I’d recommend things based on stuff they like to read/watch in other media, so I don’t have a single must-watch.

That said my initial picks would be Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Spy x Family, Kimetsu no Yaiba, Nichijou. Perhaps Log Horizon? EDIT: Uzumaki for people who are into suspense/horror.

I think the text leaves the worst parts out: assumptions, decontextualisation, faulty reasoning, focusing on individual words instead of what they mean, and things like this. As in, issues with that part of comprehension that depends on logic, not on language proficiency.

All of those were already a problem before chatbots. But since chatbot output is really bad at those things, I think increased exposure to chatbots might make the problem worse.

[François] The revived people of South America helped me to learn it [Spanish]

Things like this are the ones that make me like the least this part of the series. It shows how much they rushed research.

There’s no way they’d learn Spanish in Araxá, most of the population there speaks Portuguese. In fact, I don’t even know why they decided to mine niobium there, if they entered SA through the Amazon river delta; for reference they’re further from each other (2000km) than Berlin from Moscow. Plus there are niobium deposits in the Amazon basin, smaller and less profitable but still enough for their purposes.

And the whole idea of going to Catalunya feels silly. There are some fluorite deposits in Sant Cugat del Vallès but they’d need to walk something like 15km from the coast, on a rather hilly terrain. Transport is hard. There are better deposits in Asturias, by the coast, but no olives. But you know, where there are fluorite deposites near the coast? And olives? Tunisia. Plus dates; amazing travel food, tasty even if dried for long-term storage, and with a high caloric content. I should stop chewing on those everyday, though. They certainly don’t help with my weight.

Those things don’t make me say “bleeergh, I’ll drop it!”, but come on… it’s a stain in a series that shone because of all the research behind it. Granted, mostly Chemistry, but still.

You think the hardest part was convincing Purson? Pfffft. That isn’t even the start of their troubles!!!

I guess I think of Bertia as the MC, even though Cecil is supposed to be the MC.

Cecil is the main character, but Bertia is the protagonist.

People often use both interchangeably, because they often refer to the same character, but here I think the distinction is useful:

• main character — the character we “tag along”, following the story through their point of view. Note how almost every scene showing Bertia also shows Cecil, but the opposite is not true.
• protagonist — the character driving the plot. Bertia is clearly the one doing so: from her world knowledge, her desires to keep the plot intact, and even her interactions with other characters. Cecil might act behind the scenes, but it’s more accurate to say he simply reacts to whatever Bertia comes up with.

This distinction is also something you see in spin-offs: the protagonist is usually the same as in the original series, but the MC is a different one. And this series plays a lot like a spin-off to an inexistent main series, since you’re following the love interest instead of the otome villainess.

And also in Sono Bisque Doll, at least at the start (Marin as the protag, Gojō as the MC). Later on it becomes a mess, and likely on purpose.

So far I’m pleasantly surprised with this adaptation. And the “we’re going to have a baby” scene, goddammit I laughed hard in real life at it, I don’t remember doing so while reading the manga!

Seeing Garfiel crash was very emotional

Specially as Reala thinks he’s just missing his mother, when he knows she is his mother.

And, like. We take Garfiel as more mature than he really is, as he’s physically well developed, but the poor guy is just a teen.

And in this episode, he was selling dirty mags to the boys too!

I ended watching the series anyway, even with all that AI controversy. Not a big deal, but still considering to drop it anyway.

@NineSwords@ani.social summed it up rather well. I can deal with visual issues (I’ve watched Hoshi no Samidare, for all that matters!), but I hate when they ruin a good story.

Myne and Maomao forced me to wait to throw this season’s stuff into a backlog, so I’m watching this episode right now.

So far I’m really liking the adaptation. They did a really great job setting up Veor as the cruel and ruthless barbarian, and Serafina as a war prisoner that will suffer unthinkable acts… only to undo those expectations later on.

And it’s such a great game. It exploits really well the expectations of visual novels and games in general, first pretending to play along them and then breaking those expectations. (I’m trying my hardest to not spoil it, seriously.)

But Google doesn’t care about it. Or about sensible rules. Or enforcing fairly the very rules it expects you to follow.

That threat did not materialize, and now some apologists are saying that it was just one of Trump’s deranged bargaining tactics, as if that excuses such categorical declarations of mass violence from a US president

Even if playing along this fucking farce of “just” a “bargaining tactic” (instead of accurately representing it as commitment to war crimes), and even if we brush off all moral standards (we should not), that’s still bloody stupid. He’s making sure the Iranian population gets as motivated as possible to resist, while the United-Statian population resists against any sort of war effort. He’s shooting his own foot split hoof.

Currently, OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, xAI, Oracle and even Meta have large contracts with the US military.

That should surprise nobody. Let’s play “spot who you know”:

But this week should serve as a clarifying moment.

Aah, cut off the crap. If this is a clarifying moment for anyone, the person in question has been living under a rock since forever.

Their dice remind me the ones from senet (board game from Egypt):

See the sticks there? They might look different, but they’re similar in spirit: two sided and uneven. Senet is way more recent than those Native American dice, though, probably from around 3000 BCE.

The new season is animated by a totally different company, and the first episode looks great (aside from the OP).

That’s good to know! To be honest I don’t mind some usage of AI; but I tend to judge books by covers, and anime series by the OP, so if they’re getting sloppy with the OP I’m concerned about the rest.

I’ve read bits of the light novel already, mostly because I was unsatisfied with the manga. I think I reached the point Myne manages to get the print the children’s book?

Then I had to stop it due to time issues, and never picked it up again. Might as well do it now~

The only previously reported case took place in the 1970s at Gombe, Tanzania, during Jane Goodall’s long-term study.

I was reading about it (the Four Years War) rather recently; it was really nasty, seven of the adult males died in it. (All from the Kahama clan, and one from Kasakela.) Granted, this might not look like a big deal, but the community had 14 adult males, half of them died in the war.

I also found further info on the Ngogo community here. 32 adult males, 50 adult females, 166 members in total in 2011. That’s fucking huge.

“What’s especially striking is that the chimpanzees are killing former group members,” says Aaron Sandel, associate professor of anthropology at UT Austin and the study’s lead author. “The new group identities are overriding cooperative relationships that had existed for years.”

It’s the same with us humans, too: gaining trust takes years, but losing it takes a few seconds. As soon as you’re identified with “the enemy”, you already lost that trust, and things only spiral down.

“If relational dynamics alone can drive polarization and lethal conflict in chimps without language, ethnicity, or ideology, then in humans, those cultural markers might be secondary to something more basic,” says Sandel.

I admit I don’t know enough about chimps to say anything concrete, but what Aaron Sandel is saying sounds sensible. Multilingual communities are often stable and can last centuries; but once there’s “something” missing, usually in the material conditions, you see war. I believe this applies to the rest of culture, too.

Interesting to contrast with that Scythian comb you posted some time ago. They’re from the same place and culture, made from the same material, but the style is completely different, this one doesn’t “feel” Greek like that other. The animals motif is going strong, but also more active than just a bunch of sitting lions; I guess that’s one or two centuries of refinement.

I’m binge watching earlier seasons of this series, in preparation for the one currently airing. Frankly? The story is amazing, but the series was always poor on the visual aspect.

I’ll keep watching the earlier ones but I don’t know if I’ll watch the current one, or just read the light novels as usual.

Spanish has the same problem with digraphs to be taken as individual letters for collation purposes, such as ⟨ch⟩ and ⟨ll⟩. At least ⟨nn⟩ got merged into ⟨ñ⟩ some centuries ago, yay.

From the title I was expecting a web browser reskinned to use the language, but after reading the text it’s more like a full-fledged dictionary. I like the idea; it could be used with other languages, too.

…also lemme get this out my throat, the orthography looks like the stuff chair addicted linguists made, with no regards to usability by the native speakers. I mean, they’re even using a plethora of IPA letters. IPA is great when you want to accurately transcribe something, but awful for practical everyday usage. But at this rate the speakers are already used to it, so I guess the mess was already done.

Communism relies on the government controlling everything to function.

First off, “communism” is a stateless society¹. By definition. That already makes your claim an oxymoron.

You meant “socialism”. Confusing socialism with communism is as silly as confusing capitalism with feudalism. For the same reason — it’s a succession chain: feudalism → capitalism → socialism → communism².

And not even for socialism this is remotely valid. There are multiple ways to implement a post-capitalism society (aka socialism), from full hierarchy to complete self-governance. It depends on the material conditions.

Notes:

1. What your typical left-wing anarchist and your typical Marxist call “stateless” is different. However, in this context the difference between “there’s no state at all” and “there’s no state as a tool for the dominant class” isn’t relevant.
2. Yeah, I’m oversimplifying matters. But c’mon, the user in question has been clearly fed more propaganda than information. Some didactic oversimplification is fine.