Zompist Bboard Again

Worth noting that in English, sixth and eighth very often are irregular in spoken English, and arguably standard twelfth (in that usually English suffixes assimilate in voice, rather than vice versa), and indeed for many (most?) speakers 'twentieth', 'thirtieth', etc.

The Ultimate Sound Change Applier is a very difficult thing to define clearly, in part because people all want it to do different things: generate tables of inflectional paradigms, derive an entire child vocabulary, verify that one's child vocabulary is consistent with the sound changes, etcetera. ...

Oh, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer has responded to the former Foreign Secretary's criticism of the government's policy on leaving the European Union by putting on a silly 'Boris' voice. And I forgot the exciting bit! The Prime Minister has announced we're going to have a Festival of Brexit in ...

LB: sorry, don't have one. I've only heard that journalists had received the message - I've not seen anyone quoting it verbatim. Except that a "Whitehall source" has described the situation as "fucking ridiculous". But if you want some leaked obscenity, we can all take a moment t...

A few updates on the ongoing Tory Party Conference: - The former foreign secretary, who has indeed labelled the PM's Brexit plan a "deranged" "moral humiliation" and has proposed instead building a bridge across the Irish Sea (with the argument, "why not?"), has now res...

Less than a month to go until the Irish presidential election. The candidates are: Michael D Higgins - an acclaimed, bilingual (trilingual - he also speaks Spanish, though I don't know if he's fluent) poet, sociologist, political theorist, philosopher, international human rights campaigner and orato...

Beeb: Musk out as Tesla chair over fraud case (wait, what are Tesla doing over fraud case? They're chairing?)

And primed by that, it took me a moment to work out Danish police free manhunt suspects too...

Not really informative, but just in case some readers are wondering who this "Jacob Rees-Mogg" person, is, I just came across this masterpiece of modern photography: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DoB1Wd3UcAAQPnj.jpg It's 18 years old, but this is JRM in one of his cuddlier, more approachable...

From a paper on radiation in space:

Even with > 30 g/cm² of regolith shielding the 95% CI dose from a major SPE would exceed the 30-day limit.

Got confused with that one. Could really have done with punctuation.

From the Guardian : Air pollution fears fuel fight against new London cruise ship terminal https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/26/air-pollution-fears-fuel-fight-against-huge-new-london-cruise-ship-terminal-river-thames So the air pollution in London has gotten so bad that it has actual...

Perhaps worth pointing out that the same change has happened in the Italian form: Gwenhwyfar > Guinevere > Ginevra.

Nah, I wouldn't say it's anywhere as logical as Lojban. I have been thinking about how to handle place names, and have come up with some kind of idea. I haven't really thought this idea all the way through, but I thought I'd share it here and see if anyone can find flaws in it. All place names get ...

Do we know if by "left" they mean left(-wing) or lieutenant? I had assumed the latter when I saw that headline some years ago, but most people seem to say that in this case , left is just left. So far as I'm away "left" as an abbreviation of "lieutenant" is not actuall...

Anyway, the news today is apparently that the Cabinet have agreed to back a relatively hard Canada-style Brexit. The PM's aides are apparently considering calling an election to defend her policy - which is a stupid plan, not only because she'll lose an election, but also because it's not clear what...

What would one do if their anti-Blair but okay with Brown? Well, neither Blair nor Brown is actually involved. And some of the people who are involved were never really either Blairites OR Brownites - Blair was a decade ago, after all. But calling them "New Labour" seems perverse, when th...

Well, the Daily Express at least; "MAY'S FINEST HOUR" trumpeted their front page on Saturday, in a spectacular affront to reality. To be fair, if you're looking for May's finest hour, there's not exactly a lot of good candidates... to be honest, I have to think "May's Finest Hour&quo...

mèþru wrote: ↑Sun Sep 23, 2018 8:33 am https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-45616308

Essentially meaningless, though, since Labour can't trigger a referendum until they're next in power, by which time we'll be out of the EU.

I don't think a second referendum is possible, unfortunately. It makes sense - Cameron should have set it up as two-stage in the first place. [first: should we negotiate a withdrawal? If yes, then second: are these the terms we withdraw under?] But the timeline makes it impossible. We've got until M...

On current form, BoJo will be PM when hell freezes over. That said, there is a strange inevitability about him, and I wouldn't be surprised if he comes back to prominence again at some point in the future. Boris has failed in four ways. First, he hasn't been a great Foreign Secretary. He hasn't, hon...

Is there some legal reason for not using the men's names here? That would make the sequence hella less confusing. Well, one of the men has been named by first name and initial of surname. But even if that hadn't been allowed, nothing could excuse using "the 41-year-old man" and "the ...