Random Thoughts

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We don’t really have a place where we can post things that don’t fit any other topics, but aren’t noteworthy enough to make a new topic about.

What you can post here:

  • Shower thoughts (things that randomly pop into your mind that you wouldn’t normally think about)
  • Memes
  • Random things that happened to you
  • Basically, whatever you feel like saying that isn’t covered by other topics

There are three rules:

  1. Limited Replies
    There can be no more than three replies to anyone else’s post. This includes replies to replies. For example, Post 2 replies to Post 1, Post 3 replies to post 2, and then Post 4 replies to Post 3. Both 2, 3, and 4 all count for the limit for Post 1, so neither it nor 2, 3, or 4 can be replied to anymore. If you reach the limit and there are still other things you want to discuss, make a new topic, continue it in private messages, or let it go. (This does not include the original post or replying to the topic in general.)

  2. No Harmful Media
    Due to the continuing harm caused by the creators of the Harry Potter franchise and the impact this is having on real people’s mental health, this topic is banned for the foreseeable future. This extends to other works put out by Rowling. If any similar things happen with other creators, like Stephen King deciding to actively destroy people’s lives, then discussion or memes of that creator’s works will also be banned. Attempting to talk about the franchise without saying actual names, e.g. “a certain boy wizard” or “a game I’ve been playing with wizards and magic”, is not acceptable. This continues until the creator in question dies, apologizes and stops harming people, or gives up all rights to the entire franchise (as with Notch and Minecraft). This topic is meant to be fun; harming people is not fun.

  3. All other forum rules apply.

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I had an interesting experience with online dictionaries yesterday.

We were wondering what the correct definition of “dungeon” was. Did it just refer to a castle’s basement? Someone seemed to think that it was a jail within a castle. Someone else thought it used to mean a specific building within the castle walls.

So we googled it. The traditional dictionaries (Cambridge, Merriam-Webster) said that the last two definitions were correct. There was something missing, though: neither dictionary mentioned dungeons in the context of fantasy role playing games (the first D in D&D, for example) or in video games (like WoW). Vocabulary.com refers to game dungeons in a little explanatory preamble, but doesn’t actually give them a specific definition.

Okay, maybe those dictionaries were just not very good. Oxford’s definition includes, “ *(in fantasy role-playing games) a labyrinthine subterranean setting.” I would remove the word “subterranean”, though, or perhaps say “often subterranean”.

Who else? Collins, nope. Dictionary.com? Nope, though several of their autogenerated web examples refer to game dungeons. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English? Ditto. And so on, through a number of other online dictionaries.

(I skipped Urban Dictionary, as it does not even pretend to be authoritative. It’s a source of last resort, I only use it when I am drawing a complete blank with better sources.)

Wiktionary.org (a Wikipedia offshoot), not only has two distinct definitions for tabletop and video game dungeons (both of which have been around for over 20 years), but has another, even older, meaning which all the other dictionaries missed: the BDSM dungeon.

So, a win for the accuracy and completeness of the Wikimedia open-source model!

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If cucumbers, olives, and tomatoes are put together in a bowl, it is technically a fruit salad.

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I’m thinking King Charles is just thrilled the “bad boy” in his family was his “spare” and not his “heir” or else he would have faced the same problem his great-grandfather (George V), his triple great-grandmother (Queen Victoria) and his four times great uncle (George III) faced a “bad boy” as their heir.

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Why are buildings called buildings, when they should be called builts?

And why is it called Roadworks, when it should be called Road Doesn’t Work?

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it kind of creepy an actor liked a cuple of my (historical) comments I posted on Facebook about Monday’s eposide of a show which he happens to have the same last name of.

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It’s quite possible that it was the doing of a well-meaning minion. Celebrities usually have a person to manage their social media.

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CJR’s comment about Mandatory Fun in the Let’s get silly thread reminded me how my workplace made a declaration that its employees will commit a certain (large) number of hours of volunteer work in total. Now they’re (for now) requesting all employees to do volunteer work and add their hours.
It looks like someone missed a crucial point of volunteering :roll_eyes: .

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Just realized at some point I figured out how to sing my abcs faster backwards than forwards. Have no idea when, why, or how. But I can do it now

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Text: About this time last year I made a fake solomon seal, infiltrated some of the edgy appropriative "qabala" groups, posted this and told people it helps them see through lies. It says tomato soup. Outside letters say garlic bread. Alchemical symbols mean salt, water, potassium, boil and mix thoroughly. The Latin is just the word for tomato. It went mini-viral. Image underneath is a six-pointed star inside a circle. In the center is Hebrew letters meaning tomato soup. Six letters are in the gaps between the star arms and the inner lines, which translates to garlic bread. Above the star are the alchemical symbols for salt, a circle with a line through it, and water, a downward-facing triangle. Within the star is a smaller circle with the symbol for potassium, a rectangular box with a cross underneath. A circle to the left has three horizontal lines, the two on top being half the length of the final, and a diagonal line through all three, which is the alchemical symbol for boiling. On the right is a circle with an H-like shape, with loops at the upper points and a bridge between, which is the alchemical symbol for mixing thoroughly. On the bottom of the circle is the scientific name for tomato, which is solanium lycopersicum.
Text: About this time last year I made a fake solomon seal, infiltrated some of the edgy appropriative "qabala" groups, posted this and told people it helps them see through lies. It says tomato soup. Outside letters say garlic bread. Alchemical symbols mean salt, water, potassium, boil and mix thoroughly. The Latin is just the word for tomato. It went mini-viral. Image underneath is a six-pointed star inside a circle. In the center is Hebrew letters meaning tomato soup. Six letters are in the gaps between the star arms and the inner lines, which translates to garlic bread. Above the star are the alchemical symbols for salt, a circle with a line through it, and water, a downward-facing triangle. Within the star is a smaller circle with the symbol for potassium, a rectangular box with a cross underneath. A circle to the left has three horizontal lines, the two on top being half the length of the final, and a diagonal line through all three, which is the alchemical symbol for boiling. On the right is a circle with an H-like shape, with loops at the upper points and a bridge between, which is the alchemical symbol for mixing thoroughly. On the bottom of the circle is the scientific name for tomato, which is solanium lycopersicum.817×1344 88.2 KB

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This came up in my Facebook timeline and I thought I’d share it here…

FB_IMG_1677427981708
FB_IMG_16774279817081152×1440 69.3 KB

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If Sam Beckett died during a leap, what would happen to the leapee?

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Random thought I just had. Could it be possible that part-time workers here in the Canada/U.S. are like the prison slaves in Les Miserables? Just without you know the beatings and the sentencing.

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If the conspiracy theorists were right and there actually is a conspiracy running the world/causing certain events/whatever, wouldn’t the first act of the conspiracy be to infiltrate conspiracy theorists and blame all their acts on someone else? Thus making the theorists spread lies among the people who are seeking the truth?

So whether there is a conspiracy or not, we can be sure that what conspiracy theorists are saying is a lie.

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I mentioned my conlang in another thread, but thought this might be the better place to post its “writing system.”

Old Saskeatian
Old Saskeatian1375×1375 177 KB

Technically four separate conlangs are involved in this writing system, but one is significantly more developed than the others. A second is basically the language the more developed one is an offshoot of–think Scots/Broad Scots vs Modern English–and while they are mutually intelligible, they are functionally different languages. The more developed language utilizes a LOT of loanwords from long-dead languages, which considering this conlang is for a science fiction story set 25 million years into the future, you can choose to read that as “loanwords from modern human languages.”

Its worth noting that the actual vowels/syllables shown here correspond more to a theoretic Romanization than actual pronunciation; for instance, syllable V may be pronounced closer to our V, but consonant V would be pronounced somewhere between a V and a B. Likewise, the consonant C would generally be pronounced somewhere between a soft-C and /sh/.

If anyone wants to hazard a guess on the main inspiration behind the math/numbers portion, feel free to do so!

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The number system looks a lot like Mayan numerals, but upside down. It also seems like there’s inspiration taken from the Roman numeral system, with the separate symbols for 50, 100, 500, etc.

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Hit the nail on the head!

A few other points on how the primary conlang works:

  • Plurals utilize reduplication. the first syllable is generally skipped when duplicated when it starts with a vowel sound, ie Ovuvum tu veraichiyt, or “two fried eggs.” Reduplication can also utilize the language’s partitive articles to alter the meaning, ie Ovuvumcae veraichiyt or “a few fried eggs.” It can also be used on verbs for emphasis: Ovuvum gaeragaera kukuchiyt or “very undercooked fried eggs.”

  • Nouns are gendered like in many real languages but the genders are limited to feminine and neuter. This has far more to do with how the species organizes its family units than any actual sexism. This is generally not reflected with possessives, which typically involve adding either 'ikiyt (loosely, the thing that belongs to me), 'ikit (the thing that belongs to her/him/it) and 'ike (the thing that belongs to you) to the end of the word. The main language also lacks indefinite articles.

  • a number of words naturally don’t have a clear translation. This isn’t just because the words may represent something that we would never encounter, but also because of cultural differences; ie taevati (weak) and voloriy (cruel), which have completely different connotations when used for a sibling (younger sibling/my responsibility and older sibling/my guardian respectively) thanks to, again, how family units operate (the parent becomes rather hands off with their second offspring once both they and the first reach certain respective ages; at this point the older sibling does most of the raising).

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When i think of titles I only think of British peerage. I can’t wrap my head around other titles like “Doctor” or “Professor” or Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms.

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Pretzals and hearts are the same shape.
:pretzel:
:orange_heart:

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to me they don’t look lthe same at all. To me pretzel looks like someone is praying or something.

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