Zompist Bboard Again

Not a native English speaker, but I was wondering if this difference is reflected in the way you pronounce "and" in English, that is /ænd/ vs the reduced form /ən/. This is definitely true of the English here ─ there commonly is a meaning difference between /æn(d)/ and /(ə)n/ of the sort ...

Quick question ‒ do Verdurians (in the 35C) use fireworks for celebration? Or, rather, what does a big 35C Verdurian civic celebration sound like?

I know that Verdurians stomp their feet rather than applaud...

(This question has no intended relation to real world events...)

It sounds cool, I suppose, and it’s not as bad as Chakobsa...!) I really like the idea of "battle languages" -- make your own language so the enemy can't figure out what you're saying. (As a one-off idea, it works; but it's not a very long term technique -- just capture and torture a flue...

On Dune: Dune has an interesting take -- the basic idea is that the elite relies on natural human capabilities, expanding them via special training and genetic selection. So you train natural mathematical / strategical genius to the utmost, and you get Mentats. (It's not clear what Mentat do that y...

Isn’t it a failure state? At least, a recovering one. There was a cataclysmic war 10,000 years in our future in which all computers were wiped out, and it was so bad that the injunction against them continues to be upheld (to a zealous degree far past the edge of ‘madness’) for another ten thousand ...

Huh, sorry to post again, but, I just thought of another Fermi’s paradox possibility: civilizations deliberately ‘clear an area’ around them, i.e., reach a demonstrably self-sustaining economic model within themselves with an enormous contingency set aside for unexpected challenges, then physically ...

Our social complexity has been a death cult for ten thousand years. Any scrutible super-advanced civilization should look like a bunch of idiots one button-press away from annihilation. Getting that far intact should be like winning the galactic lottery, not an inevitable result of progress. My jur...

A response re Elizabethan London off the top of my head that could no doubt be better researched... I’m pretty sure there were rivalries between theatre troupes, though not sure about partisan loyalty to one or another. From the POV of zomp’s metric, they had a pretty large reach ‒ in some theatres ...

I was planning a walk on the Pennine Way, which was now on the east side of Nottingham, and going through pretty lowland woods by the river Trent rather than bothering with the Pennines. I was remembering going on a walk in that area with my dad when I was a kid, and passing a sign for a place calle...

Sorry if this is necro-posting: but; What about Watling Street in the U.K. ? Well, I live near a portion of it, and even though it’s a small country road for some of its way through these parts we still use it as a (long, thin) local landmark. The A5 and M6 toll follow it roughly and the former twi...

This thread might be of interest, Collisteru ‒ or anyone who hasn’t seen it.

Vardelm wrote: ↑Sat Dec 15, 2018 4:43 pm viewtopic.php?t=206

I just want to say, too, Vardelm, that I really enjoyed the paper.

It is a great essay. Easily one of the best treatments of this I’ve read, and I like that it deals well with the Fermi paradox without ever mentioning it. One thought I have on it is that I seem to have missed or forgotten the tidbit about iliu music being a low tech and amateur entertainment... Exc...

So, sounds like there's a context-driven process to prioritise preferred nouns for each pronoun slot, neurally. Interesting. The pronoun nodes must be big, active interchanges between these context processes and the cells that store information about individuals... (?)

We now have a vocalist! That’s great!! I got Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri working on my mac and spent a happy 30mins remembering all the gorgeous details and bathing in the soundtrack. Hands down my fav game of all time, though not one I’ve played for 15ish years. I had been dreaming about it, oddly,...

While we're at it, on archive.org , you can find something I made for the Almeopedia back in the 2000s: a Timeline Orientation Help, which compared historical developments on Almea and Earth. Unfortunately, it was still based on the assumption that 3480 on Almea was roughly equivalent to 1750 on Ea...

That’s terrible, I’m sorry and I really hope you recover quickly.

It's nice to revisit the old boards sometimes. The wayback machine's copy of the main page of the spinnoff forum happens to capture some online users I remember well. I remember one of them, Soren, from a Leeds meet in ≈2005. Whether the history of the zompist boards has been documented much is some...

I'm wondering if it might read "Terry the ___"
No idea what the __ would be though.

This seems like something that is bound to have been discussed at some point, but basically: is there a language out there where there are different types of 'and'? In my mind I keep using terms like 'inclusive and' and 'exclusive and' , but they're probably not very good descriptors. Sometimes and...

Japanese uses と <to> between items of a complete list, and や <ya> between a list of examples. So: "Niku to yasai to gohan o tabemashita." = "I ate meat, vegetables, and rice (only)." "Niku ya yasai ya gohan o tabemashita." = "I ate (things like) meat, vegetables, ...