Zompist Bboard Again

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Apr 16, 2026 8:42 pm Does anyone else have a consistent phonemic contrast between enable and unable?

Yes. /E/ vs /V/.

5. Limit Supreme Court terms. Do you think that would be enough? I think the court needs to be greatly enlarged. Why not have the same number of judges as representatives? Sure, it may sound silly to have hundreds (or thousands) of judges in a court room, but people used to say the exact same thing...

However, gas prices won't just evaporate on their own A bit off-topic, but this is a rather good mixed metaphor I just have to highight :-) I do think we have to cut malloc a bit of slack, though; he probably only encounters non-Trumpists very rarely in real life, so he's a bit like Bilbo climbing ...

5. Limit Supreme Court terms. Do you think that would be enough? I think the court needs to be greatly enlarged. Why not have the same number of judges as representatives? Sure, it may sound silly to have hundreds (or thousands) of judges in a court room, but people used to say the exact same thing...

4. Redirect police budgets to mental health and support for the homeless. Also, instead of paying for a cop to pull people over for minor traffic infractions all day, how about we put that money towards building safe streets that don't need cops to babysit them in order for people to drive safely o...

Does anyone really care that someone tried to assassinate Trump? No one really cared the last two times, why would they care now? This time there were literally thousands of journalists watching the assassination attempt. Imagine the kind of coverage that will generate over the next few weeks. It w...

malloc wrote: ↑Sat Apr 25, 2026 8:11 pm and will undoubtedly give Trump a considerable boost.

No, it will not "undoubtedly" do that.

Just when it looked like the tide was turning against him.

The fact that people keep trying to assassinate Trump tells me that he remains rather *unpopular*.

(1) Automatically increase the size of the house of representatives after every census, adding a seat for every 100,000 people (or maybe less).
(2) Abolish the senate.

I'm all for building more!, but please, let's not build more car-dependent suburbs. Quite. We made a grave mistake in turning over urban infrastructure to automobiles and forcing humans to the sidewalk. Someone here once observed that if you looked at Earth from space, you might conclude that cars ...

We have a small but thriving manga and anime scene here; more generally there's a lot of good cultural production (and I'd extent that to Europe). It just doesn't export much. It's hard to break into the English-speaking market with translations; which is too bad I guess. You really miss out on a l...

Cars have always been bigger here. I visited Europe in the 1970s and was amazed to find that a Volkswagen Beetle, which looked small here, looked big in Europe. The whole suburban-sprawl model is expensive and bad for the planet. I have a hatchback, and have been told multiple times that it's "...

I can't help pointing out that some of the problems you mention— too much food, overly large cars, sprawl— are problems of excess. Americans don't react well when told to eat better and buy small cars. I think it's a systemic problem, not a personal problem. Most people, American or not, will eat w...

French is surprisingly good with pop culture-- movies and comics. When I was in college you still had to reckon with French novels, and the the deconstructionists (not my cup of thé, but inescapable). French scholarship is still top-notch. The Francosphere does have Wakfu, but French anime is nowhe...

Sure but one must wonder why the old economy has been destroyed. The technology to make things affordably still exists and indeed automation has only advanced over the years. Logically this should translate to increasing abundance and thus affordability. Yet somehow we are faced instead with ever-s...

Predictably, Trump has immediately ditched and attacked these people, as he does with anybody the moment that they oppose or even merely question him. I know why Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Candace Owens, and Alex Jones have all been fighting me for years [...] Even Megyn Kelly? The one who defend...

Phew. Better than what might have happened, I guess. On a cynical note, how many people are, by now, absolutely convinced that Trump achieved a brilliant and historic triumph by forcing Iran to open the Strait, which they, now, are equally absolutely convinced had been closed before the war? Some M...

I know it's a little old, but it's too funny to not share: - https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tv/articles/jon-stewart-slams-donald-trump-083250200.html These ships should go through the Strait of Hormuz and show some guts, there’s nothing to be afraid of… They have no Navy, we sunk all their ship...

Interestingly, I do have stopping of /T D/ initially, but I definitely don't have NCVS. This is common in lower registers of many English varieties; e.g. it is common in urban dialects in the Great Lakes region. BTW, just to clarify, when I say /T D/ stopping, I mean *dental* stops. They're still d...

It was my understanding that the voice/unvoiced distinction in English is minor compared to aspirated/unaspirated, and the distinction gets lost in many environments. But maybe I'm overgeneralizing some special cases like intervocalic flapping in GenAm. JAL I've heard this description before, but I...

Yes, the aspiration on /p/ is missing, but it's still unvoiced, and /b/ is still voiced. It was my understanding that the voice/unvoiced distinction in English is minor compared to aspirated/unaspirated, and the distinction gets lost in many environments. But maybe I'm overgeneralizing some special...