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[+] 118 points 1 year ago* (22 children)
  • [+] [S] 48 points 1 year ago (10 children)
  • [–] 15 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    The ones who walk away from Omelas is one of my favorite stories. Powerful metaphor, that.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    God she was an epic baller of a person too. An amazing personal story and she herself was a deep well of insight and compassionate wisdom. It comes through in most everything she wrote or said.

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Same! I snuck up behind and choke-holded them with Wizard until they passed out from Ged overdose, and then I crammed Atuan into each and every orifice before I left them for dead.

    I can't wait to have a new book bestie!

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    i recently read through the series and now i only have the last short story left– and i don't want to finish it becuase then it'll be over :(

    so few authors manage to make me sad this way

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  • [–] 23 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    humans sent off some unwanted people, no scientists, to another planet

    Telephone sanitizers?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    Are those people? Are they unwanted?

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Only until the entire race contracts a nasty virulent disease from a dirty telephone.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    It’s funny, as I got older I became kind of a germaphobe. (Like I’m usually carrying a pack of antibacterial wipes.)

    When I was young payphones were still a thing. And I used them frequently. I couldn’t see myself doing that now. I have to wonder if people got weird ear diseases or ear infections from those things. I don’t remember any stories about it. Though it seems like the kind of thing that would become an urban legend.

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  • [–] 70 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yeah, it should be translated to Bearable and Unbearable.

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  • [–] 47 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Just wait until they realize we named everything in space after milk.

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  • [–] 44 points 1 year ago*

    Took me too long to remember “Arctic” and “Antarctic” and I kept wondering how “North Pole / South Pole” translated to “Bearlandia / NoBearlandia”

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  • [–] 34 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    Just wait until they hear about Virginland.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Gonna need you to be more specific about that. We have a lot of virginlands in the Americas

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  • [–] 37 points 1 year ago (15 children)

    In Chinese (I mean like most dialects), North Pole is just 北极 ("Northern Extreme"), South Pole is 南极 ("Southern Extreme"). Arctic is just 北极 with the extra character 地区 meaning area ("Northern Extreme Area"), Antartica is 南极洲 ("Southern Extreme Continent").

    There's no weird etymology involving bears lol

    Maybe we should let someone from China or Taiwan contact the aliens?

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  • [–] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Someone once told me that the Chinese word for penguin translated to "business goose" and I cannot tell you how crestfallen I was when I looked it up and found out it wasn't true.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 year ago

    I mean "企" character by itself isn't really a word, but maybe the person thought of 企业 (Enterprise/Bussiness), which I would say technically that person isn't like lying, just a misunderstanding of language.

    But then again, I've only attended primary school grade-levels in China, so I'm no word expert either.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago

    Penguins are called 企鵝/企鹅 (qì'é, [tɕʰi˥˩ ɤ˧˥]) in Chinese. It would be better literally translated as standing goose. It just so happens to share the same character 企 with the word for business. Most people don't know that 企 means standing anymore though.

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  • [–] 19 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Read Three Body Problem if you wanna know how that goes

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Tbf she was an alien-worshipping cultist (cult wasn't technically founded at the time, but she had the mindset of a cultist)

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    She sorta was the cult leader, iirc the aliens didn’t understand humans and trusted her organisation to decide how to get things done (at least until they finally realise how humans actually work and decide to just shut it all down), so the cult was probably her idea

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Heh, I understood this obscure sci-fi joke!

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  • [+] -26 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Maybe we should let someone from China contact the aliens?

    FTFY

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)
  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)
  • [–] 17 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Nah, isn't it more Towardsbearland and Awayfrombearland?

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  • [–] 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Arktos means bear in Ancient Greek and the name Arctic comes from Arktikos which could be translated as near the bear. One theory is that it was named because of the Ursa constellations (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor). Antarctica just means opposite of the Arctic.

    The scientific name for Brown Bears is Ursus Arctos. Ursus means bear in Latin while Arctos means bear in Ancient Greek so their name translated is Bear Bear.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    And then there's the grizzly bear, ursus arctos horribilis, horrible bear bear. My favourite part is that 'horribilis' is a mistranslation from English into Latin; 'grisly' is synonymous with 'horrible', but 'grizzly' actually means 'greyish'

    Edit: Ursus arctos griseus or Ursus arctos canescens would be the most likely names of it had been translated correctly (grey bear bear and greying (with age) bear bear, respectively)

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    Yep. It's Towards-bear-land, and Against-towards-bear-land.

    IMO, nobody every made it clear if it's (against-towards)-bear-land, what would be away-from-bear-land, or against-(towards-bear-land).

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  • [–] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    ...didn't i just see something about ursus arctos arctos?...

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago

    This joke would be rather hard to translate to my language because we use the same word for dirt (as in, 'soil' - in fact, in certain cases for actual soil, as well) as for Earth. Or ground.

    We only have a separate word for the unclean meaning of dirt, or a compound word containing dirt to denote soil.

    I can easily imagine this as an actual attempt from a beginner English speaker from home.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    But Antarctica doesn’t derive from “not Arctic”, but from ‘opposite of Arctic’. The bear part is right, though.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    They're actually called penguinland and no-penguinland

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    ChatGPT or Bing Translate?

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago

    A bit disappointed this isn't about the funny YouTube song about the Dirt Man

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago
    [–] 2 points 1 year ago