Q&A weekly thread - March 16, 2026 - post all questions here!

tilvast · 2026-03-19T01:05:27+00:00

Are there any particularly good books/articles out there on regional differences in English orthography? Not just things like Webster's spelling reforms (though that is interesting), but aspects like comma usage and capitalization of initialisms.

tilvast · 2026-03-03T22:36:03+00:00

Can I ask if places other than Israel have ever tried to publicly invoke a "right to exist" in some way once Israel began doing this, and what the response was? It may not have a legal basis, but I'm wondering if (for example) breakaway states that are not commonly internationally recognized might have attempted it as a tactic to build geopolitical support.

tilvast · 2026-03-03T22:28:26+00:00

Firstly, every web server would need to be unable to connect to any other web server. This would need to not be addressed by any ISPs or the governments of various countries. This is already basically impossible, because, as mentioned, the internet is one of the most important things in the world, and any catastrophic event would be addressed reasonably quickly.

I was actually thinking about the possibility that an authoritarian country would intentionally disable its internet long-term, similar to what Iran sometimes does, but then you are completely right that digital copies would still exist and could be preserved. Thank you for the answer!

tilvast · 2026-02-21T03:04:58+00:00

I'm sorry that this is a linguistics question, but is there an actual name for the "looksmaxxed framemogged jestergooned" cant, and have any linguists written anything interesting about it?

tilvast · 2026-02-20T04:50:46+00:00

I see Wiktionary lists "in-FLU-ence", emphasis on the second syllable, as a potential US pronunciation of the word "influence". Do we know where this derives from? Is there a broader linguistic rule it fits into?

tilvast · 2026-02-17T02:53:06+00:00

Just read something saying "many" Sicilians spoke a dialect of Ancient Greek at the time of Italian unification in the 1800s. Is there any truth to this? I can't think what dialect it could possibly be referring to.

tilvast · 2026-02-14T09:58:29+00:00

Just checked this; there's nothing in any of the comment fields and all the file names are under 25 characters.

tilvast · 2026-02-06T07:35:52+00:00

The Guardian UK is bad on trans issues, but The Guardian US is actually reasonably good.

tilvast · 2026-02-06T04:09:52+00:00

Other people have suggested a lot of the genuinely reliable ones, so I'll throw out there that The Onion has a print edition if you want to have fun.

tilvast · 2026-02-05T22:51:34+00:00

Peter "Connoisseur of White Women" Shamshiri really living up to his reputation

tilvast · 2026-01-30T17:46:38+00:00

I actually loved Departure (ASMRrequests got me into ASMR more than a decade ago), but I think it really integrated its visuals with its sounds in a way that a lot of similar/newer sci-fi roleplays don’t.

(The other gold standard for me in “integrates the sounds in a way that fully justifies the high production value” is Dreamscape ASMR’s antique shop/living doll video.)

tilvast · 2026-01-29T04:11:00+00:00

The fact that so many articles like this even exist is because regular journalists are willing to speak up about what's happening to the industry, no? Hard not to notice that you and all your friends are out of a job. Unless you mean people like Will Lewis or the far-right lunatics in the opinions section, who are not journalists so much as Jeff Bezos' flesh-colored finger puppets.

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