That’s a great journey you’re on. Takes a lot of guts to re-evaluate our worldview, even when the old one is making us miserable.

If you can remember anything more about that I’d be really interested, as langauge reform is a big interest of mine. As far as I’m aware, there’s been no successful langauge reform in Britain, and even the few attempts (George Bernard Shaw’s simplified spelling society and a labour MP in the 50s who failed to pass a bill in Parliament) were all for simplyfing and regularising English spelling (so that ‘give’ would become ‘giv’, because it doesn’t rhyme with five, hive, dive, etc) not re-Latinizing anything.

The last significant change in English spelling I can think of was when Webster introduced his “American” spelling in the 19th century and changed ‘honour’, ‘centre’, etc to their US versions.

I totally agree that this is something that happens naturally, and probably shouldn’t be interfered with by a government. When it has been successful, it has been about giving permission for official langauge to reflect current usage. Telling people they must write ‘hav’ instead of ‘have’ is not going to work because even if it’s illogical it’s such a high frequency word that it is minimal effort to add, and then ignore, the ‘e’. But allowing school children to start writing ‘thru’ instead of ‘through’ might actually work.

Quite right! Never trust the English! But what do you mean, they “keep intentionally fucking with their dialect”? All languages, dialects, sociolects, etc are constantly changing in different ways, do you feel like the dialects of England change more than other? Or that they do it more purposefully?

I think there’s a way that society represents “what sex is” that is very different from most people’s experience of it. For various reasons, Hollywood/advertising/porn all promote skinny and heavily made up women. And even if they find those kinds of actresses or models hot on the screen, that’s not the kinds of women most men actually crush on.

The reality is most people have a fairly limited number of sexual relationships, and they’re often with people who do not meet some abstract societal idea of ‘hotness’. A lot of the time people are attracted to people because they like them, and they have good chemistry. Sometimes it’s more of a ‘type’ or whatever (knew a guy who was really into short girls, and then I met his tiny mother…)

Same with relationships or sex or whatever. People learn a bunch of expectations and assumptions growing up, and then as theynget older they realise that most people don’t actually fit that arbitary standard. Sure, some guysnare horny all the time and just want emotionless sex, and so do some women. But it’s not as ‘normal’ as some media would suggest.

Ahh, I didn’t know that Americans* called dictionaries ‘lexicons’. In most forms of English I’ve heard, and in the field of linguistics, ‘lexicon’ is the complete set of vocabulary in a language, or subject. A dictionary is an alphabetical list of a lexicon, often with definitions.

*I’m presuming it’s Americans because mirriam webster lists the dictionary definition first, while OED and Cambridge only list that as archaic usage.

Yeah, but it isn’t impressive avoiding a letter if you can use any word you want, and it doesnt matter what it means. “Without employing the second most frequent letter of English.” would make sense or “the vowel which is commonly listed first” or some sort of thing. I suspect they just didn’t know what lexicon meant and thought it sounded smart.

In what sense is it the first letter of the English lexicon? Lexicon ≠ alphabet

More of an app than a website but meow meow beenz from Community.

France. It’s great and i love being here, but I teach English so there’s a lot of having to speak English and not a lot of push to speak French. Things should quite down in six months and I hope to be able to focus more on French and start actually gaining confidence in talking.

Given that almost everyone in the world speaks one of a tiny fraction of world languages, there’s less than 0.1% chance that anyone you ever meet will be able to understand you. Google Translate only covers 250 of more than 7000 world languages, so there’s a 97% chance I can’t even use online tools to get my message across.

If it was weighted it would still suck as I’d need to travel to other countries based on what i happen to speak (if it changes each year). That doesn’t sound worth it, especially not for the rest of my life. If it changed after every sentence, it would be like having an awful speech impediment. Trying to have a conversation would involve repeating myself half a dozen times until I hit the right language, and only if I’m in top 5 langauge areas. If I was trying to speak french I’d need to repeat myself 20 times before I was likely to be understood.

And what’s the benefit? That I can understand lots of langauges but can’t functionally communicate?

I’m not a fan of that change, but I don’t really see it as an attempt to be more ‘politically correct’.

Han Solo was going to marry Leia, and you look back and say, “Should he be a cold-blooded killer?” Because I was thinking mythologically—should he be a cowboy, should he be John Wayne? And I said, “Yeah, he should be John Wayne.” And when you’re John Wayne, you don’t shoot people [first]—you let them have the first shot. It’s a mythological reality that we hope our society pays attention to."

I think Lucas is wrong, because even if he shoots first Han is being threatened with kidnap and death, so he’s not a cold-blooded murderer to shoot the guy threatening him. But unless we’re rolling all ideas of heroism and morality into woke/PC then I don’t think that example works at all.

Not only is it distracting and disgusting, but it starts normalising ads everywhere. Cigarettes were digitally removed so as to not set a bad example for kids. But letting them think that it’s perfectly normal to have glowing ads decorating the walls of your workplace is fiiiine.

What movie dialogue did they edit?

Here’s something from 2025 and it’s even better, because AI!

Its definitely just proof of concept for now, but it seems a grim, if inevitable, step in the war of ads vs adblockers.

I don’t know. It’s something I think about a lot, especially when I’m wasting too much time online. But it really isn’t that simple. I had lots of friends and saw them pretty regularly, but I moved countries to be with my partner and I’m very happy with that choice and our life together.

But I don’t speak the language here, I’m learning but slowly. So if I wasn’t in message groups, sharing memes and video chatting my friends back home I’d feel pretty lonely. And it would make the couple of trips home each year much more awkward. By keeping in touch so regularly it feels totally normal to spend the day with a friend, even if I haven’t seen them in 9 months because I know all the little things they’ve been up to or excited about.

On the other side, if I had none of that, maybe I would have worked harder at learning the language. Especially with the lack of distractions the internet provides (being able to watch tv in English instead of local stuff is probably the biggest hurdle to learning), but realistically we’re busy and live in the country, so if I had some intermediate language skills and was vastly more lonely I’d probably not have made any real friends. I’d just go to some more social events in the year and participate a bit akwardly and feel sad.

TBIs are awful. That sleep thing sounds horrible but at least you can still communicate. Hope you’re surviving okay.

They’re all fine with some extendent. It really depends specifically what and how you’re cooking. I like cast iron for steak because you can heat it up a helluva lot, even without fat, while trying that with non-stick pans can damage the coating and make some weird smells. Similarly, I prefer it for frying eggs because I like to use a metal slice to flip eggs, and worry about scarcjing my non-stick. But I have both and happily use both.

I’ve probably done it occasionally, when calling them in a public space shouting ‘Daaad’ as an adult feels a bit weird. Same with talking about them to a third person, I might use their names rather than say “my mum” the whole time.

But face to face, talking with them? It’d feel pretty weird, too impersonal and distant. If I saw someone else doing it tontjeir parents, I’d probably note it as unusual, but would be shocked.

That’s a really good example, just a mix and regurgitate of older, better work trying to give consumers what they think they want.