Interesting. I knew about “bear” but I did not know about “medved” as another minced-taboo. Thanks for that.

Sorry for being unclear–proto-Celtic calls wolves “wailos” for the same reason as they call gulls “weilanna,” because of the noise, yes. The coincidence is that the modern word “wolf” sounds like the proto-Celtic word “wailos.”

You have to go pretty far back (to proto-Celtic, it looks like) to find a linguistic ancestor for the word “gull” that doesn’t just mean “that specific bird.”

But in proto-Celtic, it looks like “weilanna” probably meant “wailer.” As in, “one who wails,” though we don’t know exactly what the suffix “-anna” means. A similar word in that language would’ve been “wailos,” which even though it sounds similar seems to have been unrelated to our modern term “wolf,” as it comes from a different proto-indo-european root.

Anyway, the word “gull” does refer to the sounds that it makes more than anything else. So in figuring out what a landgull, airgull, and firegull might be, we need to find something noisy. Or just something annoying, given the derisive connotation of “wail.”

Edit: This is, of course, assuming that we’re looking for different existing types of animals to be these creatures, rather than just (for instance) creating new, elemental forms of gulls; or “reskinning” seagulls with different elements; or inventing all-new animals to fill those roles.

Last year sometime. Frustrated by Microsoft’s latest tomfoolery, I decided, “eh, might as well give Linux another shot, it’s been a decade or so since the last time.”

So I booted up my fifteen-year-old desktop computer as a testbed before I put it on my daily driver laptop. First I booted it into Windows (7, because that’s how old it is and it couldn’t hack Windows 10) to see if there was any data I needed to pull off of it, and predictably it was an awful experience. Slow? Try glacial. Constantly paging out of memory. I had to put it in safe mode without networking just to get it to boot all the way up. I grabbed everything I thought I needed and breathed a sigh of relief that I was done with that.

Then I put Linux Mint on it. And…wow.

Like, I knew Linux did a good job on older systems, but this was unbelievable to me. It was snappy and responsive in a way that it has literally never been. The thing ran like butter. I was flying around that OS, installing games, setting up backups, even trying my hand at a bit of light self-hosting.

But the real kicker came when I installed VirtualBox. See, I have one program that I still need Windows for; an Adobe program that some people I work with still use. So I installed VirtualBox and put Windows 10 on there, fully expecting to clown on Windows for a few minutes but just hoping I’d see enough to know whether it would be usable on my laptop.

But no. Windows 10—which, when I tried a decade ago, couldn’t run on that machine at all—ran almost flawlessly in VirtualBox on Linux. I mean, it wasn’t the quickest thing ever, but for a modern build of a more-or-less modern OS on a computer older than my marriage, it was honestly amazing.

So, when did I go full Linux nerd? When I discovered that it can run Windows better than Windows can.

There are a few other things, too. The software manager, the customizability, the lack of ads, the unobtrusive updates… And at some point along the way, I realized that it actually felt like my computer, which is a feeling I haven’t felt in ages.

It’s a great feeling.

Probably. “We’ve investigated! No issues here!”

Yeah, good point.

Ooh, good point. Well, they’re both going to ship from the factory in nonworking condition, so that’ll be tough to tell.

Absolutely gonna be “made in America” in that the application of the cheap Chinese gold decal to the cheap Chinese handset will be done in America.

It’s definitely going to be the Escobar Phone all over again. Anyone who accidentally receives one will get a foil-wrapped $150 Huawei handset with a preinstalled background image.

Easier than spotting the Cybertrucks?

Very much. I was shocked, listening to their podcast, how much Angela is a Pam and Jenna is a more easygoing Angela.

It’s worth noting that this only works if you have hardware that supports the correct form of sleep.

“Law and order”

“ChatGPT, here’s an executive order, make it sound legalish”

It has definitely plateaued.

You know, I thought I heard it did, but now I can’t find any sources so it may just be Winforms or something.

Sorry, I think I must have had a small stroke while writing that. I think I meant C++.

Those are silly folks lmao

Eh, I kind of get it. OpenAI’s malfeasance with regard to energy usage, data theft, and the aforementioned rampant shoe-horning (maybe “misapplication” is a better word) of the technology has sort of poisoned the entire AI well for them, and it doesn’t feel (and honestly isn’t) necessary enough that it’s worth considering ways that it might be done ethically.

I don’t agree with them entirely, but I do get where they’re coming from. Personally, I think once the hype dies down enough and the corporate money (and VC money) gets out of it, it can finally settle into a more reasonable solid-state and the money can actually go into truly useful implementations of it.

So it turns out that it’s just the “Recommended” section, and it’s actually the Microsoft flavor of React Native that spits out real Windows (I think C++) code, but still…yeah.

This is one of the few things that AI could potentially actually be good at. Aside from the few people on Lemmy who are entirely anti-AI, most people just don’t want AI jammed willy-nilly into places where it doesn’t belong to do things poorly that it’s not equipped to do.