The catarrhine who invented a perpetual motion machine, by dreaming at night and devouring its own dreams through the day.
Okay, final question. Is there anything more you hope to get out of life before you can say you’ve done it all?
I want some sort of feat, achievement or even improvement left behind for people after my death. It doesn’t need to be fancy or life-changing; just something nice that makes people say “hey, Lvxferre it did”.
Front right, keys and lighter. Front left, cigs. Rear right, wallet. If I must carry my phone with me it’ll be probably in the front left pocket alongside the cigs.
Sadly I never had much of an opportunity to travel to a lot of different places, at most neighbouring countries - Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay; I’m from the southern parts of Brazil. I did it alongside a native Spanish speaker, my then girlfriend.
What are some of the most memorable places you’ve travelled to?
Probably the Iguazu Falls. It’s technically in my state (Paraná), but right at the border with Paraguay and Argentina. When I went there it rained a lot a few days before, so the falls were really strong. A shame that my ex- already saw them a few times, so she was a bit more interested on buying whisky for the travel and going to Asunción.
I also enjoyed Asunción (Paraguay) a fair bit. It’s kind of weird to associate fish with a landlocked area, but they had some amazing freshwater fish dishes, and the old colonial architecture was really nice.
Rosario (Argentina) was memorable but for another reason - since it was her home city, we spent there two weeks, I kind of grew tired of the city.
Wow, you’re impressive. I’ve never interacted with someone with as much depth of knowledge as you.
Thank you! It’s mostly knowledge directed towards one area though.
My grad was Linguistics, Translation and Literary Criticism; it’s a weird mix but traditional here in LatAm. I hopped in due to Linguistics*, specially Historical Linguistics but… well, reality kicks in, and translation became my breadwinner. I’ve been doing it for a decade or so, first through contacts that I’ve made in uni times, then as an independent freelancer.
*it’s actually the main “root” of my fascination with languages - there’s something bittersweet about understanding the languages of the past and present. For me it forces to deal with the contradiction between “we’re all different” and “we’re all the same”, how much culture shapes us while we’re all still unmistakeably human.
If you’re into language learning for pragmatic reasons then I think that the only conlang that could be useful would be Esperanto, and even then it’s like squeezing water from a rock. (I do it mostly for the fun, though. That’s also my attitude towards ancient languages - I’m not exactly using Latin everyday, and Sanskrit will be likely in the same bag.)
German is a great choice but be aware that proficient German/English bilinguals tend to use English as soon as they notice that you can speak it. It’s kind of funny because I’ve seen French speakers with the opposite reaction - as if one side saw a language as a tool, another as a cultural root. (It’s both.)
What do you do for a living?
I’m a translator by trade. I stick mostly to Portuguese, Italian, and English - those are the languages that I’m actually proficient with. Sometimes I pick something from German too, but I don’t typically translate things into German to avoid going full “ich bin ein Berliner”, like that American president. (That reminds me that I promised the old lady next-door to give her some Berlin balls once I prepare them. Her avocado ice cream was amazing. Also, sorry for the amount of off-topic that I tend to go into, but I guess that it’s more data to guess my age?)
Well, constructed languages aren’t something insanely useful, unless you’re into Linguistics or also into constructed worlds. For the former, it’s a good way to explore some “boundaries” of natural languages - conlangs can go beyond natlangs in certain features, but the opposite is almost never true. And for the later it’s that extra step to make the world within a story feel livelier, fleshing out the culture of its inhabitants.
Although my reasons are probably not too far from Tolkien’s, who called constructed languages a “secret vice”. It’s mostly for fun.
How long have you been gardening?
Five years or so, I guess? I mean, beyond simple stuff like planting radishes in my backyard as a kid. I still joke about it with my mum - she outright hated it. “My house is no farm dammit!” (The radishes tasted great though.)
If it’s any consolation, the grammar pedant in me didn’t like it either. Even if I was the one writing it. (Also, I’m glad that things are going great for you.)
As for niche interests: gardening, cooking, simulation games, constructed languages, ancient languages. Some tidbits of oil painting, but frankly, I suck at it; perhaps I should stick to digital watercolours. (This reminds me Island - the main character was recalling his travels through Switzerland, his mum painting a watercolour, and his dad sarcastically saying “The milk chocolate advertisement that [brand] rejected.”)
But I digress. My gardening is currently pepper plants, I’m trying to breed a new variety following very specific criteria - heat, colour, shape, size. Once I’m done I’m going to spread the seeds here and there, through the city, as some small act of anarchy.
My brain is skibidi tier rotten and I have absolutely no money in my pockets, but Boxxy is still the queen and fr fr nobody can prove me wrong.
…sorry, I’m doing it on purpose to throw you off tracks. How’s going?
Have the router ask the server if there’s an update available when turned on. If none, proceed as usual; if there is, force the update, regardless of the time of the day. Problem solved.
Of course, for that you need to acknowledge that you violated the “ask, don’t be an assumer” rule, instead of bossing customers around with “golden rules”. You won’t change their silly and pointless habits anyway.
Let’s make one for reading comprehension:
Here in Curitiba it’s this church:
It’s constantly maintained and renovated, but the building is 287 years old, built in 1737. (For reference the city itself is 331yo.)
It’s kind of funny that people here don’t typically remember the name of that church, Igreja da Ordem (Church of the Order; the “order” in question are the Franciscans). Instead they remember the name of the square that the church faces, named after the church - o Largo da Ordem (lit. “Order Plaza”, but more like “the plaza of the church of the Order”).
Both bad and good mean skibidi.
yes it’s raining on this side of the house too.
“You can never be sure!” - cat logic.
Perhaps she associated bathtub = attention and feeling good afterwards? Cats do show some sort of weak “past cause, present effect” connection.
In Kika’s case I don’t have an idea, as the place changes from time to time. It used to be on the stairs, then on the sisal mat, now the box. It’s kind of annoying when I’m taking my morning yerba though, as I’m in the kitchen and she’s meowing constantly.
Kika (16?yo): she likes to be petted, but she’s wants to be petted in a very specific corner of the house - currently her cardboard box, but it changes over time. So she begs me “pet me, pet me!”, then as I move my hand to pet her she runs to the box, and keeps meowing. Until I go pet her in the cardboard box.
Siegfrieda (7?yo): I don’t know what’s weirder: looking at the rain and meowing at me as if saying “can’t you stop it?”, watching anime with me, or the “overly attached girlfriend” face that she does when someone is eating yoghurt.
They probably could, indeed - but you’d need multiple different applications, each for one use case. In the meantime a LLM offers you a tool that won’t hit all the nails, or screw all the screws, but does both decently enough in the lack of both a hammer and a screwdriver.
It’s a great analogy though - Linux users aren’t deemed profitable by the A³ companies, just like offal is unjustly* deemed yucky by your typical person.
*I do love offal though. And writing this comment made me crave for chicken livers with garlic and rosemary over sourdough bread. Damn.
The backlash to this is going to be fun.
In some cases it’s already happening - since the bubble forces AI-invested corporations to shove it down everywhere. Cue to Microsoft Recall, and the outrage against it.
It has virtually no non-fraud real world applications that don’t reflect the underlying uselessness of the activity it can do.
It is not completely useless but it’s oversold as fuck. Like selling you a bicycle with the claim that you can go to the Moon with it, plus a “trust me = be gullible, eventually bikes will reach Mars!” A bike is still useful, even if they’re building a scam around it.
Here’s three practical examples:
None of those activities is underlyingly useless; but they have some common grounds - they don’t require you to trust the output of the bot at all. It’s either things that you wouldn’t use otherwise (#2) or things that you can reliably say “yup, that’s bullshit” (#1, #3).
I would like to introduce you to the indie game scene. Where AAA is faltering, indie has never been in a better place.
Amen.
Indie games might not be flashy, but they’re often made with love and concern about giving you a fun experience. They also lack all those abusive DRM and intrusive anti-cheat systems that A³ games often have.
Wow, that’s really close (I’m 38).
How did you guess it? (Sorry for the late reply!)