Masculine, feminine, terrestrial, celestial, and collective
Languages with more than three grammatical genders
MAGA Finds Its George Floyd – The Atlantic
Today, like five years ago, a controversial man has been transformed overnight into a one-dimensional saint, marshaled in a culture war that precludes measured thought. Once again, Americans are being asked to genuflect before an idol.
In becoming a martyr, Kirk has been reduced to slogans and half-truths that obscure the real tragedy of his death. But if Americans are to learn anything valuable from the deceased, both sides will need to find the courage to reject such opportunistic cant.
MAGA Finds Its George Floyd – The Atlantic
This short piece from Thomas Chatterton Williams echoes a longer one from him on the same topic, from July. As someone who’s both black and conservative, Williams may be one of the few people who can write a piece like that without being immediately dismissed without a hearing by (at least) one side.
Calls of the Great Tinamou (Tinamus major)
I’d love to hear one in person someday. It reminds me of the Eastern screech owl, which has some of my all-time favorite bird calls.
Conceptual Terrorists Encase Sears Tower In Jell-O
CHICAGO—In what is being called the first conceptual terrorist attack on American soil, the landmark Sears Tower was encased in 18 million tons of strawberry gelatin early Monday morning, leaving thousands shocked, angry, and seriously confused.
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Varieties of Abundance
This piece makes an interesting argument that Ezra Klein’s and Derek Thompson’s Abundance only describes ‘a very particular place on the Abundance spectrum’. It provides a taxonomy of semi-existing viewpoints along that spectrum (from ‘Red Plenty’ to ‘Dark Abundance’), with plenty of links to more information about each.
Cluster Moon
The Narrowing Circle · Gwern.net
The “expanding circle” historical thesis ignores all instances in which modern ethics narrowed the set of beings to be morally regarded, often backing its exclusion by asserting their non-existence, and thus assumes its conclusion: where the circle is expanded, it’s highlighted as moral ‘progress’, and where it is narrowed, what is outside is simply defined away. When one compares modern with ancient society, the religious differences are striking: almost every single supernatural entity (place, personage, or force) has been excluded from the circle of moral concern, where they used to be huge parts of the circle and one could almost say the entire circle. Further examples include estates, houses, fetuses, prisoners, and graves.
In Defense of the Ad Economy
I want to say this is stupid and wrong, but unfortunately I’m not sure it is. And in fairness it works out great for me; since I routinely use adblockers I’m being subsidized by the people who do look at ads.
Ads are annoying, except as compared to the alternative. And this is true at many levels. Not only do ads elegantly solve some pricing problems, they actually create a continuous economic incentive to hunt down spammers and even to care about the quality rather than quantity of time spent.
Becoming a goat to avoid existential dread
A gentler Sapir-Whorf
Although the languages with top scores for “snow” are all spoken in snowy regions, the top-ranked languages for “rain” were not always from the rainiest parts of the world.
For instance, South Africa has a medium level of rainfall, but languages from this region, such as Nyanja, East Taa and Shona, have many rain-related words. This is probably because, unlike snow, rain is important for human survival – which means people still talk about it in its absence.
For speakers of East Taa, rain is both relatively rare and desirable. This is reflected in terms such as lábe ||núu-bâ, an “honorific form of address to thunder to bring rain” and |qába, which refers to the “ritual sprinkling of water or urine to bring rain”.
Our tool can also be used to explore various concepts related to perception (“smell”), emotion (“love”) and cultural beliefs (“ghost”).
The top-scoring languages for “smell” include a cluster of Oceanic languages such as Marshallese, which has terms such as jatbo meaning “smell of damp clothing”, meļļā meaning “smell of blood”, and aelel meaning “smell of fish, lingering on hands, body, or utensils”.