@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

kechpaja

@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com

Conlanging/Linguistics/Polyglotism/Linux/Sometimes music

Dual US/FI citizen who doesn't really do gender. Trans as in transhumanist, transatlantic and transfluvial.

I'm "kechpaja" pretty much anywhere you see that username.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

I have an alt history of what-if-the-US-stays-British; in the timeline, Zionism didn't do much, and the entire Levant is one Syrian state, ~5% Jewish.

Dear followers, please persuade me to write it up as a normal narrative and not as live updates (like @ww3real) by the Jewish-Syrian-British protag.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon @ww3real If you're looking for concrete arguments: the biggest downside of the WW3Real format is that it's hard to maintain context for the overarching narrative when it arrives in tiny pieces spread throughout the day. That doesn't make it a bad idea, but it is a bit more challenging to read than a regular book.

(This is reminding me of the hypothetical I sometimes revisit where Europeans in the New World saw themselves as immigrants rather than conquerers; in that world I might be a native speaker of Anishinaabemowin.)

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

These cursed "ants" can be ordered for your child's playground... no wonder people grow up fearing bugs. I'm scared of them after seeing this.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird Somehow this is reminding me of that Archie McPhee life-sized (and more or less realistically shaped) plastic ants that my mother would sometimes put around the house in various locations. I think I have a few in a bag somewhere.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

I have a simple rule: if someone asks me a question that can be a Google query, don’t answer them.

This is because I don’t like doing Google queries on someone else’s behalf.

And if they really wanted to know the answer, they would do the work themselves.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@atomicpoet I agree that you shouldn't demand people's time and energy for nothing, but there are lots of ways to "pay" — the most obvious being the "karma" or "favor" system that has always existed informally for many people, and has been formalized on some internet platforms. You can also get a surprising amount of mileage out of just having a social norm of trying to answer at least as many questions as you ask (regardless of whether those answers are to the same people).

Alon, (edited ) to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

What's worse?

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon @acb The Normans of Normandy are another option. And normalization.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Fedi: cis men call me a mansplainer when my pronouns are right there and then refuse to back down

Bluesky: anti-Zionists who are (or say they are?) Jewish ask me what my grandparents did in WW2 when my username is my obviously Jewish real name and then don't engage when I bring up the Kaunas ghetto

(A five-minute video fragment of my grandfather's testimony, with English subtitles, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK2aBS_aYJY; one of the turds on Bluesky went eerily silent when I posted the link)

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon When I created a Bluesky account, one of the first things I saw on the (completely fresh and un-personalized, and following nobody) feed was a very thinly veiled antisemitic thread. This unfortunately tracks.

(I'm not meaningfully active on Bluesky, I just wanted to make sure I got the username.)

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

:: The story of a child housekeeper who works for ‘Mnimal’ a cleaning tech company that claims their robots systems can bring your home to a state of “elevated minimalist cleanliness” via “smart targeted cleantech interventions” neither robots nor software can deliver any of this effectively, so an army of young workers must either laboriously attempt to clean via remote control or simply sneak in to the house on guise of ‘a routine service call’ and do it by hand. 1/

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird Oh, so they use armies of trained ants?

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

Machine learning is prime for a "what people think I do" vs. "what I actually do" meme, where the public discourse about it is that it's some kind of AI revolution that will change the nature of work, and what it actually does is provide better modeling for predicting public transit ridership.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon Maybe:

I'm a machine learning algorithm!

What society thinks I am: magic wand erasing pile of work

What science fiction writers think I am: picture of Terminator

What rationalists think I am: God

What tech companies think I am: $$$

What people who know me know I can do when used correctly: optimizations such as OP's transit example

What I actually do 99% of the time: take your pick of currently popular funny LLM garbage output

abdalian, to linguistics
@abdalian@lingo.lol avatar

Is there a term for an interlocutor saying the last word of the previous speaker’s sentence in unison with them? Not just occasionally or when the previous speaker is having trouble recalling a word, but nearly every sentence, possibly even when that sentence is not the end of a turn? I’m looking for articles or research about this out of personal curiosity.

@linguistics

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@abdalian @linguistics Would this not just be a subcategory of backchanneling?

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

I can't believe I'm saying it, but, Renew Europe is based. https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/05/21/renew-europe-will-vote-to-expel-dutch-vvd-party-on-june-10-group-leader-says

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon Meanwhile, in Finland, Anna-Maja Henriksson says she won't work with the far right at the EU level while her (Renew member) party is in coalition with the Perussuomalaiset.

I suppose there's a reason why RKP is polling below the Christian Democrats nowadays.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

"So how do you feel about George Bush Jr. now, 15 years later?"

"Well, I've started writing dubya as dubia..."

(@futurebird)

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

Today, the only audio (albeit digital) conversation I had with real life human beings was in Klingon.

I'm not sure if this is an accomplishment or just means I need to get out more.

luckytran, to random
@luckytran@med-mastodon.com avatar

"So this bill will protect the Ku Klux Klan to wear masks in public, but someone who's immunocompromised like myself cannot wear a mask?"
— North Carolina Senator Sydney Batch, who is a cancer survivor

Unbelievable.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@luckytran This is awful, but it also sounds like an invitation for malicious compliance. Can there be a secret society of covid avoiders?

kechpaja, to climate
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

There was (and possibly still is?) an orange juice shortage in Finland. Has there been an orange juice shortage anywhere else?

I'm not sure I've seen any discussion of this in English.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

A bill has been introduced in the Finnish parliament to formally ban both the swastika and the hammer and sickle: https://yle.fi/a/74-20046194

It’s still in committee, so we’ll see what form it eventually takes when (and if) it gets voted on.

cidney, to random
@cidney@social.city-of-glass.net avatar

Do I know any software developers who aren't in games who like and feel good about what they're doing?

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@cidney At the moment, what I'm doing is taking time off to deal with burnout, so technically yes?

In the bigger picture, I like the company a lot, but the projects usually require a tradeoff on one of those things, and I have a growing suspicion that statistical code generation will make software development intolerable for me.

skinnylatte, to 11ty
@skinnylatte@hachyderm.io avatar

Just posted: my 'now' page, which I have changed into 'just now' https://popagandhi.com/now/2024-04-17/

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@skinnylatte The date is showing up as an error: "Published on Invalid DateTime".

I'm ten hours ahead of you, in case you end up suspecting a time zone issue.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

Challenging someone to a cook-off to settle a score, aka trial by nom-bat.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@professorkiosk Wait, goth or punk?

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

Is anyone up for running a tech conference with fake AI-generated men on the promotional material, but an all-female cast of actual speakers?

kechpaja, to linguistics
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

I'm at the in Prague, for the first time since right before the pandemic (2019).

One highlight so far: "If you think Indonesian and Malay are easy, you haven't met the rest of the family" - Brian Loo, in his talk on comparative phonology and grammar of Austronesian languages. This also holds if your primary exposure to Austronesian languages was Polynesian (Hawai'ian, Māori, etc).

Unfortunately, I seem to be the only person trying to wear a mask in indoor spaces, even at an event with over 800 people. I haven't gotten any pushback on this, but the combination of mask + queer hair + bad at pretending to be neurotypical does occasionally draw looks.

Overall, the feel of the event is definitely different from when it was 200-some people jammed into a youth hostel in Berlin, but similar to the Bratislava years (I never got to the Polish instances).

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

If a car is parked on the sidewalk, it should be towed. Full stop. Yes, even if it's street cleaning day.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

Brb, designing an alien race who genuinely do not use pronouns, just to own the transphobes.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

LRT: Apparently people are starting to refer to non-electric bicycles as "acoustic bikes".

I know why but it's still fascinating.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

Alright, that's the second time I've been profiled as a potential thief for wearing a (clearly medical) mask in a store. FFS.

kechpaja, to random
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

Proposal: all dogs — or at very least, all small dogs — should adopt cat as a universal auxlang for communicating with humans.

This entails, among other things:

() Slow blinking is used to indicate trust, like it should be
() Barking is kept to an absolute minimum
() Untrusted strangers are met with skepticism or fear, rather than aggression

It would be so much easier if all the animals you ran into walking around the city and on trails could communicate in a language that was intuitive and easy to understand. Maybe once dogs are fluent, we can then work on corvids and pheasants.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • khanakhh
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • ethstaker
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • rosin
  • slotface
  • osvaldo12
  • everett
  • ngwrru68w68
  • JUstTest
  • Durango
  • cubers
  • tester
  • GTA5RPClips
  • modclub
  • mdbf
  • cisconetworking
  • tacticalgear
  • Leos
  • normalnudes
  • anitta
  • provamag3
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •