You would HATE being a person who could read in the Middle English era. There was no standardized spelling, people used many different conventions/regional spellings, and it was mostly either phonetic spelling or random French bullshit. Also some earlier writers used really conservative spelling to emulate Old English. It was the wild west out there.

For example, here’s a (not comprensive) list of the variant spellings you may see for each second person pronoun:

Singular Nominative 2P:

thou, thoue, thow, thowe, thu, thue, þeu, þeou, thouȝ, thugh, thogh, ðhu; þou, þoue, þow, þowe, þu, þue, þouȝ, þugh, þogh, þo

(after alveolars and in contractions): tou, towe, touȝ, tu, to, te

Singular Objective 2P:

the, thee, thei, thi, thie, thy, ðe, de, þeo, þhe, yhe, ye, þe, þee, þi, þy

(after alveolars and in contractions): te

Singular Genitive, Dative, and Possessive 2P:

(usually before consonants): thi, thy, thei, they, yhi, yi, þhi; þei, þey, þy

(usually before vowels and “h”): thin, thyn, thine, thyne, thien, thyen, thein, theyn, thinne, yin; þin, þyn, þine, þyne, þinne; þines

(female referent): þinre, þire, þinen

(after “t” or “d”): ti, ty, tin, tyn, tine, tines

Plural Nominative 2P:

ye, yee, yeȝ, yhe, yie, iye, iȝe, hye, hie; ȝe, ȝee, ȝhe, ȝie, ȝeo; ge, gie, geo

Plural Objective 2P:

you, yow, youe, yowe, yo, yoe, yogh, yau, yaw, yeu, yew, yhu, yu, yw, yhow, yhou; ȝou, ȝow, ȝouȝ, ȝowȝ, ȝowe, ȝo, ȝu, ȝw, ȝuw, ȝue, ȝiou, ȝeu, ȝew, ȝewe, ȝau, ȝaw, ȝhou, ȝiu, ȝeou, ȝehw, ȝhowe; gou, gu, giu, geu, geau; ou, owe, eou, eow, eow, eo, eu, euwȝ, æu, hou, heou, heu

Plural Genitive & Dative 2P:

your, youre, yowr, yowre, ȝour, ȝoure yowyr, yowur, yor, yur, yure, yeur, yhure, yhour, yhoure; ȝowyr, ȝowur, ȝor, ȝore, ȝur, ȝure, ȝiore, ȝhour, ȝhoure, ȝaure, ȝiure, ȝiwer, ȝeur, ȝeure, ȝeuer, ȝeuwer, ȝewer, ȝewere; gur, gure, giur, giure, giuor, giuer, giuwer, giwer; ihore, ihoire, iure, eour, eoure, eouer, eouwer, eouwere, eower, eowwer, eore, eur, eure, euwer, euwere, eowrum, æure, our, oure, or, ore, ouer, ouwer, ouwere, ower, owur, hour

(early ME): þinen (genitive), þinum (dative), þirum (dative fem.)

Plural Possessive 2P:

youres, yourez, yours, youris, yurs, yowres, yowris, yowrys, yourn, youren; ȝours, ȝoures, ȝouris, ȝourys, ȝowers, ȝores, ȝures, ȝuris, ȝhurs, ȝourn, ȝouren; eowræs

You can find a lot more about Middle English spellings in LALME (A Linguistics Atlas of Late Mediæval English) (electronic version here)

Some of the more innovative spellings come from Northern Middle English/Northumbria (northern England and southern Scotland, though the dialects of the latter would largely split off and develop mostly on its own in the early stages of Middle English and become Scots) and to a lesser extent Midlands Middle English/Mercian, in large part due to significant past influence of North Germanic/Scandinavian languages; i.e., Old Norse, which was somewhat mutually intelligible with Old English and caused/progressed both the loss of inflections and the formation & solidification of Modern English syntax (in particular, Old English syntax shifted to become near-identical to Old Norse syntax; Old English also entirely lost inflection of grammatical gender, grammarical case, etc. and adopted many core vocabulary of Old Norse). Those changes happened primarily to facilitate communication with vikings in the Danelaw, since Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians were very eager to communicate with each other; things like declensions were very different in the two languages (the 12 different declensions of “the” probably weren’t fun to deal with for Scandinavians), so Old English speakers started omitting or simplifying them, and they mostly died off in (early) Middle English. English also completely lost dual pronouns (pronouns with exactly 2 referents). Word order was primarily SVO in Old Norse, so Old English’s relatively liberal word order (or lack of consistent word order) was simplified/regularized significantly to be more SVO.

Southern Middle English – the dialects of West Saxon and Kent – were significantly more conservative (partly due to having next to no influence from Norse). Those are where many more conservative spellings are from. The West Saxon dialects were the most influential/dominant (especially due to the Kingdom of Wessex’ great power) until the Norman Conquest, when East Midlands English (especially around London) took over that role.

Southern American English & Maritime Canadian English varieties were both primarily based on more southern English varieties – specifically, the time’s London English and West Country English. Appalachian English was also heavily influenced by Scottish English and the English of northern England. Canadian English in general was based on both Southern and Midlands English. Meanwhile, New England’s English was primarily derived from East Midlands dialects. Generally, dialects derived from the time’s West Country English are significantly more conservative and more similar to the general speech of ~15th century England, while more Midlands (of the time) influenced American and Canadian varieties are similar to standard ~17-18th century English. Dialects influenced by the time’s Scottish English and Northern English also generally contain a lot more conservative Anglic constructions – modern Appalachian/Southern American English varieties and modern Scottish/Northern varieties share a large amount of vocabulary and other features which were lost in other dialects.

Standard varieties of Modern British English are comparatively generally significantly more innovative and don’t share many features with Middle & Early Modern English varieties – general British English started diverging greatly from most other English dialects around the mid-to-late 18th century and early 19th century. This is also a reason why Australia and New Zealand English have a lot of features which seem to only partially agree with other English varieties. For example, the trap-bath vowel split, which was partially completed in Australia and is present in certain words, but not all words, and has variation in some words. When Australia was being colonized, Southern English varieties had recently begun undergoing the split, and it was considered a “Cockneyism” until Received Pronunciation was formed in the late 19th century and embraced it; it wasn’t fully progressed until around that time, which is why New Zealand English (which came from immigrants in the mid 19th century) mostly agrees with Southern English on those vowels.

they’re filthy communists i tell ya

Small/Medium-sized Business

Maybe access to connected devices (e.g. your computer components or the phone you have plugged in to your computer)

Pfft, silly object-oriented devs. My children are named Typeclass and Iterator! Scala Design Patterns prove themselves to reign supreme once again. Enjoy sending your kids to public coding bootcamp.

JCPenney tried changing all their prices ending with .99 to the round dollar amount. It was catastrophic for their sales, so they changed it back. It was a part of a larger plan by Ron Johnson (former senior VP of retail at Apple) to get rid of the “pricing game” of stores and to stop deceiving customers with fake sales/markdowns and deceptive pricing. It caused JCPenney’s stock to halve and then some, and got him fired within 15 months. Here’s an ad they showed that apologized to customers for using accurate & honest pricing instead of deceiving them, and begging them to come back

The power of the number “9” isn’t confined to the cents column, either. One American clothing retailer experimented by changing the price of a dress from $34 to $39 dollars and increased sales by over 30%.

Consumers are fucking idiots. Humans are stupid dumb animals that like patterns too much for their own good and short circut their brain immediately after seeing minimal information to fill in the blanks. If you like patterns so much, why don’t you marry them? Hmmm???

Usually the best resources you can get online for free for language learning as a beginner or intermediate is mostly pirated photoscanned books, with some online pages or YouTubers mixed in as another supplement.

For example, for Japanese, I pirated the 3rd editions of Genki 1 & Genki 2, plus the workbooks for them. I also owe a lot to the YouTuber Tokini Andy (who has videos going over the updated Genki textbooks and explains a lot of things missing/poorly explained in the book, he’s pretty great). There’s also an interactive quizzing website for Genki someone made. For definitions and stroke order I used jisho.org, and for etymology I used Wiktionary, hanziyuan.net, and dong-chinese.com. The only other website/app I regularly used was Renshuu (a spaced repitition learning app for Japanese), which was pretty great and was a good supplement for drilling in what you learned from other resources – although you have to modify the settings quite a bit to really “optimize” it. A lot of people use WaniKani which is kind of similar but I think more Kanji-oriented and used more for students studying before a test. Oh and to learn the Kana, I basically just tested myself writing down the characters in the standard order for a few days until it got drilled into my head, I also used the Tofugu Hiragana learning resource thing but it only helped for a few mneumonics. Other than that, although I’m not exactly a weeb, I tried to force myself to watch anime (in Japanese) any time I wanted to do something like watch a show or play a game, and I’d look up all the stuff I didn’t recognize. Anime isn’t exactly representative of how Japanese people speak at all, and you’re going to get your shit kicked in (by that I mean disapprovingly stared at) by Japanese people if you speak like an anime character, but I suppose it’s like learning English off of Sesame Street and SkyDoesMinecraft…

For German, I heavily utilized Deutsche Welle’s learning resources, especially Nicos Weg. I also had people to practice the language with. My German still sucks though… for whatever reason, I had the absolute most difficult time with trying to learning German out of any language. The word order magic fucked with my head especially, but I just kept mixing up basic words.

For Russian I used Memrise at first, which worked for vocabulary and got me familiar with the most very basic vocabulary, but the features locked behind monetization eventually got too disruptive so I spent pretty much all my time on (pirated) beginner Russian learning textbooks and very technical grammar books (I was a very learned linguistics major so learning from linguistics-heavy books was significantly more feasible for me than it is for the average person). I probably had the least frustrating time with Russian out of any of the languages I self-studied. I self-taught myself Cyrillic when I was like 8 because I thought slavic stuff was cool so that didn’t really require any time…

I learned passable French in high school (despite my ADHD ass not paying attention 99% of the time and basically just not being present mentally for all of French 3), which then degraded a lot in my ability to use it since I never used it and was preoccupied with other stuff, but I can still read it fine, and I can understand it spoken depending on how they speak and my state of mind. I didn’t even study outside of school or anything really, I just had a teacher from France (she was my favorite teacher). Actually thinking of the words and grammar I’m trying to say though, I’m pretty fucked in that department unless I go back and practice it. French is my 2nd language.

I self-studied Spanish after school, not very seriously though, I could already grasp it pretty well enough because of my French knowledge. I got conversational in no time – still, randomly not being able to recall random words is a pain in the ass (that goes with English too I guess). I did a bit of Duolingo at first but then just started listening to podcasts and videos and stuff, and looked up the words I didn’t know (beforehand and during the time I was already doing a lot of Spanish linguistics work so I already knew “about” the language and its phonology/spelling to pick out the things I heard). This was really only possible because, again, I was already able to understand pretty much all the French you would encounter in daily life.

For Finnish I mostly used pirated books and YouTube learning resources. The first books I used were from Leila White, “From Start to Finnish” and “A Grammar Book of Finnish” which are both great. I would definitely suggest that anyone who wants to learn Finnish goes through those books – the second one’s a reference rather than something you’re supposed to go through from beginning to end though.

I tried (and failed) to learn Arabic a reeeally long time ago. It didn’t extend much past a few obscure and not-very-helpful learning internet resources plus Duolingo (which was kind of useless for Arabic, even moreso than Duolingo typically is useless for languages). I had an unusually hard time with the script for this one (is it racist to say the damn squiggly lines all look the same), and reading it without vowel markers is very difficult to me.

slovake.eu was a helpful resource for Slovak when I was doing the necessary stuff for citizenship – I could’ve probably gotten by with only English (despite doing it myself and without an immigration lawyer) but I felt it only made sense to at least try to learn the language. It… definitely happened… I basically learned much of the core vocabulary and some grammar quirks, and played fill in the blank with Russian/Polish words except how I thought they’d be in Slovak for words for ones I didn’t know. Would not recommend doing that, but if you DO do it then just know that Slovak is the absolute best slavic language to do it in, they will probably understand you if you outright are speaking a different slavic language.

Right now I’m using this book online for Italian that’s only in Italian which is basically like, introducing grammar & topics in the language with no actual instruction or anything, it’s just a bunch of Italian sentences with images and stuff to get you to remember the grammar based off of context. It’s sick as hell, but I can’t remember what it’s called right now.

After a long time (around B2 or maybe B1 level probably) you have enough comprehension to start learning well while watching content made for natives – e.g. you can watch YouTube videos or a TV show in the language and can learn from looking up the (still large) portion of words you don’t understand.

I was originally a monolingual English speaker – only 1 native language, I didn’t have like 2 or 3 native languages like most of the world (shout out to all the kids who acquired English solely off of TV and YouTube as a kid). On one hand, being monolingual definitely makes you more ignorant to other languages and your first language might be a little bit harder (but honestly it doesn’t get much easier from there, you will still writhe in pain 4 hours a day trying to learn any subsequent languages), but on the other hand being a monolingual ENGLISH speaker opens you up to way more possibilities (resources) than not being an English speaker, so I guess overall I was pretty lucky in that regard.

I have really bad ADHD and Aphantasia which is (for the most part) a hinderance to language learning – my working memory is extremely bad, I can’t visualize SHIT and ADHD makes my non-visual memory go kaput. Language learning takes significant time, energy, it’s frustrating as fuck, and most of this comes down to a lot of it just being brute forcing memory. There is no cheat to language learning, there is no “lern basque in 23 dayz”, it is just putting thousands upon thousands of hours of very regular, very (inter)active focus and memorization methods into it until it’s drilled in your head. It can be more challenging than any job you’ve ever done and you’ll want to cry due to how little progress you feel that you’re making despite the great amounts of time and energy you put into deciphering this mess.

On the other hand, I know Autistic people with Hyperphantasia and Synthesia (specifically, the kind where you see colorful words appear in your vision when you hear, read, or think about language) and they are SIGNIFICANTLY more capable at language stuff than anyone else, although it’s still a lot of effort to put in for them of course.

Language is pretty much about constantly pushing back against the force inside of you that says “you can’t do this, you’re not improving, it’s tiring” and managing your breaks/scheduling well. It’s easy to turn a “break” into just not touching the language again. You have to be motivated a LOT to learn a language (including being motivated by pressure/necessity, go get locked up in a country with speakers of your TL or something) or else you’ll just quit as soon as you hit your first wave of roadblocks.

on y office maybe? that could be interpreted as “we work there” with very poor grammar

Chimpanzees are likely going to be extinct 2-3 decades from now. Bonobos will be extinct in 4-6 decades. Orangutans will go extinct within 10 to 20 years. Most animals closely related to humans (including most apes & monkeys) are projected to become extinct within a few decades. I do not want to be alive when gorillas go extinct

This is mostly due to the meat trade (apes and monkeys are often killed for meat which is eaten by locals or traded), being affected by the wars in the Congo/Africa, being kidnapped & sold as exotic pets, and habitat loss from human resource harvesting/logging & development. Humans are effectively displacing, enslaving, slaughtering, and cannibalizing their distant cousins

You don’t like Floorp?

REAL

Paywalled article

Vintage clarinets can be very beautiful, but modern more standardized clarinets are also often beautiful (I’m quite partial to a lot of the Backun designs, but I have an old Selmer I really like too)

I can’t think of any instruments that aren’t made as “beautiful” as before. The only differences are that modern ones are just made… better, like way better. A $200-400 guitar now surpasses the quality of a guitar costing thousands of dollars from a few decades ago, and there’s way more diversity in the designs.

That being said, I don’t see what the point of musical instruments that aren’t “utilitarian” would be. It’s not a sculpture, it exists to make sound, there’s no reason for an instrument that sacrifices sound or design quality to have fancy aesthetics, unless it’s for a movie/play or something and the sound doesn’t actually matter.

Do people in cities have planes circling them 24/7 or something? I see like a few planes every month maybe and I live not far from a city with an international airport.

$25 a day for food? USD???

Isn’t the context about the overthrow of the Russian Empire by communist revolutionaries? Not modern first-worlders? Am I missing something here? Why would “foreign imperialists” be relevant to modern first-worlders?

That being said, to actually answer your line of questioning, it is the correct solution to change society while ALSO overthrowing and locking up the oppressors. That may involve the elite dying, but those deaths are necessary. Peaceful reformism and strict nonviolence policies never works – unless you consider extremely high amounts of unnecessary suffering for innocents to achieve comparatively minor goals as “success” (cough cough Nelson Mandela). Even Gandhi and MLK (who took most of his influence from Gandhi), although nonviolence advocates, were well aware that violence is often necessary to achieve a better future, and much of the work they did was to the benefit of violent/militant revolutionaries (although of course they’re portrayed a lot more neutered/“deradicalized”, as well as the roles of complete compliance to nonviolence being completely overstated while violent methods are hidden away as if they didn’t exist, not even to be mentioned).

After capture though, death pentalty is not the way to go, but life imprisonment is fine and they may have a chance to be released later, mostly depending on their status/loyalty. I’m sure a lot of “revolutionaries” would disagree with me though, but I’m not an “eye for an eye” believer… I suppose if you’re in a situation where the former imperialist rulers would likely have power to directly cause damage while detained or incarcerated, or they’re likely to escape or be “rescued”, then it would be justified to chop off their heads or put a bullet in their cranium.

The core issue is that these people (the oppressors/ruling class) can not be rehabilitated, and are likely to stir up considerable trouble and disrupt when they have the opportunity, either in a bid to regain their power, or out of a large feeling of loss that makes them go nuts. You can’t always reasonably ensure that they won’t try to fuck shit up in the future.

That’s just my view, but of course there are people other than me who are just bloodthirsty for vengeance (my opinion is that they’re not thinking all too rationally and it’s the same mindset as parents that hit/yell at their kids, they’re convincing themselves it’s for the greater good but in reality it’s just attempting to satisfy their feelings of anger). Either way, I see their lives as considerably less valuable than the lives of the people they oppressed, not because they have an inherently evil soul or something, but because they are already too far gone and only can bring chaos to the world.

People with ADHD, Dyspraxia (a motor disability), and some type of insomnia disorder have significantly higher rates of car accidents – around 4x more likely for ADHD and 3x more likely for insomnia disorders (driving while sleepy is around as dangerous as driving while drunk). At minimum 25% of all car crashes involve people with ADHD or insomnia disorders (which is why your car insurance rates might skyrocket in some states if you get diagnosed)… I have all of those. Yet, somehow, they still allowed me to get my driver’s license, and I got it with single-digit hours of driving experience at the time… very American to give licenses that allow you to drive 13-ton vehicles to people who shouldn’t even qualify to drive on public roads.

I still have no reason to waste tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a few years on a car though.

Firefox consumes more RAM than chrome on average. Edge uses the least RAM

Also, Floorp is superior to regular Firefox

I’ll keep this short since you already seem extremely unhinged and half the stuff you wrote is basically empty insults.

You losers can’t even prop up Ukraine against Russia, and think you can take on China.

Remind me how long that “10-day special operation” is taking again? Seriously, how can the “2nd best military in the world” falter so hard against their tiny neighbour with 1/4 of the population just because they got weapon donations from other countries? It shouldn’t be that hard to counter right, I mean Russian military technology is allegedly so advanced and totally not stuck in the 80s. I would understand if it were half-way across the globe or something, but they’re LITERALLY ON THEIR DOORSTEP. It’s also concerning that China has repeatedly failed Russia when it comes to Ukraine and has caved into international pressure quite a few times, maybe it’s because China also realizes that the war is completely embarrassing Russia?

The sheer delusion here. Burgerland economy would collapse overnight. Go check where all your shit comes from sometime. 😂

The US navy has a larger airforce than the entire Chinese airforce, and the US has a larger and more advanced air fleet than the next 5 countries (Russia, China, India, SK, Japan) combined, and invests 3x as much as China into the military (and that’s what, 13% of the US’ budget?). The US navy also has over 2x the displacement of the Chinese navy. Spending is DEFINITELY not a problem considering that.

read and weep ignoramus https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4657439-china-doesnt-need-to-invade-to-achieve-taiwanese-unification/

Damn, an opinion piece news article. Guess that destroys the entire American military and truly shows that China numba one.

Latest polling shows that vast majority of people want to maintain the status quo, and very few people want independence, but do go on child https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/PageDoc/Detail?fid=7801&id=6963

I literally said that exact same thing in my original comment, it goes against your point lmao. The status quo is defacto independence and “Taiwan, not China”. Notice how unification is by far the least popular response in what you linked, and has decreased in popularity significantly over decades. And of course, gaining independence eventually has increased in popularity over multiple decades. Is this part of China’s grand plan, to make unification with them less popular over time?

What you’re doing here is called sophistry. Taiwan being part of China is a fact that’s recognized by international law.

Tell me you have no idea how the UN works without explicitly saying so. A majority of countries not recognizing Taiwan doesn’t mean it’s “international law” that Taiwan isn’t independent.

It’s really that simple. The reality is that China could remove US sponsored regime in the rogue province any time they want.

LMAO this is such a cope. Yeah I’m sure the extremely aggressive all-bark-no-bite and constant “you better not do <x diplomacy with Taiwan or military action in Taiwanese strait/South China Sea> again or we’ll do something about it, I swear!” empire is suuuper capable of taking Taiwan. They know if they tried full-out war against the US or its allies (Taiwan), the US navy would cut off their international trade and turn their country upside down – it’s why they’re trying so hard (and failing) to seize full control of the South China Sea.

However, they realize that it’s much better to remove burgerland influence in a peaceful way, and that’s what will happen.

Again, absolute cope. They’ve been at it for over 75 years and haven’t made any progress, considering Taiwanese have developed significantly more national identity and even more people in Taiwan support the country participating in international relations under the name “Taiwan” (80%) and consider themselves primarily Taiwanese (90%), and only 6% consider themselves more Chinese than Taiwanese (more people considered themselves primarily Chinese many decades ago but that has long since dwindled).

It’s incredible how people have trouble grasping such basic things.

It’s incredible how you have trouble grasping the situation and think China is going to “peacefully” absorb Taiwan when Taiwan is farther from China than ever in terms of national identity and international participation.

Several polls have indicated an increase in support of Taiwanese independence in the three decades after 1990. In a Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation poll conducted in June 2020, 54% of respondents supported de jure independence for Taiwan, 23.4% preferred maintaining the status quo, 12.5% favored unification with China, and 10% did not hold any particular view on the matter. This represented the highest level of support for Taiwanese independence since the survey was first conducted in 1991. A later TPOF poll in 2022 showed similar results.