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@allgebrah
silence, THIS
Internet (de, en)
synkretie.net/microfiction.h…
Joined January 2011
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    as linguists decipher elephant language, they are puzzled by what appears to be a large and recent body of loanwords from an unknown species, but eventually it is identified as 20th century truck engine sounds that have come to mean "[I am] moving towards [location implied]"
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @allgebrah
    furthermore there are multiple registers to it, with the 'train' register being more hissy and implying unstoppability, and the 'car' register (higher in pitch) indicating playfulness
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @allgebrah
    there is also a popular elephant joke going roughly like: [car and truck sounds simultaneously] [honk and crash] [car starts up again] [car receding in the distance, inflected to also mean "serves you right"] (for best effect, the car sounds are made by a calf)
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @allgebrah
    it also turns out that elephants are excellent mechanics, having great strength, a natural talent for identifying engine problems by sound alone and encyclopedic memory of replacement parts
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @allgebrah
    some other things they found: - increasing/decreasing pitch (doppler effect) indicates direction of movement (towards/away) and can even be modulated for swerves etc - gear shift pitch (sawtooth like) indicates great acceleration (often used for comic effect)
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @allgebrah
    I'm not even making this up
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @SleevelessRube
    I was riffing on emfcamp.org/schedule/2024/… but I'm moderately confident that there really are such loanwords and we'll know of them in 5-10 years
    emfcamp.org
    Toys for Elephants
    About the challenges and delights of designing playful interactive systems with elephants currently living in the UK, featuring elephants with brambles, supersize balls, giant sliders and...
    78K
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @Wammes_wabbit
    I don't know but I'd expect Indian and African elephants to have distinct languages, Indians might be the more 'civilized' ones given extensive contact with humans?
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    @allgebrah
    May 26, 2016
    The reason you use dead languages for magic is that they don't move. Spells in living languages spoil within years due to semantic drift.
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    @allgebrah
    Sep 17, 2017
    Robot slurs for humans: - sack of soiled water - meat unit - amino asset - entropy on legs - genebag - proteins
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    @allgebrah
    Jan 2, 2025
    Replying to @sagabal2
    I hadn't even found that specific one, I love how it even has engine startup sounds
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    @allgebrah
    Dec 19, 2017
    The Matrix, but set in the Renaissance: A troupe of idealists tries to escape from god's mind through alchemy and paradoxes while hunted by vengeful angels
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    @allgebrah
    Sep 30, 2017
    why call it software exploitation and not glitchcraft
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    @allgebrah
    May 26, 2018
    Art project if you have too much money: Anonymously buy some 95% to 100% of your city's ad space for a month and make it display only art and nature pictures; then hope for protests once the ads are back