What a beautiful episode. The message was great and it wasn't ambiguous enough for people to really misinterpret or miss it while still remaining an indirect allegory for current times. The allegory was clearly about either homosexuality or undocumented immigrants and I appreciate that people from either group can likely relate to this episode. As a gay guy I have to say I definitely did.
Also, the scene with Spock's "outburst" was hilarious and I loved seeing the (on the surface) emotionless Spock once again.
Overall I loved the episode and I'm very glad to see one I love after personally disliking the previous one.
The allegory was trans people. Hence all the talk of needing to 'pass' to be accepted and the wonderful lil touch of Unas child cast being the colours of the Trans flag
Ah, I’d missed that detail. I was on the fence about whether or not it was a trans allegory because it didn’t initially feel like there were as many similarities in her story to being trans as there was to homosexuality and being an undocumented immigrant but upon further consideration I have to agree. Though it does seem to me like it is also about those other groups I mentioned. I suppose it’s a bit of a catch-all (which worked great).
The way Illyrians were segregated into Illyrian and non-Illyrian cities except for people who could pass echoes the Jim Crow era of US history, with black people being segregated and some of them trying to pass for white.
The refusal of service to those who were found to be Illyrian is like antisemitic attitudes in pre-war Nazi Germany, or the refusal of service to homosexuals. Most of what happened can be compared to any persecuted minority, racial or sexual.
That’s the beauty of a good metaphor. And the ugly universality of bigotry.
It is not unlikely that this is the allegory they had in mind primarily, but so much of the bigotry and hatred depicted applied to gays, blacks, jews, women and probably more groups, too.
We're rhyming history, every generation we're trying to overcome prejudice, oppression and hatred against a new minority, only for some to conjure up a new distinguishing feature to define a minroty to be ostracized. It feels like treading water sometimes, can't we just cut through the bullshit in one go, but no, we have to go through all the steps, while some new group (or a subgroup of a previous group) has to endure all the pain this brings. Sometimes it feels like we're not really getting better. But maybe we are. But it's still too slow, it still repeats itself, and nowadays we might experience multiple such cycles in our lifetime, when at some point it took generations to get that kind of progress?
There were also parts of it that could easily be interpreted as Jim Crow era politics. Passing was a thing for Blacks as well. Splitting into two different cities reminded me of both redlining and “separate but equal.” Of course, history repeats itself, and this allegory could also be applied to Jews, Native Americans, and any other persecuted minority, including gay and trans people. Una’s whole situation could pretty easily be mapped onto a “don’t ask, don’t tell” situation as well.
I play on Linux, but Minecraft works well in Linux, Windows and Macintosh. There are also clients for mobile phones. You may have to seek help elsewhere for installing Minecraft, for windows I think it is in the Microsoft store so that should be easiest.
Ok, Minecraft is a sandbox game with no specific goal or endpoint. The object is to build stuff and have fun. There is a dangerous element built-in in the form of Creepers, Skeletons, Spiders, and Zombies. Creepers are the worst - they destroy your actual work. The others can just kill you - you end up reincarnating back at the spawn point. The spawn point is the location where
you first appeared in the game world
the last place you slept in a bed.
I normally play with the dangerous “Mobs” (mobile items) turned off as I like the model-building aspect of the game.
Some of this will seem wordy and confusing - really it is simple but takes a lot to describe. Youtube has “First Day in Minecraft” videos by various players that will show you what I am describing. “www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADU1ycprBg4” seems good.
Ok, that’s the environment, now the mechanics. You can move your avatar, you in the game, with the “w s a d” keys. these walk forward, backup, or slide right or left. You can change where you are looking with the mouse.
You can break blocks with the tool you are holding by holding down the Left mouse button. You will see cracks form and finally, the item will break. Move close to the floating broken item and you pick it up and put it in your inventory.
You can place items from your inventory into the world with the right mouse button.
You start with only fists as your tools - but you are strong, you can punch trees to get logs and cut down the tree. Find a tree that is not touching others and punch (hold down the left mouse button) until that block breaks - you will see a smaller version of the log floating nearby or you may pick it up automatically if it lands close to you. Likewise, punch each of the other log blocks of the tree. You now have logs!
You can use one log to craft a crafting table. To open your crafting interface push the “e” key on your keyboard - You will be presented with a 2x2 place to put items and your inventory. Drag and drop one log from your inventory into any of the 2x2 cells and see 4 planks appear in the output cell. Drag those planks back into your inventory. Take 4 planks from your inventory and put them in the 4 cells of the crafting interface and you see in the output a crafting table. A crafting table works the same way as your crafting interface except it has a 3x3 input area. The larger input area allows you to craft larger, more complicated things.
You want to get wood and build yourself a small simple shelter before night comes. The dangerous mobs come out at night and you want to be enclosed so they can’t get to you. When daylight comes Zombies and Creepers burn in the sunlight and spiders become docile until the next night.
Now - many of the things you make on a crafting table or in your crafting interface require the ingredients be placed in a specific arrangement. You can learn of these arrangements by opening the crafting book (the book icon in the crafting interface)
Reply here if you have other questions - but go watch that video first. Have fun! Welcome to Minecraft. BTW I am 65 and playing Minecraft so don’t let anyone tell you it’s just a kid’s game.
I usually hang out on Lemmy.one. I am waspentalive there too. I may be slow in responding if you reply. Sorry…
Thank you for your generous response. I’ll follow your advice… I just wanted to say that it feels great that someone has taken this much interest in my Minecraft initiation!
Hi! I’m a linguist, and this topic is one that comes up commonly.
The answer is no. There is no such thing as languages/words that are native to humans. You can have things that are widely shared (mama/papa based on baby-talk as an example), but seeing as language itself is not universal to humans, there is no such thing as a word that is universal.
How common are things like the bouba/kiki effect in linguistics? It seems there are some sounds that are based on something other than learned behavior, how much does this cause commonality in real language?
Hi! Sorry for the delay, took a break from social media.
It’s often an effect of local convergent evolution, effectively.
Like if the group next to you has certain associations, well you’re likely to have similar associations. It’s also hard to verify some of that research due to the nature of how it’s conducted.
Interesting answer, scanning through the Wikipedia article on kiki/bouba it makes sense that we don’t really have solid evidence that it isn’t a learned trait. It may be hard to get a population of people who developed language independently of all other humans ever and see if they maintain the strong correlation with naming kiki and bouba.
So I guess that brings up another question I have kinda wondered about. What is the most “isolated” spoken language on the planet? By that, I mean the language that evolved most independently of other spoken languages. Is there anything interesting that can be learned by comparing such a language to the European languages that are dominant among the global population?
Great question! Here’s the thing though, the language had to come from somewhere right? The people had to come from somewhere.
The assumptions and associations that make up the basis of language are thousands of years old. Obviously languages change and societies change, but no one has ever protested about the “k” sound being too “harsh” or something, or at least not seriously.
Even an extremely isolated population would likely still be heavily influenced by whatever the parent language is.
Hey @ruud, fellow SysAdmin here! Thank you for hosting this Lemmy instance! It’s a great place, uptime has been excellent!
I’ve a question, if you’re willing to give your opinion. Hardware is not cheap and eventually it might become impossible to pay the bills to host this instance.
What kind of support model do you envision for the future of this instance? Donations, subscription, advertisements?
Thanks anyway, and good luck to you!
Edit: I see that donations are already optional. Nice! But i’m still curious, so is there other options you’ve considered for your Mastadon instance for example?
Hi, I think donations will be the way also in the future. Anything non voluntary wouldn’t work because people will just move to other servers that are free. And so far I’ve seen there’s more than enough willingness to donate.
I won a potato and spoon race in year 2. The instructions they gave said if we dropped the potato we should run to where it was and put it back on the spoon so I flicked the potato to the finish line and ran and collected it and won by an absolute mile.
Almost every time “regular” people get in trouble for piracy, the reason is that they seeded something, a copyright law firm (or their contractor) noticed it, noted their IP address and then either went and got the real life address from the ISP so that they could send you “the bill” or they made the ISP send you something, depending on where you live really.
That means, as long as that that IP address that shows up on that law firms screen isn´t actually “your own”, isn´t immediately traceable to you simply by calling up your ISP, you´re already one step ahead in the game.
That law firm might still try to contact the owner of that IP though, either to send them “a bill” or to get them to rat on you. And that´s why it is important that your VPN provider operates in a way that allows them to simply ignore that. Either by operating out of a country that doesn´t mandate them to “help finding you” or by simply not keeping any logs of what actual IP was connected to what VPN IP at what time.
So if you have a VPN provider that maybe operates out or through a country where piracy is legal or has proven through audits that they couldn´t rat even if they wanted, you´re highly unlikely to get into any trouble.
I won semi-pro doubles at a table football tournament in Lithuania once. Pretty crazy how serious people take table football (foosball) as a sport, really. Was mad fun though.
I won some medals for ballroom dance when I was maybe 8 or 9. Not a sporting achievement I guess but it required a certain level of athleticism and co-ordination that I’m severly lacking in my 30s.
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