General Discussion Thread

[JoB]

However I'm still worried that some Glykonanbeter may be cooking some hinterhältige Verschwörung to fill the world with snakes and handle it to their god. There are already some very small ones that can hide almost anywhere...

Spoiler: show

A member of the Typhlopidae, obviously. Some of which actually can get almost everywhere ...

(note 1: don't start screaming, snake-phobic friends, they just look like snakes But the guy that wrote the title knows how to attract clicks...)

To be fair, the scientists premeditated that by christening those filaments "Cytoophidia". One might wonder whether there are some actual ophiolatrists among them ...

(Is it just me, or does this Dr. Ji-Long Liu sound like a major suspect? )

(note 2: those pieces in German are entirely provided by our friend Google. I have no idea if they are accurate, since my domain of the language doesn't go much beyond Guten Tag and Achtung! Oh, and Ausfahrt, that I already mentioned before )

(Transgarble did an unusually good job this time around ... except for the deplorable shortness of the nouns used, of course!)

[moredhel]

Spoiler: show

What a cute little snake.

[thegreyarea]

A member of the Typhlopidae, obviously. Some of which actually can get almost everywhere ...
To be fair, the scientists premeditated that by christening those filaments "Cytoophidia". One might wonder whether there are some actual ophiolatrists among them ...

(Is it just me, or does this Dr. Ji-Long Liu sound like a major suspect? )

See? They are spreading everywhere!

Spoiler: show

Now we must be discreet or risk "accidentally" finding a snake in our bed...

(Transgarble did an unusually good job this time around ... except for the deplorable shortness of the nouns used, of course!)

Well, I believe the deplorable shortness of the original nouns is my fault... Next time I'll try to find some in line with Mark Twain's opinion: "Some German words are so long that they have a perspective."
 

[Purple Wyrm]

Glycon has actually been on my mind of late thanks to an art challenge many years ago on the old Whitechapel board where members were challenged to reinterpret old and obscure comic book characters. One time the selected character was Glycon, who of course is not a comic book character but got grandfathered in because of his association with Alan Moore. In any case in the subsequent discussions an ancient inscription from Antioch was brought up - "Glycon protect us from the plague-cloud" - and it has been circulating in my head for the last year for obvious reasons!

(One artist in particular designed a propaganda poster for a cyberpunk-style implant that would be promoted as the solution to a pandemic in some future dystopia. I kind of wish we had that implant now! )

And now for something completely different that probably should go on the language board but I didn't think was important enough to start a new thread about!

Spoiler: Help me people of Russia, you are my only hope! • show

I am in need of some Russian assistance! I'm working on a revision of a map I made some years back detailing the Moscow Metro system of Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033 novels and have stumbled over a fascinating diagram that would be of great help. Unfortunately the only copy of it I can locate is in Russian and is horribly, horribly compressed.

The first factor is not a major issue as as part of my project I've got very good at typing Russian into Google Translate. The second part however is much more difficult as with the text so tiny it's rather difficult for a non-Russian speaker to tell the difference (for instance) between a И and a Н or a Л and a Д. I figure someone who actually understands Russian will have a better time of it, what with being able to recognise full words and such.

So I am hoping that any Russian speakers we have may be willing to take a look and let me know if any of the image is comprehensible. All I can offer in return is thanks and a credit on my finished map

I've posted a blown up version of the text here. The original is here

[Kis]

Spoiler: Help me people of Russia, you are my only hope! • show

I am in need of some Russian assistance! I'm working on a revision of a map I made some years back detailing the Moscow Metro system of Dmitry Glukhovsky's Metro 2033 novels and have stumbled over a fascinating diagram that would be of great help. Unfortunately the only copy of it I can locate is in Russian and is horribly, horribly compressed.

The first factor is not a major issue as as part of my project I've got very good at typing Russian into Google Translate. The second part however is much more difficult as with the text so tiny it's rather difficult for a non-Russian speaker to tell the difference (for instance) between a И and a Н or a Л and a Д. I figure someone who actually understands Russian will have a better time of it, what with being able to recognise full words and such.

So I am hoping that any Russian speakers we have may be willing to take a look and let me know if any of the image is comprehensible. All I can offer in return is thanks and a credit on my finished map

I've posted a blown up version of the text here. The original is here

I was able to locate a better version of this map (here)(I really hope this works)
If it is still incomprehensible, I can provide either translation or any unclear Russian words 

[Maglor]

Glookhvsky based his setting on an obsolete map, so here's the new one.

[Purple Wyrm]

I was able to locate a better version of this map (here)(I really hope this works)
If it is still incomprehensible, I can provide either translation or any unclear Russian words 

Oh thank you! That's substantially clearer! I'll let you know if I need any translation help (Google is pretty good but it does do odd things sometimes, like translating "мрамор" as "coffee"  )

Glookhvsky based his setting on an obsolete map, so here's the new one.

The third book seems to have sorted itself out mapwise and uses a version of the Metro from 2013, which is when the nuclear war is meant to have happened. The growth in the network over just 8 years is astonishing!

[JoB]

See? They are spreading everywhere!

Spoiler: show

Now we must be discreet or risk "accidentally" finding a snake in our bed...

"A snake", he says ...

Next time I'll try to find some in line with Mark Twain's opinion: "Some German words are so long that they have a perspective."

FYI, Twain also also had a noted opinion about the length of German sentences.

(Also FYI, there's a fad in bookwriting - not limited to German! - to write entire books as a single run-on sentence.)

[thegreyarea]

"A snake", he says ...

I would surely mimic her reaction, and my hair too!

FYI, Twain also also had a noted opinion about the length of German sentences.

Well, I don't know enough German to have an opinion, so I'll probably follow Twain's suggestion: "…never knew before what eternity was made for. It is to give some of us a chance to learn German."

(Also FYI, there's a fad in bookwriting - not limited to German! - to write entire books as a single run-on sentence.)

To think that I considered José Saramago's punctuation strange...
 

[JoB]

I would surely mimic her reaction, and my hair too!

(Relevant tidbit: No double, animatronics, rubber snakes, or cutting room trickery!)

[thegreyarea]

(Relevant tidbit: No double, animatronics, rubber snakes, or cutting room trickery!)

Very interesting. Made me think that I saw that movie just once, when it was released in the previous Millennium*. I recall that it was quite fun. I must watch it again soon.

* How cool it is to be able to say that without being a ghost or a vampire?

[Jitter]

Very interesting. Made me think that I saw that movie just once, when it was released in the previous Millennium*. I recall that it was quite fun. I must watch it again soon.

* How cool it is to be able to say that without being a ghost or a vampire?

I actually wonder why my kids don’t really use it. I mean, the potential of being able to say “well you wouldn’t understand, you are from the previous millennium”!

[Annuil]

I actually wonder why my kids don’t really use it. I mean, the potential of being able to say “well you wouldn’t understand, you are from the previous millennium”!

Well, I don’t do that to my parents, though it is true for our family  :'D
However, I do say to my grandma that she was born in the first part of the previous century 

[Purple Wyrm]

Lalli has been getting up to some mischief... 

[Yastreb]

I actually wonder why my kids don’t really use it. I mean, the potential of being able to say “well you wouldn’t understand, you are from the previous millennium”!

I've been wont to use the line, "Dude/mate/buddy/darlin [as applicable], that is so last millennium!"