bradrn

4 ms·

1.
by bradrn 7d ago
> Can anyone explain why this happens? Historically speaking, it seems to have been due to two independent coincidences: • The falling together of object pronoun her and possessive her seems to date back to Old English, where the gen
2.
by bradrn 7d ago
Oh, certainly, as is the case for any language! In the case you mention, I note that Huddleston & Pullum in their Cambridge Grammar of the English Language specifically call ‘some’ an existential determiner. As is usual with them, t
3.
by bradrn 7d ago
i think this post with more details would be a better link: https://www.redblobgames.com/x/2635-a-vs-an/ . The graph of exceptional cases is particularly interesting. (Besides, it clarifies the colour scheme — the
4.
by bradrn 7d ago
It’s simply that, in English, there is no indefinite plural article — or, equivalently, that the indefinite plural article is null. So ‘they are doctors’ is consistent with the behaviour of plural nouns elsewhere. Contrast this with, for ex
5.
by bradrn 9d ago
Ooh, very nice! I have my own tool I’ve been using for this [ https://github.com/bradrn/full-history-search/ ], and it’s incredibly useful, but it’s also pretty primitive. This one looks a lot nicer.
6.
by bradrn 11d ago
> wow, that's a lot. And some of those aren't even in the same family of language? Indeed! Palmer counts ‘862 languages comprising 43 distinct families […] and 37 isolates’, (where an isolate is a language with no known relat
7.
by bradrn 11d ago
> Google "language isolates in papua new guinea". My preferred source for these things is Palmer’s Language families of the New Guinea Area [0] (part of the extremely comprehensive book, The Languages and Linguistics of the
8.
by bradrn 11d ago
No, the reason it occurred in the Markham Valley is because of the bit immediately after that sentence: > a 1,000 metre climb over about 30 km takes you straight up onto the edge of the eastern highlands i.e. because the Markham River pr
9.
by bradrn 15d ago
Yes! I know it! (And I’m not old at all.) I saw it at, as I recall, a model train exhibition when I was very young, and I found it so hilarious I’ve never forgotten it. In fact I was quite surprised when I eventually learned it was a well-k
10.
by bradrn 25d ago
I’ve been using https://the-saurus.org/ lately to get access to the hierarchy, since reading https://blog.plover.com/2026/08/02/ on its use a couple of weeks ago.
11.
by bradrn 1mo ago
Reminds me of this classic: https://web.archive.org/web/20010803131841/http://www.lemis.... > ``Pardon us, ma'am. Mind if we ask you a question?'' > Well, people keep telling me that
12.
by bradrn 1mo ago
Speaking as a Jew, I don’t read GP as being ‘anti-Jewish hate’ — it seems to be at least vaguely positive in claiming the weekend as a Jewish invention, albeit with very muddled phrasing. (For one thing, Zionism didn’t exist 2000 years ago…
13.
by bradrn 1mo ago
> Is there a name for a light source which has a constant emission intensity across a given range of wavelengths? The issue with this is that you can’t necessarily define ‘constant’ in a meaningful way. Being a density function rather th
14.
by bradrn 1mo ago
I tried working on this idea at one point. My conclusion is that doing it sensibly ends up removing all the advantages of spreadsheets which makes them so widespread (as the beginning of this article discusses so well).
15.
by bradrn 1mo ago
> the origins of Fraktur, that typeface having been commissioned by Maximilian I It’s interesting to learn that Fraktur itself only dates back to the 16th century — the broader blackletter family of scripts goes back 400 years earlier th
16.
by bradrn 2mo ago
Ah, whoops, thanks!
17.
by bradrn 2mo ago
In fact, I believe that the article is describing a reinvention of this technique! Just with a plotter on oil rather than a compass on plastic.
18.
by bradrn 2mo ago
> also many of the characters in the language are believed to be derived from hieroglyphs This is true insofar as all Western writing systems are ultimately descended from Egyptian Hieroglyphics, via the Phoenician script. In the case
19.
by bradrn 2mo ago
Hah, I had the same thought on seeing the title!
20.
by bradrn 2mo ago
Personally I’ve found this article a much more approachable overview to the question in the title: https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2019/09/the_riemann_hyp...
21.
by bradrn 2mo ago
It’s presumably named after Henry Bigelow (like several other things in oceanography), so my guess would be /bɪɡəˈlə͡ʊwi.a͡ɪ/.
22.
by bradrn 3mo ago
Reminds me of Haskell’s monad-bayes: https://monad-bayes.netlify.app/
23.
by bradrn 3mo ago
> lots of unexplained grandiose thinking like “ k and q made the vector the unit of thought.” That much makes sense in context: K is an array language, like APL, J, etc. From what little experience I have with J, ‘vector as a unit of tho
24.
by bradrn 3mo ago
This point in the comments made me think twice: > People in Western countries don't realize how bad the situation on the ground actually is; random Ukrainian flags showing up on your work monitor can result in severe problems for yo
25.
by bradrn 3mo ago
Yep, that’s what I meant; thanks for clarifying the point. (Though that said, a sibling post linked this interesting talk on limitations in OpenType itself: https://www.tiro.com/John/TypeCon2014_Hudson_DECK.pdf )
26.
by bradrn 3mo ago
In Naskh, each letter has only four forms (for the most part — there are a few ligatures etc. but I think ‘only four forms’ remains basically true). The choice between forms is determined almost entirely by position within a word (initial&#
27.
by bradrn 4mo ago
Just reread the post — it’s much more pleasant to read now! Thank you! (For what it’s worth, I think your own writing style is quite nice, now that I can see it.)
28.
by bradrn 4mo ago
I like wl-kbptr myself: https://github.com/moverest/wl-kbptr
29.
by bradrn 4mo ago
Yes, that would help considerably. (Also, I suggest clearly acknowledging where AI was/wasn’t used. I like CuriosityC’s suggestion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48411968 )
30.
by bradrn 4mo ago
It’s slightly confusingly phrased, but the full sentence is: > The trombone is the only brass instrument in a classical orchestra […] where the main mode of pitch control is by moving the tuning slide. Which is correct.

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