FishFace
@FishFace@piefed.social
- Comment on ESL homework 1 day ago:
Do you find it weird that Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet and King Lear are all written in English? We’ve been doing this for centuries.
Having a snippet of native language is a more modern invention as far as I know (because if you can’t rely on the audience understanding the language, you need to subtitle the snippet), but it’s just a way of communicating to the audience in what language the conversation is taking place by showing, rather than telling.
- Comment on BIG (like Americans) IF TRUE 1 day ago:
Yellow cheddar probably also has annatto colouring. Cheese can be naturally orange in the summer, but for a long time it has been more frequently obtained by colouring.
- Comment on BIG (like Americans) IF TRUE 1 day ago:
Some cheese varieties (cheddar, red Leicester) are traditionally coloured (with annatto)
- Comment on If you "talk to yourself", you're deemed a "crazy person", but if you turn it to a song, then you're an aspiring musician. 2 days ago:
That’s what I do inside my head..
- Comment on Weight 2 days ago:
Rip
- Comment on Weight 2 days ago:
What happened?
- Comment on ‘Seasons have become confused’: the people struggling in UK’s relentless rain 2 days ago:
I’m not sure rain in winter is a confused season. The reason we’re having is exceptional in any season.
- Comment on I dont think my opinion matters 3 days ago:
Not a shitpost
- Comment on Britain’s High Court says government acted illegally in outlawing protest group Palestine Action 4 days ago:
Well no, there are many situations where you will not be punished if you do something illegal (even if caught). If you do something illegal in the course of your job, it is quite likely that it is your employer who is taken to court, not you personally. If you don’t pay the correct amount of tax, you won’t be punished if it was found to have been an honest mistake. If caught speeding but not by much, and you aren’t a dick to the police, you may be let off with a warning.
There is also a relevant pedantic distinction between “unlawful” and “illegal”. The latter means in breach of the law. The former means otherwise than in accordance than the law. What’s the difference? If the law says “don’t drive over 30mph when the number 30 appears in the red circle” and you drive at 40, you broke the law and did something illegal. If the law says, “the local authority shall consider the conditions of the road when applying speed limits” and the local authority instead assigns speed limits at random, they didn’t do something specifically forbidden, but they didn’t do what they’re supposed to. That’s unlawful, and is treated differently.
Ultimately though the difference comes down to a presumption of good faith and the idea that if politicians or civil servants were prosecuted every time they got something wrong, we’d run out pretty quickly.
- Comment on Americans rarely refer to the US as America 5 days ago:
All languages convey information at roughly similar rates. Those with less information per syllable tend to say more syllables per minute. It’s a fascinating area of linguistics!
All natural languages have ambiguities where the meaning of a word depends on context due to changes over time.
- Comment on 58 UK public libraries have parenting books with advice to encourage children to detransition 6 days ago:
The book sounds harmful, but is it the job of libraries to pick books according to such a criterion? That question was going to be rhetorical, but now I think about it, I genuinely have no idea if public libraries have some charter or other that would restrict what kind of books they hold.
I would be more concerned about books on woo-woo health stuff like homeopathy - I’m sure there are books in libraries that have the effect of discouraging people (including parents) from using alternative medicine instead of medicine.
BTW, 58 libraries is about 2% of the total libraries in the UK.
- Comment on We really need to bring back the 70s conversation pits 1 week ago:
If they don’t like the paint, they can repaint. If they don’t like the conversation pit, they can remodel… which is gonna be more expensive but I have to imagine if you’re buying a house with a conversation pit you’re probably pretty well off already.
- Comment on Onii-Chan is watching you 😩 1 week ago:
Why is loaning “big brother” better than any of these options?
At this point, “big brother” has entered the lexicon, but originally it was surely supposed to convey the idea of someone you were close to but looked up to, and who would protect you. That irony is kind of lost if you don’t translate it.
- Comment on Women's razor ads use bare legs but cleaning products don't use clean floors. 1 week ago:
It’s the plug one
- Comment on congrats to Egypt 1 week ago:
Whoosh.
Unfortunately whooshes are inevitable when people post serious stuff in shitposting
- Comment on Women's razor ads use bare legs but cleaning products don't use clean floors. 1 week ago:
Yes, I’d after with that
- Comment on France is next 1 week ago:
It’s free real estate baby
- Comment on Man posts his incorrect opinion online 1 week ago:
My parents keep their shoes on, I take mine off.
- Comment on Women's razor ads use bare legs but cleaning products don't use clean floors. 1 week ago:
I don’t think I’m using technical terminology, so I’m just explaining how I see two different concepts.
The important difference I’m getting it is that taboo things can have a “proper place” - pooping in the toilet is fine, doing it in the woods is not. You can expect stigma if you violate the taboo by pooping on the woods, but doing do in the right place is fine!
- Comment on Your teenager AND your husband 1 week ago:
Hmm I like the cut of your gib
- Comment on Women's razor ads use bare legs but cleaning products don't use clean floors. 1 week ago:
Dong is also taboo, so it’s not “fine”, but also not disgusting, same with pussy.
Like, there’s a reason why Western societies don’t approve of people just wandering the streets naked. It’s not because anyone thinks there’s something inherently wrong with being naked - pretty much everyone is naked at some point after all. Just that there are certain situations where it’s not considered appropriate.
- Comment on Women's razor ads use bare legs but cleaning products don't use clean floors. 1 week ago:
Body hair is stigmatised, but bodies in general are not; bodily functions are taboo which is not the same thing.
In modern Western society people don’t really think that women are “unclean” for having their period, no more than they think anyone is a bad person for pooping. (Notably this has not been true in all times and cultures). But talking about periods and shitting is nevertheless taboo and not considered polite. I think it’s an important distinction to realise, because you can try to push back against stigma, but pushing back against taboo is harder (and often pointless).
Speaking for myself I no more want to see actual uterine lining in an advert than I want to see an actual turd - they’re both fairly gross. Advertisers generally want to associate their products with positive feelings, not disgust.
- Comment on Average house price tops £300,000 for first time, says Halifax 1 week ago:
Government can disincentivise this or just expropriate banked land.
Last I read though, land banking isn’t as big of a problem as it’s made out to be, and is mostly just builders having a pipeline of projects, and buying the land for projects when it’s cheapest rather than the day before the spades are ready.
A land value tax should sort it out though.
- Comment on Your teenager AND your husband 1 week ago:
Croutons are solid
- Comment on Your teenager AND your husband 1 week ago:
That only happens if you reverse your arbitrary categorisations and let them dictate your feelings about things, instead of realising that categorisations are a) arbitrary and b) can be refined.
Cereal has to, at least, involve a cereal like rice or oats or whatever as the main ingredient.
- Comment on Your teenager AND your husband 1 week ago:
Who is out there saying soup had to be vegetarian, or that croutons make soup not soup? Half of the chart is a waste of potential controversy
- Comment on Your teenager AND your husband 1 week ago:
So, like pancakes? Or jam on toast?
- Comment on Alton Towers bans people with anxiety from using disability pass 1 week ago:
I also want to stop the boats and the exploitative gangs doing this, but any approach that isn’t opening up safe and legal routes for applications to be made is just advocating for everyone else to bear the burden of global instability the UK played a disproportionate role in creating.
Safe, legal routes are key, but are also a way to do the opposite of having “everyone else […] bear the burden”, because in a world where refugees are not seen as a global problem to be handled multilaterally to ensure the burden is shared, making it easier to claim asylum means you’ll receive a higher share.
This can end up with people talking at cross-purposes because in any disagreement there can be a reluctance to address the numbers: what level of immigration is the right one? We need to balance
- bringing young people into the country to offset our ageing native born population
- our obligations to refugees
- the societal problems that come from rapid change in the balance of cultures. To be explicit, I’m not talking about “white replacement” here, I’m talking about what happens to a society - let’s take a coastal Spanish town for a reverse example - and dump a bunch of immigrants - English retirees there - at a high rate. The local population is liable, reasonably in my view, to be annoyed if a load of people arrive and don’t integrate well.
So what rate will balance those three things? I dunno, but looking at how migration has changed over the last few decades, it’s not surprising that we are seeing a lot more annoyance under the third item.
the UK played a disproportionate role in creating.
I don’t think this kind of thinking is very productive though. Maybe the UK as a country does bear some responsibility, but whether it is disproportionate is hard-to-impossible to quantify. Most small boat arrivals over the past few years are from Iran. Should UK citizens now be considered responsible for the actions of our government over 70 years ago? For a counter-coup that could never have been foreseen? Or should radical repressive Islamists bear more of that responsibility?
The next largest contingent is Afghanistan - but the UK went into Afghanistan with as part of a large multi-national coalition, so just what proportion of the responsibility is ours?
The next largest is Iraq - where we certainly bear a higher portion of the blame.
Then comes Albania - I don’t know anything we’ve done to fuck them up. (Arrivals from Albania are now very low)
Next comes Syria - again I don’t believe Britain has any responsibility for the situation there.
But if we are to incorporate this thinking into policy, it can’t come as some kind of thought-terminator, “we did bad things in the world, so we have to be punished, so we must take whatever.” We need to have at least a rough idea of which countries we have adversely affected, how significantly, and therefore roughly how many people that means we ought to take as some kind of reparation.
Otherwise, it’s a non-starter; it wouldn’t provide any practical guidance, so it would be little more than virtue signalling.
- Comment on There should be a 'Political Showerthoughts': so there's a place for such thoughts 1 week ago:
Because political “shower thoughts” aren’t shower thoughts at all, they’re soapboxing.
- Comment on Bunch of lads 1 week ago:
Not on its own. Thankfully we can read some of them now and see some of the incriminating stuff.