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Swift bricks become mandatory for new buildings in Scotland (www.dezeen.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/upliftingnews@lemmy.world
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[–] 91 points 9 months ago (42 children)

For other ESL speakers who had problems parsing this headline, swifts are a type of bird:

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  • [–] 70 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    English is my first language and I was still confused about what fast bricks were for.

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  • [–] 19 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Also a programming language developed by apple.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Fuck, why'd you have to remind me of that garbage

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  • [–] 13 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Ohhhhh I thought this was about the SWIFT banking system at first lol, TIL

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    I thought it was about the speed the brick could fly at when thrown, so yeah…

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    This is quite weird, your comment was downvoted by a bunch of accounts (that are now banned) that joined about 15 hours ago: https://lemvotes.org/comment/lemmy.world/comment/21934464

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    Yeah there’s someone on this site who makes throwaway accounts constantly. They create accounts, post a bunch of stuff in comics and news communities, then self deletes after a couple hours before they can be banned.

    Any time someone calls them out on it they use their throwaway accounts to go through your recent history and downvote everything you post. They also like to make impersonation accounts to spam from.

    There’s a couple threads calling this shit out here in c/comicstrips and c/support

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago (15 children)

    English is my second language, but instead of swift bricks I had to web search what ESL stands for... When addressing non-native speakers, please don't use cryptic and ambiguous acronyms.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (12 children)

    ESL (English as a Second Language) is an incredibly common and widely recognized acronym (at least in the US, not sure about other countries).

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (9 children)

    I researched this term (I read the wikipedia page) and apparently it is used in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US. In Ireland and the UK, ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) is more common, and some other terms are floating around in the anglosphere. Where this is notably not used is where English is not a native language.

    Again, when addressing non-native speakers, using cryptic (and ambiguous, I as a German mostly know ESL as an abbreviation for Electronic Sports Leagues, swiss people could first think of l'École Suisse de Langues, etc) terms is really not the best idea.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    I have now spent majority of my life speaking English/living in English speaking country and yeah they love their acronyms. Unnecessary useless acronyms. I suspect they're wired for it from young age and don't even realize, because despite starting to learn English at a young age, there was no incentive for me to start coming up with or learning acronyms.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    notably not used is where English is not a native language

    I mean, not to be blunt, but duh?

    it would only really make sense to even talk about English as a second language if the general population does speak it as a native language. in the US people arent ever going to say something like french as a second language, because there's no need for the distinction

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    But most people with English as an additional language live outside countries where English is a native language. So again, when addressing people who speak English but not as their native language, why use terms that are exclusively used in countries with English as a native language?

    Or do you think the internet exists only in countries where English is a native language?

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    So again, when addressing people who speak English but not as their native language, why use terms that are exclusively used in countries whith English as anative language?

    As an English speaker in a city with many people whose first language isn't English, it was probably just habit. I didn't originally know it wasn't a well known term either.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    the likelyhood of talking about ESL (an initialization of English words to begin with) wouldnt generally happen where English is non-native, though. you don't have two Germans asking if the other speaks English as a second language

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    to large parts of the world that's just normal english, and implies absolutely nothing about ones fluency since we learn english in school and y'all have culturally colonized us to the degree that our fucking advertisements are in english these days.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I mean, you don't need to know what ESL means for my comment to be helpful. The helpful bit is in the second part without any confusing abbreviations.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    The swift swift swiftly swifted in the swiftest way possible.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    You ever think about the word "saw"? It's a motorized power tool used for cutting. But it's also the past tense of having seen something. So if you see a saw, later can say you saw a saw. And it's also a verb. So if you watch a saw cutting another saw, you will have saw a saw saw a saw.

    English is weird.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Golondria or golondrinas in Spanish.

    There's a song in Mexico "las golondrinas". They sing that at your funeral. I don't know why, maybe the shape of the bird looks like a pastor or maybe because it lives on churches?

    I think those birds look crazy cool and they fly crazy fast too. Totally not something related to a funeral. So I don't understand. But its Mexico, they're weird over there. In their own charro hat way.

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  • [–] -4 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    If your goal was to seriously derail the topic of discussion, I applaud you for a job extremely well done.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I just wanted to help because the headline really confused me. Then it took on a life of its own.

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    • [–] 21 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Why would you want to brick your iPhone?

    https://www.swift.org/

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    • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    Awesome news!

    Can we please have more of these initiatives?

    I remember that in the Netherlands they stopped mowing grass on various places and just let it grow for the insects

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    [–] 6 points 9 months ago (10 children)

    Wouldn't it be more logical to make separate birdhouses if there is a need for them?

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  • [–] 27 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Most swifts won't use birdhouses. They prefer large structures with hollow cavities, partly due to the increased shelter and partly due to the decrease in competition from other bird species.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) designs, distributes plans for DIY, and sells a nesting box specifically for swifts, and instructions for where to place them on homes.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    swifts nest in colonies, tend to keep the same nest for life, and require nests to be fairly high up & sheltered.

    hollow bricks like this allow swifts to do what comes naturally to them, with v minimal change on our side of things, since they're just being added during the building process & not being retrofitted.

    individual bird boxes in trees etc can be great for other birds, but it'd be tough to convince swifts to use them!

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  • [–] 9 points 9 months ago

    Bird boxes are also super-temporary in the greater scheme of things. One property owner is a bird lady with 25 boxes, she moves- next property owner doesn't like bird boxes 25->0 overnight.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    There's kind of need for them everywhere and this is a pretty practical way to ensure they end up everywhere and will stay there.

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  • [–] -5 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    And in 20 years, in the case of overpopulation, they would force people to search for those tiny holes in the walls.

    I don't like the approach. Reminds me of the story about China and sparrows.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    Exactly how hard would it be to place a "cork in the hole" to render the cavity unusable? If (big if) overpopulation becomes a problem, it's pretty easy - these days - to develop and maintain a database of most of these swift cavities, survey them from a distance to see if they are corked or not, and adjust the number of corks as appropriate to address current population trends.

    I get that you don't like the approach - but it's a solid one, which is what works best for swifts' nests: solid structures.

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    • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    How many of these are they going to put in one house? Hopefully it’s not every brick in the wall. I feel like people would be upset if their wall had hundreds of birds nesting in it.

    One brick per house would be nice though.

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    [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Cute!

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