Göktuğ Kayaalp @cadadr@mastodon.sdf.org

Late #introduction

Been playing around w/ #coding since I was 11, & w/ #linguistics since that weird summer of 2014.

BA in Italianistics, doing an MA in English Linguistics since Fall 2019. Slowly working my way to becoming a researcher. My current interests are #sociolinguistics #phonology #syntax #ConstructionGrammar (and other non-TGG approaches).

When I'm not ranting about web or desktop computing, I toot interesting links, showerthoughts, and increasingly more linguistics stuff.

rando: so what do you study?
me: #linguistics.
rando: what is it about? english?
me: no, more than particular languages, we try to figure out how language itself works, like in the brain, and society...
rando: 😕 😐 hmm 😒
me: ... and we collaborate with *medicine*, y'know, help figure out how to fix speech impairments...
rando: 💡 😮 woow 😮 💡
me: ...and we also cross paths with computer science, artificial intelligence, y'know, siri and stuff...
rando: 😲 😯 huh

that's how I sell linguistics

Turkish man fleeing quarantine disguising himself as a... fucking road sign 🤯

https://www.reddit.com/r/Turkey/comments/fvcvsi/karantinadan_tabela_olarak_ka%C3%A7mak/

Watch this lecture by James Paul Gee titled "From Grammar to Society". It's about the interface between language as a semiotic system and language as a proxy to societal structure. The first ten minutes or so is exceptionally good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiaYBVAEUk

#linguistics #syntax #discourse

I keep my ~/.profile and aliases.sh POSIX-compatible, so they work almost anywhere and with almost any widely used shell (maybe except tcsh? does anybody use it?), and it's very easy to share them.

Another tip for consistency:

systemctl --user import-environment PATH

This'll make sure your user units (in ~/.config/systemd/user) will work as expected w/o long paths (and if you don't want to hard code your $HOME in those units, I recently learned you use %h for that: like "Exec=%h/bin/...").

BTW most of the stuff people tell you to put into your .bashrc or .zshrc is best put into your .profile, like PATH variables and other envvars. (maybe not the above function tho, it's best in an aliases.sh file that you source in different POSIX-compatible shell rc files).

This way, your DE will pick them up (or in your .xsessionrc/.xprofile: ". $HOME/.profile"; see your DEs docs), and also you wont have to copy them around for different shells.

Here is a convenient little shell function for your .profile to simplify that command line:

yw ()
{
ydl -o- "$1" 2> /dev/null | mpv - > /dev/null 2> /dev/null
}

If anybody picked up the youtube-dl alias I tooted an hour ago (https://mastodon.sdf.org/@cadadr/103946938754474529), note that you can use it with mpv too, like this

ydl -o- '<url>' | mpv -

mpv itself can use your system youtube-dl installation, but at least on Debian derivatives that is often too stale to work reliably.

I use that command a lot when I want to take notes watching a video: an uncluttered large mpv window and a little emacsclient window in a workspace. Neat and tidy.

If you do *any* #computer related productive work, especially teaching people computers, you *must* watch Ben Eater's channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/eaterbc). Especially the #8bit #breadboard computer series and the one he's doing now building a #65c02 based computer. Even if you'll never do anything with hardware or program at the hardware level, you learn so much useful stuff. It's like going from an excercise bike to a fixie: neither are your daily driver, but the latter teaches you so much more.

April is rainy in Istanbul, but this year it's more like wintery. The crazy wind, the fog, the cold, all totally out of place.

Looks like the planet's tryna get rid of us...

Xiaomi phones are good but ad-ridden. Ny nezt phone will be something else.

Fairphone is intriguing. Oneplus gets nice reviews.

What does it take in terms of technical skill, dedicated time and server costs, to run a small Mastodon instance?

So while we could expect a bit more sensibility from these people, it's important to notice that the world has screwed them.

I can't come up with a practical idea on how to help these people tho. We must teach them that internet is full of trolls and conspiracy theorists that enjoy manipulating people or are dumb enough to believe the stupidest of things. We must teach them that not everything their friends say is sensible.

That's not strictly an age thing tho, it's just the generation they've born into: until a decade ago, they went to the movies, spent cash, and newspapers fed them filtered, safer news. The ways the world has changed in the past ten years is mind boggling.

As a 26yo who's been into tech since 15yrs, even I feel left behind at times. WTF is Snapchat? You ask for your date's Instagram instead of their number? When did that happen?

Tech-illiterate middle-aged and senior users just can't handle the amount of bullshit the internet throws at them.

Facebook and Twitter accounts of people who believe "they are hiding the truth" are more likely to end the world than nuclear weapons.