Previous account: https://lemm.ee/u/Thymos
After I finished Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness, I bought The Hainish Novels and Stories. Yesterday I finished Rocannon’s World and started Planet of Exile.
They’re great books, I’m a fan. What I liked about Rocannon’s World is the mixture of science fiction and fantasy elements, and how they’re used to show different perspectives on the same events. Also, I would love to fly one of those windsteeds.
Looking forward to what Planet of Exile has in store.
I threw it across the room after 5 pages. Utter crap.
Cool! Curious to know what you think about it 🙂
I’m currently reading The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Someone mentioned it in one of the threads here and to my surprise my library had it. It’s a really interesting story. I love how Le Guin is able to create a world that is so different yet feels like a real place.
The only issue I have is that it takes place on a planet aptly nicknamed Winter where it’s so cold all the time. And it’s been a really cold week here too, and reading about the freezing cold only makes me feel colder. If anyone knows any good books set in hot climates, I’m all ears.
Maybe you want to re-read the question? They’re asking about the practical use of linguistics, and this answer combined with your other one is basically “language is very practical so duh, we should study it”.
But what do you do with the results of those studies? That’s what the question is about.
Bon Jovi. Apparently they’re not a one hit wonder.
Ooh, I read The House of the Spirits years ago, such a good book! I read Paula by her before that, but I preferred this one.
Sorry, can’t help you there. There’s nothing less funny than explaining jokes, except maybe this joke…
Dutch: Er liep een man in de woestijn en die vond een kameel, maar de kameel vond van niet.
English: A man was walking in the desert and he found a camel, but the camel found he hadn’t.
I don’t know, maybe it works in English too.
Not sent but spoken on the phone.
I worked for the tax services on the phone and received a call from a woman who needed to pay back some money, more than she could afford. Before she spoke to me she had been given advice by someone from the tax office she had met in person and they had told her she wouldn’t need to pay back anything. This was wrong, but we were not allowed to say that someone from the tax office made a mistake, even if it was obviously so.
She blamed me, personally, for making her pay back the money and then threatened to kill me. So I guess a death threat for fixing someone else’s fuck up is the stupidest reason yet.
The speaker of the house asked her, but only when urged to by another member of parliament who reminded him that earlier this year, another member was asked to change the T-shirt he was wearing with a foetus on it during a debate about abortion. The rule is that the appearance of the parliament should be neutral.
By the way, because she was asked to change her clothes, the moment was aired in all talk shows that evening, with an explanation of the watermelon blouse she wore later (and which the speaker suggested she wore instead by the way), so this incident only helped to get her message out there.
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The case of Charles Dexter Ward by H.P. Lovecraft.
From what I’ve read there’s a way to export a list of installed packages (apps) and import them into the package manager again, but I’ve never tried it. Different distros have different package managers though, so that might not work. And even if they have the same package manager some distros name the package differently, so yeah. I don’t usually switch distros, but if I did, I would definitely start afresh.
Thanks for testing it out! It’s quite a relief to know those apps work. I don’t purchase anything through the Play Store either, so that won’t be a problem.
Good to know you enjoy the phone so far. I’ll keep an eye out for your review.
I’m thinking of buying the same phone, but I can’t decide between Android and e/os. Apps that I’m most worried about not working:
I also use my phone to stream to a Chromecast, don’t know if that’s supported. Also, how do you like the phone so far?
Oh boy, there is political drama here in the Netherlands right now.
The most right wing party in the coalition stepped out of the government because the other parties refused to sign its “strictest immigration policy ever”, so we’re heading towards elections again. Meanwhile parliament approved a law making being an illegal resident or helping one a crime. It needs to pass through the senate yet, but still. The minister of agriculture was found by a judge to abuse her power to obstruct freedom of information. There’s still no plan to solve the nitrogen pollution crisis, leading to building projects being on hold throughout the country. Against their promise of not drilling for gas in the northern province of Groningen anymore they’ve allowed it again, leading to more earthquakes. A singer was accused of antisemitism by politicians because he refused to play at a gig that had posters promoting Zionism, which led to him having to flee the country with his family because of death threats. Don’t speak out against Israel here either. There were border patrols done by a group of “activists” looking for illegals (“we found no brown people or anyone looking like that” they said), which were small and luckily stopped, but still. Then there are the government cuts in all social sectors, killing all services slowly over the years. Public transport, education, healthcare, municipal services, welfare, it’s all going downhill. And while the government still has to pay back thousands of parents it had wrongly accused of daycare fraud, the next screw-up was discovered a few months ago and they now also have to pay thousands of people on welfare for being sick because they had underpaid them for years.
The election campaign is probably gonna be a bunch of screaming matches about immigrants and refugees and name calling again even though there are far more pressing issues going on. It’s not as fascist here as it is in the US yet, but that’s only because we have a more reasonable electoral system.
I started learning Swedish yesterday. My native language is Dutch. I started by reading a pronunciation guide, but (and this is so childish) I had to put the book away for laughing so hard after reading the Swedish word for meatballs: köttbullar.
In Dutch, the word “kut” means “cunt”. It isn’t as profane as the English word and is also often used for the well-known genitals. The guide explained that Swedish “ö” is pronounced like Dutch short “u”. After this I opened my Swedish story book and the first picture had the word köttbullar in it. I then heard myself very carefully enunciate what in Dutch sounds like “cunt balls”. Couldn’t stop laughing.
Today I will make a second attempt. I hope I can keep it contained to a short chuckle.
Growing up I really loved the animated series Alfred Jonathan Quack or Alfred Kvakk in Norwegian. It’s about a duck, his farther (I think) is a mole and the antagonist is a nazi-styled crow called Dolf. My favourite episode was about this island they visited which turned out to be the shell of this gigantic turtle.
Another favourite was The World of David the Gnome. It’s about a gnome who lives in or under a tree and has all sorts of adventures with animals. The books it’s based on are also great, I still have them.
I don’t know if you can still find these series since they’re pretty old.