Interesting Links for 28-10-2024

[andrewducker]

1. Character Amnesia in China

(tags:language china )

2. I now know why humans kiss - and nothing will ever be sexy again

(tags:sexy kissing monkeys disgust )

3. A short history of saturated fat: the making and unmaking of a scientific consensus

(tags:research fat diet health )

4. AI-powered transcription tool used in hospitals invents things no one ever said

(tags:ai voice text healthcare fail )

5. Lily Allen OnlyFans Feet Pictures Make More Money Than Spotify

(tags:spotify feet money music )

6. Day trips from Edinburgh that you don't need a car for

(tags:travel tourism edinburgh )

7. Are we making too many games?

(tags:games business )

Comments

3.

[channelpenguin]

Nina Teicholz is considered by some to be a pretty dubious source. But look into it yourself, I'm not pushing any opinion.

I guess when it comes to food for health, we all can tend to cherry pick the research that supports our own beliefs and desires.

4.

[channelpenguin]

Insane. Especially the one that DELETES THE ORIGINAL RECORDING!

Should be outright banned in that application. And probably many others.

2.

[channelpenguin]

I always thought it was from feeding infants before they can chew up tough foods?

[simont]

#1: just looking at the title I was reminded of the article Why Chinese Is So Damn Hard by David Moser.

And rightly so, since "Character Amnesia" is by the same author, and the first paragraph of today's link repeats the story about "sneeze" that appears in section 3 of WCISDH.

[channelpenguin]

I understand that spoken Chinese is reasonably easy? No tenses?

[simont]

On the other hand, says WCISDH, the fact that it's a tone language makes it difficult for people previously accustomed to non-tone languages, in a way that you don't quite realise until you start trying to use it to talk about things you care about passionately instead of pure classroom exercises. Also the difficulty of the writing still causes some problems even if you're mostly interested in speaking, because sooner or later you want to look something up in a dictionary.

But I haven't tried learning it myself. My niece is studying Mandarin, though – good luck to her!

[channelpenguin]

I never thought about that aspect of a tonal language before. As a singer, I might personally expect to pick it up more easily, but I can see this combination of factors adding to learning time for anyone!

[redbird]

3. I am, shall we say, skeptical of an article whose abstract starts by saying it contains "revelations that have never before been published in the scientific literature."

[channelpenguin]

I also think there is still a huge majority consensus. So it's a very disingenuous title.