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Cake day: August 2nd, 2023

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  • Genie was locked up at 20 months old. I don’t think they locked her up because of her mental illness. They locked her up because of their mental illness. I reference Genie because she’s the most documented “wild child,” which is a completely disgusting term.

    I was going off old college memories - after looking it up, it sounds like her father thought she was mentally disabled and began/increased his neglect because of it, despite her only outward health issue being delayed walking due to a hip problem.

    Also re: “wild child”. I agree, and thanks for pointing it out. That’s what they were called in my books, but catchy rhyme aside it’s a horrible way to refer to a victim of such abuse. I’ll edit my original comment.

    Language is universal to all humans, even though it is multifaceted. Humans also have massive brains that require extra care to bring to fruition in comparison to other animals. Language is one of those things. You can learn other languages at any age, but you first need learn a language.

    It would be fascinating to know what inner thoughts look like without the construct of language to frame them in. Unfortunately there’s no ethical way to find out, short of uplifting a non-sapient species and asking them.


  • There was an old study showing that London taxi drivers develop enlarged hippocampi, the part of the brain used for navigation, to deal with the labyrinthian London streets. The growth continued over several years even in mature adults as they used those navigation and memorization abilities. I’d like to see a study of the brain of an adult prospective language learner over a long period to see if any similar plasticity exists for the brain’s language centers.

    (I’ll admit I’m horribly biased. I was exceptional at picking up new languages as a teen, but let that knowledge decay into nothingness as an adult. I’d hate to have wasted such a useful talent.)


  • Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.worldtoMicroblog Memes@lemmy.worldNew idea for a language course
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    17 days ago

    Given the success of foreign exchange students, I’m willing to bet the age factor is much less important than people claim.

    People bring up the abused or abandoned children that had trouble learning to speak when introduced to society later in life, but usually fail to mention the reason they were neglected/abandoned as children was due to mental disabilities, so they aren’t really a viable data point.


  • I think this is showing how much faith people have in regular commercial pet food. Normal pet food isnt great for your pets, look into what the ingredients actually are and their quality.

    Not stepping into the vegan drama here, just wanted to chime in here about cat food. Two of my three family cats growing up had terrible kidney issues in their elder years. It turns out that - even setting aside the grains and fillers added to kibble - dry food is bad for cats unless they drink a ton of water with it.

    Domestic cats are descended from desert wildcats that obtained most of their water content from their prey, and they inherited a low natural thirst drive because of this. Kidney issues are common if cats don’t get enough moisture in their diet, and since they instinctively hide symptoms of illness, you might not notice anything is wrong until it’s too late.

    Kibble became the norm because a) most people are used to dogs and b) it’s cheaper and way more convenient than canned food (which is a messy bacterial magnet that can’t be safely left out for more than an hour). If anyone reading this feeds their cat exclusively dry food, consider switching to at least a partially wet food diet or buying a cat fountain (the sound of flowing water entices some cats to drink more often). Watching your beloved family members suffer from kidney failure is a hell I wouldn’t wish on anyone.






  • We could also have “karma” on Lemmy, but while technically tracked the environment is better off without it being public in my opinion. I view voting records similarly.

    It’s strange that they removed total account karma visibility a while back but are now thinking about making votes public.

    I think a good compromise (since Lemmy already tracks that data) would have been to show the upvote/downvote ratio a user receives on their profile page, without showing their total karma. That’d help you spot toxic users without incentivising karma whoring.

    Similarly, a display of how often a user upvotes versus downvotes others would help spot bots and trolls without completely obliterating privacy like their suggestion would.

    (But ultimately none of this solves the problem of privacy on the Fediverse being one federated bad actor away from nonexistence)







  • I liked how there was a multi-book background subplot of some Aes Sedai investigating the Black Ajah in secret, only for them to get killed off between books (and their deaths only mentioned in passing during the next book’s prologue) and the Black Ajah plot thread put on hold, then for the solution to the Black Ajah to be handed to Egwene with a wrapped bow a few books later.

    I get Jordan was trying to cut out extraneous subplots and actually finish the series, but it sucks that so many pages were wasted on something that went nowhere, and the eventual resolution didn’t even need them in the first place.


  • I loved the descriptions of the Carheinien Game of Houses, where everything was political theater and anything you did in public was scrutinized for multiple deeper meanings. It’s a shame the actual politics shown in the series was mostly pampered and immature nobles complaining that preparing for the literal imminent apocalypse was too inconvenient.

    It’d make a great RPG setting, but IIRC every attempt at a licensed adaptation (aside from a forgettable FPS like twenty years ago) has ended up in development hell or terrible. Or both, in the case of the show.