Tootfinder

As I'm learning Dutch, I'm reminded that the idea that there are people who believe that the bible is to be taken literally. The idea that a several hundred year old translation of a collection of texts in multiple languages, that were themselves translated multiple times between languages, before the whole thing was translated to Latin, then being translated to English, could somehow perfectly reflect the original text... Yeah, it's only possible to believe that if you have no idea how languages work and have never learned another language.
Like, just from linguistic drift alone if the bible were written in King James English you're losing *so* much context. But Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek translated to Latin, then to English, then to English again?
There are so many things that erg can't be translated, even as a beginner. Dutch and English are two of the closest languages that exist, they're both Germanic languages and they're the closest to each other (other than Friesian). You can't really be much closer, and yet, there are so many things you can't mutually represent. Hebrew and Latin, Aramaic and Latin, Latin and English, Greek and English, these aren't even the same families at all... They're extremely distant. There's absolutely no way to represent concepts from one to another without another book's worth of explanation.
And that ignores all the cultural context, which is mostly lost and a library and decade of education to get the stuff that we *do* know.
Only monolingual Americans could come up with an idea so incredibly asinine.

The world's data centers already consume three times as much electricity as Dutch national consumption. And this is expected to grow to 8 times within five years.
https://mastodon.green/@solar_chase/114556281180000861

Shoot First laws in the United States lead to substantial increases in violence
and the senseless loss of hundreds of lives every year.
Research shows that these laws have increased gun homicides by up to 11 percent nationally,
translating to more than 700 deaths annually.
Some Shoot First states have seen even steeper increases, with those rates rising by 30 percent or more in Alabama, Florida, and Missouri.
Adolescents experience higher rates of gun homicides…

The Dangers of Shooting First: "Stand Your Ground" Laws Are a License to Kill
Shoot First laws, also known as Stand Your Ground laws, allow a person to use deadly force in a confrontation without any duty to retreat.

Weekend #Plankton Factoid 🦠🦐
27 M tonnes. Dutch NIOZ scientists found that nanoplastics (<1 μm) are not only widespread, but equivalent to the mass of macro & microplastics! Polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC) #plastics don't just float on th…

Delirium often goes underreported, making it hard for #AI to predict accurately. Our review of 120 studies found common data issues that hurt model reliability. We created a step-by-step guide to help build fairer, more accurate models—so we eventually can detect #delirium earlier and im…

This https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.14346 has been replaced.
initial toot: https://mastoxiv.page/@arXiv_mat…

Atomic Toposes with Co-Well-Founded Categories of Atoms
The atoms of the Schanuel topos can be described as the pairs $(n,G)$ where $n$ is a finite set and $G$ is a subgroup of $\operatorname{Aut}(n)$. We give a general criterion on an atomic site ensuring that the atoms of the topos of sheaves on that site can be described in a similar fashion. We deduce that these toposes are locally finitely presentable. By applying this to the Malitz-Gregory atomic topos, we obtain a counter-example to the conjecture that every locally finitely presentable topos…

Accidental character design (wet spot from where I had placed my umbrella)
#FacesInPlaces

“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.” – NATO chief
The state of these fuckers. https://mastodon.energy/@Sustainable2050/114739811540017876

Kees van der Leun (@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energy)
Attached: 1 image NATO boss Rutte (fmr Dutch PM) sends app to Trump, who promptly publishes it. "Wow, your bombing of Iran was great; it makes the world a safer place!" Straight from The Hague, formerly known as the International City of Peace and Justice. Awkward.

Report from Deutsche Welle.
As the great Bernard Katz said, when I said to him in 1992 that he must welcome reunification, "Hmmm let's wait to see what crawls out from under stones"
"Nazi slogans trigger scandal at German school"
https://www.dw.c…

Nazi slogans trigger scandal at German school
A report of an antisemitic incident in a high school coincided with the arrest of teenage rightwing extremists last week. This has triggered a debate over whether Germany's youth is embracing Nazi ideology.

The starvation of Gaza, announced by the Israeli government since October 2023.
Front page of Dutch newspaper @trouw.nl today.