Some middle-aged guy on the Internet. Seen a lot of it, occasionally regurgitating it, trying to be amusing and informative.

Lurked Digg until v4. Commented on Reddit (same username) until it went full Musk.

Was on kbin.social (dying/dead) and kbin.run (mysteriously vanished). Now here on fedia.io.

Really hoping he hasn’t brought the jinx with him.

Other Adjectives: Neurodivergent; Nerd; Broken; British; Ally; Leftish

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  • 26 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 13th, 2024

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  • This actually got me to check something.

    I used to spend a lot of time in a location where all of the satellite dishes seemed to point towards a major non-satellite broadcast mast. People in the area were, and probably still are, somewhat suspicious, because that’s where their regular roof aerials also point.

    However, that mast happens to be largely south, or, you might say equator-wards of there. In the same direction as a ring of satellites orbiting above the equator, perhaps.

    So I’ve just been on street view to check for satellite dishes roughly an equal distance south of the mast. They also point south. Regular TV aerials point the other way, to the regular broadcast tower.

    Suspicion debunked!



  • Are you sure? They’re both unvoiced th, which is what thorn is for if you intend to distinguish.

    I can’t tell whether Old English used eth for those words early on - though the unvoiced quality in modern English makes that seem unlikely. Did we also devoice them? Eth died out fairly quickly in favour of thorn in all cases, voiced or not. Possibly because its name is “eþ” not “eð”. It doesn’t even use itself. (Though, ironically, ‘w’ also doesn’t and it replaced ƿynn, which does.)

    There was another commenter - actually might have been the same guy, I’m not all that sure - who did use eth for voiced instances, to similar controversial effect in comment sections.


  • We have a diacritic in English text already. Rather than above or below, it goes to the right of the letter it modifies and looks an awful lot like a letter h.

    And if you don’t quite buy that, remember that a lot of diacritics started life as letters that were eventually moved above a preceding letter and then simplified. The tilde on ñ was an n itself; the ring on å was another a; and in at least some cases the umlaut was an e.

    Modifying-h may only be stuck where it is because technology did away with the need for economical scribes before they had a chance to start messing with it.


  • Curious as to what Commodore that was. For the C64, a full schematic came with the Programmer’s Reference Guide (PRG) which was a separate publication to the User Manual that shipped with the computer. There were bits and pieces about the internals in the manual, a lot of similar sections and tables, and perhaps a simplified diagram of how things were arranged logically, but not the full fold-out schematic.

    That said, maybe I got a pared-down budget manual along with my C64C in the early '90s. When I found a pristine PRG in a bookshop, it was much expanded and had that schematic… which I learned didn’t quite match the C64C once I’d plucked up the courage to open the case.

    I doubt anything this new Commodore are planning to release will come with anything quite so detailed, and even if they did, the new C64 seems to be an FPGA (computer on a chip) housed in a keyboard that looks like the original. The diagram wouldn’t be much more than a single box with a lot of wires coming out of it to the various ports.








  • Beard gives me a chin, which is otherwise weak. (This is apparently a common problem in modern humans. Too much utensil use and not enough flesh tearing begets a reduced jaw.)

    Even so, I take it off occasionally because, even when washed well, it will begin to literally irritate me.

    It’s my own hair. It’s not supposed to do that. And yet…

    aaand now I’m itchy.


  • Once I’ve been through the recommended deep breathing exercises, I lay still for as long as possible, and then, if I’ve not fallen asleep, I get up, turn on the computer and do something mindless in Minecraft until I’m tired. I might watch videos online. I have Redshift installed which reddens the screen at night, so I don’t get too much blue light.

    It usually takes an hour or three and then I’m ready to try sleeping again.

    Or at least, that was the case until I got on new medication which helps with falling and staying asleep. Now, if I do wake up with mind spinning, it’s usually three or four hours before I get up anyway, so I do all the above but don’t go back to bed at the end of it. I just have something for breakfast and then carry on a normal day.

    I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve felt the need for a depression nap since I’ve been on them. Doesn’t mean my depression is cured, but I’m almost never tired enough during the day to want to take one.





  • Deaf people will almost unavoidably copy the mouth shapes they’ve seen when other people have spoken. This means that how they sound will be at least somewhat informed by any hearing people they observe as well as indirectly through other deaf people who have also learned from hearing folks.

    So yes, aspects of voice accent do carry over to deaf people.

    There’s also the concept of “accent” within sign language too. How people move between signs, carry themselves and act when expressing an emotion, which is usually exaggerated for the sake of clear communication, can vary from community to community, even if the base sign language is the same.