It's sometimes claimed that languages spoken by societies with large numbers of non-native speakers, and large heterogeneity of their native speakers, tend to simplify themselves over time. This study contradicts the claim, based on data for morphological complexity from 1k+ languages.

Relay was (yup) one of the third party apps that survived the API-calypse. But this sort of model is unsustainable in the long run, given that the competitor (the broken native app) is free and unlimited.

The obvious future monopoly of the broken native app is bad for the platform in the long run, given that Reddit always sucked off ideas from third party apps; and now there's no incentive whatsoever to make it better, after Reddit Inc. killed the better competitors.

The title is a bit clickbaity but the article is worth a read. To keep it short:

• large subreddits stopped protesting
• 1.8k subreddits are still in the dark, but those are rather small
• [from the article] "Though the Reddit team likely caused permanent damage to the platform and its relationship with users, Spez got his way. But that victory might not mean much."

IMO it was a Pyrrhic victory. Sure, the protests ended, and most users are still stuck in that shithole... but the reputation damage won't be reversed, Reddit managed to seed its competitors (as this one) with the necessary userbase to make them functional, and odds are that Reddit will keep going in its death spiral. And that doesn't even take into account the amount of bad press that it generated, that will hurt IPO numbers for sure.

Left: 2yo, right: 15yo. Still the same ticklish weirdo, who thinks that the clothespin basket is a toybox.

The study involved linguists and geneticists, and estimated the family to be around 8100 years old, with five main branches splitting off 7000 years ago or so. That fits neither the Kurgan/Steppe hypothesis nor the farming/Anatolian one. Instead the authors propose a hybrid hypothesis, with PIE spreading initially from the southern Caucasus; and then an IE branch going north, into the steppes, and spreading from there.

Personal note: that further hints that the similarities noticed between the NW Caucasian languages and the current PIE reconstructions aren't just a result of coincidence; they might be areal features. I wouldn't be surprised for example if what's currently reconstructed as *e *o was originally vertical, something like **ə **a (Ubykh style).

I'm sharing this here mostly due to the "official" labels. Excerpt from the text:

“Starting today, we’re beginning early testing of placing a visual indicator on certain profiles to provide proof of authenticity, reduce impersonation, and increase transparency across the platform,” a Reddit admin (employee) wrote in a post. “This is currently only available to a *very* small (double-digit) number of profiles belonging to organizations with whom we already have existing relationships, and who are interested in engaging with redditors and communities on our platform.”

At least for me this looks like a really poor attempt to attract content creators into the platform, while shifting its focus from the content created and shared by the users to the users themselves, as in more typical social media platforms (such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok). It's bound to fail - what made Reddit desirable for the users was the content that they shared among themselves, unlike in Twitter where a few personalities can "anchor" the rest of the userbase.

This community grew far more than I expected. That's great, but a single mod for such an active comm is a liability, plus I want to nurture a few other comms. As such, I'm recruiting new mods.

Does anyone volunteer? Potential new mods should:

• be already active members of this community;
• have spare time to browse, comment, and post in this community fairly often;
• have decent reading comprehension;
• be able to dialogue with other members of the community, in a respectful and cooperative way;
• not be moderators of a large number of other communities.

[EDIT] Two important details:

1. You do not need previous experience as a moderator!
2. I'll still be actively moderating this community, alongside any newcomer. Don't worry, I'm not abandoning it; I'm just future-proofing it.

cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/RedditMigration/t/233339

Comments from the original poster:

Not much else needs to be said tbh. Fuck Spez. // Edit: Not sure why imgur marked the album as NSFW, but there's nothing NSFW in it other than the name of one of the mods including the word "removed"

Personal comment: the critter isn't even dead but the vultures are already flying in circles around it. I certainly do not envy their situation, I bet that the users will treat them like shit.

The article provides a global analysis to model patterns of current and future language endangerment. In other words, it's trying to explain and predict where and how language loss happens, by measuring stuff.

Interesting excerpts of the article:

Our best-fit model explains 34% of the variation in language endangerment (comparable to similar analyses on species endangerment.

That's actually rather good, considering the global scale of analysis for something as messy as human beings, and how local political factors can revive or kill languages.

Five predictors of language endangerment are consistently identified at global and regional scales: L1 speakers, bordering language richness, road density, years of schooling and the number of endangered languages in the immediate neighbourhood.

I feel like linguists handling minority languages should already know thing by "gut feeling": small community, with lots of nearby languages, well-connected to other communities, being drilled by the government = threatened linguistic community. However, it's still great that the article is grounding that "gut feeling" into data.

Link for the study: A global analysis of matches and mismatches between human genetic and linguistic histories

The conclusion itself is nothing new, but there are some interesting tidbits, such as about 1/5 of the gene-language relations being a mismatch.

This article covers mostly the recent events, where Reddit tries to gaslight the mods into a "we need to talk". As well as r/place opening.

I'm posting this here as it documents that the media already took notice of the hostility towards Reddit and Reddit Inc., including in r/place, even if the admins are trying to control the damage in it by screwing with the message.