original: kakaw, kakawatl Spanish: cacao German: Kakao Portuguese: cacao French: cacao Polish: kakao Japanese: カカオ Russian: Какао Hungarian: Kakaó Arabic: كَاكَاو English: cocoa :thonking: I never thought about that, why is English like, metathesised the vowels? it doesn't make sense phonetically either, you would expect something like "cackaw" or whatever if they were trying to imitate the sound. it feels as if at some point someone mixed up the letters rather than the sounds

I know a poor soul who is in California right now and they still can't believe how car-centric everything is. I was like yeah cali is terrible and that's still one of the least bad ones, you should see Phoenix, by which I mean, definitely don't. it's really kind of eerie and scary how thoroughly USA folk have normalised no public transport, no trains, and driving-required urbanism generally. it's like you move into a country where everyone can only get anywhere by swimming through channels of molasses and nobody thinks twice about it because they're so proud of their brand-name molassess-swimming trunks

" A German newspaper commissioned an article from me but then refused to publish it: Ai Weiwei, „Was ich gern früher über Deutschland gewusst hätte“ ': > A society governed by regulations, yet lacking individual moral judgment, is more dangerous than one with none at all. > A society that values obedience without questioning authority is destined to become corrupt. > A society that admits to error but refuses to reflect on its origins possesses a mind as stubborn and dull as granite. > Here, at a deserted street, people stop dutifully at a red light. Not a car in sight. This, I once thought, is the mark of a highly evolved society. > At the heart of bureaucracy lies a collective endorsement of power’s legitimacy, and therefore, individuals surrender their moral judgment — or perhaps never developed one. They abandon challenge. They relinquish dispute. > When conversation becomes avoidance, when topics must not be mentioned, we are already living under the quiet logic of authoritarianism…

Hyperallergic

What I Wish I Had Known About Germany Earlier

A German newspaper commissioned an article from me but then refused to publish it.

my ex is about to travel to Portugal. ex: how do I say 'a table for two, please' and 'with card, please'? me: in theory, 'mesa para dois, por favor' and 'com cartão' me: in real life: pop two fingers and say "dois", or show your credit card and say "credit?". everyone gets what you mean x3

If you did not stop using Spotify yet, you might want to know that Spotify is running ICE recruitment ads in the USA now. I won't point fingers on people pirating it but you're literally platforming the brownshirts if you keep giving money to Spotify

I guess part of the dynamics of "a bubble" is when everyone starts hyping the bubble, like, kinda the opposite of crypto scams, at some point investors' herd behaviour kicks in and everyone panics and disinvest from the thing, causing a crash. the "AI bubble" is mainstream discourse now, and I am helping by reblogging that even Deutsche Bank is warning now of how the entire USA economy is ridiculously dependent on Big Tech at the moment, which in turn is fully hanging onto the "AI" economy, which so far has only generated any revenue at all for Nvidia and datacenters. Basically the entire finances of the USA is balanced on shovel sellers during a gold rush, with nary a nugget of gold to be seen. https://www.techspot.com/news/109626-ai-bubble-only-thing-keeping-us-economy-together.html Also investors are doing the math and realising that > The industry is spending over $30 billion a month (approximately $400 billion for 2025) and only receiving a bit more than a billion a month back in revenue. And it's probably a bad sign when you're sinking one Apollo space program per *month* on a piece of tech and all you get to show for it is universally despised slop.

my current pet peeve with movies/series: people routinely discuss crimes they've done right next to their smartphones, or even *in* their smartphones. I'm like one step in paranoia away from thinking the CIA is putting this in movies on purpose

the non-Christian from Catholic country's urge to defend the Catholics whenever the criticism is coming from Protestants or lumping them with Pentecostals

Shopify, pulling strings at Ruby Central, forces Bundler and RubyGems takeover

Ruby Central recently took over a collection of open source projects from their maintainers without their consent.

it's past time to kill Freedom 0 and stop making software that capital owners can use. corporate is the enemy, make software for the people (only).

> Israel may defund own film awards after movie about Palestine wins top prize > Under Israel's protocol, "The Sea", a film critiquing the country's occupation of Palestine, will automatically be put forth as its Oscar contender.

AV Club

Israel may defund own film awards after movie about Palestine wins top prize

Israel may defund own film awards after movie about Palestine wins top prize