Regruntled.com

Lolspeak is obviously a kind of baby talk, mixed with slang from text messaging and internet chat rooms.  The universality of baby talk is disputed, but it’s widespread and commonly used for pets, which are substitute babies.  Or in the case of Lolspeak, since pets don’t talk, we project our baby talk onto pictures of cats, as if the cats themselves were speaking. 

Is there anything similar to Lolspeak in other languages?

In the Googleverse, everything I can think of already exists.  The act of naming something makes it part of my reality, and Google will supply the details.  Is there a Spanish version of Lolspeak?  Of course there is, if I can name it.

And I said, Let there be Lolgatos.  And there were Lolgatos.  And I saw los Lolgatos, that they were good.  And the evening and the morning were the first day.

First, Knitted Zombies, and now, Lolgatos.  I’m starting to like the Googleverse.

From Lolgatoz.com:

¿Qué es Lolspeak?

 

Lolspeak es la forma en que hablan un lolgato.

 

Es una mezcla entre la forma en que hablan los niños y algunos dialectos regionales.

The Church of Google has some hilarious “proofs” (omniscience, omnipresence, etc.), prayers and commandments.  Of course, it’s all a preposterous spoof, unlike Scientology or Mormonism.  Right.

I’ve been playing with the unfortunately named Web Gobbler, a program that downloads images from the net and makes collages out of them.   It’s an interesting effect, a bit busy for my taste, but an endless stream of images with fragments of meaning.  It feeds into the brain’s tendency to extract patterns out of noise.

As usual, I play with a new toy and I end up with more questions than when I started.  Is there a way to programmatically discard the less interesting images?  Can I generate more interesting collages by filtering the input images?  In other words, can I treat the thing as a black box and manipulate the inputs and outputs?

As for looking under the hood, Web Gobbler is open source, but it’s in Python, and I don’t know Python.  I looked at the code and there are lots of comments to explain what’s going on.  If I were in the mood to learn Python, this would be a good program to start with.

Didn’t anyone take Chemistry in high school?  K₂O is potassium oxide.  You do not want to drink the stuff.

Of course, K₂O is a play on H₂O.  It’s like water, but New!  Improved!  More expensive!  The marketing is interesting.  The product is not aimed at the organic, natural demographic.  It’s aimed at people who are impressed by something that sounds kinda sciencey, but who don’t know that K₂O is poison.  In a more scientifically literate society, selling K₂O Protein Water would be like selling Arsenic Brand Animal Crackers.  Hopefully none of the K₂O customers will find a jar of potassium oxide in the chem lab supply closet and try to mix it with water.

I wonder… if someone unsuccessfully tries to commit suicide by drinking K₂O, can they sue Kellogg for false advertising?

Here we are, on Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday, in one of the most Special countries in the modern world.  That’s Special as in Special Education and Special Olympics.  Look at the chart above.  Spain, Italy, Ireland, Austria… extremely Catholic, historically.  Or Denmark, Sweden, Norway…  extremely Lutheran.  Can you say Protestant Work Ethic?  I knew you could.   The Catholics and Lutherans have this stuff figured out. 

And Muslim Turkey… I don’t even know what Turkey’s doing on this list, unless it’s to keep the USA from being in last place.  I suppose one can argue that most of Istanbul is in Europe, and therefore Turkey has one foot in the modern world.  Hurray!  An arguably modern country that’s even more Special than we are!

This is what’s waiting for you: