[Migrated, see pinned post] Casual Conversation

I remember I was at my uni library and I learned from a tweet of the health ministry that schools and unis are shutdown for the foreseeable future. I immediately went home early.

I remember telling my siblings "Meh this will probably last a week or so". lol in hindsight.

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I was watching a lecture today about the fact that a number of Polynesian islands will be gone in about a century due to rising sea levels, and the people are currently looking for places to relocate to. And I was thinking to myself about how we're as worried about money as we are while not being worried about land in the same way. Alongside the nations that need to evacuate, there are nations with one person per couple of square kilometers and nations with one person per couple of square meters. There are people in need of a home and homes in need of more people. And there are people on foreign land and land nobody owns that's not claimed. You'd think it would be easy.

Nations have a lot of stuff going on, like overpopulation, war, natural disasters, etc. and half of the world has the potential to help. For example, Russia could receive half of the Chinese population to ease overpopulation, or the US (or even a billionaire) could set aside parts of Alaska for the countries being conquered by nature. But they won't. They see it as a nationalistic issue. But that doesn't mean you wouldn't or couldn't help. You, of course, see everything that's going on. In a world where your hometown could literally save another town somewhere, what would you do for refugees, even if law was on the line?

I wonder how native English speakers do it, but here’s how I approach this problem.

My trick involves using a consistent spelling system for encoding a random letter sequence into a sound which I can memorize. When writing, you just pull those auditory memories, decode the sounds back to the original alphabet salad, and you’re done! Needlessly complicated, but that’s a common theme in English anyway, so it should fit right in.

To make this method work, you need a consistent spelling system, so you could make one up or modify one previously invented for another language. Basically anything more consistent than English should do, so it’s a pretty low bar to clear.

Here are some example words to test this idea with:

• carburetor
• carburettor
• carburetter

Pronounce those letter sequences using that alternate spelling system. It won’t sound like English, but it’s consistent and that’s all we care about at this stage. The end of each word could sound like this:

• [retor]
• [retːor]
• [reter]

In my system, each letter corresponds to a specific sound like e=[e], a=[ɑ] etc. I’ve been thinking of including the Italian c=[tʃ], but you could use other languages too. Feel free to mix and match, as long as you make it consistent.

The idea is that it’s easier to memorize sounds rather than whimsical letter sequences. Once you have those funny sounds in your head, it’s easy to use that same consistent spelling system to convert the sound back to letters.

Once you know that trick, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to spell common words like “island”, “salmon”, “subtle”, or “wednesday. For example “cache” could be stored as [tʃatʃe] in my head. Still haven’t settled on a good way to store the letter c, so I’m open to suggestions.

Fancy cupcakes are 70% icing, really not that nice and a waste of money

I like that its smaller, it feels like the Internet used to back in the day. You get to know posters better which is nice

I don't have many close people in life right now, but I have to share this with someone.

Tonight has been very stressful! In the middle of my work shift, I got a text that someone had my dogs at their house. The little buggers figured out how to unlock and open my sliding door and had a little adventure.

So, I get permission from work to go take them back home. I re-lock the sliding door and go back to work.

Then, only a few hours later, I get another text that they got out again! Thankfully, my job is very understanding and just let me take the rest of the day off. So, I go pick up the one dog, the other still missing. I'm also worried about my cats if the door was left open. They're indoor-only cats, so I was very concerned for their safety.

When I pull into the driveway to drop the one dog off, there's the second one! Just hanging out in the front yard!

Lots of relief! Now just the cats to worry about...

Luckily, they didn't go any farther than the backyard and came right inside when I called for them.

So, after a lot of stress and adventure, my fur family is back home, safe and sound, but I'm still kinda feeling a bit shook up. Whew. Thank god it's all over now.

Thanks for listening!

or do if you are filming a one cup video

Cats. I feel very strongly about this.

I wfh atm so my view is my car parked outside my house, except with my cat sat in the way.

Once tried to paint my front door and fucked it up so badly that a professional had to sand it down. Cost me more than a workman would have done in the first place.

On the one hand, my father lost his dad when he was 12, so he is not perfect. I want to assume he is atleast trying his best. But this past year, "his best" was "OK with punching his children" and as far as I know, hasnt seen his grand children. (My sister has a kid. Living happy with her partner. Since sister and partner is not married, my dad doesnt acknowlege them.)

Im OK with skipping the birthday text to father, but mother (who i still talk to) insist i send the text.