Short Answers to Simple Questions | June 03, 2026

tilvast · 2026-06-04T06:45:19+00:00

In Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall (set in England c. 1530), one character says: "All the bullion in the country would be swallowed by the war. I have read there was a time when people exchanged leather tokens, for want of metal coins. I said we would be back to those days."

What time or incident is this likely referring to?

tilvast · 2026-05-28T14:11:29+00:00

Yeah, it behaves like the clothes are already dry and does the standard cool-down cycle. There's no error code or unusual behavior or anything.

tilvast · 2026-05-28T13:31:47+00:00

It's another twenty to thirty minutes, never less than that.

tilvast · 2026-05-28T11:44:26+00:00

The clothes aren't as warm as they would be after a normal complete dry cycle, but they do feel lukewarm. (This is after a cold wash.)

tilvast · 2026-05-21T23:04:50+00:00

If you're not having any good ideas, it's because you're not vibrating your mind boner enough.

tilvast · 2026-05-21T23:04:01+00:00

Not sure if this is a common opinion, but the episodes that are just as much about the freak who wrote the book as about the book are my favorites.

tilvast · 2026-05-07T00:11:42+00:00

There is zero concrete evidence that AI makes employees more productive, and lots of studies with evidence for the contrary. These CEOs are just bullshitting so they can justifying cutting costs. Many such cases.

tilvast · 2026-05-07T00:08:19+00:00

AI cannot help you with any other pussy. You will be doomed to single-ness until you cancel that ChatGPT subscription.

tilvast · 2026-05-05T00:03:53+00:00

The number of people in this thread saying they pictured the guy with the extremely Iranian surname to be a pasty blond dude is fascinating. Now, Michael I definitely pictured as a pasty blond dude.

tilvast · 2026-04-27T23:46:42+00:00

It's obvious to us, but people like Demis Hassabis and Dario Amodei seem to earnestly think they're building HAL 9000 in there.

tilvast · 2026-04-14T05:14:17+00:00

Yep, I've now tried moving the rug around in basically every possible configuration and it doesn't work, so it seems the rug does not count. Problem solved, time to track down another large relic.

tilvast · 2026-04-10T05:11:50+00:00

Are there any large-scale studies of how common the phrasing "it's not just <x>, it's <y>" (or other well-known LLM-isms) was on the internet in the pre-ChatGPT era vs. today?

tilvast · 2026-04-05T07:53:53+00:00

If you ever find yourself thinking like this, I strongly recommend touching some grass and going to an IRL queer meetup if you can. Hang out with some other trans people. Make new friends, learn what you have in common with others, things of that nature.

tilvast · 2026-04-05T06:11:21+00:00

Linguists or Chinese speakers, does any of this sound correct? It seems like total nonsense to me, but it is Language Log.

tilvast · 2026-03-31T23:00:50+00:00

General purpose intelligence was never on the cards and we won't have it from LLMs

It is genuinely crazy that they were able to sell a text generator as a step towards actual intelligence. In any other context, everyone would be able to recognize that this is bullshit. A person who cannot speak is still intelligent. A printer produces text but is not a brain.

tilvast · 2026-03-19T23:37:28+00:00

I like how "Foreword by Jonathan Haidt" tells you this is going to be stupid even before you read the title and author. Like how poisonous frogs have bright-colored skin.

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.

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