Notices by The Dread Slender Gnome (gnomeshatecheese@spinster.xyz), page 3

@Piss_Ant @Rogue_Koala It just looks like they’re sort of sitting on top of something, rather than being a part of the abdominal structure.

I could be wrong of course. I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone with well-defined abs after they’ve eaten and drunk a lot.

@Rogue_Koala The abs in that first photo look fake.
It’s the combo of defined abs and a bulging belly that looks odd. I have no idea if that’s actually a thing, but it definitely looks incongruous.

PSA to everyone who posts links to Twitter threads for information!

Twitter is now not visible without signing in, so those of us without an account won’t be able to view the posts or threads you link.

If you’re linking something important, you may want to consider using a screenshot, the threadreaderapp, or just a quote or a summary of the content.

@Ducking Also, I just tried searching for a username I know for a fact is on Twitter, and nitter found nothing.

So if it works, I don’t know how to use it.

@Ducking But will it work to open a particular link?

I don’t browse Twitter. I just look at it when someone posts a link to a tweet.

@HebrideanHecate I have quite severe opinions on this.
Any child that’s old enough to go to school, is old enough to know better and to control their behaviour. And if they are actually unable to control themselves, they should not be in school. Or at least not in a normal school.

I also can’t help thinking that parents who play by the rules are not going to succeed in protecting their kids, as long as things go on like this. I’m not suggesting breaking the kneecaps of the bullies, but they clearly could do with someone putting some fear in their hearts.

@Piss_Ant Don’t webbed feet also have toes, with the webbing just between the toes?

@Cousin_Isobel @DollyCat @Chronic-Yonic @DoctorDee @EmmyNoether @FeartnTired @Flick @Fullycaffeinated @Funsizescot1975 @GrumpyOldNurse @HebrideanHecate @Jennifer_Lee @Kay @mk @MandyJane @PennyLope @Rogue_Koala @TheWitchBitch @Ladyfat @LostInCalifornia @starsstorm @susansiens @xzy45 Well… of COURSE you have butter (or maybe something else but butter is Traditional) beneath the toppings.
In fact the word closest to “sandwich” in Finnish translates literally to “butter bread”. ^

^Meaning a piece of bread with butter and then most of the time toppings, but not covered with another slice of bread. Typical toppings would include a cheese product, a meat product and a plant product. Not necessarily in that order.

@Piss_Ant I would like to see what definition of “hate posts” the headline writer and Page are working on.

To those wondering about me being annoyed by Sabine Hossenfelder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lMvRyWWlIg

I would like to call my annoyance percipient, but that would imply it was based on good judgement rather than mere subjective bent. Nevertheless, this video certainly does nothing to reduce that annoyance.

@xzy45 @blingring I’m wondering how he imagines an “honourable peace process” would take place at this time without an expectation, or demand, that Ukraine give in and allow Russia to keep more or less of its ill-gotten gains. I’m also wondering why he’s not considering the precedent that would set for Russia’s foreign policy in the future.

Varoufiakis isn’t an idiot. But I don’t really understand what he’s thinking here.

@blingring I read that, and here are my comments. TL;DR: lovely idea, but fails at the first point.

An immediate ceasefire to be followed by a rapid withdrawal of Russian troops behind the 24-2-2022 border line

This is the minimum first step required for a peace process. It’s not going to happen until Russia realises its campaign is doomed to fail. No amount of demands is going to cause Russia to withdraw. Only clear military failure (or full political/economic collapse) will do that.

The creation of a fully demilitarised zone, 200km on each side of the 24-2-2022 border line, to be monitored by means jointly agreed

Not a good idea. It would effectively leave 200km on Ukrainian side undefended. Any monitoring that falls short of actually having troops on the ground to counter an attack, will be considered too risky by Ukrainians and is likely to fail if/when Russia becomes belligerent again. All they would have to do, is to drive across the 200km on their side and hey presto, they would be in undefended Ukrainian territory.

A mutual non-aggression protocol based on the recognition that Ukraine is a sovereign, militarily neutral country that allows no nuclear weapons on its territory

They already had this in the Budapest memorandum. Russia showed no respect for it. There’s no reason at this point to assume Russia will respect the next version. This by the way, is also in keeping with a very long history of Russian foreign and military policy.

A governance structure for the Eastern and Southern areas of Ukraine based on the Northern Ireland Good Friday Agreement to ensure political equality between the Russian and Ukrainian speaking communities

Seeing as the first point was withdrawal to pre-2022 borders, this must refer to Crimea and Donbas. This would have some chance of influencing the outcome, if the Russian claims of being worried about the political status of Russian speakers in these areas were made in good faith. There’s a lot of evidence suggesting that they are not, and evidence that they have considered pulling the same thing elsewhere. But sure, why not.

All parties agree to refer outstanding disputes pre-existing the 24-02-2022 invasion to UN facilitated negotiations

As far as I know, there’s exactly one case of a serious territorial dispute succesfully and permanently being solved by UN or it’s predecessor. That was the dispute Finland and Sweden had over the Åland islands. And that only worked because both nations were oriented towards international co-operation and peaceful solutions, and they were already friendly with each other so they had every reason to expect the other side to honour the agreement as well.

But fundamentally, the whole thing falls down already at the first point. As long as Russia has any reason to think they might at the very least be able to grind the war into a stalemate that neither side has the power to break, they have no reason to withdraw. If they think they can solidify their control over the territories, or even capture more land, that’s even more the case.

I’m sure Ukraine would absolutely welcome an immediate withdrawal of Russian troops behind the 2022 borders. That might even go some way to mitigating what now must be phenomenal distrust of Russian foreign politics on their part. But I don’t see that being on the cards, and I don’t think Ukraine does either.

@blingring I’ll give you my absolute best case scenario.

Putin has a stroke or a heart attack. He is replaced by people who understand that the war is a disaster and don’t have too much ego/status in the game. These people find some excuse for Russia to establish a ceasefire, order the troops to withdraw, explain it somehow to the propagandists, and agree to pre- Feb 2022 borders peace treaty. Ukraine gets started with rebuilding, begrudgingly since there’s still Donbas and Crimea, Russia gets back to trying to somehow make things work, and will tone down the power-based foreign politics.

This would be the path of least harm and thus the best outcome. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s likely.

@polarisera Don’t know. I’ve never actually done perv theory there, my only brush with the pomo-ish crowd was with critical studies.

I think I’ve mentioned this here earlier, but there are new people in and someone may have missed it the first time around. And I think it might amuse you.

Finnish tends to be quite creative with loan words, often changing or mangling them quite heavily in the process.

The term “queer theory” is an interesting example. Phonetically the word “queer” doesn’t really sit nicely in the language, while the word “teoria” for theory has been around for a long time. So when QT was imported, the enthusiasts needed to come up with an phonetically suitable alternative.

They settled for “pervoteoria”. Here the key word is “pervo”, which means “perv”, as I’m sure you guessed already.
So the commonly accepted, Finnish academese term for QT translates back to “perv theory”.

I’m SURE they didn’t MEAN to say the quiet part out loud, but I’m afraid they rather did.

(Of course the term “perv theory” fits amazingly well in with QT’s love of transgression and breaking of boundaries, and I’m sure that’s why they embraced it as it probably sounded amazing to them. However, we can’t escape the fact that they were rather telling on themselves.)

@polarisera …
Duh..?

@polarisera Just like that. Or did you want an English version?

If you hyphenate it, you mean you’re against pervoteoria. If you make a compound, you mean.. something else. Possibly a theory about the opposite of pervs. Or a theory that’s the diametric opposite of perv theory.

@polarisera Very droll.

@polarisera You would insert a word break where the hyphen is, in this case. Finnish can use hyphenation to signify that one part of a compound refers to entire second half of the compound, though I’m not quite up to date on whether it’s at this time officially sanctioned usage or not.

You’d insert a word break by using stress patterns. Finnish places the stress almost exclusively on the first syllable of the word, and that’s a handy way of signifying which strings are e.g. compounds and which aren’t. So the hyphen in this case would be treated as if it was a word break, i.e. you’d place the stresses like this: An-ti-Per-voteoria. If you had the second meaning, the non-hyphenated one, the stress would be Antipervoteoria.

EDIT to add para: You would also, if you speak slowly, add a small break in between, as you would between any two words normally. But if you are a quick speaker, this might not apply, so the stress would be the primary tool.

The stress is also used in the cases where the compound break would otherwise contain two or more identical vowels. Finnish has quantity opposition, meaning that a and aa, which are identical in phonetic quality but differ in length, are different meaning units. Therefore words like matka-arkku have to be hyphenated to indicate that the wovels in the middle are a and a, rather than a single aa. (The word means a trunk.)

@polarisera Puns are another matter, they tend to be untranslateable in general. The metre, however, is absolutely doable. It hasn’t been particularly popular, but it can be done.