force @ force @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Most of the places around me pay way less than the actual cost of living, like the average is maybe $12 an hour max but I'd say it's more like $10. Cost of living estimates vary but for a single adult it's often around $2500/month, which is far more than you'll make working at almost anywhere here full time. Even worse, most establishments are actually choosing to short-staff themselves to save money, so most aren't even looking to increase employment.

So you can work full time and still not have enough to just survive, then if you want to do university/trade school and aren't elligible for e.g. HOPE then you could have to pick up 2 full time jobs and still somehow have the time/energy left to do college (which most people wouldn't after that and would just drop out). Some people are able to live with family to reduce or eliminate the housing cost, and a few people are privileged enough to have their family pay for their whole college, but if that's not the case you're completely fucked.

And this is in suburban/rural Georgia. I can only imagine how shit it is for someone who can't afford college, a car, whatever else in a shitty place like Texas or Florida.

For a lot of cases the answer is lobbying, e.g. in medical/healthcare there's practical 0 competition for a lot of products because of anti-competitive laws like really shitty intellectual property laws that let prices be controlled by few (collaborating) companies. Plus there's a lot of things that are technically illegal, but in practice laws only apply to the poors so they're not really illegal for corporations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices#Types

chicken

Me when languages have homophones/homographs 😱

It's less city engineers and moreso American/Canadian laws that make it illegal to build objectively better (measurably safer/more efficient/better for peoples' health & stress/better for the economy/better for individuals' finances) infrastructure.

A high percentage of drivers are drunk, on drugs, or mentally ill* especially those hitting people

Most drivers wouldn't exactly take the advice of "pay attention to the fucking road so you dont kill people" and should have their licenses stripped from them. America's dependence on cars had made the bar for getting permission to drive a 4000 lb death machine far too low

Yeah but Mozilla has been getting shittier and shittier as time goes on. I think it all started when they forced extensions into FF without the ability to remove them, only to go into the settings and disable them (which doesn't even fully work). And most of the de-Mozillafied alternatives (like Waterfox which pretty much the only benefit is no Mozilla telemetry) have a lot of their own problems assuming you want a normal casual browsing experience (so no Librewolf or Tor)

Mozilla's better than e.g. Google or Microsoft but at the end of the day they're still a company that often makes anti-user decisions (although being technically non-profit helps them be significantly less bad). They've started converging towards those companies in a lot of ways, and they've been trying to make the browser more like Chromium browsers equally as much.

Also due to their bad priorities FF is noticeably worse in a lot of ways thab e.g. Edge (as in performance/resource usage by a long shot)

this small 3-part video series is a good place to start:

part 1: https://youtu.be/xMEFr7ghMTg?si=08I3vCSiwQC4Iuve part 2: https://youtu.be/J3IO5K5ZGB4?si=u2SaJx6gv45tsI1V part 3: https://youtu.be/jkfSA4_DCfs?si=JlMkiv75njWzbG5k

then you can just look at transcriptions in a language you speak, and/or look at the chart and try to pronounce some of the sounds (good luck for that one lmao). a good place to look/ask is r/asklinguistics, r/linguistics, r/conlangs on reddit, they're pretty active

one thing i should clarify now is the convention you usually see for notation using the IPA – there's a difference between /broad/ transcription and [narrow] transcription.

you see, the IPA can be used in many different ways – it can be used phonemically, or phonetically, or sometimes in other ways.

Phonetically means the symbols represent phones. Phones are distinct sounds, they are a specific way of articulating/pronouncing/using your articulators (articulators being the things you use to pronounce stuff, e.g. your tongue or lips or vocal cords). Usually you will represent more phonetic transcription using brackets [ ] (narrow transcription).

Phonemically means the symbols represent phonemes. Usually more phonemic transcriptions are represented with slashes / / (broad transcription). Phonemes are sounds that carry meaning in a language – i.e., a phoneme is something that if you replace with another phoneme, speakers perceive that as a different word. A phoneme is generally made up of multiple phones, called allophones, all of which are different phonetically but the speaker of the language perceives them as the same thing – in fact the thing I described in this thread is a great example of that!

"Dragon" in English is made up of six phonemes, /ˈdræ.gən/ – /d/ the "d" sound in English, /r/ (also written /ɹ/) the "r" sound in English, /æ/ the "a" sound in "cat" or "ask" in English, /g/ the "g" sound, /ə/ the schwa sound/reduced vowel as in the "a" in "about" or the "u" in "medium", /n/ the "n" sound. /ˈ/ means the following syllable has primary stress (in English that would usually mean pronouncing it with fortis – louder/more tense, and with a higher pitch than the rest of the syllables). /./ is a syllable boundary, it demarcates the end of the previous syllable and the beginning of the next syllable. /ˌ/ would be secondary stress. Often times the primary stress symbol is omitted if it's in the first syllable.

When you write /dræ.gən/, that's kind of a "template" made of phonemes that are good for describing a wide variety of dialects' sounds – it'd be very cumbersome to try to write an extremely narrow, phonetic transcription of dozens of dialects' pronunciations every time you want to describe a word; using broad transcription, you can then leave it to the reader to further break it down into more specific, precise transcriptions whenever they care about a specific dialect.

So let's break it down – in my dialect, /r/ is pronounced as a post-alevolar approximant – that is, pronouncing with a continuous flow of air with the tongue behind the alveolar ridge (the bump on the roof of your mouth behind your teeth) and not touching the roof of the mouth as to not cause as much obstruction. This would be transcribed as [ɹ̠] or [ɹ˗], the symbol for the alveolar approximant plus the diacritic for retraction (pronouncing further behind in the mouth). A lot of the times, the /r/ sound in a lot of dialects may be transcribed as [ɻ] – retroflex, generally meaning post-alveolar/pre-palatal with a tongue curled upwards, or even [ɹ̈] which uses the "centralized" diacritic to represent "bunched r" which is post-alveolar/pre-palatal and has the sides of the tongue spread out towards the molars and a strange-looking orientation/curl of the tongue called "bunching" (a sound found in very few languages, I believe only English and Dutch, and which is the realization in my dialect). You can use more symbols to be even more precise, e.g. add [ʷ] (labialized) or [ᶹ] (labiovelarized) since English /ɹ/ is often pronounced with labial constriction (constriction/tenseness using both lips) or labiovelar constriction (using the bottom lip and upper teeth).

So right off the bat, you can change it to [dɹ̠æ.ɡən]. The /d/ forms a consonant cluster with the /r/, which means it's pronounced with no vowels or pauses in between them – since the [ɹ̠] is post-alveolar, it influences consonants in the proximity which have a nearby/relatively close place of articulation to shift towards / assimilate to its place of articulation. In a lot of dialects, this causes /dɹ̠/ to simply become [d̠ɹ̠], with both of them being post-alveolar. But in my speech, it goes even further and the /d/ affricates into [d̠͡ʒ] called the voiced post-alveolar affricate which is the "j" sound. Often a change like this is called "palatalization" because the consonant shifts towards a palatal pronunciation (palatal referring to the hard palate, the place of articulation of /j/ the palatal approximant which is the "y" sound in English), in this case becoming pre-palatal [dʒ]. But you shan't confuse this with the other use of "palatalized/palatalization", which is when a sound is pronounced with partial constriction at the (hard) palate, often transcribed with superscript /ʲ/ following the consonant (e.g. /kʲ/), although often times a palatalized consonant does shift towards a palatal pronunciation.

So then we have [d̠͡ʒɹ̠æ.ɡən]. Lastly, in my dialect /ə/ in certain contexts behind consonants often becomes [ɪ] – a near-close near-front vowel, similar to the "i" in "bit" or "industry" – or [ɪ̈] sometimes called "schwi" which is similar but more centralized.

So finally we have [d̠͡ʒɹ̠æ.ɡɪ̈n] or even more specifically [ˈd̠͡ʒɹ̠ᶹæ.ɡɪ̈n]. That would be an accurate way to phonetically transcribe how I say "dragon".

Some speakers may take reducing the /ə/ even further and delete it entirely, instead pronouncing the last syllable as [gn̩] – the line under the "n" meaning it's syllabic, which means that it's the nucleus of the syllable (the nucleus being the center of/only necessary part of the syllable, where a vowel would usually be), pronouncing the second syllable with no vowel. Then, you might see even more change with speakers assimilating the "n" to the place of articulation of the "g", making it a velar (pronounced at the velum, also called the soft palate) nasal, which would make the last syllable [gŋ̍].

And you would perceive all this as the word "dragon", even if you pronounce it differently than I do. That's the beauty of language. You might use different phones in the same context as me, but at the end of the day they're the allophones of the same phonemes.

Now you may ask, how the hell do linguists type this stuff conveniently? The answer is, they don't, it can be a pain in the ass to find a tool to conveniently type for linguistics because there's just so many symbols, often times you use something like an online IPA typing tool or google gboard on android.

Argentinian leaders use nationalism as a distraction for their economic woes – it's why the Falkland war started in the first place, the president wanted something to make citizens focus on other than the declining state of the country, and grabbing some land from a greater power to get a bunch of glory seemed like a great option, especially considering they didn't think the UK would actually retaliate or even care. The reason they went for it is they thought the British didn't give a damn about the Falklands, seeing as how they constantly denied giving the island economic support. Oh boy, were they wrong.

Because of the war, Argentinians now see not having the Falkland islands as a detriment to their national pride, they think it's soveirgn Argentinian territory... even though everyone living on the island has always been and still is almost entirely Anglo-Franco-descendent, and not once did Argentina actually have claim to the islands until recently in history...

that sounds EXPENSIVE, ima stick with piped lest my wallet get piped

Many dialects, indeed, pronounce "tree" as something one might perceive as "chree".

English phonology, American English dialects' (and other dialects') /r/ is usually pronounced retracted, post-alveolar/pre-palatal (usually bunched/molar), transcribed something like [ɹ̠ᶹ], so it causes alveolar consonants in the same cluster to retract/palatalize, usually into a post-alveolar affricate ([d͡ʒ] – the "j" sound for voiced stop /d/, [t͡ʃ] – the "ch" sound for voiceless stop /t/, [ʃ] – the "sh" sound for voiceless fricative /s/). The term would be assimilation (of place of articulation).

"Dragon" /dræ.gən/ -> [dɹ̠æ.ɡɪ̈n] -> [d̠ʒɹ̠æ.ɡ(ɪ̈)n]

You can see the same thing with words like "tree" /tri/ -> [t̠ʃɹ̠i] or even "street" /strit/ -> [ʃt̠ɹ̠it]

Would explain simpler but can't, break ends now, just know its because consonant pronounced in different place in mouth is conforming to being pronounced in the same place in mouth as other consonant that is right beside it (like with "in-" vs "im-", "impractical", which notably isn't "inpractical", or "incandescent" which notably isn't "imcandascent", or "indecisive" etc. etc.)

Swappa

When asked if Sanders still endorses the article, Sarah Ford, the deputy communications director for Sanders' 2020 campaign, told the Washington Examiner he agrees with overall premise of the article, but specifically disavows the reference to Venezuela.

"Sen. Sanders agrees with many of the important points raised in that article with regard to wealth and income inequality," she said. "With regard to the article's reference to Venezuela, Sen. Sanders has been critical of the Maduro government's repression of dissent and called for international aid to end the ongoing humanitarian crisis, so would not endorse that specific claim."

DAMN ALMOST LIKE READING THE ARTICLE DISPROVES EVERYTHING YOU BELIEVED

It's pretty frustrating when you need to do something relatively quickly and you get a captcha and get it "wrong" like 8 times because of this kind of bs. Especially annoying when you get captchas multiple times. It's just wasting my time, I don't have the patience for that shit.

Never thought I'd see someone describe people like this for specifically not using some random product. What's next, people who don't use coffee makers are degenerates too?

The fact that the country can't effectively stop or prevent this, and half the people in charge along with their voters allow/agree with this stuff happening regularly, does make it a national problem. Injustice anywhere is representative of the whole nation. If your society is so weak that it can't even start to try to put an end to a few fascists imposing their power on its own citizens without months of political arguing between a bunch of shitty corrupt rich old people, then the argument "it's just one city!" falls apart. It just means this could potentially happen anywhere, like it is (in progress) in Florida right now.

This shouldn't be a common thing that's happening in the first place. The fact that it is taints the entire country. We have the resources to effectively prevent, and when needed, crack down hard on far-right authoritarian bs, but the leaders are too busy arguing about if education is actually a good thing, or if we really need healthcare, or that putting poison in food is actually an expression of freedom by companies, while being paid millions by oil/auto/banking/etc. corporations to do so.

Really the only reason to use Tor is if you really need a certain type of privacy, or to bypass certain restrictions on websites. It's definitely not something to use as a daily driver, it can be cumbersome and using it incorrectly puts you at risk.

It doesn't have a lot of features that normal browsers use – it doesn't save history, some sites don't work on Tor because it does a lot of fancy stuff like blocking trackers. You shouldn't use extensions on Tor either, that can get you deanonymised.

It also doesn't guarantee a lot of protection against malicious actors on the web. You still have to be as cautious about what websites you use as you would on any other browser.

You also can't really do things that demand a lot of bandwith like downloading large files on Tor – speeds are extremely slow due to all of the privacy measures they take, and it causes a LOT of strain on Tor nodes and makes the experience worse for everyone. If you're pirating/torrenting, just use a VPN.

You shouldn't do anything on Tor that exposes personal/sensitive information, including logging onto websites with your personal accounts, that defeats almost the entire purpose of using it for the average user (anonymity) and can actually put you at risk.

Especially don't do anything like online banking or shopping on Tor. It's not suitable for secure online transactions.

Basically only use it for stuff that DOESN'T require personal/sensitive/identifying info, and stuff that DOESN'T use up a lot of bandwidth.

Honestly for the average person, Tor is completely useless. Most should only use it if they know there's something they may need to hide from a government/ISP/etc. Otherwise just Firefox with some extensions and changed settings will do.

Using a VPN makes your traffic travel through the VPN server to get encrypted before reaching the destination.

Using Tor basically does this 3 times, but it's decentralized so it goes through multiple different random relays before reaching the destination. And it changes which relays you're using every 10 minutes.

When using a VPN you're basically relying on your VPN service giving it their all when it comes to protecting your privacy, and also on them not bending over to the government if it wants to monitor you. Which you won't get with a lot of VPNs (especially not free VPNs).

Since Tor is decentralized and changes your connections frequently, it's virtually impossible to monitor someone using Tor. The chance that all 3 relays your traffic travels through are controlled by people coordinating to get you are slim in the first place, without even considering the relays changing.

You can also use both Tor and a VPN at once, but to do so properly is a lot more convoluted than just turning on your VPN and using Tor at the same time.

sleep is depression, i say as someone with adhd-induced inspmnia on top of just regular insomnia who can't sleep for shit

i spent 3 hours lying down with my eyes closed not being able to sleep after getting 2 hours of sleep the night before, after staying up for 24 hours straight. end me