kechpaja

kechpaja, 2 days ago to random

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

I know why but it's still fascinating.

#LanguageInTheWild

kechpaja, 6 days ago to linguistics

I'm at the #PolyglotGathering 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).

#polyglot #language

kechpaja, 27 days ago to random

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.

kechpaja, 1 month ago to random

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

kechpaja, 1 month ago to random

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, 1 month ago to linguistics

What's the equivalent of a mad scientist, but for lingustics?

Asking for a friend.

#linguistics

kechpaja, 1 month ago to random

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.

kechpaja, 2 months ago to random

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

kechpaja, 3 months ago to random

Alexander Stubb will be the next President of Finland.

This is not the outcome I had hoped for, but given the relatively small margin, I can at least take comfort in knowing that almost half of the country supported Pekka Haavisto, and will hopefully continue to vote those values in the future.

I do, however, wish I didn't have to ask myself whether the outcome would have been different if fewer people were homophobic — a recent poll found that around 40% of Finns felt that Haavisto's sexual orientation disqualified him from serving as president. But that's the world we live in, and the best we can do is try and change it.

kechpaja, 3 months ago to random

@professorkiosk Wait, goth or punk?

kechpaja, 3 months ago to random

My neighbors have acquired a clock that bongs. Every hour, and every half hour. All through the night.

Yes, this may be a part of why I've been having trouble sleeping.

kechpaja, 4 months ago to random

Happy EST New Year!

kechpaja, 5 months ago to random

Nazi bar? I'd rather just bar nazis.

kechpaja, 5 months ago to random

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, 5 months ago to random

Apparently there's a Finnish company that's still exporting truck parts to Russia: https://yle.fi/a/74-20062182

The crucial quote, which made the headline in the Finnish version but not the English: "We have agreed not to politicise this war thing in any way."

FFS. Sometimes you just have to laugh, or else you'll be overwhelmed with despair.

kechpaja, 6 months ago to climate

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.

#ClimateChange

kechpaja, 6 months ago to random

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

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

(@futurebird)

kechpaja, 6 months ago to random

"Have you joined Bluesky?"

"Dude, I live in Finland, and it's fall going into winter. The sky hasn't been blue in weeks, and it's not going to be blue again for longer than I care to think about right now. If there's ever a Greysky, I might consider it, but for now I think I'll just stick with Mastodon."

kechpaja, 7 months ago to random

Is it just me, or is LinkedIn just awful these days? Not even the content, but the site itself — slow and unresponsive, combined with a general sense of brittleness and glitchiness.

kechpaja, 7 months ago to climate

I guess what scares me most about #ClimateChange is how enthusiastic some people are about accepting the end of the world, rather than trying to do something about it.

How did we overcome this defeatism in past crises? Did we, or were there just enough people willing to do something to ensure that something got done?

kechpaja, 7 months ago to random

Tech bloggers: please put dates on all of your posts. Tech knowledge often goes out of date very quickly, as we all know. I need to know whether I'm reading something from this year or ten years ago before I invest a lot of time in the post.

kechpaja, 8 months ago to random

Apparently Poland has decided to stop arming Ukraine: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66873495

kechpaja, 8 months ago to random

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

kechpaja, 8 months ago to random

Periodic friendly reminder to write some documentation for your software project.

kechpaja, 9 months ago to random

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.