akolbe

29 ms·

271.
Cats Trash Theory That They Followed First Farmers to Europe(haaretz.com)
5 points by akolbe 4y ago|0 comments
272.
by akolbe 4y ago
I found more than half of the content of biographical articles was completely, risibly, wrong. Confident and plausible-sounding assertions of birthplace (wrong), websites founded (wrong), etc. Galactica.org seems to have gone inactive now;
273.
by akolbe 4y ago
Descendants of Latin like French have lost the neuter gender and the relevant inflectional endings. So now nominative and accusative for what we would translate as "it" differ. But it's true that Germanic pronouns still confi
274.
by akolbe 4y ago
There is actually a potential trace of an ergative system in Latin. A fundamental rule of Latin is that neuter nouns have the same endings in the nominative and accusative cases. For example, bellum is nominative and accusative singular, be
275.
by akolbe 4y ago
I'd say they're complementary perspectives. Latin is of course clearly older than (Modern) English, because it was spoken 2,000 years ago, whereas English is spoken today. But Mediaeval Latin was spoken at the same time as Old Eng
276.
by akolbe 4y ago
It's possible to get "high on work" and have a good time doing so – it can be very ego-confirming – but how long for? At some point, there has to be something else happening in your life. Asking employees to either be on that
277.
by akolbe 4y ago
If you think about it, all languages and all language isolates (there are many others besides Basque, like Ainu) are really the same age. At any rate, this applies if you assume that people developed language only once. Each language then r
278.
by akolbe 4y ago
There is an important omission in that Guardian article. They cite a Latin professor said to have helped decipher the artifact and then another scholar of Indo-European linguistics: "Velaza’s colleague Joaquín Gorrochategui, a profess
279.
by akolbe 4y ago
I take your comments under advisement. It's true that many of my discussion comments here – especially recently – have been about Wikipedia fundraising. There are several reasons for this. For one, this is a topic I both care about and
280.
by akolbe 4y ago
Let us note that of the six candidates for the Wikimedia Foundation board in this year's (s)election process, three endorsed the statement: "WMF fundraising is deceptive: it creates a false appearance that the WMF is short of mone
281.
by akolbe 4y ago
The discussion has run for less than 24 hours; and of those (now) 37 editors, only three (3) have left a comment saying they are okay with the banners as they are. Good URL trick. It helps to be a staffer. ;) https://meta.wikimed
282.
by akolbe 4y ago
Per this page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Endowment the Endowment at the Tides Foundation held over $113 million in January of this year. That is the latest data available. The Wikimedia Foundation itself
283.
by akolbe 4y ago
This is what the Wikimedia VP said in 2013: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2013-March... "WMF has operated in the past without staffing and with very minimal staffing, so clearly it's
284.
by akolbe 4y ago
No, the Knowledge Equity Fund was the topic of another recent viral Twitter thread by @echetus that someone mentioned here in this discussion a few hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33609524
285.
by akolbe 4y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2... and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_Equity_Fund
286.
Why did one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges just collapse?(theguardian.com)
2 points by akolbe 4y ago|0 comments
287.
Wikipedians are rebelling against “unethical” Wikipedia fundraising banners(twitter.com)
451 points by akolbe 4y ago|370 comments
288.
From Russia with WikiLove(en.wikipedia.org)
2 points by akolbe 4y ago|0 comments
289.
Disinformatsiya: Much research, but what will help Wikipedia editors?(en.wikipedia.org)
2 points by akolbe 4y ago|0 comments
290.
by akolbe 4y ago
Here is some public documentation of Wikipedia "Disinformation" projects, the first one specifically related to the election: Biden Campaign Disinformation Retrospective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bid
291.
by akolbe 4y ago
Here is the Tides Foundation's Form 990: https://www.tides.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2020_Tides-... It is searchable. I cannot find a single mention of "Wikimedia" or "Wikipedia&
292.
by akolbe 4y ago
The Wikimedia Endowment contains over $100 million of donations. Find me one Form 990 for it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2...
293.
by akolbe 4y ago
It's resource-efficient because it relies on volunteer labour. The people earning the most money from that volunteer labour aren't even the Wikimedia Foundation, but the Big Tech companies who use Wikipedia and Wikidata content to
294.
by akolbe 4y ago
The Wikimedia Endowment has amassed $100 million in five years, half the time anticipated, and there has never been a single audited financial statement or Form 990 disclosure, because the money is stashed away with the completely opaque Ti
295.
by akolbe 4y ago
A $51 million surplus on a $112 million budget, to be exact: https://foundation.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File%3AWi... Though in fact, the real surplus was nearly $90 million, because in addition , their Endowme
296.
by akolbe 4y ago
Moreover, most of the money to date has gone to U.S. organisations. This is truly bizarre if you consider that the Wikimedia Foundation raises funds in places like India, South Africa and South America – with heart-wrenching messages about
297.
by akolbe 4y ago
The Wikimedia Foundation collects money in places like India, South Africa and South America with those misleading messages: https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikipedia-endownemnt-fundrais... Most of the money from the Kn
298.
by akolbe 4y ago
See interesting comment underneath the linked article by a very longstanding Wikipedia volunteer: -------------------- Problems with poorly supervised grants See discussion last month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
299.
by akolbe 4y ago
Okay, I get your point. Speaks to the organisation's basic lack of honesty, which is arguably the real problem here. That's come up before – a recent poll among Wikipedians judged the WMF's fundraising emails "unethica
300.
by akolbe 4y ago
You're right, but that is what the post you are replying to was proposing: they should say what they are raising the money for . Then people can decide, instead of being panicked into donating because they are made to think there is a

More ›