Account inactive @literorrery@awoo.space

Neo Yokio is, from everything I've been told, intended to be satirical. I can accept that, but that doesn't make it feel okay to me. Kas' rip on "Babylon No. 5" is supposed to be a metaphor for kids picking on historical media without understanding it; I get that he's supposed to come across like a smug ass while he's doing it. But absent any immediate in-show refutation of his statement, even knowing what the writers are trying to suggest, _Kas still says it_.

Verdict: it didn't go well.

Full disclosure: satire is toxic to me. If it's subtle enough to be genuinely satirical and not merely mocking, I'm very likely to read it earnestly. Even when I know things are meant to be satirical, the emotional sting of the earnest reading usually still lands, and I know of no good way to extract recognition of the emotional damage wrought by satire without stepping on its humor potential. So I don't watch a lot of satire that isn't just plain parody.

I tried to watch the first episode of Neo Yokio tonight.

@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space ... I... uh... have a small passion for conlangs. *blush* I just don't get much chance to work with it because as hobbies go, it's about number-six on my list and I rarely get below about four these days because of other obligations.

@aldersprig@tootplanet.space @DialMforMara Short-short, "they have only one vowel" has a lot of wiggle-room for interpretation. None of those interpretations are particularly flattering for the speaker of the statement, but there's ways to have that be "true" and still have a functional language.

@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space Or, on the flipside, look at a language like Quecha which "has only three vowels" but in practice, those vowels have incredibly broad interpretive options. Quecha "i" can be anything from "ih" to "ee" to "eh" depending on what's around it.

(( https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Quechua/Pronunciation ))

@aldersprig@tootplanet.space @DialMforMara And yes, an abjad is a writing system in which the vowels aren't always written, but can be inferred from context.

@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space Basically, yes, but what I was thinking is more along the lines of Middle Egyptian, where all we have is the consonants and none of the hints to tell us what the language sounded like, so a lot of linguists all sub in the same short vowel (ə or ɨ) when speaking it, leading some people to assume that vowels didn't matter. Bad praxis leading to stereotyping.

Today in Very Perceptive:
Multiple Coworkers: Bitcoin bitcoin mining SIXTEEN THOUSAND DOLLARS mining so easy to join!
🐰​: BTC mining burns more energy than three-quarters of the countries on the planet and people are literally turning to tire fires to fuel it.
Coworkers: ...
🐰​: ... here look at cryptokitties. *hides under desk*

@aldersprig@tootplanet.space @DialMforMara Tonal variations, creaky/breathy voice, volume... there's a lot of ways to change the sound without changing the "vowel."

@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space Or maybe we can't hear the subtleties in how the vowels differ from each other and we're just assuming it's one sound. Or maybe they write using an abjad that doesn't include hinting. Lots of ways to split that one.

@DialMforMara @aldersprig@tootplanet.space When I was in Australia, one of the running jokes about New Zealand was that their version of English only has one vowel, so everybody there ate lunch at the feush eund cheups sheup.

Oh, look, a crock pot full of shellfish chowder and almost no dragons about...

I keep thinking I should get a Mastoface over on writing.exchange and link my blog to it there, then boost it from here so it's showing up in a bigger federated timeline. I can't tell if this is a good idea or pretentious. Or both.

Fifteen minutes on the new bike keeping heart rate at 125 and my legs are dead. But... I kept fifteen minutes at heart rate 125 before my legs died.