Zompist Bboard Again

YouTube has decided that my channel doesn’t have the clout for “enhanced features” like putting links in the descriptions of videos (I upload CC-licensed/public-domain/free music with particular attention to netlabels ca. 2010 and the experimental duo Bull of Heaven and like to link to the appropriate CC license and release pages). They will be happy to let me include them again if I a) upload my driver’s license, b) let them take a six-second video of me, or c) “build history” (never mind that my account is like 20+ years old!). I refuse to do a) or b) given the recent news so I’m forced to go with option c), but I don’t know when—or even if—I will qualify again.

One also notes that they didn’t have a problem with me doing that before with the links…

Man in Space wrote: ↑Fri Apr 03, 2026 5:40 pm YouTube has decided that my channel doesn’t have the clout for “enhanced features” like putting links in the descriptions of videos (I upload CC-licensed/public-domain/free music with particular attention to netlabels ca. 2010 and the experimental duo Bull of Heaven and like to link to the appropriate CC license and release pages). They will be happy to let me include them again if I a) upload my driver’s license, b) let them take a six-second video of me, or c) “build history” (never mind that my account is like 20+ years old!). I refuse to do a) or b) given the recent news so I’m forced to go with option c), but I don’t know when—or even if—I will qualify again.

One also notes that they didn’t have a problem with me doing that before with the links…

Fucked up. Commiserations.

I forgot it was Nikita's birthday on March 30th. She would have been 14.

Just in case anyone here is celebrating, Happy Easter!

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Apr 05, 2026 3:18 am Just in case anyone here is celebrating, Happy Easter!

And while we're at it, an overall happy spring to people in those parts of the Northern Hemisphere where it's currently spring! As Goethe put it,


They celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord
For they themselves have been resurrected

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hitMjJGkD3w

Hylian Review

My on-the-job knowledge came in handy today. I got a scam text purporting to be from my pastor using an unfamiliar number, but I was able to detect the scam (protip: indigents in a hospital will not request donations be in the form of Apple gift cards…or really any gift cards) and notify Pastor (via his real number).

Is The Netanyahus worth reading or is it only going to annoy me?

https://youtu.be/E1E8k39inaM

Chakobsa / Dinlih Review

Does anyone know a good source to learn how pitch accent (not tone) works? A lot of the sources i've found go off on a ton of tangents and are difficult to read for it, or seem rather unreliable. Thanks in advance to anyone with options

Starbeam wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 1:28 pm Does anyone know a good source to learn how pitch accent (not tone) works? A lot of the sources i've found go off on a ton of tangents and are difficult to read for it, or seem rather unreliable. Thanks in advance to anyone with options

This is an excellent paper explaining why ‘pitch accent’ is an incoherent term: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman ... accent.pdf

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 1:43 pm

Starbeam wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 1:28 pm Does anyone know a good source to learn how pitch accent (not tone) works? A lot of the sources i've found go off on a ton of tangents and are difficult to read for it, or seem rather unreliable. Thanks in advance to anyone with options

This is an excellent paper explaining why ‘pitch accent’ is an incoherent term: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman ... accent.pdf

Do you have any sources on how to correctly understand the phenomenon then? That source is also a textbook example of someone going on tangents, but in that case it seems like they've been misunderstood so much that they have no choice

Starbeam wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 2:56 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 1:43 pm This is an excellent paper explaining why ‘pitch accent’ is an incoherent term: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman ... accent.pdf

Do you have any sources on how to correctly understand the phenomenon then? That source is also a textbook example of someone going on tangents, but in that case it seems like they've been misunderstood so much that they have no choice

My advice would be to look at a particular language, such as the classic example of Tokyo Japanese. Masayoshi Shibatani's The languages of Japan contains a good overview, including dialects other than Tokyo.

Hyman strikes me as making a common mistake, which is taking our definitional systems as aspects of reality. Is there a matter of fact whether Japanese is a "pitch-accent" system, rather than what seems to be his preferred term, "reduced tone"? No. Classification systems are our tools, not our masters. When you look at enough languages, almost any linguistic feature starts to look confused and contradictory. But if you describe a single language, most of the confusion disappears.

His definitions in (2) strike me as unfortunate— "tone system - a language with word-level pitch features, e.g. Mandarin". "Word" is an extremely controversial concept to apply to Mandarin, and if it applies at all, it is not the level tone appears on. (E.g. zhāngláng is a word in Mandarin, meaning "cockroach"; it is not a compound. It has two tones.) Tones apply to syllables in Mandarin, and in fact that's the key to understanding how it differs from Japanese, where the pitch melody applies to words— in fact, often to words plus the following case particle.

If I understand Shibatani, you could explain Tokyo Japanese as a stress accent system, since knowing where the "stress" is tells you all you need to know. I don't know why you'd want to do that, since the primary feature of the syllables is pitch not volume, but you could. However, this would not work for all dialects; in some you need to know both the location of the "stress" and whether the word is inherently high or low tone.

bradrn wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 1:43 pm

Starbeam wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 1:28 pm Does anyone know a good source to learn how pitch accent (not tone) works? A lot of the sources i've found go off on a ton of tangents and are difficult to read for it, or seem rather unreliable. Thanks in advance to anyone with options

This is an excellent paper explaining why ‘pitch accent’ is an incoherent term: https://linguistics.berkeley.edu/~hyman ... accent.pdf

To be completely honest, that paper feels like a bit of a rant about how, because pitch accent cannot fit in a single prototypical model, the concept must be disposed of entirely.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 3:45 pm If I understand Shibatani, you could explain Tokyo Japanese as a stress accent system, since knowing where the "stress" is tells you all you need to know. I don't know why you'd want to do that, since the primary feature of the syllables is pitch not volume, but you could. However, this would not work for all dialects; in some you need to know both the location of the "stress" and whether the word is inherently high or low tone.

To me the only thing keeping Tokyo Japanese from being treated as a stress accent language is that in addition to accent position there are also content words which lack an accent entirely, whereas in, say, English content words always have at least one fully-stressed syllable.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 3:45 pm My advice would be to look at a particular language, such as the classic example of Tokyo Japanese. Masayoshi Shibatani's The languages of Japan contains a good overview, including dialects other than Tokyo.

I agree with this. Unfortunately, as Hyman explains, looking at one language ‘with pitch accent’ tells you very little about any other language ‘with pitch accent’, because ‘pitch accent’ can mean completely different things depending on who’s using the term.

zompist wrote: ↑Wed Apr 15, 2026 3:45 pm Hyman strikes me as making a common mistake, which is taking our definitional systems as aspects of reality. Is there a matter of fact whether Japanese is a "pitch-accent" system, rather than what seems to be his preferred term, "reduced tone"? No. Classification systems are our tools, not our masters. When you look at enough languages, almost any linguistic feature starts to look confused and contradictory. But if you describe a single language, most of the confusion disappears.

I rather take him as saying that a good classification system ought to reflect aspects of reality. It is very true that ‘almost any linguistic feature looks confused and contradictory’; I think that reflects quite poorly on our current system of linguistic terminology, and we should aim to improve the situation by being careful with terms we know to be incoherent.

Dear Google,

Fuck you. Making me choose between a video of myself or giving you my ID to use basic features my YouTube account, which has been in good standing for 20 years. I refuse to let you use my likeness for AI so now I have to trust that you won’t fuck up the security around my driver’s license. No strikes, no warnings, nothing, and you make me do this all of a sudden, when it wasn’t a problem before.

Piss off. Yours,

—me

Man in Space wrote: ↑Sat Apr 18, 2026 12:50 pm Dear Google,

Fuck you. Making me choose between a video of myself or giving you my ID to use basic features my YouTube account, which has been in good standing for 20 years. I refuse to let you use my likeness for AI so now I have to trust that you won’t fuck up the security around my driver’s license. No strikes, no warnings, nothing, and you make me do this all of a sudden, when it wasn’t a problem before.

Piss off. Yours,

—me

You're so right. Again, commiserations.

How can it be already ten years since the year when all the celebrities died? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04M6NhkIKk

Raphael wrote: ↑Sun Apr 19, 2026 2:12 am How can it be already ten years since the year when all the celebrities died? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z04M6NhkIKk

Because every year is the year when all the celebrities died; the deaths of some are simply noticed more than those of others. Celebrities died in 2016, they died in 2017, they died in 2015, and they are dying in 2026.