Zompist Bboard Again

I have my doubts about the upper classes. As you should! As it happens, I'm reading a huge book of Orwell's essays. His estimation (mid-1940s) was that though the British upper class (what he called the English upper class) was inclined to Hitler, they weren't captured by fascism because they were ...

Traffic in what sense? There aren't many cars - congestion pricing works very well. But foot traffic is a nightmare. In Zone 1 you can experience the sidewalk equivalent of the Beltway at 5:30. And if I had to commute on the Underground I'd go insane within the month. It certainly knows how to achi...

In North America, there's a third option, the suburbs. According to Pew Research, 14% of the US population is rural, 31% is urban, and 55% suburban. There's a lot to say for the suburban lifestyle: you get a big lot of your own, you can work in the city and visit whenever you want, it's safe and qu...

Probably not that many; R*f@rm's appeal is generally among the lower classes. Their leader's constituency does, after all, include the most deprived area in England. I think it's generally true that fascism as we understand it appeals less to the the upper classes than to the lower classes. Fascist...

"You! Yes! You!" Had a brief look at the video. Would have thought Mr Schmidt would have realised he'd get many more views if he split his seven hour magnum opus into a series of 30 minute shorts, each with its own topic like "Miracles", "Saints", "Our Lady", ...

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place where was a den and laid me down in that place to sleep; and as I slept, I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold, I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in h...

The rise is far right came in the 2010s. The rise in smartphones also did. Both are linked to increased anxiety. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy082dn7rkqo https://www.jeantwenge.com/igen-book-by-dr-jean-twenge/ . Also, smartphones are literally making people dumber as in the Reverse Flynn Effe...

Travis B. wrote: ↑Sun Aug 03, 2025 6:40 pm I can confirm that I indeed can read the Zeeb while logged out right now.

Ditto. I noted 90 guests just now.

kosen444 wrote: ↑Wed Apr 16, 2025 6:55 pm There are words in English that can mean their exact opposite – like oversight, which is either careful watching or a mistake; sanction, which can be to allow or to punish; or dust, which is either to add fine particles or to take them away

And cleave, which means to cling together or break apart.

This may be slightly OT, but has anyone seen this Daily Kos story? MAGA has helpfully provided a map of fascist supporting businesses to AVOID [wicked laugh] It's got links to both the Huffpost story and the "anti-woke" website itself. :roll: And as of this posting, the website is *still* ...

Well, Mao was, I think, a librarian by training, which is not exactly an industrial proletariat profession. Anyway, if that's true, it might partly explain his popularity among upper class students who wanted to be Marxists. Some more possibilities: 1. The Soviets had nukes and gulags. And they wer...

Is "yippy" even a word? - oh. That's where it came from. Never mind.

However, it's a very old word, and the early uses ("towndweller", "middle class") still survive, and affect Marxism as well. Unfortunately this makes "bourgeois" a weasel word. Even in your own paragraph above, to say nothing of the leftists you're criticizing, are you...

As Zompist said after 9/11:

I also believe that everybody is allowed to say something stupid this week. Nerves and emotions are going to be running raw.

Well, I suppose if the plant species died out, maybe through over-cropping. That's what actually happened to the medicinal leech species in some areas.

The ablaut reduplication rule I-A-O doesn't seem to hold *within* words: rabbit, blarney, over, tuna, wallet, loony, only, etc are all counterexamples. None of those are reduplicated, so why would it? Neither is Big Bad Wolf. I may be wrong about this, but I have the impression that "English&q...

The ablaut reduplication rule I-A-O doesn't seem to hold *within* words: rabbit, blarney, over, tuna, wallet, loony, only, etc are all counterexamples.

Has anyone seen this article?. A work colleague showed it to me, but it seems to have turned up in a number of blogs over the last couple of years. Interesting.

Now, can anyone think of any similar rules in other languages? Or any exceptions in English?

Rounin Ryuuji wrote: ↑Mon Feb 28, 2022 8:53 am I'm more of a fan of [y].

Good point. Or [ɯ].

I don't like the human-alien cross-breeding stuff for the same reason Justin B Rye doesn't - it's biologically impossible, obviously, blatantly, in-your-face impossible. But I've thought of a workaround. Let Spock be a full Vulcan, but let Amanda have been orphaned as a baby and brought up by humans...