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    1. What are your favorite songs for the gym and cardio?

      I'm always on the lookout for more tracks to add to my gym mix. Here are a few from mine that I think work well, with YouTube links. This is rock-heavy; I do love hip-hop and R&B in my gym mix,...

      I'm always on the lookout for more tracks to add to my gym mix. Here are a few from mine that I think work well, with YouTube links. This is rock-heavy; I do love hip-hop and R&B in my gym mix, but everything I have there is really well known.

      3 votes
    2. Should we, in rich countries, open our borders to migrants, refugees and other immigrants?

      Loads of people want to get to rich countries for various reasons: no war less crime better economic prospects no persecution no famine The list is almost endless. Should we, in countries not...

      Loads of people want to get to rich countries for various reasons:

      The list is almost endless.

      Should we, in countries not affected by such problems, accept these folks that want to get away for whatever reason?

      22 votes
    3. Daily Tildes discussion - future daily Tildes discussions

      Sorry this is so late today, I had to go out and do some things, and didn't get back until much later than I was expecting. Since it's so late, I'm just going to do a simple one, and save my...

      Sorry this is so late today, I had to go out and do some things, and didn't get back until much later than I was expecting. Since it's so late, I'm just going to do a simple one, and save my original planned topic for tomorrow or Monday:

      What other topics do you think would be good to discuss in these daily posts? Are there particular mechanics, plans, concerns that you'd like to see covered?

      29 votes
    4. Suggestion: Show Edit History of posts

      Can we get an Edit history on posts (also potentially comments). This is sparked by a post a few days ago in which a poster asked a question about people's standpoints on gay marriage and then...

      Can we get an Edit history on posts (also potentially comments).

      This is sparked by a post a few days ago in which a poster asked a question about people's standpoints on gay marriage and then published their standpoint as well, heavily against gay marriage.

      I made my comment here questioning them on their standpoint and they edited their post without any evidence, making it look like I was jumping to conclusions.

      Post history would prevent this kind of thing and would also equip commenters with the ability to see what OP has changed.

      Please let me know if you agree or disagree for whatever reason, I am interested to hear other people's thoughts.

      Edit: The poster in my comment link was banned shortly after that post. Linked by @Jedi here.

      9 votes
    5. Why do everyone care about privacy so much?

      Let's take Google, for example. Google tracks where you physically are - why are some people so much against it? It doesn't hurt me, google just uses it to serve me personalized ads. Why are...

      Let's take Google, for example. Google tracks where you physically are - why are some people so much against it? It doesn't hurt me, google just uses it to serve me personalized ads. Why are people so concerned about it?

      Google even tracks, which websites do I visit - again, why should I care? When I want to browse anonymously, I use VPN. If I wanted to do something illegal, I guess I won't use google at all and install tor? I'm not sure what should I do in that case, but I'm sure, there are ways to get away from google's sight when people need to.

      I don't understand, why some people fight for internet privacy so much. Could someone help me to understand it? What's your opinion on privacy and internet tracking?

      29 votes
    6. I flew from Columbus, Ohio to Ely, Minnesota

      I flew to Ely, Minnesota in August with my friend Jared. Hope the images work, I'll rehost if they don't. http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2631.jpg Me left, Jared right. He...

      I flew to Ely, Minnesota in August with my friend Jared.

      Hope the images work, I'll rehost if they don't.

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2631.jpg

      Me left, Jared right.

      He takes a regular trip with his family into the Boundary Waters (BWCA) and my in-laws have a cabin on a BWCA lake. In order to avoid driving and to get some flying hours in, we took this tiny plane from Columbus, OH to Ely, MN.

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/flight-path.jpg

      Red line is actual GPS route. Blue line is simply airport-to-airport route.

      We were trying to avoid flying over large bodies of water because when you’re in a single engine airplane, you don’t have a lot of options besides swimming if your engine goes out (ours didn’t).

      We meant to get fuel after Chicago but the day we were flying we had 30 (thirty!!!!) knot headwinds even low to the ground. It was stupidly impressive bad luck. So we had to stop in Gary, IN to grab some gas before heading up again.

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2647.jpg

      Gary, IN

      After grabbing gas, we were off. We saw the Blue Angels parked on the north ramp of the airport as we were taking off but it was too late to grab a picture. Turned out they had a show over the Navy Pier in Chicago a little later in the morning.

      We know because we flew through the TFR (before it activated).

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2657-e1506799924440.jpg

      Chicago, IL

      We thought we only had about 15 minutes to get through the TFR which we thought we could barely make, but also thought if we’re going to get intercepted, would be pretty cool to get intercepted by the Blue Angels, then realized the time change to Central and that we had an extra hour still before the TFR went active. The Blue Angels did not intercept us.

      Next we flew up towards Duluth. Still staying low because of the ridiculous headwinds, but that meant things were also super bumpy.

      Jared puked for the first time ever in a small airplane. I always have a puke bag in the plane for emergencies but never expected to use it with two pilots on board.

      So Jared pukes. The turbulence and motion wasn’t getting to me until then, but that puke-bile smell? Oh yeah. I could feel it.

      The problem was that I only had one puke bag in the cockpit. If I had to hurl, it was going to be in the same bag Jared used earlier. Gross.

      Furthermore, Jared told me point blank that if I hurled, he was going to need the bag back to go again.

      Faced with the prospect of sharing a puke-bag and passing it back and forth, we decided to land and take a 45 minute break.

      We felt better after taking off (and getting the back-up puke bag from the baggage compartment).

      Anyway, here’s Duluth:

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2675-e1506800330868.jpg

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_3147.jpg

      After turning the corner at Duluth, we went along Minnesota’s North Shore to drop Jared off in Grand Marais.

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2689-e1506800486520.jpg

      Two-Harbors on the North Shore of Minnesota

      Then finally, with the plane to myself, I flew over the Boundary Waters due west to land in Ely, MN.

      http://photosoverohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMG_2716.jpg

      Somewhere in the BWCA between Grand Marais and Ely. Endless untouched nature.

      Was a fun trip. 9.3 hours in the plane due to the ridiculous headwinds. I was super happy to get a burger on the ground.

      11 votes
    7. The thing I want most atm is a dark theme.

      New user here, just got invited and started poking around the site, and the thing that most stands out to me is the bright white theme of the site. Its a big trend that most sites seem to not be...

      New user here, just got invited and started poking around the site, and the thing that most stands out to me is the bright white theme of the site.

      Its a big trend that most sites seem to not be catching onto, users want a dark theme at least as an option, because the blinding white webpages at this point almost seem dated, and if you're browsing at night/in a not very well lit room, they come off as harsh, sometimes almost blinding. You can see the demand for this being fulfilled with plugins on most sites, as the websites themselves seem to be slow to act. YouTube for instance is terrible with its default white scheme, but pretty nice if you do the "secret" dark theme. Slack too, although I use a plugin for that, same with Reddit and using RES to turn on a dark theme.

      So while I know the list of things to do is probably a mile long, a dark theme would go a long way to making the site more appealing I think, and give it an edge as a more "modern" website.

      8 votes
    8. Suicide, and the way we talk about it

      Last night before bed, I was posting about some books that I really liked. One of them is called Stay: A History of Suicide & The Philosophies Against It. Another person noted that it sounded...

      Last night before bed, I was posting about some books that I really liked. One of them is called Stay: A History of Suicide & The Philosophies Against It. Another person noted that it sounded interesting, and I started to reply to that user. I got about a paragraph in before stepping back and thinking, "this isn't something I should write here," and deleting everything.

      This morning, I rolled over and checked my phone. Anthony Bourdain, died by suicide at 61.. This hurts. I loved Bourdain, his work for years was to broaden our cultural awareness and open us up to new worlds. He was, in many ways, a tangible Star Trek. His death will be mourned by thousands, and that he was taken by suicide will be considered by many, many, other people with suicidal thoughts.

      Suicide spreads as a contagion - it can be looked on almost epidemiologically. The way that we talk about suicide is... Telling. It's something that we try to avoid talking about, despite us almost all knowing someone who has died by suicide.

      I have worked in mental health for several years and in high acuity settings the past year. I work with people experiencing suicidal ideation every single day. It is often my job to talk around what I consider to be a monster that lives in our heads. To try and convince or guide people away from their monster and take the day for themselves. Some of the people I've worked with have ideation only, sometimes they have had as many as two dozen hospital-resulting attempts in their history. This work is stressful, it's draining. It's very meaningful, especially when change or at least the flash of change is present. It hurts, too, when it isn't enough.

      A big part of our education attempts is to be able to talk about the monster. It isn't easy for someone experiencing suicidal ideation to talk about it. There are fears that they will be seen as attention seeking - they are! It is a just thing to seek attention when you feel that you're losing the battle. There are fears that they won't be taken seriously - and often they are not. We minimize our problems to bad days or bad weeks or bad years. We say, "Just get over it," and sometimes people simply do not have the capacity to do it by themselves.

      We would never, ever, tell someone with a broken arm to get over it without treatment. We would never, ever, tell someone with a bone protruding from their leg that they were just looking for some attention. And yet, this is how we approach mental health.

      I have been suicidal myself, somewhere in the haze of depression that clung to me for about five years. Even as I write this, I feel the urge to minimize it and say, "but never to the severity of those I've worked with." Simultaneously minimizing my own experience and serving to stigmatize those that I serve. The monster's power lies in its language. The more we refuse to talk about it, the more we isolate, the more control it has.

      I went to counseling for sixteen weeks, and was only minimally invested. It took me another two years after having left counseling to start using the tools. A big part of my own ability to hold on was the book, Stay, because of its humanistic approach to prevention, one that does not rely on religion. An unfortunate thing about working in mental health is that I now understand what it is to plant a seed and not know if it will grow or not.

      Anyway, I wanted to write something about this when I saw the news this morning. One of the major themes of Stay is that suicide is theft not just from your friends and family, but from yourself. I have not felt suicidal or depressed for several years, and I can say that this theft would have been true. Except it doesn't include just my friends or family, but the people that I've interacted with and helped with similar thinking styles along the way.

      I encourage you, if you think a friend or colleague is struggling, ask the questions. "How are you feeling today?" You never know how this might help. Do you feel like someone you know might be suicidal? Ask the question. Asking someone if they are feeling suicidal is not a significant trigger that may cause them to commit - though this fear often stops us from asking. Consider, they live with the monster every day, how welcome it must be to have someone else recognize it?

      I will leave off with Hamlet's Soliloquy. I have never been huge on Shakespeare, lacking time to read. I read this as well in Stay, and now I listen to it frequently. I even had the opportunity to use it in a Group I lead the other day.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYZHb2xo0OI

      20 votes
    9. Do you think the world is getting better or worse?

      I'm going to intentionally leave this vague and open-ended, because I want to hear different perspectives hopefully without imposing my own views. I've heard some people express that the world is...

      I'm going to intentionally leave this vague and open-ended, because I want to hear different perspectives hopefully without imposing my own views. I've heard some people express that the world is getting much better, for example, in terms of science, technology, and medicine. Other people feel that the world is getting worse, for example, in terms of climate change or political corruption. What do you think? Or is it that we're biased towards our own time period? In other words, do you think it's human nature to think that our own generation/time period is experiencing the best or worst or most significant period in history?

      12 votes
    10. Suggestion: Don't drop threads off the face of the Earth when using timed activity sort

      I'm currently using 24 hour sort, and it's great, minus one thing - threads older than 24 hours just disappear. Perhaps a better implementation would be to keep the threads showing up underneath...

      I'm currently using 24 hour sort, and it's great, minus one thing - threads older than 24 hours just disappear. Perhaps a better implementation would be to keep the threads showing up underneath the <24 hour ones, but prevent them from being bumped up by new posts.

      Example - if I go to ~comp right now, there are only 5 posts. Older ones, imo, should still be visible, just no longer bumping.

      14 votes
    11. Tildes Extended

      I posted about it three days ago but in these last three days I really worked my ass off to include lots of functionalities and feel like the community is missing a lot of topics... So, sorry, I...

      I posted about it three days ago but in these last three days I really worked my ass off to include lots of functionalities and feel like the community is missing a lot of topics...
      So, sorry, I won't spam this for the next days every three days but I felt like it deserved to be "bumped" in the activity feed at least once now that the default is just 24h.

      As of today, the features are:

      • management to choose which links top open in a new tab
      • button to quickly jump to new comments in a topic
      • button to quickly get back to the top of the page in topics (no, there isn't one to go to the bottom)
      • live preview of the reply/topic box
      • load external CSS to customize the UI
      • add label to users

      I'll just link to the original topic so you can have some context if you want, otherwise these are just the links to download it:


      I need feedback to know what else you'd like to see implemented or what have bugs or could be done in a different/better way!

      37 votes
    12. How well has John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace" Aged?

      Link: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence Full Text: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace by John Perry Barlow Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and...

      Link: https://www.eff.org/cyberspace-independence

      Full Text:

      A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
      by John Perry Barlow

      Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

      We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

      Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

      You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

      You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract. This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

      Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

      We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

      We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

      Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

      Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge. Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

      In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

      You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

      In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

      Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

      These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

      We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

      Davos, Switzerland
      February 8, 1996

      6 votes
    13. Suggestion: Persist subscribed groups list across site

      Currently the subscribed groups list is only shown in the sidebar of the index page, but given that the sidebar isn't currently used for much else and doesn't take up much vertical space, it would...

      Currently the subscribed groups list is only shown in the sidebar of the index page, but given that the sidebar isn't currently used for much else and doesn't take up much vertical space, it would be nice to have the group list persisted across at least the individual groups if not threads themselves, to make navigation easier without having to go back to the top level to check a different group.

      7 votes
    14. Does de-humanisation of others occur automatically, as soon as we believe that we can predict their actions?

      Dear Tildes community, this is an issue that's bugged me for some time. I might struggle to put this into the right words initially, because I have not studied either philosophy, psychology,...

      Dear Tildes community,

      this is an issue that's bugged me for some time. I might struggle to put this into the right words initially, because I have not studied either philosophy, psychology, biology, sociology or anthropology. Yet, all of those fields could input into this. I will edit this post to clarify things once people start commenting.

      I will begin by stating the question at the root of the issue I am trying to explore:

      Does de-humanisation of others occur automatically, as soon as we believe that we can predict their actions?

      Things to consider:

      • What is a measure of 'humanity'? Is it consciousness? Self-awareness? Intelligence? Empathy?
      • Is it true that a more 'conscious' or 'intelligent' creature is closer to us in nature and therefore should enjoy more rights, considerations, or respect? (Case in point: Some countries will not allow performing surgery on an octopus without anesthesia, due to them being considered very high up on the ladder of consciousness)
      • It is easy to conflate consciousness and intelligence. I think that's a bit of a trap. I have often looked at intelligence as a sort of "clock rate" of the brain. As in, you might be able to process information very quickly, but that's still pointless if you're running the wrong algorithms, or have very little knowledge to rely on. Intelligence all by itself is not a good measure of how 'conscious' or 'aware' or 'human' something is. Often, however, people tend to call animals more intelligent or less intelligent when they mean 'more highly developed', or 'more conscious'. The same probably applies to people as well.
      • Additionally, among self-aware, conscious beings (humans), empathy and intelligence van cary wildly. Therefore, does consciousness, or even 'human-ness' vary? Is a highly intelligent psychopath less human than a much less intelligent but empathetic person?
      • What do we use to assess whether a human is highly developed, or less developed / desirable? (Brushing aside the notion that we obviously shouldn't do so). I think it is important to look at what mechanisms have been used in the past to demonise swathes of the population, in order to discredit them or further some kind of agenda. Take African people during the slave trade. They were called primitive, less intelligent, less human. In fact, in more subtle ways this even happens to women nowadays. They are constantly belittled by chauvinists, for supposedly being less intellectually capable due to their gender. Are these all forms of de-humanisation, linked predominantly to intellect?
      • What is this founded upon? Is it predictability of their actions? Let's try to go full circle. How does one discredit a part of the population? One observes them and demonises their behaviours (and with that, culture, etc.) The predictability of such behaviours is essential in this. You cannot reliably say that "those brutes do [x], how disgusting", without there being frequent evidence of it actually happening. (On the flip-side, could people be predictably advanced or developed?)
      • What do we think of predictable people in general? Predictability has negative connotations. At best it's boring (say, a highly intelligent beaurocrat), at worst, stupid / less human (say, racists talking about another culture being predictably primitive)
      • Is there an implication of people, or beings, who are more predictable, having less free will? If your intellectual faculties are limited, or you operate on instinct more than you do on rational or logical deduction, you become more predictable, ergo, predictability == stupidity. (I know this is a fallacy, but I am trying to establish why one might irrationally and subconsciously dehumanise, not arguing in favour of this dehumanisation or trying to defend it)
      • Take our favourite pets. Cats and dogs. They are pretty highly developed and if it wasn't for humans, they'd be unchallenged apex predators ruling the world. They display complex behaviours, at times even hard to predict ones. But still, they are animals and behave in reasonably reliable patterns. They are also not able to pass the mirror-test for self awareness, implying they are not (or only in extremely limited ways). So, one could argue they are less human, less intelligent. Now look at insects. Even less intelligent. Even though it could be argued that some (like ants) display a form of swarm intelligence, they are still extremely predictable. (Except for, perhaps, the flight patterns of flies or mosquitoes, which evolution has scrambled into extremely random patterns to avoid them being swatted. But that's just hard-coded into their genes, not an intelligent thought process)
      • So, once more. Think of someone you really don't like. Do you ever call them stupid for their actions? Would you ever say "here we go again, they are doing this again". Particularly if they are your boss? Perhaps it helps you cope with their shitty behaviour to dehumanise that person. Make them a lesser human being, to compensate for the fact that they make you feel powerless in their work. If dehumanisation is such an immediate and convenient mechanism to protect yourself from feelings of inferiority, or to stop yourself from being threatened (say, by a different culture), perhaps it is in fact an ingrained behaviour, which expresses itself on a larger scale once fueled by propaganda and political intent. If we identify it and understand how it happens, we may protect ourselves against it by elevating others to a higher status of 'human-ness'.
      • When we 'have figured someone out', we are stating we can predict them. Are we putting them beneath us, henceforth? Are they 'less' than us in some ways? It gives us power to be able to predict, so it makes us more powerful than them in some way, so it makes them lesser beings in some ways.

      Why am I bringing all this up? In my life, so far, I have gone from being very insecure, mistrusting and scared of people, to much more open, trusting and confident.

      The more insecure I was, the more time I spent trying to prove to myself that I was somehow superior to others. Generally using intelligence as an argument (uggggh....). You know, like the goth teenager sitting in their basement, who is oh-so-individual and everyone else is so stupid and nobody understands my pain, etc. (see, dehumanising my past self right there, haha).

      The more I started trusting people and the more I started seeing everyone around me as humans, humans just like me, the more I began to see how others still apply these weird dehumanisation mechanisms to make themselves feel superior. This made me wonder whether there is some kind of innate drive to do so. Try to predict others, or paint them as predictable, to prove that you are superior to them, because they would not be able to predict your actions, as you are so far beyond their capabilities.

      So yeah, uhm....let me know what comes up in yer heads as you read through this, I'd be most interested to hear your perspectives.

      5 votes
    15. Suggestion: a 'my discussions' page (or similar)

      So I've been really excited about this page, but lately I keep coming here, glancing at the front page, and then leaving. I think it's in part the minimalist design and the way the colour of the...

      So I've been really excited about this page, but lately I keep coming here, glancing at the front page, and then leaving. I think it's in part the minimalist design and the way the colour of the clicked links is very similar to the colour of the unclicked ones, making it unclear at a first glance which threads one has visited already.

      Since the pace of debate is moving much slower than on Reddit here (which I think is a good thing), it would be very useful to have some kind of a 'my discussions' page that you could save threads to - either threads you are participating in or just threads you are excited to see the responses to. This would make it much easier for users to return to interesting discussions without having to browse around ~ for ages trying to find that one interesting topic.

      7 votes
    16. Two steps forward, one step back on Aboriginal treaties in Australia.

      This week, two governments in Australia have taken steps towards negotiating treaties with the native Aboriginal people: Victorian Parliament votes on law to negotiate Australia's first Aboriginal...

      This week, two governments in Australia have taken steps towards negotiating treaties with the native Aboriginal people:

      Meanwhile, one government says no:

      It's interesting that the two governments moving forwards are Labor Party governments, while the one that's stopping the process is a newly elected Liberal Party government. It's hard not to draw the conclusion that this is a politically partisan issue.

      5 votes
    17. Should languages keep historical artifacts?

      Three examples : American English have lost the u in word like "color", because it is closer to its phonetics (the u is silent and there's no particular sound associated with "ou"). The letter u...

      Three examples :

      American English have lost the u in word like "color", because it is closer to its phonetics (the u is silent and there's no particular sound associated with "ou"). The letter u has an anglo-norman root.

      Swiss French (and for this particular example Belgian French) differs little from standard French, apart from the numbering system. It is ironically more metric than standard French since it streamlines what's left of the base 20 (vigisimasomething) system, i. e. it's "seventy and eighty" ("septante et huitante*") instead of "sixty-ten and four-twenties" ("soixante-dix et quatre-vingts". Historically people all over the world used some sort of base 20 system, probably because we have twenty toes and fingers.

      *no one ever use "octante". Belgian people think the Swiss uses it, while Swiss people thinks the Belgian it. I don't know why its that.

      Swiss standard German (not dialect) have ditched the Eszett ligature (ß) in favor of a more simple "ss ". That ligature was more common in the middle age.


      With those example in mind, do you find value in the "old" vs the "new" way of writing?

      (in other words: spelling reformer partisan and opponent : what goes through your mind?)

      6 votes