I never understood this attitude from native speakers towards their own language. I am a fresh NL citizen, and have struggled SO MUCH to assimilate into society largely due to this prevalent mentality of "dutch sux actually, we can all speak english amirite guys??" its so bafflingly self-destructive to your own culture. But go off I guess.
You've probably never watched Indiana Jones speak French... I was forced to when staying for 2 weeks in the south of Belgium as part of a French immersion program. It's unbearable.
When I watch an American movie, I want to hear it the way the director intended it to be. I don't want every villain in every movie have the same voice. If I want to hear Dutch in a movie, I watch a Dutch movie. It's not that deep.
The fact that it helps kids learn a different language is a very nice fringe benefit.
I remember watching an English movie with an incorrect subtitle in school when I was 12, well before my first English class. The whole auditorium laughed because everyone caught the error.
I didn't understand him that way. It's more that it helps if people can more easily pick up a foreign language, or solidify their skills, along the way through media. Doubly so when it's a lingua franca like English.
Though for you, I understand you might have been peeved if people kept switching to English when you just wanted to practice Dutch.
Yes, I meant it that way. And yes, Dutch people too easily switch to English when someone they encountered is not very proficient in Dutch. It is a kind of 'helpfulness' which is not so helpful for foreigners who want to learn Dutch, and I agree that more Dutch people should make the effort and not the easy language switch.
I’m a Dutch native and if it were up to me we’d switch to English. I think it’s dumb that small country like us feels the need to maintain its own language.
It is a massive disadvantage. It means that we’re always late with new stuff because the Dutch market is so small no one wants to make the effort of building Dutch versions.
I'm a native Swede and I've said the same about Swedish to, don't really care if it's Mandarin, English or Spanish, just that as many countries as possible go together and unify under one language. Obviously both for Netherlands and Sweden, English would be the way to go, but imagine if you could learn just 3 languages and speak with 90% of the world's population? I thought globalism would take us there eventually somehow, but seems the pendulum started swinging the other way instead.
FWIW, Mandarin is not the universal spoken language of China. It's just the lingua franca of China as the region. They actually have something like a dozen major groups of dialects with varying degrees of mutual intelligibility.
The place read as Shang-hai in Mandarin is apparently read Zan-he in the local "dialect" spoken there. I think one could say Koln and Cologne sound closer together.
Did anyone say that Mandarin is the "universal spoken language" of China? IIRC, >90% of Chinese people speak Mandarin as either a 1st or 2nd language.
I don't think as many did 20 years ago, but China is consciously Mandarinizing, and English has lost its spot as the standard second language with the vastly increasing hostility from the West.
Yup, there is a lot of value in having universal language and English is the only one with a chance (in Western world anyway).
Imo EU should mandate English as 2nd official language for all business dealings and bureaucracy. Having many languages and obligatory translations is a huge disadvantage we have in comparison to USA (or China).
Language is the biggest thing that defines culture. Do you want the Netherlands to perform some sort of countrywide assimilation into British or American culture?
Yes, I’m a huge proponent of global unification. It’s ridiculous that we have different cultures, languages and laws based on between which imaginary lines on a map you live.
Countries make no sense to me. Look at the current situation in Iran. Everyone on the planet is affected by the actions of a president we didn’t vote for. Earth should be a single country.
What a sad world where we all have the same culture and language. There's many concepts that don't translate from one language to the next, they form a way of looking at the world. What about foods, and stories and music, nah, sounds terrible.
I also want one big world for all but definitely not a single culture or language
So there's only one single culture in all english speaking countries? A unified language does not in any way imply a boring or "assimilated" culture. Dutch people can still ask their closest friend to Venmo them 2 bucks for the fries they took earlier, germans can still make and drink objectively better beer, and the french can still be black and white and smoking a cigarette. But just in english instead.
OP literally advocated for having a single culture.
And you missed the part I said about how different human concepts don't exist in all languages, do we just not have those? Language is an integral part of different cultures, not the only one, but a pretty big one. Can't believe I'm having to defend this.
Your second question, "Do you want the Netherlands to perform some sort of countrywide assimilation into British or American culture?", really makes it unclear if you actually realize that language isn't the only thing that defines culture, why would that be a question otherwise?
It's really not that hard. I lived in NL for a year and assimilated Dutch just about as well as my flatmate (a German who was taking a taking a Dutch language class)
Go out and pay attention to your surroundings. Read everything. Make dutch friends. Spend some time outside the large cities.
Dutch is already like half English just spelled and pronounced way differently.
It is 'destructive' to Dutch culture if you don't dub a movie in a foreign language? I claim the opposite. Doesn't pretend everything happens in your own culture, feels more like a kind cultural erasure of sorts. There's still more than enough TV content in native language. What I also noticed often in dubbed material is that the dubbed voice has inaccurate translation, subtle reformulations, or skips spoken words entirely, which in more autoritarian countries gives wriggle room to subtle media manipulation. The Dutch get it straight from the horse's mouth at least.
I hope we take a moment in the future to dissect the fascinating minds of AI tech bros, who have no clue what the heck they are talking about. You see a clear last gen AI yassifier that screws lighting in scenes and looks horrid in motion, and your prn-addeled brain thinks: "GENERATIONAL LEAP! LET THE GOON GAMES BEGIN!"
In a way I pray for the coming end.
I am watching the same videos. I simply fundamentally disagree with the premise that "studio lighting everywhere" = better and photo-realistic. But besides all of that, most video games do not actually go for photo-realism as an artistic direction, they bake their lighting in certain ways, intentionally add shadow to create ambience, plus 10000 other things I am unqualified to discuss here.
But again, feel free to enjoy what the AI sloppinators are offering, you are on the winning side of that battle as far as investments and bubble-making goes. I simply gave my view on it and regret the direction we are collectively taking, willingly or kicking and screaming towards infinite dogshit.
what does that even mean? Remakes have artists working with original creators to remodel characters in a way that keeps the original art's spirit, failing which they do get the backlash they deserve. This prnified AI filter "touch-up" is not the upgrade you AI evangelists think it is. But keep it coming, I'm sure once we've burned through enough forests we'll reach the desired outcomes.
Did you even read the article? No, even just the Title? Nothing is ever impressive I guess. Certainly not a 60 years running manufacturing process where your childhood pieces can be passed down and combined seamlessly with a set you just bought for your kid. So trivial and easy to do guys.
The precision in tolerance over the years is truly breathtaking.
It speaks to Ole Kirk Christiansen's impossible standards: "Even the best is not good enough" (Det Bedste Er Ikke For Godt.) (usually translated "Only the best is good enough.")
Much more strenuous in Danish than the usual quoted translation! but I know some Danish, and most of all that's how Kjeld Kirk Christiansen explained it to an American audience at Brickfest 2003 (IIRC the year).
As I commented elsewhere, it's not 60 years. Sure, the outer dimensions have not changed and are very strict metric Lego Units. [1] But there have been continual improvement that render old and new less than wonderful to use together. You don't really want to mix 70s-early 80s bricks.
Conversely, if you're reselling those old sets, you need to find vintage pieces (though also Lego would use up older pieces and begin to use newer ones in that set)
But bricks from the mature design of the 80s even didn't age so well (clutch too hard, walls can warp), and there have been many improvements to the interior of a brick. All for sound engineering reasons. Thinner walls and internal voids to prevent warp, subtle changes to fine-tune clutch power.
It's a story of continual improvement, but it makes the old bricks seem less wonderful.
Weird thing Lego started to advertise in the 2000s: Lego bricks reach the proper clutch power after 7 insertions! I guess you have to stress-work the new plastic...
[1] I've used a micrometer on pieces of various age and can't get a difference from the outside. Doesn't help that they compress under measuring.
Yeah, that's not eternity. And if you read the article at all you'd know the argument is not against life extension, it's about having constraints, horizons, and deadlines to give meaning and urgency to things.
I read it. And this argument is plain silly.
Does a kid feels urgency of immediate death? Did you when you were sixteen?
Like the only thing keeping people all around the world going would be though that they are going to die and they need to do as much as they can before that. This is just radicoulous.
If people would be immortal they would just lie down and die because there is no point in leaving! People die on their retirement because they have nothing to work on! And author need the deadline to actually do some work! Those arguments sounds like rants of workaholic with procrastination problems. By the gods! If I would live forever I would live for 200 hundred years in one place and build water mile and garden. The move to some beach and learn surfing. And then maybe I would built a boat and move to another continent. Learn climbing. And then fencing. And then maybe I would join university and become math proffesor. Or join rock band. Or just knit some socks for grandkids. Possibilities are endless.
Good reductio, and good showcase of how little you know of your true nature. This is just a disagreement on the fundamental nature and needs of a human being. If you think an eternity would go great for you, more power to you. We'll see when/if that happens who's right, and who's delusional. Its pointless to make my case to transhumanist techbros on this website.
And I am pretty sure I know more about my nature then you mate.
I think you did not read the article. Author argues that:
- people on retirement fade away and die
- he need to work
- he need to have deadline to actually do the work
- he says something that in order to achieve that apparently you need to stop enjoying life ("not eating food he enjoys, not drinking, not doing anything spontaneous")... like why? Why advancements in our technology and medicine that will make our lifespan longer will mean that it will be devoid of spontaneous enjoyment?
Again this is silly and author seems to be living a life when he needs outside stimulus to actually be forced to do something instead of doing things he likes just for himself.
It's always the people who have no clue what they're talking about, whether in physiology or philosophy, who insist on speaking so confidently on matters of physical activity and the meaning of life. No, your reductionary argument about the purpose of something like the gym should not be "remembered". People partake in labor and even seek hardships for many individual reasons, most of which do not involve "faking" anything at all. Keep inhaling the data-ist technobro coolaid though, it's awesome to be always online.
Seems to be an awful lot of that recently to justify anything, from mass surveillance to crypto fascism. "Its just how things are guys, law of nature!".
As citizens of a civilized society, we collectively get to shape and orient how legislation is put into practice. But ofc, if all you and people like you have to offer is pre-deterministic fallacies, then we are indeed screwed.
Not sure why this is getting downvoted, you are absolutely correct. The unhinged weirdos are still a minority, but less and less ashamed of their own behavior online. No doubt that dev is better off remaining unnamed in this instance.
They may be a minority but they are more empowered than ever. Both by the new owner of Twitter and the current politics in the US.
It’s a shame that large companies like EA/Bethesda/Valve/etc don’t do more to fight against it, instead of cowering and leaving indie devs that are barely surviving to fend this off.
> all of mid/late 2010s online politics was colored by one reviewer giving a favourable game review to a game that some people disliked
That's kind of a twisted interpretation of events. It was coloured by one incel who though he owned the developer of a game and a whole lot of incels who sympathized because they too were owed a vagina by the ones who controlled them. Now it's spread to broader issues and higher levels of politics and is still going.
I remember the start of GamerGate well, it was all people screaming about "ethics in games journalism". But you're obviously right that that it wasn't really about ethics in games journalism, your description is probably a better reflection of the actual psychology of the people involved.
And then there are people, gamers, who were actually just dismayed with the conflicts of interest that ran rampant in the orthodox "games journalism" space and didn't give two shits about the personal drama side of the story, although that's mostly solved by finding your favorite youtube reviewer. And those who were genuinely focused on improving discovery of good indie games were subjected to some pretty horrible commentary that completely missed the point. Now there are smaller dedicated publications or channels that actually do regularly (weekly/monthly) review a decent volume of new promising indie games to help discover standouts, but that turned out to be a niche that the existing publications didn't want to keep up with, and a niche that suddenly many people denied even existed, for some reason? People who can't contemplate that there are amazing passion projects out there to be discovered, I suppose because those people can't imagine actually working hard on something people would enjoy, because they would rather spend their time raining on others' parades instead.
But it was too close of a tangent towards criticism of establishment journalism in general, so of course establishment journalism countered back with the only weapon it has, and suddenly the vast majority of people forgot any of it had to do with reviewing and promoting good indie video games.
People who make indie games are not losers. People who want good games to be promoted are not losers. It is an art. It's not for everyone. People who just want to play the latest AAA sequel can stick to those. But if you've ever tried a niche indie game and been more impressed than you expected, you know it's art, and you'd want other people discovering and promoting the good ones, and talking about what makes them special.
I am not going to re-litigate GamerGate here. There were people who were genuinely concerned about ethics in games journalism, sure. But it did not become the defining event in the online-political sphere of the mid/late '10s simply due to genuine concerns about ethics in games journalism.
Correct, because a large portion of the public has no idea what indie games are, or how the software industry works, but they know that angry nerds are funny.
What I remember is that there were a subset of people I was acquainted with online who when this started all /immediately/ started posting things exactly like the comment this is a reply to; "these people just don't respect women, you all need to sit down and listen to women and center women" kinds of things. They were all men; mostly straight men although some were bi, and all generally thought to be fine although known for being a little performative and mildly, as they say, horny on main a little too often.
Every single one of them later turned out to be a sexual predator. This is now known as the "softboi" or "male feminist". This kind of person is still out there and is dangerous as ever, so it's important to keep an eye out.
(None of these people were in tech; instead all my tech coworkers who were men and lived in SF also heard "we need to respect women", but being kind of autistic engineers took it too literally and didn't seem to know any women, so they seemed to think the right thing to do was go out and find a woman and literally just start respecting them. This didn't work out for them and they mostly ended up getting scammed by scammers who happened to be women.)
No you are the one twisting it. It was about conflict of interest regardless how hard you try to throw around ad-hominems and rewrite history.
A game reviewer should not be in sexual relationships with people selling games that get reviewed. I think anybody not ideologically captured would agree.
I also find it tasteless to use the same rhetoric here as it was used back then to slander someone into suicide.
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