This was the big thing for the sequel for me - it kind of just treated it as a fantasy world. An actually interesting film would have been written with the question of how computers have changed in mind. What would the concept of Tron look like in the modern age?
Ralph Breaks The Internet is actually s better sequel…
WRT Shakespeare, it’s perhaps worth noting that Shakespeare himself wasn’t immune to unusual names.
He literally coined the names Jessica, Imogen, Miranda, and Cordelia (as well as some others which have more or less fallen out of favour today, like Ophelia, and Desdemona). And he popularised several more which would have been highly unusual in his time, like Juliet, Olivia, Viola, Beatrice, and Adriana.
There’s a family in a Terry Pratchett book where a family did that for the girls but didn’t quite understand the rules and just knew that it should be different for boys. So one of the secondary characters of this book is called Bestiality Carter.
Pratchett handles it beautifully, too. Like, he’s a character for a good third, maybe even half of the book with it not remarked on at all before he gets an asterisk next to his name, which leads to a footnote which starts off (paraphrased, but the tone is correct): “okay, look, so it’s like this…”
IIRC, Alien didn’t officially make a profit until a couple of years ago.
Hollywood accounting is wild.
At the moment OpenAI can’t pay back anything, becuase they’re hemmorhaging money. Losing billions a year. And there’s no path to profitability.
That’s why they make investors confirm that they’re considering their investments a donation. That’s also why it’s unusual.
It’s not unusual for the opening phases of big tech companies to be “operate at a massive loss until the competition has gone out of business”, as companies like Netflix and Uber can attest, but it is unusual for that to be done where the investors aren’t expecting to make a profit.
Writing is absolutely part of language. If your point is that English has weird, illogical spelling rules, then you’re right. That’s not a new observation. People have been writing about that since spelling was standardised.
And it’s been changing for a very long time.
How do you feel when you see the name “Amy”. Do you dislike it? What if I told you that the original spelling in English was “Aimee”? “Amee” was also very common once upon a time. “Amy” was a much later spelling and was once considered a cringey, trendy “Tragedeigh”. As, as I said above, were Ashleigh & Kayleigh.
But you don’t think of them that way, because they’re now common. “Kayleigh” only gained popularity 40 years ago. “Ashleigh” is less than 100 years old. And already people don’t bat an eye at it. But they will at “Emmaleigh”, even though it’s exactly the same evolution.
What’s not standard about the phonetics of Emmaleigh? Or Graycyn, for that matter, to go with the example in the screnshot?
“Gray” is a word, and even an extant first name (Gray Davis, for example, or Gray O‘Brien). “Cyn” is a common syllable, like in “cynic”, but it’s also a name itself - it’s a common nickname to shorten “Cyndy” or “Cyntha” (eg Madame Cyn or Cyn Santana).
You’re fine with Graycyn, right?
VCs typically want a return on their investments
What is or is not considered dumb in any particular culture is normally nothing more than a function of the age of that thing.
For example, Wendy is just considered a normal name today, but people were mocked for calling their daughters Wendy once upon a time. It was invented for the book Peter Pan and was derived from a child referring to their friend as their “Fwendy”.
Vanessa was once considered a stupid, trendy, quirky name, being another one taken from literature.
Cheryl - a combination of Cherie and Beryl. Melinda - a combination a Mel and Linda. Annabelle - a combination of Anna and Belle. Annabeth - guess what that’s a combination of?
All of those got the same push-back for being stupid and contrived. Yet now they’re just…names.
Give it 50 years and people called Khaleesi and Katniss will be talking about how stupid all these new names are, rather than sensible ones like thiers.
Why is He not called Batcat?
Let’s not leave out that he abuses his co-stars for the sake of “method acting”.
I thought he was really good in Mr. Nobody.
IRL dick, though. To put it mildly.
Billie Eilish has several middle names. Eilish is in fact one of them. One of them, however, is “Pirate”. Because her parents allowed her big brother to choose one of them when she was born.
Why she doesn’t go by Pirate, I’ll never understand.
Very much this. The people who make these kinds of posts forget that this is how names are invented and evolved.
People who complain about what can be termed “Tragedeigh” names seem to be fine with “Kayleigh” and “Ashleigh”, despite both being a later variation on “Kayley” and “Ashley”, with the former not becoming popular until the 80s - and because of a song, at that.
In general, people have a very hard time with the idea that language in general, and names specifically, evolve over time. Whatever was commonplace until they reach, say, their 30s is what’s “right”. Any variation after that is “wrong”. When, of course, it was just as mutable when they were young and before they were born, but they weren’t around for the latter and were equally mutable when they were themselves young.
There can often be an unpleasant class/race undertone to it as well.
I have a similar philosophy, but framed a little differently: never argue with an idiot, because the best possible outcome is you’ll win an argument against an idiot.
So it’s more kind of “pick your battles”. Or, to widen the application beyond just discussion - always think “why am I doing this? What am I hoping to achieve?”
Not framed like that. You have to acknowledge that investments can depreciate rather than appreciate and that you may lose your money, sure. That’s very different to saying that you acknowledge that you probably will lose your money and that you consider your investment a donation.
FWIW, part of the OpenAI investment process is signing something to say that you understand that you’re unlikely to get any return on your investment and that you consider it more akin to a donation
I was just scrolling down to see if anybody had mentioned it
Scientists from Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry found that children diagnosed as autistic earlier in life (typically before six years old) were more likely to show behavioural difficulties from early childhood, such as problems with social interaction.
However, those diagnosed with autism later on in life (in late childhood or beyond) were more likely to experience social and behavioural difficulties during adolescence.
I assume that the paper itself frames this a little differently, because what this is saying is trust there’s a correlation between when traits become noticeable and when people get a diagnosis. Which is what you’d expect. You don’t tend to diagnose people who don’t exhibit the traits required for diagnosis.
I gave examples of having a root in language - specifically, the English language.
But, okay, a name has to have all of those things when coined to not be stupid. That would mean that you have equal disdain for Vanessa? It was coined by Jonathan Swift. It has none of the things you claim are important. It’s just a combination of two syllables taken from a friend’s last and first name - Esther Vanhomrigh. Myra? Coined by Fulke Greville, it’s just an anagram of “Mary”. Wendy? Coined by J. M. Barrie, it’s taken from a young girl mispronouncing the word “friend” as “fwendy”.
There’s plenty more. I’m sure you’re equally annoyed by all of these, rather than accepting them as perfectly fine and normal because they were coined before you were born.
I mean, at least you’ve dropped the facade that you have a reasoned, linguistic rationale for your dislike and are now leaning into “it’s stupid because I personally don’t like it”.
Okay, so, “-ly” is equally valid as an English place-name spelling varient of “leah”. Don’t believe me? Ask the English Place-Name Society: https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/epns/documents/journal/49-2017/jepns49-2017-wager-95-126.pdf
Again, it’s good to see you dropping the pretence of having a reasoned position.
You’re right, spellings should only change if it also changes the meaning of the word. That’s why I shame people for calling their children Amy rather than the original Aimee; Edith rather than Eadgyth; Alice rather than Aalis; Walter/Walther rather than Waldhar; and so many more.
You’re definitely right about Emmaleigh. The only proper way to spell it is Emelye. All subsequent spelling changes is just hipsters who aren’t changing the meaning at all. Imagine calling your daughter a stupid as fuck, dumbass name like “Emily”! For shame!