> “Please describe your greatest weakness“
I memorized to reply with “I have a weakness for Italian pasta.”
Even though you may be tempted to reply with “You fight like a cow.”
575 karma · joined August 26, 2019
I memorized to reply with “I have a weakness for Italian pasta.”
Even though you may be tempted to reply with “You fight like a cow.”
This is just work in IT.
There's a subclass of 成语 the sense of which you can't even guess at unless you know the story:
- 塞翁失马 (Sai Weng Shi Ma) - Old man loses horse; a 5-fold story of riches-to-rags-to-riches-to-rags-to-riches = life is unpredictable
- 自相矛盾 (Zi Xiang Mao Dun) - Resemble spear and shield = unstoppable force meets indestructible object
The latter is so common that 矛盾 (Mao Dun) is the dictionary entry for "contradiction" in Chinese and Japanese.
Because 矛盾 is so common, the story 自相矛盾 (=etymology) gets taught only later to native speakers. Similarly, consider the surprising etymology of word "rob", deriving from "robe" [1].
Consider also: - "Seven at One Blow" [2] = bamboozle
This proverb everyone knows, yet nobody uses it. It only cumbersomely embeds in a sentence; "bamboozle" is briefer. But 成语 do easily embed in Chinese or any phrase does in Tamarian.
1: https://www.etymonline.com/word/robe 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brave_Little_Tailor
Consider Chinese 成语 (Chengyu) [1] or Japanese 四字熟語 (Yo Ji Juku Go) [2]: - 指桑骂槐 (Zhi Sang Ma Huai) - Pulling the shoots to make the rice grow = helicoptering - 拔苗助长 (Ba Miao Zhu Zhang) - Point at the mulberry tree to curse the locust tree = deflective criticism
These condense a whole story with moral lesson in them, and they facilitate recall of that concept. The trick is omission of everything but 4 characters from the whole story. Sometimes they're just an enumeration:
- 柴米油盐 （Chai Mi You Yan) Firewood, Rice, Oil, Salt = essential things for everyday life - 都道府県 (To Dou Fu Ken) all 4 types of Jap. prefecture = everywhere
I think brevity is key for words that aim at aiding thinking. All languages allow composition; consider "Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher". But only if the word is short, can you quickly cast your thought into its form (as if speaking) and proceed to compose it with the next thought. You do this until your individual mental capacity runs out.
It's also very important that others know the concept. I find myself often refer to "that scene in Wolf of Wallstreet where Belfort _really safely_ drives his Lamborghini home"[3] to express "power is nothing without control". I wish there was a briefer word for it yet.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chengyu 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojijukugo 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1huYsSOYlVo
I use a passwordcard[1]. When the paper dissolves, I generate a new one from the same seed and print it again.
Does the spacing of the knobs allow hinging wooden elements like on a Rubik's cube?
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20230726232243/https://www.atlas...
> it’s been buried for 1,700 years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti#History says:
> The first written record of pasta comes from the Talmud in the 5th century AD
> In the West, it may have first been worked into long, thin forms in Sicily around the 12th century
> "that the toilet seat is a sacred collar one must wear before shouting, down the hole, to the gods below"
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/162247/humorous-st...
Make them a bit terser, and maybe “Right to repair” will heave them out of the science fiction tarpit.
Somehow like category theory will enable you to solve your maths homework.
- material, spiritual, civic, social identity, and social aspiration
and the levels of soul in jewish Kabbalah:
- Nefesh, Ruach, Neshama, Chaya, and Yechida?
Make note that for example “when well fed, E. coli bacteria divide once every 20 minutes”[1], making that iron memory last for 80 to 140 minutes. Though that may still be longer than it takes them to discard a plasmid (genetic “loose change” on e.g. immunity resistance) when competing for reproductive speed.
1: Nick Lane, “Power, Sex, Suicide. Mitochondria and the meaning of life”, 2nd ed., 2018, p. 175
“Finding Mr Young”[1] identifies him as: “Mr Young was probably Quin Fischer Curtis, in his theses published in 1931/1936, as part of John F. Shepard’s multi-decade research programme at the University of Michigan into ‘floor cues’, going well beyond just putting sand on the floor.”
Bacteria acquiring genes to feed on plastics would lead to closing the circle again. Although supply will be cut short when humanity gives up producing plastics.
Levels were initially added as a “gimmick” by the programmers, and quickly came to dominate every aspect of life. His last name was assigned from his father’s job title at the time of conception.
If gender is how we sneak conditional expressions and nondet Prolog predicates into natural languages, then I’m in.
COMEFROM considered harm-mitigating
It ingeniously makes Return Oriented Programming (ROP) a lot harder.