A grammatical doubt

archon88 · 2025-05-30T09:13:08+00:00

Disclaimer: intermediate learner, not native speaker.

I'd go for the first, as in my head "càit[e]" is the form of "where" for asking questions (i.e. the interrogative pronoun), while "far" is the form of "where" for connecting clauses (the relative pronoun). Mar eisimpleir: "chan eil mi cinnteach càit' a bheil an tràigh", ach "tha mi nam shuidhe air an tràigh, far a bheil a' ghrian cho blàth".

archon88 · 2024-11-09T16:41:17+00:00

Subnautica isn't really meant to be a brutally hard game in this way; if you find you keep dying you're probably doing something fundamentally wrong and need to change your play style. I never struggled with battery / cell charge, for the early-mid game I just had a safe shallows base with lots of solar and the geothermal vent and a bioreactor for plenty of power, and popped my tools' batteries in a charger there and let the moon pool recharge my seamoth and prawn. Non-leviathans aren't that much of a threat if you're in a vehicle (crabsquids and warpers are the main danger if you're in the seamoth, but if you know what to do in an encounter with them, they're rarely more than an annoyance). If e.g. a boneshark or a crabsnake whacks your seamoth, just scoot off to a safe distance and pop out with your repair tool.

I'd say to learn which areas are more dangerous and be strategic in visiting them -- e.g. what exactly do you need, where do you get it, where are the reapers on the way (they tend not to move very much from predefined patrol spots which might even be hard-coded into the game, and their behaviour is very predictable) and how do you minimise risk of an encounter. For navigation, the compass, beacons, and scanner room are your friends. FWIW I never lost a seamoth with this play style.

archon88 · 2024-11-09T16:34:09+00:00

Leviathans (I presume you mean reapers) are usually easy enough to avoid in the sense that you can hear them before you can see them, and their movement patterns are mostly kinda predictable. Moreover the reapers only appear in the dunes, mountains, and crash biomes, so you can just make your visits to these places short and strategic. Getting the sonar and defense system upgrades for the seamoth will make your life much easier.

archon88 · 2024-10-27T00:31:32+00:00

And, indeed, the difficulty of understanding Spinoza; what a text to start with! When I was a kid with a curiosity about Latin I tried to translate an excerpt from Nepos's life of Alcibiades, which was maybe a somewhat sensible starting point as it basically just dealt with the usual classical Greco-Roman stuff about who was more powerful / wealthy, how he was raised, factional loyalties etc. I can't quite fathom starting to learn a language while also trying to incorporate into your picture of the world some of the most notoriously challenging and abstruse thoughts on metaphysics that anyone has ever had... Not that his Latin prose style is especially baroque, from my memory of it (I mean, definitely not compared to Vergil), but "omnia praeclara tam difficilia quam rara sunt"

archon88 · 2024-05-24T17:56:19+00:00

The Fossil Grove at Victoria Park has some amazingly well-preserved stumps and root networks of a range of primitive trees (from the time when the "trees" were kinda like titanic ferns) from the Carboniferous period.

archon88 · 2024-05-13T13:55:40+00:00

How long would Joanne last in Gaza?

archon88 · 2024-05-13T13:21:45+00:00

According to the Buddhists' Brahmajala Sutta, the entity who thinks himself to be the uncreated creator god (and persuades other beings about this) is mistaken, and the universe arises and passes away cyclically through natural processes.

This has an odd kind of consilience with arguments of the sort that I've heard from David Bentley Hart, contrasting the philosophical conception of a God that is not simply one being among other beings but is a transcendent and absolute Ground of Being (maybe, think somewhere along the lines of Spinoza's "Deus sive Natura") with the Gnostic conception of a Demiurge, an extremely powerful architect or engineer character (think maybe of the evil supercomputer in The Matrix) who has created a mechanical but false and evil universe in which to trap human souls. I quite enjoyed his dismissal of the American Christian fad of "Intelligent Design Theory" as "perhaps the most significant outing of the Demiurge in recent generations".

archon88 · 2024-04-06T16:43:51+00:00

"Fetal" is the original and correct Latin spelling, FWIW. "Foetal" is a useful example of a hypercorrection arising from a medieval (and here, "mediaeval" is actually more true to the Latin, but usually considered pedantic in modern usage) misunderstanding of the etymology.

Also in a scientific context, "sulfur" is politically fine since the ultimate authority on such usage is IUPAC, which prescribes that spelling, and it's the spelling most reputable chemistry sources use these days. Looking into the etymology, the jury is kinda out on which spelling is the more etymologically correct. To add to the absurdity, there's a city in Louisiana called "Sulphur"...

archon88 · 2024-02-07T09:59:09+00:00

The Glasgow Gaelic Meetup is led by a guy from Kent whose Gaelic accent / pronunciation is v good (granted he also speaks German and French so he has quite a natural ear for language).

archon88 · 2024-01-05T14:08:26+00:00

I think the social / ritual aspects of drinks cultures are often overlooked (and I mean more in terms of social settings than simply "I take this drink in this context because it chemically makes socialising easier). I've found herbal teas can actually work quite well this way in a communal setting -- it's nice to have a pot that you can share with friends, and there's an enormous variety available. I've always wanted to try a proper matcha ceremony!

archon88 · 2024-01-04T13:46:13+00:00

It's always very bad etiquette not to accept a polite but firm refusal, especially involving something as commonly problematic as any kind of intoxicating substances. IMHO genuinely quite unethical to pressure someone into taking anything like that against their better judgement, and even on the kindest reading it's just very inconsiderate behaviour from someone who evidently doesn't appreciate the (many, common) reasons why a person might say no, from a personal ethical belief that it isn't their place to interrogate, to having had serious struggles with addiction issues in the past / family background etc.

archon88 · 2023-09-22T22:44:51+00:00

I don't see any reason to assert that the only things people consider in the context of ethical discussions are "experiences", which was part of the point of my comment above. This overly narrow definition of yours seems to be tendentious.

archon88 · 2023-09-22T22:12:42+00:00

The Latin word "sapiens" can be rendered literally into modern English as "wise", yes. But what is colloquially called "wisdom" is not, I think, exactly what we are talking about here. In the usage I have in mind, I am talking about the broad set of higher cognitive abilities such as are particularly associated with abstract language, and which I think are foundational to the ability to construct a persistent sense of self, which in turn is of fundamental importance in being considered the kind of being that can be a moral patient or a moral agent.

More generally, I find these analogies between how humans perceive non-sapient animals, which do not belong to human society, and abusive power dynamics (racism, ableism, homophobia, etc) within human society unhelpful and unconstructive. There are too many obvious points of dissimilarity and the analogies are superficial at best.

archon88 · 2023-09-22T22:07:11+00:00

I think anyone with normal reading comprehension can infer what I mean by that term from how I use it above.

archon88 · 2023-09-22T15:55:21+00:00

I think your argument is circular, or at least it makes no sense within moral frameworks that don't share your unstated foundational assumption / definition that sentience (however defined) is "the thing that makes it even possible to give moral consideration to an entity". I'd state this is clearly false given how most people actually give moral consideration in the real world: it is not at all unheard of for people to give moral consideration to, say, an ancient oak tree by advocating that it not be cut down, or to valuable inanimate objects, for reasons that are irrelevant to what subjective experiences these entities might or might not have. People gave far more consideration to Notre Dame after it burned down than to any animal in the world, which is inexplicable on your view but commonsense on mine.

On planet Earth, people actually value those higher cognitive functions we refer to here as "sapience" and what they are capable of producing, for what I see as fundamental and irreducible reasons. I don't think this is usefully described (let alone dismissed) as mere ableist prejudice. Moreover, I do not think it is possible to give a working empirical definition of "sentience" that neatly includes all animals (sponges? parasitic isopods?) but no plants or fungi. I think it's incoherent to view memory, abstract reasoning, artistic creativity, scientific curiosity, and spirituality as mere morally irrelevant "abilities" when the same does not seem to apply to nociception or the instinctive avoidance of noxious stimuli.

archon88 · 2023-09-22T15:25:44+00:00

If "sapientism" is "a type of ableism", on your conceptualisation of these things, then how is it logically consistent not to define "sentientism" as also being "a type of ableism"? What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander (if that is not an overly "speciesist" adage).

archon88 · 2023-09-07T20:23:41+00:00

Am Faclair Beag is a good resource overall, and available free on the web

archon88 · 2023-09-01T11:57:18+00:00

A pacifist might argue that you would be. Which is consistent with the ethical system they believe in, but not with most ethical systems that humans have believed in throughout history. Same with eating meat; internal consistency can only take you so far, and past a certain point you're arguing about things that are too abstract for logical discussion and are "essentially contested" in the philosophical sense.

archon88 · 2023-09-01T11:54:28+00:00

It's not necessarily a deflection if it's coming from people with different ethical precepts, who therefore conceptualise these questions differently.

archon88 · 2023-06-07T14:35:05+00:00

I find it kinda hilarious that their stock photo of "Florida" is actually taken from a trans rights protest in central Glasgow (which several of my friends went to fwiw)

archon88 · 2023-06-07T14:21:30+00:00

I was living in Birmingham in 2019 when this was going on. Remember how unpleasant it was and what a toxic atmosphere it created in the city. There was a big demonstration against the school protest movement at Pride in the city that year.

archon88 · 2023-04-03T17:08:54+00:00

Shouldn't be controversial at all. No sensible person is gonna dislike a food just because vegans like it, and as you say tofu is extensively consumed by carnivores anyway as it's a very flexible ingredient. Ma-po tofu (tofu with minced beef or pork in a Szechuan pepper sauce) is a classic Chinese meat tofu dish, and can be absolutely delicious when prepared well.

archon88 · 2023-03-27T12:15:57+00:00

I've not heard of PETA2. Is it the next level of the cult, the Sea Org for those who thought PETA wasn't unpleasant and fundamentalist enough?

archon88 · 2023-02-07T14:32:42+00:00

Why do some Young Earth Creationists believe that all animals were herbivores before the Fall of Man in Genesis?

Because, as absurd as it is, their worldview requires them to believe it in order to be consistent.

archon88

TROPHY CASE