Are we moving towards an AI jihad? A jihaid, if you will.

Hormuz doesn’t fit in the Dune: Planet Earth narrative for me. We should stop using oil for the sake of the climate yet we don’t. We don’t have to go through that strait with so much trade. We just don’t want to take the detour and price increases. The Dune universe depends on the spice for navigation and I think there isn’t another source. We are still so dependent on oil out of habit and/or stupidity. The mullahs really aren’t the freemen. They are more of a side arm of the Harkonen clan that was provoked by the thoughtless action of the emperor’s real estate developer triggering their typical c@![ish behaviour.

I think there are more grey areas in the classification. Just take recreational weed use, which is as legal as smoking cigarettes in some regions but illegal in others. Where does the drug classification start? It’s not as clear to me as you seem to indicate.

Also, the content label doesn’t tell the proprietor of a cinema who can come and see a movie. Do they have to look up a combination of letters to see if a 14yo can go see It? How about something like Trainspotting where there is violence, foul language, and lots of hard drug use. A VLD rating doesn’t indicate anything. But for me the movie isn’t R because for all the pearl clutching it may cause for some people it’s a good promotional film to stay away from heroin.

You can run your system parallel to the existing one. And some of the streamers do that, I think. But for legal reasons, in the US as well as most of Europe, you cannot not give an age limit as well.

I stopped watching Marvel movies because I found the plots virtually nonexistent. And don’t get mad at me, dear reader, if you love them. That’s okay, I’m not taking that away from you. I’m just saying how I felt.

So I don’t know if I would sign on to your theory. I did enjoy a lot of the characters but it didn’t carry an ironman or Thor movie for me.

I would like a sequel of Hail Mary though.

These systems vary by country and you’ll find fault with most of them. They are more often than not rating systems that were introduced to appease a loud group in society, possibly the pious folks were one of those. Society’s natural inclination “to think of the children!” makes these rating systems more about age appropriateness than about clearly labelled content. I can see the logic in your approach to the subject. Logic probably wasn’t the driving force behind introducing labels such as “parental guidance” or “restricted.”

I think it might be easier as a committee to be compelled to come up with an age of people, for whom the content is appropriate, and not argue over labels until they’re blue in the face. Is vaping drug use? How much blood (if any) is required to be labelled violent? Etc. Can this committee agree with a majority vote that 12 year olds probably shouldn’t see this? That’s probably easier.

A fan on a boat would work. There are these fan boats people ride through the Everglades. There are propeller sea planes. The difference to a sailboat is the profile of the vessel under water. A sea plane has two or three smaller areas that are submerged. The everglade ones are just breaking the surface of the water and are very flat so they can glide over water and plants. A sailboat has a big, often deep profile under water, the whole length of the boat, possibly a keel underneath. And that’s moving through water, which is thicker than air. So you need possibly more than one propeller and the engine may need to give you more horsepower to move the boat through water with the force of the air above deck. That’s inefficient so boats tend to move their propellers under water.

A few container ships have a spinnaker sail they can deploy. If the wind is favourable they can reduce the engine output and save diesel. Just in case you’re wondering about the reverse situation.

In contrast, do you know any words that are near identical when written down between two “alphabetical” languages based on their spelling?

Yes.

Idiot (English) Idiot (m) Idiote (f, French) Idiot (m) Idiotin (f, German)

Time keeping developed as a local phenomenon. We are stuck with this dumb 24-hour clock. People don’t want to have to get up at 22:00 in Vanuatu to go to work when it should be 7:00 AM because it’s dawn outside. Time keeping stays local. Unless you live in the West of the PRC.

GMT has been rebranded UTC to remove the reference to Greenwich and whose acronym doesn’t stand for anything so not to annoy the French. NATO uses Zulu time, which is UTC, regardless of where they are on the planet.

We’d improve the situation if we all just agreed to get rid of daylight savings everywhere. If it wasn’t for that, the UTC +/- whatever would work much better. Alas, politics.

It’s a Tuvix level decision I’m glad I didn’t have to make. I think reuniting a child with their biological parent is a general, understandable guideline. And if you look at this clusterfuck in sequence, the first crime in this case - the illegal invasion of Bajor notwithstanding - is Rugal’s abduction by Dukat’s aide and his subsequent depositing in an orphanage. If it hadn’t been for that, Rugal would not have had Bajoran foster parents. Who were understandably not very nuanced about the Cardassians. (There must have been a way to raise him not hating his “kind” unconditionally as he does. So they carry a small dose of guilt for this mess in my opinion.) Which led to Rugal biting Garak.

The biological dad makes a convincing case that he was fucked over. Rugal is fucked no matter what. Sisko went back to where this train was sent on the wrong track and corrected that. I can kind of see the logic of that decision. He had to weigh different factors and decided to give less weight to Rugal’s wishes over the crimes that preceded him ever being in a position to express them this way.

Tough call but he (somehow, there doesn’t appear to be a legal system with a metal sphere gavel and the social worker from Mrs Doubtfire presiding just yet) had to make one. And there probably isn’t a right decision.

As a starter, Duolingo isn’t bad. Sure, it’s mostly slop at this point so keep that in mind. And only stick with it until you realise the mistakes.

When I hear “I’m seeing X everywhere,” I suspect you might be Baader-Meinhoffing.

The index of content available online, which they built and updated themselves. A policy of constantly tweaking the algorithm to make it understand what us monkeys want. No ads on the first search page. And then absolutely dominating the online ads market, which kept financing the continuous improvement to the service. Until they realised this was to their own detriment and made it ask Jeeves level competent again. They won the initial war but lost the peace.

Did your identical post in asklemmy get taken down or did you delete it?

Most of these countries have local news organisations offering news in English. I would also suggest next time you group some of these questions in separate posts. You’ll get more people reading a few shorter threads than one loooong one.

If the UK had proportional voting and not first past the post for parliament seats, they’d have a greater problem with far right politics. Burnham just started and is the first PM to point out very publicly that Brexit was a mistake. That won’t solve any of the most pressing problems the people are feeling right now because rejoining would, like leaving did, take bloody ages. But it would probably be a net plus for the UK economy. I have a suspicion that the guilty verdict of criminal financial shenanigans for Manchester City Football Club, the city where he used to be mayor, and the ensuing scandal will spill some shit on him as well. So there is every chance the revolving door at Downing Street will keep spinning. Too early to tell.

The AfD in Germany has already risen. They are the party with the second most seats in this Bundestag. In the state of Saxony-Anhalt we now may get the first AfD minister-president (governor). While his election isn’t guaranteed at this point, he’s a handful of votes short of a majority, the election, on whose result this state parliament will constitute itself, has already happened. The damage a single Trumpian minister-president can cause is significant but not irreversible. The other parties don’t have a clue how to stem the tide. However, there are still enough people who would stand up for German democracy right now so we aren’t quite back in Weimar yet. The situation is shit but not hopeless.

Japanese kids learn the alphabet in primary school to do Romanisation of their own language and then for English class. There are no problems with the former because they can see and read those everywhere. English is a particularly difficult alphabet language to read so that’s hard. But on a certain level there is relief that there aren’t an additional 2000 Kanji characters to learn to be able to read it. It’s a radically different language so it’s hard either way.

Mandarin learners must pick up Pinyin, at least in the mainland, fairly early. I’m guessing primary school as well.

Both Pinyin and Romaji use the alphabet to make sounds that don’t exist in English. Like rya in Japanese or the distinction between q, ch, and zh in Mandarin. Both mainly use qwerty keyboards for typing their own language.

Gendered languages flummox even learners from the country next door. The biggest obstacle to learning English in Asia isn’t the different writing system or even the insane spelling conventions of English or French. It’s mastering indefinite and definite articles, when to use either or none, that makes them pull their hair out. It doesn’t matter which European language you pick, it makes no sense, it’s vibe based more than anything, and it isn’t the same between French and German or English and Spanish. So knowing one language already is only of limited use.

I’m going to theorise that a writing system with spaces between words helps learners to grasp what is an equivalent unit in their own language. To a point because you get words like antiestablishmentarianism in English or Verwaltungsfachangestellte (an administrative assistant in the public service sector) in German and all bets are off.

I have a feeling that the people who could judge that best probably aren’t present in an English language forum.

I think if we look at the spectrum of popular international animation with South Park America on the low end and Miyazaki output at the top, the care put in to make the spoken word match lip movements often correlates to where you are on that spectrum. And there is a lot of stuff trending towards the low end. They probably don’t do 20 retakes on a line read during voice recording. No matter what language they are doing.

Granted, the word stereotype might be wrong. I just wanted to point out that the majority of Caucasian men may be able to grow thick beards but not all of them. As far as Asian men are concerned, most cannot but once again not all of them. That’s the generic genetic lottery part. (edited)

As far as testosterone is concerned:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beard

The beard develops in human males during puberty. Beard growth is linked to stimulation of hair follicles in the area by dihydrotestosterone, which continues to affect beard growth after puberty. Dihydrotestosterone also promotes balding. Dihydrotestosterone is produced from testosterone, the levels of which vary with season. Beard growth rate is also genetic.

So beard growth depends on the person’s genetic makeup. And on testosterone. This has nothing to do with American bro culture thinking. Female athletes who were given testosterone as doping post WW2 could start growing facial hair if their genes happened to be right. You need the genes and the hormones.

Edit 2: I have a feeling some of this disagreement we are having may be due to my repeat typo generic -> genetic. Written on my phone and didn’t notice the one letter difference.

Shit like that can’t be planned. It either catches on or it doesn’t.

Why do you want to make it cooler? Why polish this turd?

You mean illegally?

You’re heavily dealing in stereotypes. I would like to throw in there are plenty of Caucasian guys who can’t grow a full beard. And there are those in Asia who can grow a thick one as well. The distribution is subject to the generic genetic lottery and the individual’s production of testosterone.

(Edited a typo)

I have a strong suspicion that language prescribed by an Iranian official will have no bearing on what people call that region in English.

“Middle East” is a reference point from the British Isles where there is a more significant chunk of geography directly east of it. When you move into Central Europe, the ME region is called “near East” when translated literally. Because we are already a bit further east and the reference points change. There isn’t an English-language equivalent in the West because there’s mostly water.

Having exported this language to beyond mostly water to the new world, the designation stuck although it makes no sense from a North American perspective. If we all spoke a truly international version of Esperanto, things might be different. But that’s not how it worked out.

I don’t think ME as a term has acquired the same problematic stench as “orient” and variants thereof in English. Cardinal directions are quite resistant to that. The Confederate States of America haven’t ruined “South” as a term. The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea hasn’t made “North” go out of style.