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    1. Is all language linear to a native speaker?

      I hope this question will become clear by the following example: When I state "Mother's Cooking," As a native English speaker, to me the sentence fragment is read kind of "in order" so to speak,...

      I hope this question will become clear by the following example:

      When I state "Mother's Cooking," As a native English speaker, to me the sentence fragment is read kind of "in order" so to speak, each word being read in the order it is presented for me to understand the sentence.

      However, when this sentence fragment is translated to Chinese, it becomes:

      妈妈 做 的 菜
      māma zuò de cài

      Which I literally translate to:

      "Mother's cooking of Dish"

      and in practice I begin to learn to look for the phrase after "de" then "go back" to the "māma zuò" to figure out the whole sentence. Does this make sense? I have to go to the end of the sentence and then refer back to the part "in front" of it so to speak?

      What is going on here, and is this perceived as such by native speakers? Do all native speakers feel like their language flows linearly ? I think I read somewhere that some languages start their sentences with the verbs at the front of the sentence (Arabic?)

      I'm hoping that a linguist will be able to explain to me what phenomenon I'm experiencing.

      Thanks in advance!

      Source for sentence/grammar

      32 votes
    2. Fitness Weekly Discussion

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started...

      What have you been doing lately for your own fitness? Try out any new programs or exercises? Have any questions for others about your training? Want to vent about poor behavior in the gym? Started a new diet or have a new recipe you want to share? Anything else health and wellness related?

      9 votes
    3. You're running for office on a somewhat petty, yet univerally-understood single issue. What is it?

      Imagine that on the campaign posters, it will say your name and then this policy. For example: Vote for <your username> ... Rain boots for everyone. (No American / Englishman / Indian / etc....

      Imagine that on the campaign posters, it will say your name and then this policy. For example:

      Vote for <your username> ...

      • Rain boots for everyone. (No American / Englishman / Indian / etc. should have soggy socks.)
      • A Speedy DMV. (It should take 10 minutes to renew your license at the DMV.)
      • Rice in every restaurant. (Rice is good with everything. At least some Asian KFCs will serve fried chicken with rice!)

      It should resonate deeply with people, without the expectation that it should solve any of the deeper problems in life.

      80 votes
    4. Timasomo 2024: Roll Call

      October 1st has already hit in some parts of the world, so Timasomo has officially begun! Posting in this topic is your official entry into Timasomo. Let everyone know what your actual plans are:...

      October 1st has already hit in some parts of the world, so Timasomo has officially begun!

      Posting in this topic is your official entry into Timasomo. Let everyone know what your actual plans are: what are you going to make?

      Anyone who was not already on the notification list will be added with a comment in this topic.

      Once the date turns over to October 1st wherever you are in the world, feel free to start creating!


      FAQs

      What is Timasomo really though?

      Timasomo is "Tildes' Make Something Month": a creative community challenge that takes place in the month of October. It is a chance to create something/anything!

      There are no restrictions on what you can choose to make.

      The best way to get a feel for Timasomo is to check out our previous Showcase topics, where creators share their creations with the community at the end of the event:

      Can I participate?

      Yes! Timasomo is open to anyone on Tildes! Please make sure you are subscribed to ~creative.timasomo.

      The greater Tildes community is also encouraged to participate in discussion threads even if you are not actively working towards a creative goal. This is meant to be an inclusive community event -- all are welcome!

      If you are interested in participating but do not have a Tildes login, please e-mail the invite request address here for an invite to the community.

      If you do not want to create something but still want to check out the showcase, let me know in a comment here and I will add your name to a separate notification list that I will ping for the showcase topic only.

      How do I sign up?

      Make sure you are subscribed to ~creative.timasomo and/or are included in my notification list (simply comment on this topic to be added).

      On October 1st, there will be a Roll Call thread. By posting your plans to participate in that thread, you have formally signed up for Timasomo!

      Didn't it used to be in November?

      Yes. Timasomo was originally inspired by NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, which takes place in November.

      Initially, I wanted people participating in NaNoWriMo to be able to share their work with Timasomo as well. In the entire time it has run, however, no participant has publicly submitted any work from NaNoWriMo to Timasomo. Instead, Timasomo has gained its own identity independent of NaNoWriMo (which, after recent events, is probably for the best).

      Many participants from previous years have shared that October would be a better month for them personally, so we moved the event to October.

      Also, the event was so fantastically popular that it regularly upstaged American Thanksgiving, thus we only felt it fair that Canadian Thanksgiving be targeted as well.

      What are the rules?

      Timasomo is self-driven and its goals are self-selected.

      On October 1st, participants will commit to a creative project (or projects) that they plan to complete within the month of October.

      There is no restriction on the methods/products of creativity: writing, painting, code, food, photos, crafts, songs -- if it's creative expression for you, it works for Timasomo!

      Though most will be participating individually, collaborations are welcome too!

      What is the schedule?

      Timasomo begins October 1st and ends October 31st.

      All creative output towards your goal(s) should be confined to this time.

      This week prior to the start of October is for planning. There will be a few days at the beginning of November given to "finishing touches" before we have our final thread, which will be a showcase of all the completed works.

      Below are the dates that I will be posting weekly threads:

      Tuesday, October 1, 2024: Roll Call Thread
      Tuesday, October 8, 2024: Update Thread #1
      Tuesday, October 15, 2024: Update Thread #2
      Tuesday, October 22, 2024: Update Thread #3
      Tuesday, October 29, 2024: Final Update Thread
      Tuesday, November 5, 2024: Timasomo Showcase Thread

      Do I have to share my creation(s) publicly?

      Tildes is a privacy-respecting site, and you are not obligated to share your creation here if you do not want to. We'd still love to hear about it though, if you're willing to share process and details!

      Is it Timasomo or TiMaSoMo?

      Either.

      I personally use "Timasomo" because I think it looks cleaner and because too much time on the internet has made my brain incapable of reading "TiMaSoMo" as anything other than sarcasm, but go with whichever you prefer.

      The best option, however, is “𝑻𝑰𝑴𝑨𝑺𝑶𝑴𝑶” for reasons that are self-evident.

      26 votes
    5. Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of September 30

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate...

      This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

      This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

      15 votes
    6. Simulating an ISP's access to your traffic

      Hey all, We're working on a press-freedom / anti-censorship project and we're testing a variety of scenarios in which a journalist's internet traffic is being monitored by a hostile state. We'd...

      Hey all,

      We're working on a press-freedom / anti-censorship project and we're testing a variety of scenarios in which a journalist's internet traffic is being monitored by a hostile state. We'd like to simulate an ISP's access to the journalist's traffic so we can run some packet collection and other tests to see what it looks like.

      What's the best way to do this? Put a few routers in series and collect on the last one?

      19 votes
    7. Portable monitor recommendation?

      Hi Tildes, I am going to Vienna in November (and if anyone wants to meet up send me a message! but that's another topic), and this is only half vacation, half for a work-related conference, so I...

      Hi Tildes, I am going to Vienna in November (and if anyone wants to meet up send me a message! but that's another topic), and this is only half vacation, half for a work-related conference, so I want to be able to easily spend a couple hours on work even during the vacation part. To make this easier, I want to buy a portable 2nd monitor that I can plug into my laptop.

      I have ZERO experience using such an item, and wasn't even 100% sure they really exist until I searched just now, so I don't think I have any flat requirements. However, I would super like if it takes touch input and comes with a pen! (no i do not want a tablet, I want a 2nd screen for my laptop that I can drag windows & paste between etc). It also should either be super lightweight or be safe to put in my checked luggage (preferably the latter). Minimum 1080p resolution, I don't think the size matters THAT much but at least the size of a normal laptop screen (and not netbook) would be good.

      (oops I thought I was pressing enter on a tag but it sent the whole post! edited a bit to finish writing it)

      23 votes
    8. I'm looking for a spicy wasabi snack that will kick my ass and make me regret eating it

      A few years ago, I got my hands on a bottle of St. Elmo Cocktail Sauce. When I tried it for the first time, it had so much horseradish that for a moment, I thought I was going to die. Fast-forward...

      A few years ago, I got my hands on a bottle of St. Elmo Cocktail Sauce. When I tried it for the first time, it had so much horseradish that for a moment, I thought I was going to die.

      Fast-forward three seconds later, and I was eagerly repeating the experience over and over and over again. I could not get enough of it. It was like it was kicking my sinuses in the testicles and slapping my tastebuds in the face. I became addicted.

      It changed my life.

      The problem with cocktail sauce though, is there's only a few occasions you can reliably snack on it. I want something I can take with me on the go. I want a snack that grabs me by the shoulders and says "WAKE THE FUCK UP, YOU HAVE A LIFE TO LIVE."

      I've tried various wasabi peas and smoked wasabi almonds. Horseradish potato chips (or crisps, if you'd rather) and pretzels. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, provides the puckered face, lose-your-balance experience I'm looking for. The only way I've gotten close is by putting handfuls of dried wasabi peas in my mouth at a time, and that folks, is just not sustainable.

      And so, I come to you with my plea: I want pure, concentrated doses of horseradish/wasabi on some sort of crunchy, long-lasting snack vehicle. Yes, I have a problem, and yes I want you to enable me.

      Any recommendations?

      32 votes
    9. Tildes Book Club - Fall schedule

      Following this month's discussion of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, , we are set up to read This is How You Lose the Time War towards the end of September. After that we will discuss Kindred by...

      Following this month's discussion of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett, , we are set up to read This is How You Lose the Time War towards the end of September. After that we will discuss Kindred by Octavia Butler at the end of October and The City We Became by Jemisin at the end of November.

      I look forward to reading with you.

      18 votes
    10. Architecture blog recommendations?

      Morning, y’all! I’ve been a reader of Dezeen for years, but have lost touch with all the other architecture blogs I used to read via RSS (RIP Google Reader) pre-current internet. I like their...

      Morning, y’all! I’ve been a reader of Dezeen for years, but have lost touch with all the other architecture blogs I used to read via RSS (RIP Google Reader) pre-current internet. I like their combination of showcases and architecture news, though I do wish there was more technical information given.

      Anyone have any architecture blogs they’d love to recommend in a similar vein?

      8 votes
    11. Hamas was created and supported by Israel to oppose the seculars, divide Palestinians, and destroy the two-state solution

      This is a historical analysis of the subject, as such, it deserves its own topic. I'm using several sources. By using different sources of good to high quality, my aim is to create a historical...

      This is a historical analysis of the subject, as such, it deserves its own topic. I'm using several sources. By using different sources of good to high quality, my aim is to create a historical explanation based on convergence of evidence—the idea that difference sources supporting the argument makes for a much more robust case.

      I quote the passages I deem most relevant. Also, in order to boost credibility, I give a Media Bias/Fact Check profile about factuality of the each main source.

      The Japan Times — Israel's historical role in the rise of Hamas

      MB/FC Profile — Factual Reporting: High

      The international focus on the war in Gaza has helped obscure the fact that Israel in the 1980s aided the rise of the Islamist Hamas as a rival to the secular Palestinian Liberation Organization and its dominant faction, Yasser Arafat’s Fatah. Israel’s policy was clearly influenced by the U.S. training and arming of mujahideen (or Islamic holy warriors) in Pakistan from multiple countries to wage jihad against Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

      (...)

      Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, with Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists. Hamas, a spin-off of the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, was formally established with Israel’s support soon after the first Intifada flared in 1987 as an uprising against the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands.

      Israel’s objective was twofold: to split the nationalist Palestinian movement led by Arafat and, more fundamentally, to thwart the implementation of the two-state solution for resolving the protracted Israeli-Palestinian conflict. By aiding the rise of an Islamist group whose charter rejected recognizing the Israeli state, Israel sought to undermine the idea of a two-state solution, including curbing Western support for an independent Palestinian homeland.

      Israel’s spy agency Mossad played a role in this divide-and-rule game in the occupied territories. In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”

      (...)

      Israel, by contrast, persisted with its covert nexus with Hamas. With the consent of Israel, Qatar, a longtime sponsor of jihadi groups, funneled $1.8 billion to Hamas just between 2012 and 2021, according to the Haaretz newspaper.

      Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been in power for much of the past decade and a half, told a meeting of his Likud Party’s Knesset members in 2019 that, “Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” adding, “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”

      The Intercept — Blowback: How Israel Went From Helping Create Hamas to Bombing It

      MB/FC Profile — Factual Reporting: Mostly Factual

      But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?

      This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)

      “The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”

      “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.

      They didn’t listen to him. And Hamas, as I explain in the fifth installment of my short film series for The Intercept on blowback, was the result. To be clear: First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.

      (...)

      “When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake,” David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military who was based in Gaza in the 1980s, later remarked. “But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.”

      The Times of Israel — For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our faces

      MB/FC Profile — Factual Reporting: High

      For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

      The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

      Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

      (...)

      Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

      According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

      While Netanyahu does not make these kind of statements publicly or officially, his words are in line with the policy that he implemented.

      The same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message.

      Reuters — EU's Borrell says Israel financed creation of Gaza rulers Hamas

      MB/FC Profile — Factual Reporting: Very High

      EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday that Israel had financed the creation of Palestinian militant group Hamas, publicly contradicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has denied such allegations.

      Opponents of the Israeli government and some global media have accused Natanyahu governments of boosting Gaza rulers Hamas for years, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.

      "Yes, Hamas was financed by the government of Israel in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah," Borrell said in a speech in the University of Valladolid in Spain without elaborating.

      45 votes
    12. Tildes Minecraft Survival Weekly

      New Thread Server host: tildes.nore.gg Dynmap: https://tildes.nore.gg Playtime Tracker: https://tildes.nore.gg/playtimes.html Tildes website extension (shows online status & location): Firefox...

      New Thread


      Server host: tildes.nore.gg
      Dynmap: https://tildes.nore.gg
      Playtime Tracker: https://tildes.nore.gg/playtimes.html
      Tildes website extension (shows online status & location): Firefox (Desktop and Android) - Chrome
      Verification site: https://verify.tildes.nore.gg
      Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TildesMC

      The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.


      New Thread

      17 votes