Gentle nerd freak of the pacific northwest. All nation states are vermin.

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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: June 26th, 2024

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  • Tauros in greek is bull, yeah. The minotaur was the Bull of Minos. It may link back to the pre-greek people of crete, known for bull-leaping.

    The “ken” in “Kentauros” is thought to mean piercing, but why is a piercing bull a half man/horse? There’s no obvious explanation.

    I love the idea of -tauros coming to mean a monstrous combination, like franken- in english. But if there were any evidence of that some very excited nerds would’ve told us, I’m sure.


  • Personally, I say sen tore.

    According to my classics professor ~20 years ago, we can’t know how “au” would’ve been pronounced in the greek.

    He told us that ancient greek diphthong pronunciation is just made up. Apparently it’s much harder to reconstruct those sounds confidently, but that didn’t stop past classicists from claiming their reckonings as incontrovertible facts. Oxford and cambridge used to expell students for following the diphthong pronunciations of the other, but both are basically guesses.







  • I downvoted then blocked it because:

    • I don’t trust its specific analysis of sites. Others detail some examples.

    • I don’t think whole-site analysis is very useful in combatting misinformation. The reliability and fullness of facts presented by any single site varies a lot depending on the topic or type of story.

    • Other than identifying blatant disinformation sites I don’t see what useful information it provides. But even that’s rare here and rarely needs a bot to spot.

    • Why is an open-source, de-centralized platform giving free space to a private company?

    • Giving permission for a private trust-assesing company to be operating in an open public forum makes it look as if these assessments reflect a neutral reality that most or all readers would agree on or want to be aware of. It’s a service that people can seek out of they decide they trust it.

    Presenting this company’s assessment on each or most articles gives them undue authority that is especially inappropriate on the fediverse.