@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.

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.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

My headcanon for Over the Hills and Far Away is that the protag's friend knew he was cheating on him with his wife and that's why he framed him for robbery; the protag's choice not to reveal the affair as an alibi out of a misplaced sense of love was for nothing.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon Which piece of media are you referring to here? Searches turn up a gazillion different things, and my first association with that line is a children's rhyme about ducks.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Spanish: hormigas
Malay: semut
Arabic: "alnuml" النمل
Chinese: "Mǎyǐ" 蚂蚁
Hawaiian: ʻanane
Latin: formicae
Yiddish: "murashkes" מוראַשקעס
Finnish: muurahaiset
Igbo: ndanda
French: fourmis
Czech: mravenci
Maltese: nemel
Danish: myrer
Quechua: ankakuna
Dutch: mieren
Filipino: langgam
Haitian: foumi
Swahili: mchwa
Korean: "gaemi" 개미
German: Ameisen
Samoan: loi
Greek: "myrmínkia" μυρμήγκια
Yoruba: kokoro
Maori: popokorua
Irish: seangáin
Vietnamese: kiến
Italian: formiche
Xhosa: Iimbovane

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird

Nitpick: German Ameisen is always spelled with a capital letter.

Also in Welsh it's morgrug (at least if Wiktionary is to be trusted), with the singulative form morgrugyn.

xgranade, to random
@xgranade@wandering.shop avatar

It's funny, the whole superhero trope where heroes are obligated to use their powers for the good of humanity rather than live their lives for themselves.

Why don't we hold ordinary people to that standard? We do have some limited power in the world around us --- not superpowers, but the ordinary day-to-day power that comes from a place of empathy, care, and advocacy.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@xgranade I mean, that's basically the premise of the Utopian Hive from Terra Ignota (that, plus some more stuff that's a spoiler).

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

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

NickEast, to puns
@NickEast@geekdom.social avatar

Fun with edu-fuckin-cation! Am I doing it right? I'm looking at you linguists... 😂

@linguisticsmemes @linguistics @humour


kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@NickEast @linguisticsmemes @linguistics @humour My first linguistics professor loved using that example to get students in her intro class interested.

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

If Emmanuel Macron holds a rally at a synagogue or other Jewish site, does that mean he's converting a Jewish space into a temple of Jupiter?

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon I feel like I should get this, but I don't.

beeware, to random
@beeware@fosstodon.org avatar

Is the keyboard you use on a daily basis not a US keyboard? Looking for a way to contribute to BeeWare? We might be able to use your help. We're trying to work out how to best handle non-US keyboard mappings for key shortcuts: https://github.com/beeware/toga/issues/2428

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@beeware My recommendation is that you check out how key bindings work in i3wm. They've let you choose between binding keysyms and keycodes (i.e. typed characters versus physical keys on the keyboard) for as long as I've used i3, and the existence of keycodes is the only reason I can use i3 at all.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

Someone on tumblr posted this survey to get the math people all riled up and I think it's working.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdMDLd0lCFZtwIDPU9VDRxQ0FCVAlpCML3j-Cfbfsf2S0S1hg/viewform

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird There may need to be a version of this for linguists at some point.

recursive, (edited ) to random
@recursive@hachyderm.io avatar

Technical words that sound worse to people outside of that particular field:

degenerate (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Degeneracy#Science,_mathematics,_and_medicine)
regime (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regime_shift)

I'm trying to think of others. Please no outright slurs, we can let those die.

(Edit: folks on Discord mentioned:
"reaping zombie children" (Unix process management)
"performed an illegal operation" (computers in general)
"exploit" (compare resource usage vs. computer security)
)

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@recursive It's not what you asked for, but now I'm thinking of the story of how nimrod came to be an insult.

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

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.

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

In addition to the bazillionty things I said I would do this week, I need to get my astrobiology students to pick their final project topics: they have to evaluate a work of scifi on the plausibility of its aliens using what they learned from my astrobiology course.

I've asked here before, but I'll ask again: what are some scifi works that have really great aliens and/or alien worlds?

My list so far:

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@sundogplanets Octavia Butler's Lilith's Brood should also be on this list, as should George R. R. Martin's Nightflyers (the story at least — I know nothing about the Netflix filmification).

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

I remember going to the dentist as a kid and the dated old music from the 70s they always played.

Songs like "Take it Easy"

But, here is the mystery. When I go to the dentist now it's the same music. Doesn't matter what dentist I see or what city. The music is still from the 70s.

Shouldn't it be music from the 00s by now?

Why are all Dentist offices frozen in time??

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird Teeth have that effect. When you get enough of them in the same place at once, time begins to slow. Why do you think bluetooth headphones sometimes have lag?

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@franktaber @futurebird Isn't that about when Capitalism became the official religion of the United States? Those songs are part of the official Capitalist Christmas liturgy.

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

@professorkiosk Wait, goth or punk?

futurebird, (edited ) to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

What's is the more hopeless task?

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird Is there an equivalent to "open a can of tuna and go where you want the cats to gather" for ants?

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

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.

liztai, (edited ) to food
@liztai@hachyderm.io avatar

Wait. I just found out that Americans don't put butter on their sandwiches???

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@liztai What kind of sandwich? A grilled cheese would definitely include butter, but a pb&j or ham and cheese (made at home) would not. A generic deli sandwich would depend on the deli.

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

Antiracists in the American South have fought hard for people outside the South to recognize that not only do they exist, but they fight, and sometimes win, and they should not dismiss the South as a uniformly racist place that cannot be helped. And it's something I think of a lot internationally for racist countries and groups of countries. Israel is full of racism, but also anti-racist activists. France, same thing. Germany, same thing. Singapore, the most racist of this bunch, same thing.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon nods in Finnish

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

There is a rumor running around about Nikki Haley not being eligible to run for president. She was born in NC, it's not that complex. Some commenters have suggested this is a misinformation campaign that is playing on the naiveté of the "maga" base? Maybe a little.

I think it's something else. It's another dog whistle. Do you remember when there were people suggesting that only people with parents born in the US should be "natural born citizens?"

This is that. The idea is very nativist.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@robotistry @futurebird

> You're not eligible to be President, but you are a citizen from birth.

A cursory search indicates that this has never truly been tested, but that it probably wouldn't actually render you ineligible. "Natural-born" is not well defined.

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

The conflict isn't expanding. It's fine. It's not turning into a world war. It's fine. Nothing is wrong. We just needed to fix something off to the side. And it probably won't work. Stop worrying so much.

There is some soft consensus among the working ordinary people that we do not like war or want a world wide one especially but somehow the consensus cannot create any policy or action.

I don't have the answer but I consider it an ugly paradox.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@futurebird To have a world without war, you need a stable world government capable of policing those factions that do want war. That is a goal worth working towards, but until such a thing exists, your choices when attacked are fight and surrender — and surrendering just invites more aggression in the future.

jon, to random
@jon@gruene.social avatar

Do I have anyone in my network here who does (quasi-)academic research into how to get passengers to change their behaviour, and choose trains/bikes over planes/cars?

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@jon @Alon How big of a role do those factors actually play, compared to the quality of the relevant infrastructure?

thomasfuchs, to random
@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io avatar

"We should not allow cultural* beliefs to have any place in space exploration but private companies** should be allowed to do whatever they want without restriction" is quite a take

*a group of people
**a group of people

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@thomasfuchs Who is saying that exactly?

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

Happy EST New Year!

Alon, to random
@Alon@mastodon.social avatar

International left and pro-Palestinian anti-Semitism is a violent annoyance, but if it had any risk of getting in power, the ADL would find ways to brown-nose it. Until Jonathan Greenblatt goes into a partnership with Joseph Massad, the latter is only a limited threat.

kechpaja,
@kechpaja@social.kechpaja.com avatar

@Alon

> would find ways to brown-nose it

Would find ways to suck up to it, or would find ways to discredit it? I'm used to "brownnose" only being used for the former.

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