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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • That makes sense. The cost of housing is rising faster than pretty much anything else, so it’s inevitable that any well intentioned scheme to help first time buyers will ultimately become completely unaffordable unless something else changes. Thanks! Such schemes exist in my country, so I’m curious now to look up some of the reasoning behind those schemes and see how they argue around or attempt to compensate for this.








  • Absolutely, for many it’s nice to be under one name even if there is no legal need. I do think though that in a world where taking the male family name is not a default and anything can happen, double barrelling becomes problematic as a solution. You can only double barrel so many times! We need a new tradition that is equal for everyone and scales well. My favourite is what I once witnessed at a fantastic wedding. Before cutting their cake, the happy couple literally did a coin flip to choose who would take the other’s name. It was easily the most exciting part of the day.



  • You make an interesting point, but I can’t help but feel it’s not completely the same and you’re reaching a bit. I feel like it’d be closer if GIMP, next to shape tools for squares and circles, literally had a ‘Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker’ shape. The crux of the issue as I see it in this part of the legal debate is whether or not AI companies are willing participants in the creation of potentially copyright infringing media.

    It reminds me a bit of the debate around social media platforms and if they’re legally responsible for the illegal or inappropriate content people keep uploading.



  • Maybe a US/UK divide? At least in the UK boffin is relatively inoffensive depending on how it’s used. Eg if I build a fusion reactor in my garden my neighbour might say “wow, look at what this boffin did!” and it would be a complement where boffin is a stand in for a word like genius, only with a tounge in cheek touch of jealousy.

    Thinking about it I would say that ‘nerd’ is typically putting someone down for their intelligence or interests, whereas boffin is a light insult while identifying the ‘boffin’ as being smarter than yourself.









  • I know at least for French it’s been more controversial as there was no direct they/them equivalent. Instead new language has started to be used, though it’s not standard. I find it interesting as they/them is often defended (beyond the fact that it’s been in use in English for a long long time) as being a language tool in English that’s readily available and a far more palatable alternative to neo-pronouns. However in French (and other languages) I wonder if an invented gender neutral equivalent is culturally perceived as being no different.