The Whole “scientists Use Big Words On Purpose To Be Exclusive” Is Such A Bunch Of Anti-intellectual

The current situation with climate change and how liberals talk about it is like if you had early stages of cancer, where it was still very much treatable, and instead of giving you any treatment all the doctors were talking to you about accepting death, and giving you pamphlets for the terminally ill, and explaining to your loved ones how to put everything in order for when you die. And when you said it was treatable everyone would either act like you were in denial, or explained to you how impractical any treatment was (chemo therapy, don't you know radiation is deadly). And when they talked about the future they'd talk about one where you were dead, despite the fact that it's still 100% treatable, and every day you don't get treatment it gets worse. And eventually when you tell them "fuck you I want to live" they act like you've broken some unspoken rule.

Stone With 1,600-Year-Old Irish Inscription Found in English Garden

A geography teacher, Graham Senior, stumbled across a rock with mysterious incisions while tidying his overgrown garden in Coventry, England. The discovery of a small stone carved with an early form of Celtic script has caused excitement among archaeologists.

The rectangular sandstone rock was found by Graham Senior in Coventry during lockdown in 2020 while he was weeding, but its true value was only recently understood.

The 11-centimeter-long and 139-gram rectangular sandstone rock had cryptic inscriptions on it that suggested a history spanning over 1,600 years, all written in the mysterious Ogham alphabet.

Ogham is an early medieval alphabet used to write the Archaic Irish language from the 4th to the 6th century and Old Irish from the 6th to the 9th century. It is usually found carved on stones in Ireland, Wales, and western Britain. It was the first written language in Ireland. The majority of the 400 or so known inscriptions from the Archaic Irish period are family name pillars that were built to announce land ownership.

Ogham is an extremely unique writing system among all writing systems, with lines arranged in groups of one to five only. The stones provide insight into the Irish language before the use of the Latin insular script.

Finds liaison officer for the Birmingham Museums Trust, Teresa Gilmore, told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland that the discovery on an Ogham stone in the English midlands was a rare find.

“These finds do not turn up in the midlands. The bulk of Ogham inscriptions are found over in Ireland,” she said.

Professor Katherine Forsyth of Celtic Studies at the University of Glasgow conducted additional research that shed more light on the stone’s provenance. Her findings point to a period suggesting a timeframe ranging from the fifth to sixth centuries, with the possibility of an even earlier date in the fourth century.

The stone is inscribed on three of its four sides. The inscription on the stone, “Maldumcail/S/ Lass,” puzzled researchers, with interpretations pointing towards a version of the personal name Mael Dumcail, but the meaning of the S and LASS is unclear. Given the usual purpose and significance of ogham stones, it may be a location reference.

Theories regarding the origins of the stone abound, with speculations ranging from migration patterns to the presence of early medieval monasteries in the region.

The rock will be displayed at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry, to which Senior has donated it permanently. It will feature in the forthcoming Collecting Coventry exhibition, which opens on 11 May.

By Oguz Kayra.

“Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friends.”

— Albert Camus

internet pro tip, you can go to ANY internet browser, type in "tiny kitty cat", then click on images. you gotta try it

Like I said in my previous post, I just started making pixel art a few days ago, and here is what I did in those days. I take advice and constructive criticism because I know that will be super helpful, especially as I'm just starting.

First one: Some donuts I made when watching a YouTube tutorial about how to use aseprite.

Second one: A coin I made in a few minutes (I couldn't find the colour I wanted so I just gave up on that and did whatever).

Third one: A viny pumpkin

Fourth one: a chocolate cinnamon roll

i lowkey ship tumblr ♠ twitter now

Yepppp this is linguistics

Hey All,

I've been away for some time, as we've been working really hard on something quite exciting:

let me present to you the world's first ever global ocean drainage basin map that shows all permanent and temporary water flows on the planet.

This is quite big news, as far as I know this has never been done before. There are hundreds of hours of work in it (with the data + manual work as well) and it's quite a relief that they are all finished now.

But what is an ocean drainage basin map, I hear most of you asking? A couple of years ago I tried to find a map that shows which ocean does each of the world's rivers end up in. I was a bit surprised to see there is no map like that, so I just decided I'll make it myself - as usual :) Well, after realizing all the technical difficulties, I wasn't so surprised any more that it didn't exist. So yeah, it was quite a challenge but I am very happy with the result.

In addition to the global map I've created a set of 43 maps for different countries, states and continents, four versions for each: maps with white and black background, and a version for both with coloured oceans (aka polygons). Here's the global map with polygons:

I know from experience that maps can be great conversation starters, and I aim to make maps that are visually striking and can effectively deliver a message. With these ocean drainage basin maps the most important part was to make them easily understandable, so after you have seen one, the others all become effortless to interpret as well. Let me know how I did, I really appreciate any and all kinds of feedback.

Here are a few more from the set, I hope you too learn something new from them. I certainly did, and I am a geographer.

The greatest surprise with Europe is that its biggest river is all grey, as the Volga flows into the Caspian sea, therefore its basin counts as endorheic.

An endorheic basin is one which never reaches the ocean, mostly because it dries out in desert areas or ends up in lakes with no outflow. The biggest endorheic basin is the Caspian’s, but the area of the Great Basin in the US is also a good example of endorheic basins.

I love how the green of the Atlantic Ocean tangles together in the middle.

No, the dividing line is not at Cape Town, unfortunately.

I know these two colours weren’t the best choice for colourblind people and I sincerely apologize for that. I’ve been planning to make colourblind-friendly versions of my maps for ages now – still not sure when I get there, but I want you to know that it’s just moved up on my todo-list. A lot further up.

Minnesota is quite crazy with all that blue, right? Some other US states that are equally mind-blowing: North Dakota, New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming. You can check them all out here.

Yes, most of the Peruvian waters drain into the Atlantic Ocean. Here are the maps of Peru, if you want to take a closer look.

Asia is amazingly colourful with lots of endorheic basins in the middle areas: deserts, the Himalayas and the Caspian sea are to blame. Also note how the Indonesian islands of Java and Sumatra are divided.

I mentioned earlier that I also made white versions of all maps. Here’s Australia with its vast deserts. If you're wondering about the weird lines in the middle: that’s the Simpson desert with its famous parallel sand dunes.

North America with white background and colourful oceans looks pretty neat, I think.

Finally, I made the drainage basin maps of the individual oceans: The Atlantic, the Arctic, the Indian and the Pacific. The Arctic is my favourite one.

I really hope you like my new maps, and that they will become as popular as my river basin maps. Those have already helped dozens of environmental NGOs to illustrate their important messages all around the world. It would be nice if these maps too could find their purpose.

The Sino-Arabica Project

Xiao’erjing—Writing Chinese with Arabic Letters: An Introduction

A writing system is not merely a means of recording sounds and ideas, but itself a carrier of religious and cultural values. In Europe, for

Xiao’erjing is, at its core, a phonetic writing system which represents the phonemes of Chinese using adapted Arabic letters. In its phonetic aspect, Xiao’erjing is thus akin to pinyin, the system commonly used to write Mandarin Chinese in Latin letters, though differing notably in that tones are not explicitly marked. This lack of tone markings may be cause for confusion, given the vast repertoire of homophones in Chinese. In a given semantic context, however, native users of this writing system rarely encounter ambiguity, just as an experienced reader of Arabic or Persian has little difficulty inferring the short vowels of a given word despite the absence of diacritics from most texts.

Sharing this article that I thought might interest both Arab and Chinese speakers following me