Zompist Bboard Again

Several things come to mind. First of all, the European Greens are very different from the American Green Party. I don't think the European Green are happy with Jill Stein right now. There are a number of issues with the Greens here; though I can't say there are any really convincing left-wing parti...

I wouldn't fret too much about style right now. It's all right if a first draft is a bit rough. Albert Camus described a trap to avoid in The Plague : he has a character endlessly rewriting the first line of his novel. Stephen King occasionally does the kind of opening you have in mind (one example ...

By specialization, I was referring to the beginnings of professionalization. I know gladiators were full time professionals, of sorts (more like slaves at first). I don't know if all the athletes competing in the ancient Greek Olympics were full time. I know they trained a lot and put themselves on...

Up for debate, though: is Gravity science fiction?

This latest scandal with Signal does give me hope that the MAGA regime could actually lose WWIII owing to sheer incompetence if nothing else. They still have an overwhelming advantage in military hardware and funding but that can only take them so far without good strategy and intelligence. That su...

I just finished both seasons of Severance , and that was some truly great science fiction. One of the best series I've watched. With that and Succession I did get the impression that Americans are really not doing OK at work these days. Speaking of Succession , it's very good but a little too bleak ...

I suspect the easier format is around 50,000 ~ 60,000 words. That fits in with my experience... I've tried short stories and novels; none of these are really readable, but the least awful ones are short-ish novels. Besides, a lot of first novels tend to gravitate around that word count. It probably ...

The original French verb is clicher ‘to copy/stereotype’, That's funny because I didn't know there was a verb in the first place (though of course it makes sense, given the final -é !) It's specialized vocabulary and rather uncommon. Huh, interesting! To me as a learner it seemed immediately obviou...

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Mar 26, 2025 10:59 pm The original French verb is clicher ‘to copy/stereotype’,

That's funny because I didn't know there was a verb in the first place (though of course it makes sense, given the final -é!)
It's specialized vocabulary and rather uncommon.

I don't think you can ever convince the hardcore base of the opposite side (whoever that may be) in politics. Convincing people who are kind of on the fence is definitely possible, though! The most committed conservatives won't ever vote Democrat... but some of them may decide to stay home in the ne...

Personally, I would trust the output more if you told the LLM to write a script that applies the sound changes. This would not only improve regularity, it would also let you examine the changes yourself. It might be easier to just use a SCA tool. My thoughts exactly; I'm not sure a LLM is the right...

But, all that said, I still quite like the first two chapters of what I wrote. I plan to keep them mostly unchanged. So, partly in search of more feedback, and partly as a reminder to myself to finally get more writing done, I've decided to post those first two chapters here. I liked that; and I ho...

As AOC says, one of our best hopes is precisely their incompetence and stupidity. It doesn't prevent them from being completely evil, but lackeys and stooges are also not the people who can create a popular, stable system. I dread what happens if Musk succeeds in breaking Social Security-- but it w...

I'd just note that if learned Latin is involved, medicī doesn't help at all: it's both singular genitive and plural nominative. This is pretty common in Latin. But if you're naming a family, wouldn't you use the plural genitive medicōrum ? I think a singular genitive makes sense if you're naming an...

Wait, you got seats?

I used to work near one of the last stops on the RER B; it was okay but I can't say I miss it.
The real annoyance is having to take it to get to the airport. But getting to Charles de Gaulle airport is an unnecessarily painful experience, no matter how you get there.

Congratulations! And I hope you can figure this out soon.

A completely different question: Are Italian surnames in -i from old genitives or from plurals? I used to think it was the former, but now consider the latter to be more likely. But I don't know. An inherited genitive is unlikely; Italian dialects lost the morphological genitive very early on. One ...

Linguoboy wrote: ↑Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:31 pm All in all, it was a the right balance of nostalgia, family time, and closure that we were all looking for.

That sounds quite nice. Glad to hear from you!

Tsimaah wrote: ↑Thu Mar 13, 2025 8:38 pm

On Jéos

That was great! Some very arresting images.
And the language is very nicely done, I'd be very happy to read more.

That sucks! What happened?