Let me try a 3 year old version:

-Trees with big leaves go through cycles every year where they lose their leaves in the fall and grow new ones in the spring. Trees with skinny needles instead of big leaves don’t do this.

-The winter weather is too cold for the leaves, so the tree doesn’t need leaves in the winter

-The tree makes the leaves drop off because by the time winter is over, the leaves would be too damaged to use and the tree would need to make new leaves anyway.

Is Morse still in use?

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the size of a human brain has nothing to do with the size of the body or skull it's housed in. the same goes for the penis, heart, etc.

muscles, and body mass, have no correlation to the size of a person's brain. neurological development has more to do with experience.

My father in law was also a Morse code operator in WWII in Alaska and he listened to the Japanese transmissions. He said they would change the code mid stream so all of a sudden you had no idea what you were listening too.

It’s based on the length of the dash. Spaces between the integers of the letter are 1 dash length (time) apart. The spaces between letters are 3 dash lengths (time) separate. The spaces between words are 7 lengths apart. Last did it years ago but that’s what I recall

Take a look at the links at the bottom; they may talk more directly about the issue.

Sperm whales have the biggest brain of any creature but they are not the most intelligent creature. We aren't sure why, but brain to body ratio seems to correlate with intelligence. If a person is 40% larger, but their brain is also only 40% larger, then they aren't likely to be more intelligent.

Just saw link. Having read through it, they are all cases of trying to "transliterate" the dialect (not sure if it's the correct word to use here) into Mandarin.

For example, yes “猪又” wouldn't make sense as written to Mandarin speakers. But here, it's an attempt to to make it sound as it's spoken while completely disregarding what the character means. I would argue that the correct script should be "猪肉", it's just that "肉” is pronounce differently in that dialect compared to Mandarin.

There's such example in Fuzhounese too. The name of the city itself is often written as "虎纠” in more casual context. But people all understand that it's for the sound and the official name of the city is "福州“ in written form.

A side note, ELO systems. ELO or MMR systems use some variation of th ELO algorithm created for ranking chess players. It works by assigning players a number which denotes their skill.

When two players play eachother, the probability of either person winning is calculated based on the difference in their scores. The general formula, is that two people with equal scores have a 50/50 shot at winning. For every point by which one player iss below the other, that players assumed odds of winning g are reduced by some percentage for every point. So 1 point below you might reduce his odds by 1% so he has a 49.5% chance of winning. Then another point so a other 1% now they have a 49.05% chance of winning and so on and so on.

When the game is over, the players scores are adjusted according to how much of an upset the results of the game were. So, if a player won a game they were likely to lose, they'd get more points than if they were likely to win it. Eventually, you're so likely to win that you would gain less than some threshold of points. At this threshold you usually just gain 0 rather than a fraction of a point. Both to keep the math easy in the future, as we as to represent that you played someone so much worse than you that it basically doesn't count.

The amount of points you can win at once are also bounded. So the harder the odds are against you, the less pay off you get the more unlikely it is. In other words, you have to win increasingly more unlikely games to get the next additional point.

Because the way the odds work, the game is considered to be too wide in skill gap before the odds get so extreme that you get 80 points in one game. This solves the problem of outlier games where sometimes an unskilled player will get lucky against a far more skilled opponent, and has to play many more games to even things out.

Finally, all the points one player gains, the other loses. Meaning that if you lose a bunch, your rati g goes downdown, then you win all your rematches, you should end up in a similar place, though technically be a use of rounding error you might not.

Brain size does not directly correlate with intelligence. Intelligence is still poorly understood. Also, there are different types of intelligence. All of them rely on using different areas of the brain in different ways.

> What I'm trying to convey is that there's no such thing as "written Fuzhounese" unless you're trying to be super casual by trying to map what you speak to what you write word for word.

That opens the possibility, though, that your grandmother learned to read at least in part via Mandarin (since I imagine that's how reading is taught), and that's another factor in why she can read Mandarin.

> Out of curiosity, what's your experience with Chinese language?

Not as much direct experience as I'd like, but I'm used to Chinese characters via Japanese and have a master's in linguistics. Chinese languages and Chinese characters have come up a lot in the classes I've taken, and I've done some scholarly reading on them now and again (though it's been a while). I've also studied a bit of Classical Chinese, and briefly tried to learn Mandarin a couple of times.

I actually found I can read Classical Chinese rather more easily than modern Mandarin with just my background in Japanese - Mandarin has a bunch of grammatical function stuff I don't recognise and words that have shifted meaning since they were borrowed into Japanese, but I could read short and simple sentences in Classical Chinese fairly easily even before I started studying it.

It is EXTREMELY wasteful.

Also when you are"talking" with the same group of guys you learn how they each throw their key. Each is different like their tone of speech.

>That may be, but I'm hesitant to accept the idea that a writing system that fundamentally encodes individual words in an individual spoken language can work without adaptation for a wide variety of different languages that do not all share exactly the same set of words.

And my point is that it's even though it's not 100% shared expression. It's a very high percentage and enough to be mutually intelligible in written form.

>Did she learn to read Chinese characters via Fuzhounese text written with them? Does she use them to write Fuzhounese? If not, how did she learn them?

What I'm trying to convey is that there's no such thing as "written Fuzhounese" unless you're trying to be super casual by trying to map what you speak to what you write word for word.

As an example, in Fuzhounese, "没" is used as the more general "negative" word instead of "不”. But "不” still exists in Fuzhounese and it has the same meaning. So when people write these days, even though you'd write how you speak in Mandarin and use "不" to mean no, it doesn't prevent her from understanding that it means "negative".

Out of curiosity, what's your experience with Chinese language?

There are other reasons to test for it on the regular. Like if you have an irregular cycle or your period is late. The number of times I used pregnancy tests when i wanted a negative result greatly out number the times I was checking for a positive result.

trap also isn't clean when your member is near it

Rhythm is a big part of Morse interpretation. From back in the WWII era, some Morse training was based on mnemonics for the letters. For example (from my Dad) with emphasis on the bold words:

F is .._. dit dit dah dit Payday to day

P is .__. dit dah dah dit The grand old bitch

and so on.

One of the openings for a general broadcast looking to make contact is CQ followed by your call sign.

C is _._. dah dit dah dit

Q is _ _._ dah dah dit dah (the inverse of F)

So CQ becomes: Can you hear me, answer my call

Which serves to show the pattern and remember the purpose of the letter combo!

And of course, the famous Beethoven's 5th Symphony opening:

V is ..._ dit dit dit dah -- V for victory! (WWII, remember?)

Most people can play Name That Song in however many notes. It's like that for Morse, and eventually whole words (the, and, or, go, etc.)

Funny you mention this I had to teach my husband how to read a COVID test the first time. I understood it immediately because of the pregnancy tests I took to make sure I wasn't pregnant prior to the pandemic.

Thank you. I appreciate that.

> Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a common writing system

In context it seems like that line specifically is saying 'the obviously Sinitic languages are the ones that have a shared heritage of Chinese characters', in contrast to Bai and a couple of other languages, which could or could not be Sinitic on phylogenetic grounds pending better data and further analysis.

> I'm getting the sense that you think what you're describing is a widespread problem, but from my experience, it probably only happens with very uncommon edge cases. It's more akin to, as an example, Australian's usage of "loo" to mean toilet in spoken language, while "toilet" is still understood and used in less casual contexts.

That may be, but I'm hesitant to accept the idea that a writing system that fundamentally encodes individual words in an individual spoken language can work without adaptation for a wide variety of different languages that do not all share exactly the same set of words.

Here's a brief blog post by a specialist linguist on just the difficulties of writing nonstandard Mandarin with Chinese characters, with some good links to check out at the bottom.

> I have a grandma who only speaks Fuzhounese (a subset of Min) yet has no trouble understanding "written Mandarin" (if there's even such a thing). Sure, she can't use the exact expression in written language and not have it be sort of weird. But again, people don't usually write that way, and understanding the characters allows the reader to extrapolate the general meaning of the sentence.

Did she learn to read Chinese characters via Fuzhounese text written with them? Does she use them to write Fuzhounese? If not, how did she learn them?

I was a commercial radio operator. I qualified sending and receiving international morse at 20 words per minute.

Later, in the Military, I knew people who could receive at 60+ wpm. At those speeds you can hear whole words.

So, at the slower speeds, you have an element of time that is 1 unit. That is the length of a "dit", a "dah" is 3 units long. The space between the dits and dahs of a character is 1 unit long. The space between characters is 3 units long, or the space of a dah. As you get faster, the timing should stay the same, but what happens once you get proficient, the dits get shorter, and the dahs just become slightly longer dits, say 1.5x the length of a dit. Then you make the spaces within a character as short as possible, and shorten up the spaces between characters as well, but keep them slightly longer.

A good operator has a nice rhythm, and will work with the receiving operator up to that operator's most efficient speed. It is the rhythm that makes it all work. Think of it as like someone's speech cadence.

Also, most modern movies just have nonsense, and you don't hear the whole message because it would take too long.

dah ditditditdit ditdah dahkit ditditdit, ditditdahdit dahdahdah ditdahdit, ditdahdit dit ditdah dahditdit ditdahditdahditdah

I’m very sorry I came off like that. That was not my intention. I was trying the state that I recognize how difficult it can be and I understand how lucky we were. We were preparing for a multi year effort and even began early to try to have a better chance with the challenges we were expecting. My wife used those ovulation dipsticks and we scheduled specific days of the month for quality time. We even had a referral to a fertility specialist ready for when that time came.

I am very sorry for what you had to go through. I honestly wish you well.

Well the thing about balance on a competitive videogame is that, even if something is unbalanced that doesn't make it unfair. As long as people have access to the same options, or like in asymmetric maps you alternate sides and play multiple rounds it's fair for competitive use.

What balance is about is making competitive play -interesting-. If competitors see that some character or weapon or strategy leads to an advantage some will gravitate to that strategy. And when too many people do it things get tweaked to make that less advantageous.

The developers do their best of course with play testing before a release, but after they get a ton of data to look at from people actually playing the game. Though generally they try not to make sweeping changes as that can lead to even more things going out of whack. A higher playerbase tends to find things the developers missed/couldn't predict just from the sheer quantity of people trying stuff out.

I understand that wikipedia is not a reliable source on its own. But take a look at this, and more specifically:

>Sinitic is defined only by the many varieties of Chinese unified by a common writing system

I'm getting the sense that you think what you're describing is a widespread problem, but from my experience, it probably only happens with very uncommon edge cases. It's more akin to, as an example, Australian's usage of "loo" to mean toilet in spoken language, while "toilet" is still understood and used in less casual contexts.

I have a grandma who only speaks Fuzhounese (a subset of Min), yet has no trouble understanding "written Mandarin" (if there's even such a thing). Sure, she can't use the exact expression in written language and not have it be sort of weird. But again, people don't usually write that way. Even if she did write that way, understanding the characters still allows the reader to extrapolate the general meaning of the sentence.