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DnD Central / Re: The State of Israel ~ vs ~ Hamas ---- A "Natural Right" to Self-Defence?
Last post by ersi -
NY Times created a new section for the war with Iran that Israel started last night https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/world/middleeast/israel-iran-conflict-history.html

Here's Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to justify the war https://nationalpost.com/news/world/benjamin-netanyahu-speech-iran-attack

The main argument in the speech: Since Jews got holocausted in World War II, now Israel has the right to Holocaust.
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DnD Central / Re: Everything Trump…
Last post by ersi -
According to Brits, Trump and his fans don't have a sense of humour.

Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief.

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman.
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DnD Central / Re: A sad reminder of an American tragedy of
Last post by ersi -
Trump deploys National Guard as Los Angeles protests against immigration agents continue
Federal security agents on Saturday confronted protesters in the Paramount area in southeast Los Angeles, where some demonstrators displayed Mexican flags. A second protest in downtown Los Angeles on Saturday night attracted some 60 people, who chanted slogans including "ICE out of L.A.!"

Trump signed a presidential memorandum to deploy the National Guard troops to "address the lawlessness that has been allowed to fester," the White House said in a statement. Trump's border czar, Tom Homan, told Fox News that the National Guard would be deployed in Los Angeles on Saturday.

California Governor Gavin Newsom called the decision "purposefully inflammatory." He posted on X that Trump was deploying the National Guard "not because there is a shortage of law enforcement, but because they want a spectacle," adding: "Don't give them one. Never use violence. Speak out peacefully."
There are rumours that Trump invoked the Insurrection Act, but the news say there's a different law he invoked.
An 18th-century wartime law called the Insurrection Act is the main legal mechanism that a president can use to activate the military or National Guard during times of rebellion or unrest. But Trump didn’t invoke the Insurrection Act on Saturday.

The law cited by Trump’s proclamation places National Guard troops under federal command. The law says that can be done under three circumstances: When the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion; when there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or when the President is unable to “execute the laws of the United States,” with regular forces.
So, as usual, the law is not on his side, but Trump did it anyway. Obviously, because it is enough for SCOTUS to be on his side, or actually it is enough for Stephen Miller to say that SCOTUS is on Trump's side even when SCOTUS is 9-0 against Trump.

By the way, considering what ICE agents are doing, the people are not protesting enough. Law enforcement officers that wear masks, do not identify themselves and abduct average peaceful people are indistinguishable from criminals and should be treated as criminals for your own safety. This is what we did over here during mafia wars when impostor policemen were rampant.
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DnD Central / Re: Best language resource(s) to use?
Last post by ersi -
If you'll recall, Noam Chomsky's original work was phonetics... Do you know of any currently popular academician proposing a version of Universal Grammar?
Should I forgive you for writing in meaningless half-sentences and for that you know nothing?

Noam Chomsky's original work was not phonetics. His master's thesis was about morphophonemics of Hebrew. In "phonemics" the m makes it decisively *not* about phonetics, and even more decisively so when the term is "morphophonemics". So, what's your point when you say "if you'll recall"? Is it to be stupid so proudly and confidently that you convince everybody else be stupid too? It indeed seems to work very well in USA, as evidenced by Trump and his voters, so you likely assume it works universally or at least it's worth a try to export it the way USA exports (its moronic notion of) democracy.

Universal Grammar is not Chomsky's invention. It is a position on the ancient question of whether language is acquired or innate, which is fundamentally not a question about language, but about anthropology or biology. From linguistics' point of view it is a meta-position. Of course you knew all this, right? Not!

Chomsky's contribution to linguistics is elaborating on Generative Grammar, which is the mechanics from universals or deep structure to the surface representation of language. I'm currently reading a fairly modern grammar book of Turkish that deploys this method. It is clunky for a language like Turkish, but the writer has made it work where it matters.

Chomsky's examples of Generative Grammar were on English syntax. It works fine for English syntax. In languages like Finnish or Turkish it works to illustrate the mechanics of vowel harmony, but it does not help explain Finnish or Turkish syntax at all. Different languages are different and different aspects of language are different, who would have guessed...

Generative Grammar was both inspired by and contributed to the emerging computer science and programming. In computer science there apparently is something called "Chomsky hierarchy" which I did not know about until very recently, as my own forays into programming are recent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA6yBBcfu4k
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DnD Central / Re: Best language resource(s) to use?
Last post by OakdaleFTL -
If you'll recall, Noam Chomsky's original work was phonetics... Do you know of any currently popular academician proposing a version of Universal Grammar?

(I'll understand if you'd prefer to limit discussion to orthography...or its cognates, picto-graphs :) )
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Browsers & Technology / Re: You've Lost Privacy, Now They're Taking Anonymity
Last post by jax -
Payday for the Paypal mafia. While the US has given carte blanche for private surveillance, they have been absolutely paranoid about any register that could make the government more effective or useable, where anything that could join two tables is akin to 1984. E.g. ATF is crippled by design.

ATF handcuffed by archaic records system

And the IRC can't send out pre-filled tax returns.

Unsurprisingly Alex Jones is all in for the Palantir surveillance society.


Palantir and the Age of Authoritarian Entrepreneurs



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Browsers & Technology / Re: You've Lost Privacy, Now They're Taking Anonymity
Last post by ersi -
Trump Taps Palantir to Compile Data on Americans
In March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Mr. Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.
"Officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable" a database on Americans to be used across government agencies? What's the big deal? Didn't Snowden demonstrate that this capability was there already?

Probably the notable element is that it is now being privatised to Palantir. Then again, what thing in USA is not privatised and for-profit that in normal countries is (or was until lately) strictly government purview for common good, e.g. prisons and healthcare.
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DnD Central / Re: Best language resource(s) to use?
Last post by jax -
Which foreign words to a language is used, for what purposes, is a fascinating topic, as is their transcription. Greeks seem fine with keeping Western foreign words in Latin alphabet. Chinese tends to translate into Chinese characters, which can make it quite the guessing game, which name or word was originally meant.

Japanese is importing more either by keeping it into romanji, or put it in katakana, which is another return to rebus-like guessing games. ナイフ is na+i+fu, in other words "knife". ネクタイ is ne+ku+ta+i, or tie ("necktie"). テレビ, te+re+bi, is television ("re" is closer to "le" than rolling Rs, and Japanese doesn't have the v sound). "Mozart" is モーツァルト (Moo+tsu+a+ru+to) in Japanese, and 莫扎特, Mò+zhā+tè, in Standard Chinese.