Zompist Bboard Again

For whatever reason, people started promoting ivermectin as a treatment for COVID. In response, everyone started hearing about how people shouldn't take ivermectin because it's a "horse dewormer", for reasons that include "the Responsible Authorities [in the typical DC progressives s...

Unfortunately, Nortaneous is correct here. Ivermectin is a horse dewormer and a human dewormer. It is, however, not an effective antiviral, since the dose required for that simultaneously makes it an effective anti-human as well. (I say ‘unfortunately’ here because ‘don’t take horse dewormer!’ woul...

That makes no sense. If it turns out vaccines, like anti-vaxxers claim, causes sudden death, sprouting extra limbs and irregular periods in males, the policymakers won't have much of a career, will they? How many poliucymakers have been demoted to McDonald's over the year and a half of atrocious CO...

That particular bit about immunity I got from immunology nerds that do read sci-hub 25 hours a day. But I don't really see how the idea that vaccines work is in any way extraordinary. Or how it would benefit policy makes to lie about it. Anyone will eventually see if they work or not! Vaccines are ...

what are some good wines. i have noticed the existence of fauquier county va & as a result feel like i oughta learn what wines are. i had concord wine once and it was good but very rare. what's like, the opposite of a muscadine

In many linguistic families certain languages are more conservative/archaic than other. I'm pretty sure this is more of a folk story among historical linguists than anything particularly insightful. it's not. english vs icelandic, mandarin vs japhug, buyang vs thai, etc. for there to be no vague or...

I admit the idea of 'variolation' is pretty funny. But the vaccines offer better immunity that catching COVID itself. Something about our immune system targetting the wrong protein. I'm no immunologist, so I don't really understand that either. immunologists, being practitioners of a field that can...

I know opinions are like assholes, but I really think the US would be better off if they stopped thinking in terms of "during Covid" and "after Covid." I was there in the summer and it was amazing. Nobody wore a mask because either they were vaccinated or most people they knew w...

Just to interject, why are reconstructions like *(mb,p)(i,u)t(iu)C 'fingernail', *k(a,o)nd(a,o)[C] 'foot, lower leg', *[si]si, *siti, *pisi 'urine' entertained or even accepted for Proto-Trans–New Guinean, but we are nitpicking Talskubilos for some metathesis here and there? Put differently, why ar...

The closest documented relative of Rotokas, Rapoisi, has 9 consonants (/p t k ʔ β ɾ ɣ s h/), which is pretty small, but mostly because it doesn't have nasals, other than [m n] as postpausal allophones of /β ɾ/. Aita Rotokas also has nine, but they're different - the six of Rotokas plus a full set of...

It's not reflected in Anatolian in that form, so was likely borrowed after Brugmannization and was originally just *abol-. Would you be so kind as to explain us what do you mean by "Brugmannization"? ;) The development from "Proto-Indo-Hittite" of the sort reconstructed by the L...

If we have 10 vowels with short, long, nasal and long nasal variatns, we end up with 40 vowels. If we have 12, then 48 in total, not counting all possible diphtongs. How might such an extremely high vowel inventory come about? If you count length, nasality, and phonation as producing separate vowel...

PIE *h2ebol- 'apple' This isn't a PIE-native word but a Paleo-European substrate How can you tell? (and is it possible to answer that question without saying "because PIE doesn't exist"?) It has *b and doesn't fit the usual PIE word structure, unless there's some way to analyze it as *h2e...

Indeed, all of **Hɑmæ/lV/nV look like arbitrarily constructed words to get the initially desired result. And of course, we can drop and add consonants as much as we want to get from **Hɑmæ to uda. Isn't it that way reconstructions are made? *Hɑmæ > Basque uda 'summer' *Hɑmæ-nV > Basque umao, umau, ...

OK, let's look into the dog thing a little more. PIE: *ḱwō, *ḱwon- Proto-Hmongic: *hmaŋ C (Ratliff) Proto-Kra-Dai: *kʰumaː (I forget) Proto-Sino-Tibetan: *d-kʷəy-n (Matisoff) Proto-Rgyalrongic: *k.naʔ (Hsiu) But: Proto-Karenic *θwi' (Luangthongkum) Proto-Khmeric *cɔː, ckɛː (Sidwell & Rau) Proto-...

Raholeun wrote: ↑Tue Sep 07, 2021 3:45 am What about "either" and "aether"?

/ijðər/ ~ /ajðər/

/ijθər/

If we're speaking of the form written 犬, I wouldn't be terribly disinclined to entertain the idea that it could be an Indo-European borrowing Maybe, though I find it a little awkward that the Old Chinese form 犬 *kʰʷeːnʔ looks more like PIE *ḱwṓ than Tocharian ku , which is what actually got far eno...

But would a chain shift of *[k q] > *[c k] be terribly plausible? Certainly a shift of */c/ > */k/, or */q/ > */k/ on its own would be, but I find the chain shift that would otherwise be required for */k̂/ to various fricatives and affricates to occur... strange? I've never seen such a change attes...

Sanskrit parśāna 'precipice' would derive from an o-grade *porḱ- , but still there're no verb attestations. The "paper" in "paper wasp" (to name the animal I saw most recently) isn't a verb either. I think the argument is that the PIE word for ’pig’ was supposedly a derived form...

my trajectory looks like giving up.

in the course of my researches i have had to develop basic reading comprehension in technical french, but it doesn't seem like a useful enough language to take the time to learn beyond that