First you have an association of anything bad with excrements. This is cross-linguistically fairly common, and really old*.

From that “shit = bad” meaning, you got semantic amelioration generating the “the shit = the best”. English slang does this fairly often; refer to “sick”, “dope”, “wicked” doing the same. I’m not sure but I think that the underlying process is:

• “shit” as “extremely bad” →
• “shit” as “notably, outstandingly bad” →
• “shit” as “notable, outstanding” →
• “shit” as “noteworthy, good”

That also explains why “it ain’t shit” is generally negative - it conveys “it isn’t noteworthy”.

*It’s so old that one of Martial’s Epigrams (liber III, epigram 17), in 1st century Latin, already shows this:

Circumlata diu mensis scribilita secundis urebat nimio saeva calore manus; sed magis ardebat Sabidi gula: protinus ergo sufflavit buccis terque quaterque suis. illa quidem tepuit digitosque admittere visa est, sed nemo potuit tangere: merda fuit.

A tart [scribilita], passed and passed around at dessert, cruelly burnt our hands with its excessive heat. But Sabidius’ greed was more fiery still; so forthwith he blew on it with his cheeks three or four times. The tart cooled to be sure, and seemed ready to admit our fingers, but nobody could touch it. It was filth.

I’m copypasting the translation out of laziness, but… it is not accurate. “Merda” is not just filth, it’s literally “shit” - and it’s metaphoric as you’d use in English “that cheesecake was shit”, same shit here.

Good for you. It’s important for your self esteem to feel strong and powerful.

In the context, this implies “Ada is solely doing it for the sake of her own self esteem”. I don’t think so; a simpler and better explanation is that she’s building a safe space for trans people, and the sort of people who’d spout transphobic shite elsewhere would make that environment unsafe.

So the situation might look on the surface similar to the one in Reddit, but deep down it’s nothing alike:

• Blahaj - the admins are transparently dictating who does not belong to that instance, and that is done so the instance stays true to its goal, by manually removing disruptive elements.
• Reddit - the admins play make-believe that “erryone is welcome here!”, then you have mods outright contradicting what the admins say, for a thousand reasons (from the reasonable to the petty and anything in between), with a bot that boils down to “dat uzer posted in [sub], so I assooooome dat the uzer is [whatever]!”.

Apples and oranges.

I’m not sure if I buy the claim that it was due to Gothic influence. At the end of the day, seasoning typically falls into disuse because of either supply issues (see: cumin, garum) or because it’s superseded by another seasoning (see: long pepper, superseded by hot peppers). Frankly I’d expect either to be the case with fresh coriander, and then the decrease on the consumption of the fresh stuff leading to lower availability of the seeds.

That’s against the mod guidelines, as you can’t ban people based on what they do/don’t in other subreddits, even when it would be sensible to do so. Sadly, the mod guidelines are toilet paper.

Something similar could theoretically happen in the Fediverse, but usually this is handled through defederation instead.

Yup, I’m using it as a unit of length there. It’s clear enough in context even if the result is a bit silly.

Typically posting a correction is enough. You can also warn the user, something like this:

[Speaking as a mod] When joking or memeing, please say so in the post/comment of the joke/meme. I get that it spoils the fun, but it’s better than getting someone hurt - brown recluses are spiders of medical significance after all.

Most users are surprisingly reasonable if the mod is reasonable with them.

Two* empty cardboard boxes. One is roughly the width and length of my desktop tower; another is ~1/3 of the size of the first.

My desk used to have two drawers, right below the surface top. I was always hitting those bloody drawers with my thigh. Eventually I had enough, unscrewed them, and threw them away.

…ok, but what about the stuff that I stored there? Inside the big box, that is now over my desktop tower. The smaller one and its lid became divisions for the bigger one. It’s organised, within the reach of my hands, and far from my thigh.

*actually three. One of my cats saw it on my chair, as I was organising the stuff here, and went into “if it sits, I fits, I call dibs” mode. It’s in my living room now.

I don’t think that the title is a mistake either; I was focusing solely on what the title says, on a language level, versus what the other user (Kairos) believes to be more accurate.

With that out of the way: yup, copyright was always like this. The basic premise of copyright is to not allow you to share things under certain conditions, and yet this sharing is essential for culture.

In English, the simple present often implies a general truth, regardless of time. While the present continuous strongly implies that the statement is true for the present, and weakly implies that it was false in the past.

From your profile you apparently speak Danish, right? Note that, in Danish, this distinction is mostly handled through adverbs, so I’m not surprised that you can’t tell the difference. Easier shown with an example:

Note how English is suddenly using a different verb form for the second one.

Counting centuries as it has been traditionally done makes sense, because -1 and +1 are different numbers. Using “N00s” doesn’t because -0 and +0 are the same number.

And it’s easy to remember because the Nth century always ends (if positive) or starts (if negative) in the year N*100.

Moral of the story: don’t tell people to fix what is not broken.

On itself, a simple claim (like “copyright destroys culture”) cannot be fallacious. It can be only true or false. For a fallacy, you need a reasoning flaw.

Also note that, even if you find a fallacy behind a conclusion, that is not enough grounds to claim that the conclusion is false. A non-fallacious argument with true premises yields a true conclusion, but a fallacious one may yield true or false conclusions.

The issue that you’re noticing with the title is not one of logic, but one of implicature due to the aspect of the verb. “X destroys Y” implies that, every time that X happens, Y gets destroyed; while “X [is] destroying Y” implies that this is only happening now.

Eh, sounds like a conspiracy theory.

Not really, even if false. It’s just a hypothesis.

It’s the kind of thing that would look really bad if it got out, but doesn’t have much upside.

We [current and former Reddit users] babble a lot about shit the admins do. If this got out, it wouldn’t cause much damage to the already barely existent reputation of that shithole; and as HelixDab2 said, the ones still in that shithole would outrage for 15min then go back as if nothing happened.

If it significantly affected profits, maybe, but this doesn’t register there.

I think that a system like this would actually increase the margin of profit, in the medium term. Because it would allow them to cut some slack to the cash cows, while you’re still removing some users who are pissing the others off.

Fair point - your ban hints that my hypothesis is wrong.

What I’m going to say is just a hypothesis from my part. It might be bollocks. But.

For a long time I’ve suspected that Reddit runs some sort of algorithm to predict the profitability of each user, based on factors like

• platform used (desktop vs. mobile)
• running / not running an ad blocker
• if not running an ad blocker, clicking on ads or not
• likelihood of that user to buy Reddit junk (e.g. the “coins” of the past)
• likelihood of that user to attract newer users
• etc.

and then the output of that algorithm is taken into account when handling rule violation. As in: you can go rogue and they’ll give you a short ban if you’re deemed profitable, or a small offence will give you a permaban if unprofitable.

With that said I don’t think that they manually review your earlier posts/comments before enforcing the rules.

Whoever enforces rules in Reddit has the same basic reading comprehension of a potato that has been hit multiple times with a hoe, and then left to rot under the Summer heat. In fact I bet “being functionally illiterate” is a requirement to work for Reddit, just like “lacking dignity” is to be a moderator there nowadays.

If what OP is narrating is accurate, it doesn’t really matter. OP was predicting what he believes that is going to happen, not telling people what to do. (“Inciting violence” would be the later, not the former.)

Pigs are the original artist’s muse.

Well… that seems accurate, in the light of Ancient Greek slang. Like using χοῖρος/khoîros “pig” to refer to the vagina.

[Sorry. I couldn’t resist being pedantic and vulgar at the same time.]

For my main thoughts on this matter, refer to this comment. I’ll only mention what’s different from this source to the other:

“We are more transparent than many players in this industry who have used public content to train their models and products,” Meta said.

“Since some people kill puppies, just kicking one is totally fine” moral reasoning might perhaps give you some breach in countries following Saxon tribal law, but not in countries following Roman civil law. In those, what matters is the law, not how the relevant organs handled other similar cases.

The law in this case being the LGPD (Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados - Data Protection General Law). If it’s found that Meta’s activities violate the LGPD, well, cry me a river, “I dun unrurrstand, Google does it worse, I’m so confusion…” won’t save Meta’s skin.

A spokesperson for Meta said in a statement the company is “disappointed” and insists its method “complies with privacy laws and regulations in Brazil.”

Yeah, just like my cat complies with the policy of leaving my furniture alone. You aren’t fooling anyone, Meta.

“This is a step backwards for innovation, competition in AI development and further delays bringing the benefits of AI to people in Brazil,” the spokesperson added.

Cut off the bullshit. Only Meta itself will reap the benefits of this sort of rubbish.

The relevant organ behind this decision mentioned in the article in the OP is the ANPD (Autoridade Nacional de Proteção de Dados, “National Authority of Data Protection”).

Additionally, the Senacon (Secretaria Nacional do Consumidor, roughly “Customers’ National Secretary”) is also going after Meta and demanding it to clarify:

• their usage of customer data to train AI;
• the purpose of the above;
• its impact on customers;
• the data usage information policy being adopted;
• [which, if they exist] support channels that allow customers to exercise their rights [in this regard]

I think that this is actually a bigger deal than what the ANPD did. It basically means that the customer’s protection entities in Brazil aren’t really buying Meta’s bullshit about “chrust us we have legitimare inrurrest”.

Source, in Portuguese.

Another relevant tidbit is that, when it comes to privacy, data, and internet, Brazilian organs’ typical modus operandi is “copypaste what’s being done in Europe”. And lots of European governments “happen” to be rather pissed at those megacorps.

Perhaps now I can convince my relatives to use Matrix instead of that disgusting shit called zapzap WhatsApp.

Fuck no. A religion dictates:

1. what you think to be true or false. I’m a human thus an ignorant; there’s no fucking way that I’d establish a system of beliefs that would be completely true. And the very fact that people would sheepishly look at my religion and say “its chrue cuz our faith says so lol” makes it counter-productive.
2. what you judge as good or bad. Except that my moral values might not hold so well across the time. Worse - once you gather a thousand people, most of them braindead muppets, some will care about the letter of those moral rules instead of the spirit.
3. what you do or don’t. I’d be effectively removing agency from the people who follow my religion, telling them what they should be doing, be it on rituals or whatever.