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The Lounge / Re: Random Chat
Last post by ensbb3 -
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DnD Central / Re: DnD entropy
Last post by ensbb3 -
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DnD Central / Re: Grammatical Mutterings
Last post by Frenzie -Really? Is there a difference? I consider the difference as imaginary (or rather unnecessary) as between Internet and internet. (As to "the", Estonian - and Finnish and Russian - don't have it and I'd rather we never did.)Perhaps it's because we live in a Christian (Dutch: christian) nation. The distinction is somewhat imaginary when talking about bibles that contain the Bible but there are also bibles in the sense of authoritative works in general.
"The Bible, that's how it's written in the Bible, Biblestudy"
"biblepaper, a bible seller"
"an Italian food bible"
The general rule is that proper names are capitalized and type names aren't. So the Bible/Quran/New Testament is considered the same as something like the Guardian or the New York Times, albeit under a special "holy books" category. But an individual bible is a type name. The Bible is a bible and the New York Times is a newspaper. Or something like that. But yeah, it's certainly odd for the bible seller.
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DnD Central / Re: Grammatical Mutterings
Last post by ersi -In Dutch, the Bible is the holy text of Christians and a bible is a printed specimen.Really? Is there a difference? I consider the difference as imaginary (or rather unnecessary) as between Internet and internet. (As to "the", Estonian - and Finnish and Russian - don't have it and I'd rather we never did.)
An extremely not at all sane capitalisation orthography is on display in German. A very sane one (i.e. everything lowercase, unless totally unambiguously a name) happened to exist in Low German, which I assume turned into Dutch orthography with hardly any changes. The Low German style is a major contributor to Estonian spelling tradition also, certainly when it comes to capitalisation.
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DnD Central / Re: Grammatical Mutterings
Last post by Frenzie -46
DnD Central / What is going on in Brazil?
Last post by ersi -Far from being a tightly held secret of seasoned conspirators, the would-be coup was advertised in plain sight, all over social media, with maps and photos, using the pseudo-military codename ‘Festa da Selma’, and the hashtag #BrazilianSpring, which Steve Bannon, together with Bolsonaro’s sons, Eduardo and Carlos, helped launch in November, though it only started trending after 5 January.A marginal note on orthography: Bible is spelled in this article in all lowercase like a sane spelling convention would require, but names of months are still capitalised.
The justice minister, Flávio Dino, had vowed to prevent small groups of far-right fanatics from seizing power; his promise became an object of ridicule on Twitter on 7 January. ‘Partygoers’ were advised not to bring children or the elderly, but some came along anyway. They were also told to bring bibles, though these weren’t much in evidence. They took selfies and couldn’t help posting them, incriminating themselves; several police officers also took selfies with looters.
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DnD Central / Re: Finding the best system of government
Last post by ersi -It turns out that it is a nice little book, a very solid entry in the utopia genre. It consists of two main chapters, the first being a critique of More's contemporary England, starting with counterarguments to capital punishment for thieves. The second chapter is a description of life in Utopia, with some more ctitique of the way of life in England/Europe per topic.
Some points of emphasis are the overall equality of the members of society, seniority by meritocracy, primacy of agriculture and family values (strict monogamy and children being primarily raised by own biological parents) - all well aligned with my own preferences. Some topics, such as religion, slavery (as punishment, not as an institutionalised social rank), and financial peculiarities get treated several times in various places throughout the second chapter.
The narrative is arranged in the first chapter as a dialogue where More is among opponents/skeptics about Utopia. The second chapter is entirely the narration of Raphael Hythloday, the character who supposedly visited Utopia multiple times.
I found an old English-Latin parallel publication that I will maybe examine more thoroughly later. A decent English edition is here https://theopenutopia.org/full-text/introduction-open-utopia/
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The Lounge / Re: The Holiday Greetings Thread
Last post by ersi -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5viIzp4rxC0
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The Lounge / Re: Happy New Zealand!
Last post by jax -You know the drill.
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DnD Central / Re: Today's Bad News
Last post by jax -Now they seem more intent on cutting power instead.
Fears of Extremist Campaign After Attack on US Power Station
Quote
Vandalism at four power stations in the western U.S. state of Washington over the weekend added to concerns of a possible nationwide campaign by right-wing extremists to stir fears and spark civil conflict.
Local police on Tuesday gave no information on who they suspected was behind the vandalism, which knocked out power on Christmas Day for about 14,000 customers in Tacoma, a port city area south of Seattle.
Tacoma Public Utilities, which owned two of the facilities targeted on Sunday, said in a statement that it was alerted by federal law enforcement in early December about threats to their grid.
Odd, though. The closer groups are to Putin, the more keen they are on energy warfare.