Lvxferre [he/him] @ lvxferre @mander.xyz

The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at nigh

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2 yr. ago

But where would users for this specific format come from if not largely reddit?

As old style forums went out of fashion, I think that a lot of people simply disengaged, instead of migrating. I wonder if we could make this chunk of the Fediverse a bit more friendly towards those.

Mastodon would be also a good source of new users, I think. The format is completely different, but for some people preferring one or another is about their mood.

I also think that the Lemmy userbase should be recruited from more different places than just Reddit. The main difference is "why" - I care about norms, not normies; Reddit culture established all those shitty social norms that bring out the worst of everyone: irrationality/stubbornness, soapboxing, entitlement, so goes on.

Witch hunting is only an issue here because of that Reddit culture - because it's what make someone

• assume that someone else is a witch, without rational grounds to do so;
• keep stubbornly insisting that someone else is a witch even after being shown contrariwise;
• screech at anyone who defends the not-witch "why are you defending a witch? You must be also a witch REEEEE".

I think that a good solution for this problem would be instance admins and moderators to explicitly disallow witch hunting, and admins defederate from instances enabling such behaviour. (Or potentially bring it to legal grounds since witch hunting fits nicely the legal def of libel in plenty countries.) But that's just me throwing ideas, take it for a grain of salt.

Federation with Threads is by no means a big concern nowadays, since most instances did the right thing and defederated it.

I was already in Lemmy back then, but oddly enough I only noticed her after she was gone.

And frankly? Good riddance - she's always finding new ways to create drama in the scene, and doesn't even try to hide her blatant bigotry.

And sadly, my Twitter/𝕏 thread with the company in private message is going nowhere. 😿

Sometimes "friendly" "reminding" a company about the relevant laws does wonders, making them return such "display" of "attentiveness" in a more timely manner. (Translation: they reply faster if you threaten them with the specific law.)

In this case the Ley Federal de Protección al Consumidor, article 17, second paragraph got you covered:

El consumidor podrá exigir directamente a proveedores específicos y a empresas que utilicen información sobre consumidores con fines mercadotécnicos o publicitarios, no ser molestado en su domicilio, lugar de trabajo, dirección electrónica o por cualquier otro medio, para ofrecerle bienes, productos o servicios, y que no le envíen publicidad. Asimismo, el consumidor podrá exigir en todo momento a proveedores y a empresas que utilicen información sobre consumidores con fines mercadotécnicos o publicitarios, que la información relativa a él mismo no sea cedida o transmitida a terceros, salvo que dicha cesión o transmisión sea determinada por una autoridad judicial

You // need // some // Xanax // /s 😁🍻

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO STOP IT!!!!!! /s

Serious now. It doesn't work here, since there's no audible ping for every reply that you sent me. It's more like in whatsapp: I definitively don't want to mute some people, but I wish that they didn't send me multiple short messages.

inb4 I hate whatsapp but not having it in Brazil is social suicide.

Yup - the benefits of federation are usually abstract, until someone in power goes rogue, then those benefits become solid as a brick. And since people in power here know that we have an easier time migrating, they aren't too willing to go rogue as the ones in Reddit.

I see, the cat distribution system is fully operational and working as intended!

I'm joking. She is a cutie indeed. And Miez looks classy.

Yeah. I got a leg scar from a domestic cat that I've raised from kittendom, who'd easily have ripped my face if she could reach it. A wild, larger, and more powerful version of that seems like a bad idea.

because I was holding a kitten that she never saw before. Yup. Fuck you Kika, I love you but you're a bloody arsehole.

Messaging:

• People who reply to direct text questions with 5min audio recordings.
• People who use Enter as if it was the space bar, sending 10 messages for what could be easily sent as one.
• People who treat their requests as of utmost urgency, but when you contact them back take hours or even days to reply back.

Online forums:

• The sort of illiterate fuck who treats "but" as if it contradicted everything preceding it.
• People who feel entitled to have ELI5 versions of the text content produced by other people. (i.e. throwing a tantrum because of difficult words, text size, or even conceptual complexity.)
• Usage of "lol" and/or "lmao". (I mentally translate those into "I'm braindead and should be treated accordingly.")
• The sort of dead weight that focuses too much on specific words being used to convey something, instead of what it conveys.

If you have an issue with the Reddit admins, you either suck it up or stop using Reddit. If you have an issue with the Lemmy admins, you can migrate to another instance and forget about the old admins.

Communities being smaller is a double-edged sword. Yes, it's harder to find the content that you want, but it's easier to be heard here. And it's overall easier to have a meaningful conversation here, that doesn't get flooded with sea lions, irrationals, or 11yos. (Note: I'm saying that it is easier, I'm not saying that everyone here is sensible or acts sensibly all the time.)

If you're left-wing you'll have an easier time discussing politics here. And if you want/need a safe space there are some good instances for you, like Beehaw or Blåhaj, in Reddit they'd be simply flooded with entitled newbies until the mods give up.

So TL;DR: unless you're one of those "lol! lmao!" kids or a right-winger, Lemmy is quality while Reddit is quantity.

Before watching the video:

No, English is not a creole by any sane definition. It's a West Germanic language with some North Germanic and Romance influence, that's it. This is clear when you look at creole languages typically...

1. having simpler and more regular phonology and using less contrast than the parent languages;
2. having simple syllabic structures, like CV or (C)V;
3. breaking the comparative method once you try to apply it to them;
4. having grammars that typically look nothing like the ones of the parent languages.

Those are all consequences of how creoles originate: to keep it short [sloppy definition] they're the result of speakers of 2+ languages interacting, with no side understanding the others' language, but still reaching some compromise.[/sloppy definition] The phonology and syllabic structure get simpler because it's typically what all sides can distinguish; the comparative method breaks because all the creole vocab is borrowed; and the grammar is something anew because it's generalised from those ad hoc rules, as needed by the speakers. And this happens relatively fast.

In the meantime, look at English:

1. If anyone thinks that English phonology is "simple" or "regular", look no further than the bloated vowel system. Typical for Germanic languages by the way.
2. The syllabic structure goes up to CCCVCCC (see: "strengths").
3. You can backtrack a good chunk of the vocabulary all the way back into Proto-Indo-European, through the comparative method. Specially core vocab.
4. The grammar is basically Germanic. And even the differences from [say] Dutch or German don't really fit periods with more interaction with other languages (such as the tribal invasion of Britannia, Danelaw, or the Norman rule), they're gradual and better explained as the result of internal development, for example the noun case system kicking the bucket due to phonetic erosion.

That's because English, like other non-creole languages, is the result of a somewhat stable linguistic community slowly changing their language over time. Stuff like the Norman conquest had some influence in the lexicon, but that's it, it was just a Romance ruling caste eating "porc" and "mutton" while the huge majority of the population, the Germanic-speaking lower caste, was raising "pigs" and "sheep".

I believe that this myth that English is a creole language is mostly caused by clueless people who look at a language as nothing but a collection of words, just like they would confuse an animal with its fur.

As I'm watching the video:

We already know that English borrows from everybody,

English is not even special in its propensity towards loanwords. Just look at Romanian or Japanese.

This picture is misleading as it implies that Germanic vocabulary in English was [all/mostly] borrowed, when it was mostly inherited.

Also, when it comes to Latin+Greek vocab, it ended in almost all European languages, not just English.

[Keisha Weil, PhD] Creole languages are basically languages that were created by different communities of speakers who came together and needed to interact with each other.

English already doesn't fit the definition - since it's trivial to show that it's the result of Proto-Germanic slowly changing over time, not some sort of "creation" by different communities of speakers coming together.

(That said props to Dr. Weil, that's a great way to explain this stuff to laypeople.)

[about pidgins]

A quicker way to explain pidgins is that they're the sort of coarse communication used by speakers of different languages, when they want to finish a task and get over it, not really interested on anything past that. They typically have incomplete grammar, a small vocab, no native speakers.

And as the video mentions, pidgins can evolve into creoles, once speakers feel the need for more than just "finish it and get over it"; for example, once children start learning that pidgin as their native language and they want to express themselves. In this process the "gaps" of the incomplete grammar and vocabulary get filled, the phonology gets systematised, and you get an actual language.

extended pidgins

That's mostly an intermediate category for a communication system that is already more developed than you'd expect from a pidgin, but still not a full-fledged language like a creole. I don't think that it's an useful concept, but that's perhaps just me.

Why are they not teaching students in their home languages? [exemplified with Kreyòl]

[Dr. Weil] That's a really good question. And I preface this with saying I understand why it's not taught, even though I personally believe it's wrong [to not teach in creole languages]. Creole languages, for most part, they've always been considered like a bad version of a European language. French, English, Dutch, those are real languages, where Haitian Kreyòl and Papiamentu and Jamaican Patois, because they're so young, they're not real languages yet.

Emphasis mine. It has barely anything to do with being a "new" or an "old" language; if it was an old language people would discriminate it another way, but the discrimination would be still there (like "it's primitive" or "it's just a dialect", or worse), untouched.

It's all about power. Languages piggyback on the power of their speakers, and languages associated with disempowered linguistic communities are often degraded into "this is not an actual language, it's a bad version of [insert another language]".

Here is where Dr. Weil could have inserted her talk about people of colour, and it would be extremely meaningful and accurate - because racial issues are one of the things disempowering the Kreyòl, Papiamentu etc. speakers, and creating this idiotic stigma behind creole languages.

Is English a creole language?

[Dr. Weil] Ah! I can guarantee you there'll be other linguists who will tell you "no, English is not a creole language". But when you ask them to break down why it's not a creole language, is it because black and brown people are speaking that language, that makes it a creole language?

No, it isn't. As I've explained at the start of this comment (and I'm glad to have done so before watching the video), a creole language has a different origin than a non-creole one.

Dr. Weil dropped the ball here.

We don't call Montréal French a creole language.

Can someone informed on QC French argue for/against this point?

We don't call Afrikaans a creole language.

Okay, that's bullshit.

Afrikaans is outright called a creole language by at least some authors, such as Hein Willemse. Other authors - such as Hans den Besten - claim that it has a mixed creole origin. But academically speaking nobody relevant is trying to deny Afrikaans' roots on Dutch-based creoles dammit.

Why are we not calling English creole languages? Because it [English] didn't just pop out of some place, right? It didn't just magically appear.

Why is she outright ignoring the definition of a creole language that herself provided, to lean into an "ackshyualy all languages are creoles" discourse??? Why??? Just to build a strawman and beat it to death???

In fact, do we even need the word "creole" as a descriptor to separate the languages out?

Yes if you want to talk about the origins of languages like Sranan, Kristang, and so many others. And talking about origins is important:

• it explains better why each of those languages has its own unique features;
• it explains the similarities between them;
• it highlights the history of colonialism, that made a lot of those languages to be;
• it gives their speakers a sense of belonging, because "here's how my language was born" is part of their rightful linguistic identity;
• it gives linguists another window to look into Language - as the human faculty - through how those languages are formed.

We [people in general] should not be assigning a judgment of value over those varieties, as if they were inferior to non-creole languages. However that judgment would be still there even without the term, since their speakers are typically poor and non-white.

Or alternatively we can ditch the word so the prejudice against those creole languages surfaces under another disguise, while we wash our hands and pretend that we defeated that prejudice.

Some linguists, including Dr. Weil, are saying no.

Perhaps because she's ignoring her own provided definition of a creole language to pretend that all languages originate the exact same way?

Yup, I got that you don't mean that everyone is a bot there. I just don't think that there aren't so many of them as you're saying; it's certainly not as much as half the users, or even the activity (bots tend to be more active than actual users).

They're still wrecking damage on the place though. Eventually they'll reach a plateau in proportion, but their numbers will go down, alongside the actual users.

For real. Companies being extra pushy with their product always makes me picture their decision makers saying:

"What do you mean, «we're being too pushy»? Those are customers! They are not human beings, nor deserve to be treated as such! This filth is stupid and un-human-like, it can't even follow simple orders like «consume our product»! Here we don't appeal to its reason, we smear advertisement on its snout until it needs to open the mouth to breath, and then we shove the product down its throat!"

Is this accurate? Probably not. But it does feel like this, specially when they're trying to force a product with limited use cases into everyone's throats, even after plenty potential customers said "eeew no". Such as machine text and image generation.

I'm not from USA and where I live a two rounds system is used. That said, I wish that it got replaced with a ranked-choice system. Mostly because of the lower spoiler effect, and because going to the urns twice for the same election is a bit annoying.

The insertion of an all knowing checker who could have written it himself anyway

The checker does make all the difference, but he doesn't need to be able to write it by himself. It could be even a brainless process, such as natural selection.

I think the point is less about any kind of route to Hamlet, and more about the absurdity of infinite tries in a finite space(time).

I know. It's just that creationists misuse that metaphor so often that I couldn't help but share my brainfart here.

Bots are parasites: they only thrive if the host population is large enough to maintain them. Once the hosts are gone, the parasites are gone too.

In other words: botters only bot a platform when they expect human beings to see and interact with the output of their bots. As such they can never become the majority: once they do, botting there becomes pointless.

That applies even to repost bots - you could have other bots upvoting the repost, but you won't do it unless you can sell the account to an advertiser, and the advertiser will only buy it if they can "reach" an "audience" (i.e. spam humans).

Shorthand for third language [English] speaker. I mean that I'm prone to switch a few words here and there, due to other languages interfering inside my head.

This sounds familiar, almost as if history could perhaps, maybe, just possibly… repeat itself? Nah! (says spez)

Digg, right? Yeah. Perhaps spez even knew that it would repeat, but was smart (and shitty) enough to jump off the ship before it happened.

Perhaps even worse: Wobblesticke, Jiggleweapone, stuff like this.