I like random stuff...

[DT]

It's everything I save off Imgur. They call them gifs there, but they're not really gifs. They're some kind of moving picture file format.

GIFs definitely download as such on a computer, that's what I was asking about what kind of device you're using.

Also just tried is on an iPad, same thing ,saved as an animated GIF to photos ... ?

 

[Renzatic]

I'm on a Windows machine, and it's only on imgur specifically.

Unfortunately for me, that's where I get 99% of my gifs.

 

[DT]

You've got something weird going on, we'll debug this

 

[Renzatic]

I doubt there's a bug out there that's so specific, it can convert gif files to mp4s. I think it's just down to imgur wanting to make things difficult.

 

[lizkat]

Here's something random, culled from among this summer's "deep dive" project, which was an exploration of issues for writers and translators in the art of translation itself. So I was reading interviews talking about that, like about what gets lost in translation, what it's like to translate something that's already a translation, how much stuff is translated that we don't even realize isn't brought to us in its original language, what happens when not only the language but the medium is altered and so on.

It was fun. Usually I just pick some country's fiction or poetry, or some particular author, and hang out there all summer, but this year's project was more ambitious and turned out to be a whole lot of fun, even if I ended up feeling more than ever like a jack of all trades, master of none by time I called it a season.

Anyway I stumbled into this bit by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and it's sticking with me:

"L'avenir pénètre en nous pour s'y modifier longtemps avant qu'il n'arrive lui-même."​

Roughly: "the future changes itself from within us, long before it actually arrives."

So true, no? Whatever we believe is down the road for us can be infinitely subjective in scope and focus, and we are all capable of distorting our own future... not just because of what has happened so far in real life, but because of what we have chosen to make of that.

So much of literature plays off that very human theme. I feel like I have the edges of next summer's deep dive already, but I won't get around to planning the details until next spring.

 

[Alli]

Here's something random, culled from among this summer's "deep dive" project, which was an exploration of issues for writers and translators in the art of translation itself. So I was reading interviews talking about that, like about what gets lost in translation, what it's like to translate something that's already a translation, how much stuff is translated that we don't even realize isn't brought to us in its original language, what happens when not only the language but the medium is altered and so on.

Sounds fascinating! Definitely a good lesson in why machine translations don’t work. They miss the cultural subtleties that make language live.

I used to give my students an exercise where they took a proverb of their choice and put it in Google translate. Translate it to German, take the German and translate it to French. Then the French to Spanish, the Spanish to Russian, the Russian to Dutch, the Dutch to Chinese, and then the Chinese to English. The results were almost always so far from the original that they often had no meaning at all.

 

[lizkat]

Sounds fascinating! Definitely a good lesson in why machine translations don’t work. They miss the cultural subtleties that make language live.

I used to give my students an exercise where they took a proverb of their choice and put it in Google translate. Translate it to German, take the German and translate it to French. Then the French to Spanish, the Spanish to Russian, the Russian to Dutch, the Dutch to Chinese, and then the Chinese to English. The results were almost always so far from the original that they often had no meaning at all.

Absolutely, and what an instructive exercise. Life itself is pretty idiomatic and so language is intertwined with culture. As diversity expands our awareness of other cultures, it does get tricky to find the common ground in the larger community for some of the expressions and beliefs of our own family and perhaps the immediate communities that may tend to share a particular culture.

It's apparently apocryphal that the Inuit language has over 50 words and phrases for "snow" or "ice", but an indigenous Alaskan who was a pal of an old friend of mine here once observed that the word ayorama -- short form: "so be it"-- does in fact translate more expansively in his own experience to "that's life and ya can't do nothin' about it."

As a result of that conversation, my friend installed a sturdy little boulder in the center of one of his annual flower gardens with "Ayorama" painted on it, to remind him to laugh and shrug when the killing frost had laid waste yet again to his garden on some October (or earlier!) morning.

 

[JayMysteri0]

 

[JayMysteri0]

 

[JayMysteri0]

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1296658212146630656/
Reports are, the bear is fine, and medically cleared.

 

[lizkat]

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1296658212146630656/
Reports are, the bear is fine, and medically cleared.

Gee you made me hit pawz on the audio from DeJoy's hearing for this clip. Totally worth it!

 

[JayMysteri0]

Also, since profanity isn't the issue here as it was elsewhere, just sharing how much I love John Boyega with the triggered fans of the last Star Wars films.

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1296919994207535106/

 

[JayMysteri0]

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1296943412323561472/

 

[JayMysteri0]

 

[Alli]

I like it. And for some strange reason it reminds me of the Centre Pompidou (Boubourg) in Paris.

 

[JayMysteri0]

Just a heads up if you are like me and already very tired of this year...

NASA: Asteroid headed toward Earth before November election

NASA reported Saturday that an asteroid is headed toward Earth one day before U.S. Election Day this year, though the chances of an impact are less than 1 percent.

thehill.com

NASA reported Saturday that an asteroid is headed toward Earth one day before U.S. Election Day this year, though the chances of an impact are less than 1 percent.

Scientists labeled the asteroid 2018VP1, and data reveals its diameter is 0.002 kilometers, or about 6.5 feet, CNN reported.

The celestial object was first discovered at the Palomar Observatory in California in 2018.

 

[Renzatic]

 

[JayMysteri0]

https://www.twitter.com/i/web/status/1297269282452189191/

 

[JayMysteri0]

 

[JayMysteri0]

I saw this trending on Twitter and couldn't understand why, and then if you factor stupid shit in it becomes clear.