Obsidian Wings

Come for the dumpster fire, stay for the mutual recriminations

by liberal japonicus

How about that Rishi? Or should I say Rishi!? There is too much stuff to list but off the top of my head and starting at the useful mark of that press conference, there is

• Rishi in the rain (with a New Labor soundtrack
• leaked email blaming MPs for poor campaigning
• Greece!
• Michael Gove and Andrea Leadsom!
• Lucy Allen!
• How did the Tories spell National Service with an F and a U?

Favorite take, National Service will be voluntary, so they could call the Northern Ireland contingent the Ulster Volunteer Force.

In this interview, Carol Vorderman expresses the desire (that I, from afar, share) to eliminate the Tories. Fun stuff. Have at it.

 

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Some open thread-y things

by liberal japonicus

Some open tabs agout language in my browser to chat about

A stone discovered with Ogham runic text in England

Ogham is highly unusual among world writing systems, consisting solely of parallel lines in groups of 1-5. The stones provide insight into the Irish language before the use of the Latin insular script.

Putting Ogham to good use in the Eurovision contest

Bambie Thug has chosen to wear messages in Ogham script — an Early Medieval alphabet used to write the early Irish language — on her face and legs as part of their Eurovision 2024 performance.

After the pictures from the initial rehearsals were released, fans quickly decoded the messages within this body paint.

I thought it was New advances with AI prove that Plato was just another grumpy old guy

Despite battling a fever and being on the brink of death, Plato – who was known as a disciple of Socrates and a mentor to Aristotle, and who died in Athens around 348BC – retained enough lucidity to critique the musician for her lack of rhythm, the account suggests.

Whales getting in on the action

Researchers at MIT CSAIL and Project CETI believe that they have unlocked a kind of sperm whale alphabet with the aid of machine learning technologies. Results from the study, which were published under the title, “Contextual and Combinatorial Structure in Sperm Whale Vocalizations,” point to key breakthroughs in our understanding of cetacean communication.

 

Open thread

by liberal japonicus
GftNC noted (along with this article) that I didn't open up the last thread, though I meant to, so here is a 100% open thread.

The article is Marina Hyde's takedown of the voter id law in the UK, which also noted that Jacob Rees-Mog and Boris himself fell afoul of the law, even though the two were among the Conservative voices that pushed it thru. I don't have the precise outlines, but I was under the impression that this was an idea that was taken from American conservatism. Is that correct?

Have at it.

Ahh, pronoun problems...

by liberal japonicus

A teacher here in Japan, much younger than me, mentioned on Facebook that he was letting students know that they could tell him their pronouns if they were different from their university profile. We chatted a bit about it, but it left me with some questions. Since folks here are in education and others are education adjecent, I thought it might be an interesting topic. More below the break.