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Traffic report: The most viewed articles of 2024
(en.wikipedia.org)
Literally me (to be fair I'm not always clothed).
So... what was the post about?
3
How W. Labov used a bunny to examine children's language abilities
(lemmy.dbzer0.com)
As W. Labov has passed away, I came across a comment reposting this screenshotted request, along with the paper in question:
https://betsysneller.github.io/pdfs/Labov1966-Rabbit.pdf
The paper is quite a rollercoaster, ranging from describing of disturbingly racist ideas about native Hawaiian and Black children that some scientists still pushed at the time (1970!*), to Labov's own disarmingly cute and humane solution to the issue of testing children's language abilities.
Edit: *1970 - according to the article itself, which is apparently based on Labov's 1970 talk; however, the URL suggests that the article was published in 1966, which is contradictory. I'll try to find out where and when this was actually published...
Edit 2: It looks like it is from 1970, from Working Papers in Communication, vol. 1 (Honolulu: Pacific Speech Association). It is surprising that a recently published book also claims that it's from 1966, probably the authors got the file from the same URL with the wrong year.
Edit 3: The original Twitter thread: https://xcancel.com/betsysneller/status/1516848959284678656
clbottomt when the chtopt shows up [imagine this as that popular GIF meme]
The actual article seems quite positive about her art. Why that title was written to sound so dismissive, I do not really understand, it's not at all in line with the content. If her art was thought to be so irrelevant, it wouldn't merit an article in the first place. Maybe it was meant to be positive by conveying her non-academic background and "natural", intuitive approach to painting (I think that naïve/outsider art was already gaining some positive interest at the time).
It's interesting that the article was written by a woman too.
Imagine yourself being confused and baffled by something, and asking "Really?". The intonation is rising, as is usual in questions. Imagine yourself hearing someone say something you are completely confident is absurdly false or a lie, and you want to suggest to the person that they're wrong and you know the truth, by sarcastically asking "Really?". The intonation is falling, closer to ordinary statements of fact.
OOP is using the full stop at the end of his "questons" to suggest the second, sarcastic intonation.
A friend of mine has a trans gf from Germany so he explained this quite nicely to me today. There are still two relatively peripheral issues. One is that surnames can't be changed, which is a problem for anyone from a language with gender-marked surnames (e.g. Russian, Ukrainian, Czech). It's not an acceptable situation neither with regards to gender nor to grammar (masculine name + feminine surname is just... wrong). The other is that apparently when transitioning you have to change your name, which shouldn't be necessary for those with gender neutral names that they'd prefer to keep.
Still, it's a big and nice step forward.
anti-capitalism gets classified as a mental sickness
It doesn't. People are making shit up. From Wikipedia:
The fourth revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV-TR) (now replaced by DSM-5) states that a person must exhibit four out of the eight signs and symptoms to meet the diagnostic threshold for ODD. These symptoms include:
- Often loses temper
- Is often touchy or easily annoyed
- Is often angry and resentful
- Often argues with authority figures or, for children and adolescents, with adults
- Often actively defies or refuses to comply with requests from authority figures or with rules
- Often deliberately annoys others
- Often blames others for their mistakes or misbehavior
- Has been spiteful or vindictive at least twice within the past six months
These behaviors are mostly directed towards an authority figure such as a teacher or a parent. Although these behaviors can be typical among siblings, they must be observed with individuals other than siblings for an ODD diagnosis. Children with ODD can be verbally aggressive. However, they do not display physical aggressiveness, a behavior observed in conduct disorder. Furthermore, they must be perpetuated for longer than six months and must be considered beyond a normal child's age, gender and culture to fit the diagnosis. For children under five years of age, they must occur on most days over a period of six months. For children over five years of age, they must occur at least once a week for at least six months. If symptoms are confined to only one setting, most commonly home, it is considered mild in severity. If it is observed in two settings, it is characterized as moderate, and if the symptoms are observed in three or more settings, it is considered severe.
Is this how you express your anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian stances?
ISIS doing sick combos
Just eat everything so you don't have to put it back.
“You’re prohibited from reproducing it, making a derivative work of it, distributing it without authorization, or that is to say distributing anything that isn’t the one copy you already lawfully have, and various other things. Making a public display of it, making a public performance of it, which opens up all kinds of fascinating possibilities here.”
Am I crazy or does this mean every single newspaper that has reproduced the photo (i.e. probably the majority of political newspapers in the entire world) should have asked Fulton county Sheriff's Office for permission to do it?
In an ideal society, IP laws would definitely not exist. The idea by itself is inarguably desirable.
But, more practically, IP laws should be abolished or reformed to accommodate the needs of the average creator and the average consumer. The two people who proposed this change are not average creators in the slightest, they're looking to benefit primarily their own class, the consequences for the other 99.99% are irrelevant.
A reform of this type should start at the very least with small and realistic steps. Can we e.g. reduce the absurd duration of copyright protection (author's life + 70 years)? Reducing it by just 20-30 years would be an incredible boon to human culture, and it would have zero serious negative consequences.
But they only talk about it in the most vague terms, no details or anything, and Dorsey doesn't seem to have actually described any of those other ways of compensation. They're just greedy megalomaniacs throwing ideas around.