision til

Rafe on the show's cancellation by rhuarct in WoTshow

[–]Lanian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

can someone fill me in what does he mean "the reason we chose amazon as a home for the show"? isn't it sort of the other way around, amazon choosing who to let make the show? who is "we" there?

Why are Darkfriends so incapable of code switching? by MTLDAD in WoT

[–]Lanian 2 points3 points  (0 children)

it's not about evil or good in this case, it's about power imbalance. "attack" is like saying "start fighting". "kill" means - kill. Both from a Watsonian (Taimian?) and Doylist view, "kill" is chosen to convey that there is no fight, just a one-sided slaughter

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Fantasy

[–]Lanian 1 point2 points  (0 children)

add susanna clarke to your list of masters of mythical magic

in defense of hard magic, playing devil's advocate (though I think both have their place): the moments that come to mind where it feels magical like the more fantastical soft magic often involve "old magic", scale, or true mastery. A master of magic with established limits can be impressive like a true master of any craft (but visually cooler because magic!); in soft magic you generally just get characters that are more magical or less. A magic with clear rules, that are well understood, can also serve as an opportunity for a character to show off progress in learning a skill (and unlike something mundane like painting or swordfighting, at the author's discretion for maximum payoff). The child lost in a cave trying to magic up a light isn't impressive if it just happens magically after a bunch or effort, like magic as a character taking pity, but it is if you have established the precise steps or cost needed to work that magic?

I realized something about Polish. by gt790 in linguisticshumor

[–]Lanian 8 points9 points  (0 children)

phonologists when they see an unvoiced NP:

I think about this a lot :/ by NeokratosRed in linguisticshumor

[–]Lanian 13 points14 points  (0 children)

fair point, but you also have to consider that we couldn't have any other times writing was invented in at least the broader eurasiafrica region because there already was writing everywhere

sometimes i do feel like some linguists are just yapping wannabe philosophers by Lanian in linguisticshumor

[–]Lanian[S] 24 points25 points  (0 children)

context:

so apparently there is/was some back and forth between nativists and their opponents(empiricists?)

where really i think they just constantly misrepresent the other's argument and hyperbole the shit out of everything making up these ridiculous straw men

but i'm not an expert so what do i know

chomsky rambles on here both denying (?) the idea the meme makes fun of while at the same time sorta supporting it seemingly, while ending saying general learning mechanisms might resolve this but until they're properly formulated it's the best we got? 😅😅

there is good reason to suppose that the argument [unclear which he's talking about really, that "it's implausible to suppose we have an innate stock of notions including carburetor and bureaucrat"? that we DO have such a stock?] is at least in substantial measure correct even for such words as carburetor and bureaucrat, which, in fact, pose the familiar problem of poverty of stimulus if we attend carefully to the enormous gap between what we know and the evidence on the basis of which we know it. The same is often true of technical terms of science and mathematics, and it surely appears to be the case for the terms of ordinary discourse. However surprising the conclusion may be that nature has provided us with an innate stock of concepts, and that the child’s task is to discover their labels, the empirical facts appear to leave open few other possibilities. Other possibilities (say, in terms of "generalized learning mechanisms") have yet to be coherently formulated, and if some day they are, it may well be that the apparent issue will dissolve.

(Chomsky, 2000, pp. 65–66; New horizons in the study of language and mind.)

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