Zompist Bboard Again

Do your conworlds have semi-democratic systems of governance where popular input through voting or polling exist, but the executive also has significant powers to veto legislation and much more? My example ( not my personal ideal) would be a technocratic system which is dominated by the nonpartisan ...

That in a way reminds me of my mother, who is an atheist because of Catholicism - in contrast to myself, where I am an atheist solely because I simply cannot have faith, and was never raised to have it. I may have mentioned this before, but my dad's experiences as a member of the clergy ( permanent...

A natural disaster that caused members of several different linguistic groups to band together for survival could have a similar effect Zompist uses this for Old Hanying particularly. Trade pidgins like sabir, Russenorsk and that RussoChinese one in the frontiers of Russia and China are another exa...

????? Refactorcamp referred to a series of conferences (what I wanted to go to) hosted by Venkatesh Rao at varying locations, and his now-private Mastodon(Tm) server Ribbomfarm is Rao’s blog Nytgate: when a hostile reporter published an Nyt article alleging scott alexander was interested in eugenic...

????? Refactorcamp referred to a series of conferences (what I wanted to go to) hosted by Venkatesh Rao at varying locations, and his now-private Mastodon(Tm) server Ribbomfarm is Rao’s blog Nytgate: when a hostile reporter published an Nyt article alleging scott alexander was interested in eugenic...

Are creoles evolving inflections through grammaticalization?

I once considered leaving a leaf to go to Refactorcamp in Santiago, Chile

Also there are conservative minorities esp immigrants for whom race may not be the primary reason they reject liberal beliefs

The postrationalists I admire - Rao, Chapmann and Perry are beyond caring about the average person in one way or another - that is, what is is-and they are amoral in outlook Rao is a management consultsnt who has taught at cornell, lived in Dubai, Singapore, Geneva, LA-backpacked through Colombia (P...

I also really have a strong subconscious urge to become a king penguin in mind as well as in body - this stems from a period of my life where I believed awareness=pain, so I used deliberate forgetting to target many center-of-network memories like the word “tedious”. Also both me anf my brother wsnt...

Is there a communitarian (community centered) right in Western countries anymore? You have the “Asian values” crowd, but that’s an East Asian/Sinosphere thing

Ares Land wrote: ↑Tue Oct 19, 2021 3:29 am Right-wingers have an oddly specific issue with the word 'rights.' Bad memories of the civil rights movement?

In the anonymous preacher’s case, he is Asian and the criticism has to do with individualism and lack-of-commitment-to-community/marriage/etc.

Evangelical clergy and the like tend not to view the idea of rights (as part of a social contract) very highly. To quote Wikipedia on sexual-minority rights: In 2009, N. T. Wright noted that, in popular discourse, there has been a "supposed modern and scientific discovery of a personal 'identit...

I have heard that creole morphologies are somehow "simpler" than those of other languages (McWhorter) or a simplified version of the lexifier's grammar. Is there any truth to these assertions?

Yes and no? The kind of Irish spoken by young people has little in common with traditional Gaeltacht Irish, as Breandan mac Ardghail explains in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kw-of3UBgg . Moreover, the percentage of Irish-speakers who use it regularly after leaving school continues t...

You're in a very difficult situation, but the above is very good news: in just three months you'll be out of the house. You can get there. You may have another problem though, which you can start working on now. Children of over-controlling parents can end up very other-directed— that is, they rely...

Western powers carve the Balkans into contiguous nation-states, making ethnicity and geographical borders match as best they can: "What are you doing? Nation-states are a terrible idea! How can civic institutions be expected to take minority rights seriously? What about exclaves? What about de...

Isn't irish undergoing a kind of slow revival thanks to young people, on the other hand? What are your sources for this? Also, English seems to be crowding out Arabic in the UAE and there are exclusively Anglophone middle class type in India. Even if the entire middle class of a country switched to...