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[Ryusenshi]

I personally do use X-SAMPA, but as input to an X-SAMPA to IPA converter.

I do something similar, but with the code used for a LaTeX package called TIPA (it's similar to SAMPA but not compatible).

[Richard W]

The story of MSKLC

[Raphael]

Am I the only one here who kind of associates light brown wood with "modernity" and dark brown wood with "old-fashioned-ness"? Are there others with similar associations? Is my feeling a result of what kinds of interior design tend to be common in what kinds of settings in Germany?

[Richard W]

I personally do use X-SAMPA, but as input to an X-SAMPA to IPA converter.

Me similarly. The keystrokes I use to type IPA are the X-SAMPA encoding. I've encoded it in MSKLC (for Windows), KMfL (under iBus), quail (for emacs) and M17n (under fcitx). For MSKLC I had to use dead keys. For the others, an extra backslash (so 2 or 3 in total) takes me back to the ASCII key.

[Kuchigakatai]

Raphael: your English is very good, as always. The translation is bookish, though— at first I thought it was actually a 19th century text (for which this style would be appropriate). I'm not sure what the best way is to translate Mann's long sentences, but they come across as very old-fashioned.

That Raphael kept most adverbial phrases in (I imagine) their original position doesn't help either, also the very low use of contractions (had not been able, etc.). It seems he also kept some wordings that have a very formal or old-fashioned connotation today ("one" as a pronoun isn't old exactly, but it adds to the formality a lot when combined with other things; same for "in the year 1859", or the verb "cease"...). The semicolon is generally disfavoured these days too, except in pretty high-register writing.

Raphael's version:
Against insurrectionist criticisms by the subjects, against rebellion and high treason, there had traditionally been no other means than prison and strict punishments. An idea of the state as the property of the dynasty, which might once have been good enough, was up against a new idea; law, as it existed, against law that wanted to come into existence. Against Austria, one must add that in the year 1859 there should already no longer have been any doubt about the overdue-ness and triumph of the new law; in its favor, that if one brought the new law to all its inherent conclusions, the Austrian Monarchy would cease to exist altogether.

How I'd do it:
To repress revolutionary criticism by subjects, and rebellion and high treason, traditionally the only tool was prison and harsh punishment. The idea of the State as a dynasty's property, thought good enough before, was up against a new idea: law as it existed was against law that wanted to exist. As a point against Austria, it should be noted that by 1859 there shouldn't have been any more doubts about the importance and victory of the new law. However, in its favour, if the new law reached its inherent conclusions, the Austrian monarchy would have stopped existing altogether.

Random thought: nobody around here seems to use X-SAMPA much any more, I wonder why that is? Back when I first joined it was at least as common as IPA.

Like Travis, I use it a lot to write IPA. I love the tool made by the admin of the CBB: XIPA.

The story of MSKLC

So, basically, if it hadn't been the NSA, maybe they would've made a website with plenty of user tracking instead.

[Ares Land]

Am I the only one here who kind of associates light brown wood with "modernity" and dark brown wood with "old-fashioned-ness"? Are there others with similar associations? Is my feeling a result of what kinds of interior design tend to be common in what kinds of settings in Germany?

Same here.
It's certainly due to which colors were current at different times. (I think the tipping point between light colored wood and dark wood was in the late 80s)

[Moose-tache]

I blame the Scandinavians. Very light, unstained wood has been a popular symbol of "IKEA design" since long before IKEA made it to the United States.

[Ares Land]

There's a similar trend towards white paint on the walls. That might be due, to some extent, to fewer people smoking.

[Raphael]

Does anyone else sometimes get weird pains in parts of their feet when they're walking around in socks, that often get less intense or disappear entirely when they put on sandals or shoes?

[Linguoboy]

I'm 50 years old. For me "weird pains in parts of my feet" is a lifestyle.

[Torco]

It's remarkable how decent these cheap guitars are nowadays. No, really, they're not _good_ but for 50 bucks you get a... well, a guitar. a fully functioning, even if shitty, guitar. that will give you tendinitis cause the action is high af but still.

in entirely unrelated news, there being too many musical instruments laying around is starting to be a problem in this household.

[malloc]

So yesterday I had some problems with the Cinnamon desktop on my computer running Linux Mint and rebooted it. Although it seemed to boot fine at first, no login screen appeared. The cursor appears, as if the deskop is loading only to go back to a black screen and the appear again after some minutes. I tried booting from a flash drive but no boot menu appeared, as if nothing was found in the USB port.

For now I am relying on my phone for my computing needs, which makes researching this complicated problem rather tricky.

[doctor shark]

Holiday decorations have been going up around here since the start of October, actually... seems quite early, but there's also Sinterklaas in early December and St. Martin's Day on 11 November, so maybe it's quite timely after all. Still feels odd, though so do the Christmas trees on sale in August in the U.S...

[Travis B.]

Holiday decorations have been going up around here since the start of October, actually... seems quite early, but there's also Sinterklaas in early December and St. Martin's Day on 11 November, so maybe it's quite timely after all. Still feels odd, though so do the Christmas trees on sale in August in the U.S...

I've always wondered about early sales of Christmas trees - won't they lose all their needles by the time Christmas comes around?

(To me Christmas decorations before Halloween just seem wrong, as aren't you supposed to put up Halloween decorations beforehand. Of course they don't have Halloween over where you are, unless they've recently imported it under American influence...)

[doctor shark]

Holiday decorations have been going up around here since the start of October, actually... seems quite early, but there's also Sinterklaas in early December and St. Martin's Day on 11 November, so maybe it's quite timely after all. Still feels odd, though so do the Christmas trees on sale in August in the U.S...

I've always wondered about early sales of Christmas trees - won't they lose all their needles by the time Christmas comes around?

(To me Christmas decorations before Halloween just seem wrong, as aren't you supposed to put up Halloween decorations beforehand. Of course they don't have Halloween over where you are, unless they've recently imported it under American influence...)

Normally, it's the artificial trees that go up in August. Indeed, live trees will be not-very-live by that time... I think in Lux. the live trees could be bought from mid-November onwards, normally in conjunction with the start of the Christmas market season.

The thing is that normally the Christmas decorations in Luxembourg, which doesn't celebrate Halloween but does celebrate All Saints' Day (Toussaint, on 1 November), would normally go up in early- to mid-November. And Halloween isn't a thing, but All Saints' Day is in a lot of countries... though it turns out it isn't here in the Netherlands. In any event, I'm still used to mid-November at the absolute earliest for Christmas decorations, so having them up this early just feels wrong.

[Ares Land]

I have a bit of a conworlding problem.

I always sort of assumed the Tarandim (one of the cultures/civilizations in my conworld) had a strong prohibition against slavery.
The idea is that either it was never practiced, or it was forbidden relatively early on.

My problem is that it does look like most if not all early civilizations did practice slavery, so that seems tricky to justify.
Research has so far, not given much results. I have a hard time finding economic / sociologic explanations of slavery.

So should I just abandon the idea? Or could early abolition be justified?

[zompist]

My problem is that it does look like most if not all early civilizations did practice slavery, so that seems tricky to justify.
Research has so far, not given much results. I have a hard time finding economic / sociologic explanations of slavery.

The Incas don't seem to have had slavery. (This is suggested by some Googling, as well as a check of the one history on my bookshelf.)

You could check Trigger, but for most cultures the important question is how much slavery there was. It doesn't seem to have been very significant in Mesopotamia-- the largest source of slaves were war captives. In contrast Greeks, Romans, and colonial European states used slaves in huge numbers as the major contribution to production. The Chinese seem to have prohibited slavery multiple times... meaning that they didn't quite succeed, but suggesting both that it was not a major economic factor and could be condemned by a premodern state.

(One can debate forever on who exactly is a slave. It doesn't seem too useful to classify any coercion as slavery. At the same time, civilized premodern states were all dizzyingly hierarchical... but there were also non-state regions which might be far more egalitarian.)

[Kuchigakatai]

Also, weirdly, some tribal groups like the Haida and Tlingit are known to have practised slavery, including slave trade, without ruling large-scale civilizations. All the more notable if there are large-scale civilizations like the Inca that probably didn't...

(One can debate forever on who exactly is a slave. It doesn't seem too useful to classify any coercion as slavery. At the same time, civilized premodern states were all dizzyingly hierarchical... but there were also non-state regions which might be far more egalitarian.)

Incidentally, I also notice that the medieval word "serf" is just the Old French descendant of Latin servus 'slave', and "servant" is related too, but I don't know what to make of that.

[Raphael]

We live in the weirdest timeline:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/derailed-dut ... 48785.html

[Ares Land]

Incidentally, I also notice that the medieval word "serf" is just the Old French descendant of Latin servus 'slave', and "servant" is related too, but I don't know what to make of that.

"servant" is ultimately from servire, be a slave.

Technically serfdom was an evolution of the late imperial colony system... Though evidently the people of Gaul in Late Antiquity didn't really see the difference with rural servitude.

An interesting question is why slavery was gradually abandoned during the Middle Ages.
It's not terribly clear. Answers to that question tend towards 'it really didn't' (technically true, but missing the point) or 'Christianity'. (Dubious. Christians don't necessarily see the problem with slavery, any more than other religions do, anyway. I seem to recall St Paul counseled resignation to slaves, anyway.)