I got a decent rank to get into med school. I convinced myself this is what I wanted pretty late and now I regret it. Everything I do and think is fking dumb. My behaviour isn't suited for this and it's too late to drop out. I cannot live like this anymore. How do I convince myself to keep going despite feeling this dumb?

I'm stuck between choosing UIUC MSIM (Information Management) and USC ADS (Applied Data Science) to pursue my goal of becoming a data scientist. Given the harsh job market, I'm also considering taking some CS courses and looking for software engineer roles. Here are some factors I'm considering:
🧡UIUC MSIM
Pros: Strong brand name, particularly in CS; lower tuition and living expenses
Cons: Location might not be ideal for me; degree title is not specifically in CS
❤️USC ADS
Pros: Location is a better fit for me; program may be more closely aligned with CS (not sure)
Cons: Higher costs; school ranked lower (While I know rankings aren't everything)
As an international student, I'm interested in hearing perspectives from local students. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Hello, I'm an international applicant and I recently got accepted by ASU after getting rejection few weeks ago. Honestly, I never really wanted to go to ASU, because I had the locations in the top of my preferences along with the programs and the universities. But after being accepted I was willing to reconsider my choices (because ASU has the highest rankings among all the other universities that I have applied in). But now after seeing almost all of the rejects turning into accepts, its making me seriously not consider the university again. Because when I talked to a senior from ASU, they told me not to come to ASU and that I should consider other universities and further added that how it is extremely difficult to get the courses that you want and how its almost impossible to land in campus jobs for the first semester or two.
Other than ASU, I got accepted by NJIT, Stevens, NYIT, PACE and UMass Boston, all for MS CS, but got rejected from NEU for the same. And now I have applied for MS in AI and DS in NEU. So if you can help, I would really like to know my chances of getting into NEU, and set my expectations accordingly.
My Profile:- CGPA: 7.69/10 (1 to 6 semesters) GRE: 303 (161 Q + 142 V, 3.5 AWA) IELTS: 7.5 (L=7.5, R=8, W=6, S=7.5)
And in case if I don't get admit from NEU (for MS in AI or DS) is it right decision to go along with NJIT or Stevens (both for MSCS)? If yes then which one would be better?
Thank you.

I've taken a two year gap and I'm planning to attend law school this fall. Since then, I've been working at a pretty notable non-profit organization and my resume overall is quite strong. I took the LSAT four times since Summer 2020. (I'm a god awful test taker.) I've applied to variety of schools so far and no positive results yet. (The schools I have heard back from were definitely reaches, but did it to at least say I tried.) I'm really starting to worry about my prospects. I haven't financially been able to dedicate as much time/resources as I've needed before a test to get the score I think I deserve. I'm so tired of taking this test, it's not even funny.
My thoughts are, considering I wouldn't be able to move out of state by this Fall like I want to, to go to a lower ranked school at home and transfer after my first year.
​
This entire process has been frustrating and stressful to say the least, but I do really want to become a lawyer and I would appreciate actual advice that is something other than 'give up and find another career'. I could care less about big corporate law and I have a primary interest in humanitarian law (domestic and international).

I have been accepted to the Penn State and Cemfi master programs without funding. I am looking for schools give stipends to their MA students. I am also open to lower ranked schools. If you know any school give stipend their MA students, can you tell me? PS: I actually want to go to Cemfi a lot but I am an international student and I can not afford it. Is there a way so I can study at Cemfi?

/collegebaseball General Discussion Thread - WEEK 6: Weekend (2023)

— Rules

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Week 6 Games

Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Fri	Sat	Sun
20th	21st	22nd	23rd	24th	25th	26th

2023 Week 6 Top 25

Mean+Median 3-Poll Composite

Rank	Team	Conference	D1B	BWA	USAT	Prev.	Δ
1	LSU Tigers	SEC	1	1	1	1	—
2	Wake Forest Demon Deacons	ACC	2	4	2	5	↑3
3	Florida Gators	SEC	3	2	3	4	↑1
4	Arkansas Razorbacks	SEC	5	3	3	6	↑2
5	Vanderbilt Commodores	SEC	4	5	5	8	↑3
6	Louisville Cardinals	ACC	6	6	6	7	↑1
7	Virginia Cavaliers	ACC	8	7	7	10	↑3
8	UCLA Bruins	Pac-12	7	8	8	12	↑4
9	Stanford Cardinal	Pac-12	9	10	9	9	—
10	ECU Pirates	American	10	11	10	11	↑1
11	South Carolina Gamecocks	SEC	11	9	11	14	↑3
12	Tennessee Volunteers	SEC	12	12	12	2	↓10
13	Mississippi Rebels	SEC	13	13	13	3	↓10
14	Texas Tech Red Raiders	Big 12	14	14	14	19	↑5
15	North Carolina Tar Heels	ACC	15	15	16	18	↑3
16	Oklahoma State Cowboys	Big 12	20	16	15	13	↓3
17	Boston College Eagles	ACC	16	20	17	NR	↑10
18	Miami Hurricanes	ACC	17	17	20	NR	↑8
19	Campbell Camels	Big South	18	18	19	23	↑4
20	Texas A&M Aggies	SEC	21	19	18	15	↓5
21	Missouri Tigers	SEC	22	21	21	NR	↑
22	Florida Gulf Coast Eagles	ASUN	19	22	23	24	↑2
23	Kentucky Wildcats	SEC	23	24	22	NR	↑
24	Alabama Crimson Tide	SEC	NR	25	25	22	↓2
25	UCSB Gauchos	Big West	NR	23	NR	NR	↑
NR	West Virginia Mountaineers	Big 12	24	26	NR	NR	↑
NR	NC State Wolfpack	ACC	NR	29	24	20	↓7
NR	Grand Canyon Antelopes	WAC	25	27	NR	NR	↑

D1B – D1Baseball
CBW – National Collegiate Baseball Writers Association
USAT – USA Today

Should the Chakavian language be included in school education? “ The Croatian standard language becomes speechless as soon as it approaches the sea”

I see the recognition of the Croatian Chakavian language by the ISO organization and its getting an international code (CKM) as a living language ​​of our world as an opportunity to raise awareness at the national level about the problem of the dying of local idioms that are still alive in Croatia. It is necessary to start the production of native reading and learning books focused on the Chakavian, Kajkavian and Štokavian vernacular languages, representative texts of the written and oral literature. Of all Croatian languages.
Professor Emeritus Joško Božanić from the University of Split, director of the only scientific journal dedicated to the Chakavian language and a foremost authority in Croatian linguistics, in a big interview for Dalmacija Danas, tells why a wing of the Croatian academia reacted by expressing negative emotions to the news that the Chakavian speech was recently recognized as a separate language from the Croatian standard language by the International Organization for Standardization ISO, the international scientific journal Ethnologue and the international organization SIL International (responsible for cataloging all the languages of humanity), basically all the most relevant linguistic institutions in the world.
Among other things, he explains how the Croatian standard language could have gone in a completely different direction if some centuries ago the Pope had not heeded the Zagreb bishop’s recommendation and ordered on June 23, 1633, to postpone the printing of the first Bible in “Illyrian” (this was how Croatian was known back then) and Latin. Božanić also answers the question of who is promoting the introduction of the Split dialect of the Chakavian language in all Split elementary and high schools as part of the local culture course.
He emphasizes that young people need to be taught that speaking their native “BESIDA / BESEDA” is not a mistake but a fundamental intangible cultural asset of our world and a great source of cultural richness for them and the country of Croatia.

Denying the significance of an important historical event

The International Organization for Standardization ISO from Geneva included the Chakavian language in its list of living languages ​​of the world in 2020. How did this resonate with Croatian linguists?
– The first reaction I saw in the newspaper was in Slobodna Dalmacija, which published an interview by Damir Šarac (February 2, 2023) with a local scholar, Professor Dunja Jutronić . She expressed the following controversial statement in regard to the news about the assignment of a standardization code to the Chakavian language by the ISO: “This choice is not relevant for either international or national linguistic science. Linguistic scientists consider both Chakavian and Kaikavian dialects to be “supra-dialects” (a word made up by Yugoslav linguists to describe a uniquely balkan concept that doesn’t exist in other languages of the world, Ed.) with their own many sub-dialects, and they advocate for this through their scientific work but the status of an official – standardized – language is not a scientific, but a political category.“
I cannot agree with some of these statements. First – because I simply do not see how the international codification of a Croatian idiom on the most prestigious international list of world languages ​​could be irrelevant, unimportant.
Was the codification of the Croatian standard language by the same international institution in Geneva (International Standardization Organization – ISO) which happened on September 1, 2008 and which codified the Croatian official (standard) language under the code name ISO 693-3 [hrv] irrelevant? Back then the event was met with national jubilee.
Second – this is not about declaring an “official language” but a language. That’s an important difference. Languages ​​can be official when they are standardized, such as the Croatian standard language, and Chakavian is a vernacular language, such as the Shtokavian vernacular language, which is based on the so-called Jekavian / Ijekavian southern Neoshtokavian dialect, which Croatian linguists have started to call Eastern Herzegovinian-Krajiški dialect only in the last twenty years, and that was standardized as the Croatian standard (official) language only at the end of the 19th century. Third – the term supra-dialect/narječje, which according to Akademijin Rječnik (33, 586) was introduced by Vuk S. Karadžić and his followers, the so-called vukovci, as a translation of the Russian word [нарѣчие] in Croatian linguistic terminology as a dialect, can in Russian mean a local speech and dialect and a group of related dialects, but also a vernacular (non-standardized) language.
The term Chakavian language in fact means exactly the later – a vernacular language because in Croatia the standard Croatian Shtokavian language is the official language. And fourth – I agree with the position that the status of an official language is not a scientific but a political category, since the official language is the result of an agreement, convention, political decision. So it was also for the Croatian standard language.
All standard languages ​​are artificial and not spontaneous like vernacular ones, because they are standardized by political decision and stylized by linguists and maintained through institutions. But it is a scientific fact at the same time that there is a Croatian Shtokavian vernacular language as well as the Chakavian and Kajkavian Croatian languages ​​which are not standardized even though they were literary languages ​​for centuries long before Shtokavian. The word vernacular comes from Latin. Vernaculus means native, according to Latin verne – native slave, one who was born in the master’s house. According to the definition in Webster’s dictionary, vernacular is a language that is native to the people, as opposed to a literary one.
According to the article by Željko Rogošić in the weekly magazine Nacional (7/2/2023, 53-55) titled “A Croatian paradox: Chakavian was declared an independent language of the world“, three prominent Croatian linguists, academics, dispute the significance of the international codification of the Croatian Chakavian language. Academician Josip Bratulić says: “I am not sure that declaring Chakavian an independent language will achieve anything“, professor Silvana Vranić believes that “the Chakavian dialect cannot be isolated and viewed as a separate language“, and professor Mira Menac-Mihalić believes that the decision on the codification of the Chakavian language “means nothing, because on that basis no one will give Croatia money to preserve the language” and concludes: “… we are not talking about the Chakavian language, but Chakavian is part of the Croatian language system.” Therefore, according to this the Chakavian dialect is not a language (which is defined as a system), but it is a language system within a language system that represents the Croatian standard language.
This idea of ​​the Chakavian dialect as a system within a system is incorporated in the concept of the “three-narječje formula” by prof. emerit. Iva Lukežić from the University of Rijeka, according to whom the Croatian language is “unique in the world”. She says: “…the Croatian language should be used to define every idiom by which Croats communicated with each other through history and by which they communicate. This is the starting point and at the level of organic idioms, in dialectology, the Croatian language is defined as a sui generis complex language structure with three components of the abstract rank of supra-dialects, each made up of a certain number of components of a lower abstract rank of sub-dialects, and according to this three-supra-dialec formula, the Croatian language is unique in the world of languages” (Appendix to the discussion on the genesis of Croatian supra-dialects, Fluminensia no. 1-2. 1996, p. 223).
Questioning this “three-supra-dialects formula” and the “uniqueness” of the Croatian standard language compared to all other languages of our world can get a person in trouble and to be labeled negatively, and is a direct result of the current very foggy scientific situation in the Croatian dialectology field.
Thus, recently we were able to read in a text of M.M. Letica titled “How to explain to dilettantes that Chakavian is not a language, but a dialect of the Croatian language” the following words: “We should arm with facts, i.e. the one truth. And armed with it, resolutely attack the enemies of the Croatian language” (Hrvatski tjednik, 9.2. 2023). Judge for yourself the weight and meaningfulness of such a statement about “dilettantes” and “enemies of the Croatian language” as written according to the author of that article.

Heretical thoughts about the Croatian language in a popular university textbook

Recently, the Faculty of Philosophy in Split, together with the Literary Circle from Split, published your book “Vernacular Stylistics“, which was recognized the status of a university textbook. Therefore, it is intended to be used by students of Croatian studies. I assume that your book also deals with some issues of the relationship between the Croatian standard language and the vernacular languages, as you call them, Chakavian and Kaikavian, so I would like you to present to us the positions you represent in it, which concern this conversation.
– Yes, in 2019 I published the book “Vernacular Stylistics” as a university textbook for students and teachers of Croatian studies. My specialization is stylistics, and as I am also a dialectologist, I connected these two disciplines in an effort to analyze and interpret the stylistic wealth of various texts written in vernacular idioms, not only Chakavian, and not only literary ones.
This wealth of expressions is completely neglected because in our country dialectologists rarely deal with the stylistic level of expressions, and stylists ignore texts in non-standard idioms of the Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian vernaculars. But when we talk about this book of mine, it is interesting to say that in it I expressed some “heretical” views that have not caused, until today, any reaction from other professors.
This position of mine is opposite to the above mentioned reactions of other professors of linguistics, because I claim that the Croatian language is one system that cannot logically consist of three systems (Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian) and that all three Croatian language systems are actually three separate vernacular languages/systems.
In doing so, I follow the teachings of the most prominent Croatian linguist Josip Silić, who distinguishes between language as a system and language as a standard. As I said before, language as a standard is the result of the standardization process and as such the result of conventions, agreements, and the work of institutions, because it does not arise spontaneously in the speech practice of a narrow or wide local community.
Josip Silić says the following about this topic: “In conclusion, we can say that Shtokavian, Chakavian and Kajkavian nariječja are different (language) systems (…). They are therefore separate Croatian idioms, not dialects of one Croatian language. (this does not mean in any way that one narječje is less Croatian than the other). Therefore, it is wrong to speak of Chakavian and Kajkavian phenomena in the Croatian standard language as a dialectal phenomena, i.e. dialecticisms. Dialectisms are not phenomena in the Croatian standard language that come from the Chakavian and Kajkavian dialects, but phenomena that they come from the Štokavian dialect.“
Thus, Chakavian and Kajkavian are separate linguistic systems, not varieties of the Croatian standard language. Dialectal phenomena in standard Croatian can come only from the Shtokavian vernacular, which is the basis on which Croatian was standardized as an official language.

The Croatian father of the nation idea about the “bleating-speech”

You were a member of the Council for the Normalization of the Croatian Standard Language. What is your experience of participating in the work of that Council?
– I participated in the second convocation of the Council for the Normalization of the Croatian Language, which was created at the invitation of the Minister of Science, Dragan Primorac in 2005, and lasted until 2012, when it was abolished by Minister Željko Jovanović. The president of the council was academician Radoslav Katičić. The topics discussed were mostly about spelling. Some conclusions about orthographic solutions have taken root in orthographic practice, and some suggestions have fallen away. I well remember the discussion about the accent norm, which caused a polemical tone considering the big divergence of accentuation speech practice between the Chakavian and Kajkavian speaking areas, and the Neoshtokavian accent norm, which got erroneously marked as purely rural pronunciation, despite being native to the 3 biggest cities in Croatia.
This split with the normative Neoshtokavian accentuation appeared mainly due to the realization of descending stresses on internal syllables or due to the omission of the transition of stress from the tonic word to the proclitic, which is the result of the influence of the Chakavian and Kaikavian accent systems.
Today, this practice of diverging is even more pronounced on radio and television, so that two accentual norms have come to life, one could almost say: the one that is prescribed, the Neoshtokavian one, and the one that is increasingly present in public communication in the media, and is the result of accent influence by Chakavian and the dominant Zagreb Kajkavian vernaculars into the standard Croatian language.
I remember well also other discussions, especially the one about the issue of the orthographic norm of writing neću / ne ću or the question of the Ekavian realization of the so-called covered [ r] like in greška / grješka, vremena / vrjemena, strelica / strjelica. I considered particularly absurd that the norm chosen deviated from linguistical rules, and only pursued to increase a (perceived) distance from the Serbian Ekavian standard.
Isn’t it ironic that in our time this hyper-Jekavianism is associated with the defense of the Croatian distinctiveness from the Serbian language, while Ante Starčević , the “father of the Croatian nation”, in the 19th century defended his Ekavian language from the Serbian Ijekavian language of Vuk Karadzic, calling it derogatorily “bleating-speech”, and describing Jekavian / Ijekavian pronunciation as “bleating” (I. Marković : Notes on the language of Ante Starčević, Filologija 71, Zagreb 2018).

On purism according to the Croatian maritime lexicon

What is your attitude towards purism in Croatian linguistics?
– I dedicated a chapter to that topic in my book, because it also touches on the issue of linguistic identity on the lexical level. I will tell you right away that I am not a purist, although today we are all witnesses of the unstoppable penetration of English into all world languages, except for the languages ​​of civilizations that have not yet reached the Internet. You mentioned my participation in the Council for the Normalization of the Croatian Language. I well remember the lively controversy surrounding the idea of ​​croatizing English IT terminology. I then compared that effort with the hypothetical idea of ​​building a dam on the Amazon River. Namely, I am convinced that the influx of English into all world languages ​​is inevitable and unstoppable. On that occasion, I mentioned my own experience in working on the dictionary of a small island dialect, my Komiža dialect, whose dictionary I have been systematically working on for thirty years.
I said on that occasion that in my Komiža dictionary, which contains twenty thousand glosses, about seventy percent of all nouns are of alloglottic (foreign) origin. But all those words that arrived on the island by sea were adapted – accentually, creatively, and morphologically adapted to Komižan speech. Words adapted in this way became our own words, and not foreign words or loanwords, as many Croatian linguists call them. We did not borrow them with the intention of returning them one day when we invent our own words for the concepts they describe.
No, these words have become ours and lived in our speech for many centuries. This vocabulary is now our intangible heritage, a part of the Croatian national identity created on our shores of the Adriatic sea, in our life shared with that sea. But unfortunately they are ideologically uninteresting to our normative lexicographers.
Some of our linguists consider purism to be synonymous with culture. I wonder in what kind of linguistic non-culture I was born and spoke, being that my language was full of words that came to us by sea lines for centuries, and without which we Croats would not know how to talk about the sea at all.
There are two types of purism: exogenous (rejection of words originating from other ethnos) and endogenous (rejection of words from non-standard idioms of the same ethnos). I would like to ask those linguists who talk about the three-supra-dialectal Croatian language and the interweaving of three dialects within the Cha-Kaj-Shtokavian formula, how come that the language of the Croatian Vukovci, who reject almost completely the Kajkavian and Chakavian lexicons in order to prevent the “contamination” of the Shtokavian lexical standard, is still at work to this day.
How come it was only at the end of the twentieth century (in 1990) with the appearance of Anić’s Dictionary of the Croatian language, the first ever purely Croatian dictionary, many names of some commonly known sea fish enter the Croatian dictionaries for the first time? How is it that an entire segment of the national culture, the maritime, coastal and island one, is deleted from the whole of the national culture in our lexicography so that when the Croatian standard (Shtokavian) language approaches the sea – it becomes completely speechless and wordless?
At the same time, it should be underlined that the Croatian nation inhabits a coast almost 6,000 kilometers long, a water area that covers two-thirds of the Adriatic sea and has a maritime culture that is more than a thousand years old. It is the only Slavic nation in the world, which is the guardian of the Mediterranean cultural and linguistic universe.
Branka Tafra, a full-time professor at Croatian Studies in Zagreb, says the following: “The rule of correctness for Croatian was chosen to be the Neoshtokavian Ijekavian dialect, and all words were drawn out of that mold. Back in the day the Croatian vukovci received the authority and power to determine what was to be classified as correct and what was not, and all in accordance with theNeoshtokavian canon (…) Although the vukovci are not usually spoken of as purists, they also practiced a form of purism by persecuting Kajkavisms, Chakavisms, and all non-Neoshtokavian words.” This kind of purism against Chakavisms and Kajkavisms was also brought forward by the language policy of the NDH, which, with its idea of ​​a single Croatian Shtokavian language, had a negative relationship not only toward the non-Neoshtokavian lexicon, but also toward all non-Neoshtokavian literature.
I would like to hear your opinion on this attitude towards dialectal literature since you are also known as a dialect poet?
– Dialectal poetry has nowadays no place in Croatian poetry anthologies. This attitude towards literature written in the vernacular Croatian languages, Chakavian and Kajkavian, has been maintained to this very day.
Just as the standardization of the Neoshtokavian idiom at the end of the 19th century brought the Chakavian and Kajkavian vernacular languages from an equal position to a s subordinate one toward the Shtokavian standard, so literature based on these vernacular languages received the depreciatory attribute of epichoric, regional, indigenous literature. As something filled with sentiment of attachment to some past states, provincial speeches, memories. As such, it is almost completely excluded from the corpus of the national Croatian literature, and its authors have no place in the national literary pantheon unless they legitimized themselves with other literary works in the standard language.
In most anthologies of Croatian poetry, the poems of even our best and most genius dialectal poets are completely omitted. The recent anthology by Tonka Maroević “Svjetlaci – Croatian poetry of the third post-war (1996 – 2019)” presents in the introduction the author’s explanation for his omission of poets who write poetry in dialects. He says: “I believe that songs in the dialect belong to their own language systems, within which they can be measured and categorized, and that it is inappropriate and violent to anthologize them within a whole composed in the standard Croatian language.” With Maroević’s explicit removal of dialectal poetry from an anthology named “Croatian poetry” in its title, his words above could have two meanings: First, that dialectal poetry that is created in Croatia in non-standard idioms is not Croatian, because only poetry that is Croatian is anthologized, and if it is Croatian, yes, since it is dialectal, it does not meet the value criteria (of the author of the anthology) for inclusion in the corpus of representative Croatian poetry.
Or second: phrase “Croatian poetry” in the title is not limited in terms of meaning by anything except the time reference in the title of the anthology – the year 1996 as the starting year and the year 2019 as the final year and, of course, the anthologist’s value judgment – his selection criteria.
According to this interpretation, the term “Croatian poetry” does not include dialectal poetry precisely because those are written in non-standard idioms, which means that the criterion for belonging to the corpus of Croatian poetry is that it is written in the standard Croatian language of Neoshtokavian. Therefore, even if it met the artistic criteria for inclusion in the national anthology, it could not be included because it was not written in the standard national language.
Maroević’s position on the status of dialectal poetry is not very different from Antun Šoljan’s one from year 1965. Šoljan claimed that: “…in one so little literature, the scattering of talents on several linguistic paths (meaning: on several versifications, on several traditions and several tendencies) can be tragic. It seems to me that today the only way forward for a dialectal writer is not to stick to an inanimate or underdeveloped language, but to merge his native idiom with a literary one and thus fertilize and enrich the linguistic matrix” (Three-year chronicle of Croatian and Serbian poetry 1960-1962, Naprijed, Zagreb 1965: 41). This idea about endangering the “linguistic matrix” by writing in vernacular Croatian languages indicates the same kind of understanding of the national cultural monolith, which is threatened by “dispersion”, disunity, endangerment. I, on the other hand, see in these diversity the unique richness of Croatian culture, its diversity, and as a writer I perceive language as a space of freedom, games and linguistic wealth that includes living oral idioms, all vernacular organic speeches that preserve the collective memory of the Croatian people and the millennial work of language and speech.

The Pope against printing the Bible in Latin and Shtokavian

On several occasions, you have mentioned Croatian vukovci, their influence on the process of standardization of the Croatian language.
– Their influence is present to this day, because even today the door towards the Chakavian and Kajkavian languages is closed, as I already mentioned. The influence of Vuk S. Karadžić was decisive in the choice of the vernacular Neoshtokavian basis for the standardization of the Croatian language. The dialect of the Shtokavian vernacular known colloquially as the “southern dialect” of eastern Hrecegovina was not chosen by chance.
This chosen dialect, which was a common dialect also to the Serbian language, became the basis for the standardization of the Croatian language. The founder of the Phonetics Department of the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb, Professor Ivo Škarić says the following: “Thus, all epithets for the standard language began to be attributed to that chosen Neoshtokavian dialect, with the consequence that all non-Neoshtokavian idioms began to be considered less valuable despite the natural equality among all organic speeches (as well as among peoples) and the fact that some speeches rejected during the selection, especially Kajkavian and Chakavian, had an extremely rich cultural and literary tradition. As an immanent property of every standard, Neoshtokavian moved psycho-sociologically from a horizontal relationship with other speeches to a vertical, hierarchical one, where it was adorned with all the then valid epithets of a literary language: superiority, class , cultural elitism. The contemporary speakers of Neoshtokavian as an organic idiom, boasted then of self-satisfaction that they are already well-spoken by birth and that others speak “objectively” in an ugly and funny way” (I. Škarić – Hrvatski govori, Školska knjiga 2006: 19-20).
The process of standardization of the Croatian language toward a Neoshtokavian vernacular base began in the first half of the 17th century with the translation of the Bible by the Roman Jesuit Bartolo Kašić, originally from the island of Pag, author of the first grammar of the Croatian language (Institutionum linguae Illyricae libri duo, Rome, 1604). For his translation, he chose Latin and the folk Shtokavian language of the Dubrovnik region, relying on the language of the Dubrovnik literary tradition. But his attempt was stopped by a letter from then Zagreb bishop Franjo Ergelski to Pope Urban VIII.
The bishop recommended that the printing of Kašić’s Bible be postponed. The Pope accepted the bishop’s recommendation and ordered on June 23, 1633, to postpone the printing of the Bible in the Illyrian language. That delay meant de facto a ban, and the main reason for that ban was that it was translated into the Dubrovnik dialect (“Ragusina vulgari lingua“), which will not be understandable to all Croats, and in Latin script, not Glagolitic or Cyrillic, which were used by Croats at that time. And so the printing was “postponed” for 367 years, when the conditions for the printing of this capital work of the Croatian written word were finally met, but not in Croatia, in Germany.
So the resistance to printing came from Zagreb, out of the suspicion that Kašić’s Bible translated into Shtokavian speech of the Dubrovnik region would not be understandable to Croats in other regions and because of the choice of the wrong script – Latin. If Pope Urban VIII did not accept the recommendation of Zagreb bishop Franjo Ergelski, but the advice of the Sacra Congregatio de propaganda fide that suggested Kašić’s Bible be printed, probably the process of standardizing the Croatian language would have followed a different path and the Croatian language would, I believe, be quite different from the one with which I am now answering the questions posed to you.

The Croatian terminological and linguistic fogginess

Do you expect resistance from politicians inclined to unification and centralization of everything, disinclined to any diversity, regionalization and the like? What kind of argument do they use to defend their positions?
– Croatian linguistics is strongly influenced by politics, to such an extent that even some of the greatest Croatian linguists in their scientific works and public speeches changed their initially declared positions on the Croatian language in order to harmonize them with the dominant political narrative. It is a huge defeat for science. I remember a great national celebration when, on September 1, 2008, in Geneva, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigned the code to Croatian Shtokavian and accepted it as a standard language on the list of world languages. It was a national feast. When this same institution assigned the code to the Chakavian language in 2020, the event was first hushed up in the Croatian media, and then two years later, negative evaluations of that act appeared. Language is the most important symbol of ethnicity in our country, and the romantic idea of ethnicity popular in the 19th century, which is still alive today, needs a community of one “blood, soil and language”. At the same time, Croatian politics and Croatian linguistics are burdened even today by the common Neoshtokavian vernacular basis of the Croatian and Serbian languages, which is an indisputable scientific fact. The declaration of Croatian as the only triune (that is tri-dialectic) language, “unique in this respect in the whole world”, as Prof. emerita Iva Lukežić claims, is a politically useful, but totally unscientific attitude favored by the Croatian terminological and linguistic fog.

Chakavian at the top of UNESCO’s intangible heritage list

Did this recognition open the door to saving the Chakavian language from extinction through the Croatian education system or is this an illusion in itself? What should be done to teach and nurture the Chakavian language outside of the optional subject in elementary and high schools?
– The world’s linguistic diversity is today more threatened than its biological diversity, but it is just as important as biological diversity for human survival. “Language is what is most human in a person,” says the French linguist Claude Hagège, author of the book “Stop the extinction of languages” (Disput, Zagreb 2005). The death of any language, no matter how small, is also the death of a whole world that existed in it and through it.
UNESCO’s Paris Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage (Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage) from 2003 defined the list of intangible heritage of the world, and at the top of that list is language (oral tradition and expressions, including language as a vehicle of the intangible cultural heritage. It is about language as a carrier of intangible cultural heritage. By the end of this century, half of the 5,000 languages ​​alive today will disappear from planet Earth if current trends continue, says Hagège.
I see the recognition of the Chakavian language and its receiving of an international code as a living language ​​of the world as an opportunity to raise awareness at the national level of the problem of autochthonous dying languages that are still alive in Croatia today. It is necessary to start the production of native reading books with Chakavian, Kajkavian and Shtokavian vernacular languages, that is, with representative texts of written and oral literature. I made such a digital book for the children and young people of the island of Vis as part of the national cultural asset preservation program “Cokavski govori otoka Visa”. This type of digital readings should be made for Split as well, based on the very rich literature available in the Split dialect of Chakavian.

Introducing the Split dialect of Chakavian in all Split schools

The association “Marko Uvodić Splićanin for the research and preservation of the Split Chakavian language” fought, on the initiative of its president Jadranka Mardešić Komac, for the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia to issue a decision in 2013 declaring the “Split speech (Split Chakavian language)” a national intangible cultural asset. The same association, together with the Split local section of the Čakavski Sabor, has been trying to fight for the introduction of Split speech in all Split primary schools as part of the cultural program for several years.
The councilor Damir Barbir even asked the following parliamentary question during a session of the City Council held on February 16, 2023: “Does the City of Split want to support the initiative that the Split speech, as a most important and most endangered cultural property according to the UNESCO Paris Convention from 2003, and as a national cultural heritage according to the decision of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, to introduce it as a subject in the curricula of primary and secondary school education, and to provide funds for the financing of that program, which should also include the creation of a ‘Reading book of the Split Chakavian language’ According to the information of representative Damir Barbir, the mayor of Split, Prof. Ivica Puljak, Ph.D., responded positively to the question, and the official decision of the Split City Council is awaited.

A virtual living museum of the Chakavian language from Pelješac to the west coast of Istria

How do you plan to take advantage of the newly acquired status as an internationally recognized language with its own language code?
– The Čakavski Sabor, an organization which today has 25 sections all over Croatia and was founded in 1969 in Žminj, and the journal of the Literary Circle in Split “Čakavska rič“, which has been published for fifty years as the only scientific journal in Croatia and in the world dedicated to the research of the Čakavian speech, gave so far the greatest contribution to the preservation of the Chakavian region from Pelješac to the west coast of Istria.
On the occasion of this international recognition of the Croatian Chakavian language, I intend to send an initiative letter to the Čakavski Sabor in Žminj to initiate the procedure for the registration the Croatian Chakavian language in the UNESCO Red Book of Endangered Languages ​​for Europe and in the UNESCO Atlas of the world’s Languages ​​in danger which contains 2,460 languages ​​from around the world, through the support of the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, its Directorate for International Cultural Cooperation, the Service for UNESCO.
The red book already contains five registered languages from Croatia ​​(with code characters) from Croatia (Istriot, Istro-Romanian, Venetian, Ladin and Romani).
This is the first step that must be taken in order for us to be able to fight and to get the possibility of launching projects under the EU funds for research, valorization, education and preservation of the Chakavian language, with an emphasis on the possibility of its digitization, which is imperative at this moment.
This means networking between many Chakavian speeches, creating a common database of all written texts, books, audio records and videos, networking all glossaries and dictionaries between them.
In other words: we are launching an initiative to create a Virtual Living Museum of the Chakavian language from Pelješac to the west coast of Istria. Such an idea requires the energy of young people, who have yet to learn that their native BESIDA / BESEDA is not a mistake but an intangible cultural asset of the world.
Anecdotes about the life and death of the Komiža speech
On February the 10th of this year, you held a lecture at the Marko Marulić Library in Split entitled “The Future of the Croatian Chakavian Language”. I would like to conclude our conversation with your answer to the question of what is the future of the Chakavian language.
– I will start my answer with two anecdotes. The first is the one I heard from our famous director Hrvoj Hribar, who some ten years ago in Komiža sat at a cafe on the Komiža waterfront with his then ten-year-old son. It was winter time when only Komiža people sit on the terrace, because there are no tourists at that time. When they finished their drinks, the father called the waitress to pay, and then the son whispered to him: “Dad, you should pay in euros here, don’t you hear how they speak?”.
The second one is the one I told during the public lecture “The Future of the Chakavian Language” in Split. It happened recently, when I boarded a bus from Komiža to Vis. The bus was full of primary school children from Komiža who were going to Vis, where they have organized some free school activities – football and music. When I took my place in the bus, I carefully listened for a while to the children’s to see if I could recognize any part of the Komiža speech, but I didn’t manage to hear a single one. I then stood up like a teacher and asked loudly, to silence the roar and attract their attention, if any of them speaks Komiški… A single boy quietly told me that he speaks Komiški. When I asked him “how come you don’t speak Komiški here on the bus?“, he replied that he only speaks komiški at home, and that he doesn’t speak komiški among his peers “because they would laugh at him“.
This is the reality of the state of the Komiža Cokavian speech, probably the best-preserved Chakavian speech in Dalmatia. This is also the answer about the future of the Chakavian language.
In those past ten years, a dramatic change took place. I, who have been researching the Komiža dialect for more than fifty years, can competently say that I am a witness to the rapid death of one of the most well-preserved Chakavian dialects, the research of which I devoted my life. Today, the organic idiom of the Chakavian language cannot be expected to maintain its basic communicative function. Such an expectation is unrealistic.

How to save the Chakavian language

However, it is imperative that through the education system, starting from kindergarten to high school, we raise, encourage and nurture awareness of the native language as an intangible cultural heritage by which we recognize our own selves.
That we understand it as a most important element of our identity, because language is what is most human in a person. Education is the only tool left to us. The task of raising awareness of organic speech, dialect as a fundamental cultural value, and not a sign of provinciality, rigidity, grammatical mistakes, is the most difficult task of the educational system.
When it comes to the Chakavian speaking region, it is especially important to highlight the vast area of ​​national culture that remained on the margins of the interests of Croatian standardologists in the 19th and 20th centuries, namely the maritime culture imbued with millennial experience of the sea and encounters with other Mediterranean cultures and languages.
This thousand-year-old linguistic heritage is not someone else’s, but an authentic and indigenous Croatian heritage, without which the Croatian language is poor for one very important function in the area of ​​its linguistic superstructure.
It is time for the Croatian standard language to open up to its vernacular languages and accept them as equal. It is one of the most important ways to ensure their survival.

[Continues in the comments]

I was curious about the consistency of mba decisions. Like if you are rejected from a T25 school, are you guaranteed a rejection from an M7. Is there anybody on here who was rejected from a T25 or T50 but was accepted to a higher ranked school like an M7? I understand that among closesly ranked schools it can happen that a higher ranked school will accept an applicant who was rejected from a lower than that ranked school. But i am talking about when the difference in ranking is larger like atleast 15-20 spots.

Hi,
I am suspecting that my child might have a mild case of ADHD, he is 9. I am not really asking for a diagnosis, but more interested in what treatments look like for mild cases (if this does turn out to be the diagnosis).
His behavior doesn't really compare to most of what one reads on reddit. He is generally happy, nice, fairly cooperative, remembers when he has tests or has to bring something to school etc. He is generally liked, and has a few close friends, to whom he is especially attached. He is doing ok but not great in school. We are stressed sometimes like all parents, but not at our wits end.
But he does show the following issues:
- He is a bit fidgety at times, but not all the time. Also very active physically, and sometimes feels like he needs to do something physical.
- He does have a streak of getting angry about stuff and feeling like others are against him. I don't think overall his behavior is especially unmanageable compared to the kids in his school, but when he does get this way, there's an element of feeling like he's been wronged.
- He will clean stuff up and do chores, but needs to me reminded. He's not defiant, just generally on the messy side. But it is not a total disaster. He keeps his school things pretty organized.
- The thing we are most worried about is the school stuff. As I said, he is doing ok, but no better than ok, and not as well as he should be doing given that he seems to understand a lot, and frankly enjoys some kinds of school topics. It seems that one weakness is test-taking (which is a big deal where I live unfortunately). Like, even if he knows a topic really well, he'll make a bunch of careless mistakes. Another is attention or concentration in school. A couple of times it's happened that he has some homework where he just misunderstood the basic concept or the way to do this math operation or whatever. I explain it and he understands right away and does it fine. But it seems like he had trouble understanidng when the teacher explained it.
- He also plays an instrument. Practicing is sometimes good, but other times not well organized, where he doesn't focus on things he needs to do enough, but spends a lot of time just doodling around (which is fine too, and encouraged, but a bit more structure would be good).
- The difficulty with school is also frustrating for him. He gets very upset about doing poorly on something.
- He remembers when there's a test, to bring things to school etc. pretty well, but he does seem to be anxious about that, maybe he's making a lot of effort to remember these things.
- He is pretty loud and sometimes keeps asking stuff even if we say we need a few minutes of quiet, likes to sing to himself, but he doesn't strike me as very unusual in this respect.
- He is sometimes a bit shy with new people, but with people he knows and likes not shy at all.
- (Not sure if this is relevant but ...) He tends to like (for brief periods) watching videos about certain somewhat unusual topics, but one common trend is that there is some kind of ranking involved, which he enjoys learning and talking about (though lately the ranking aspect is not so prevalent). He also likes sometimes doing repetitive tasks that are easy, for example there is a drawing app on the tablet that involves a lot of filling in of predefined boundaries, and the app then rates his work (highly! ;)), or occasionally a math app that is for smaller kids -- I'm tempted to interpret this as needing a low pressure situation in which success is easy, but that is speculation.
We will be talking to a doctor soon, but I was wondering if anyone had an experience that sounds similar, and what steps were taken. Especially regarding medication, might this be a case where really small doses were effective -- since, as it seems to me, this seems relatively mild. Is that done? Or in such cases are behavorial or other therapies sometimes helpful on their own? If anyone has suggestions about what parents can do to support (besides spending a bit more time studying, doing some practice worksheets to focus on concentration) that would be helpful too, but I am mainly interested in the types of treatment that could be suitable, and experiences with them.
Thanks!

This story takes place in the same universe as Humans Are Awful At War, a few centuries further along the timeline. Any allusion to a certain grimdark scifi universe is purely intentional. Any Latin declension mistake is also intentional.
The Emperor was a towering silhouette at the main stand of the Agora assembly.
He was more than three meters tall and clad in a golden power armor that further reinforced his brutal, physical presence in front of the galactic ambassadors. His right fist was a clenched psionic claw, radiating with power as it filtered the light coming down from a ceiling so distant clouds formed underneath its arch. His left hand rested on the pommel of a sword the size of a small space-to-space missile locked in its sheath, whose message was plain and simple: the Emperor was a warrior. He had killed. He had slaughtered. He had led the charge of his praetorians in the heart of battle, he had ordered the destruction of entire planets from the bridge of his superdreadnaught, he had impaled rulers, common folk and heretics alike on this blade. He did not fear, for he was functionally immortal -- the pinnacle of posthuman genetic engineering, with three hearts and twice the strength of his praetorians, themselves capable of individually manhandling an entire cohort of the weaker species. The Emperor was a glorious figure, truly, and he had been speaking sentences of honour and fury for the past hour.
Fatima Mansour hadn't listened to a single word.
There was archeo-music in her ears -- Tangerine Dreams' Love On A Real Train -- dispensed by a cassette Walkman. She knew the speech by heart because it was always the same. The Empire wasn't at the stage of barbarism, not yet, though the mask was beginning to slip at times -- the xenocide on Oltaran, the firebombing of Kazark and the subsquent death of seventeen billion sophonts, the summary execution of two million captured pseudo-simian at the battle of the Bridge Nebula (that one, to be fair, had flown under everyone's ethical radars: it was outside Agora space). The scenario was always the same. The Emperor came forward at the Agora with a request: to allow him to put another minor species under the patronage of his generous power. There was always a good pretext. An insulted ambassador; a destroyed ship; a dead praetorian; a vanished explorer; sometimes, a more elaborate lie, like the complex diplomatic trap that had led the old and venerable Xii to declare war on the Emperor a century ago. In many ways, had always considered Mansour, it had been the turning point. The militant, theocratic, dictatorial offshoot of humanity had always been taken as a pleasant joke the Agora indulged in by throwing a few expendable species at the growing and splendid monster, not wanting to deal with the stray children of Sol, whose parents were one of the most well-regarded species in the Milky Way. Surely, had thought everyone, the Xii would make short work of the Emperor and his praetorian.
Mansour still remembered the images, displayed in great detail on the virtual reality spaces of the Agora. The swift brutality of posthuman shock combat meeting the outdated practices of a species that hadn't known war in a thousand years. Military innovation vanquishing immobilism. Industry and aggression meeting useless notions of battlefield honour. Millions of dead hulks orbiting Novus Terra. Hordes of Praetorians, pristine armours under the twin suns of the Xii capital. The Emperor leading his honor guard in a glorious charge against the last Xii redoubt, trumpets blazing. Then the cleansing -- the monuments torn down by the praetorians, the reeducation of the children, the slaughter of the parents, the dismantlement of the industrial worlds, turned into agrarian prisons, the plagues and the xenocides, the forceful terraforming and the colonisation. And the Agora, watching the demise of someone's noble but annoying neighbours, hard-pressed to lift a finger in their direction.
Then, silence. Two decades later, the brutally effective intervention of the Emperor against a rogue race of constructs would give him a seat at the Agora and half a million votes. The absorptions and the colonisations started shortly again -- but everything was legal in the eyes of galactic law. In many ways, the Human Empire was practical. Its violent pragmaticism had saved the Agora once and granted the Emperor a strength that made any direct confrontation suicidal. None of the old, tired Agoran core species could size up alone to the Human Empire, and in the end, suspected Mansour, they were all afraid. Afraid of posthuman strength. Afraid of the posthuman spirit. Afraid of this immortal, bearded giant of a man, clad in armor adorned in seals and eagles.
And the civilization being discussed could but suffer the staunch words of the Emperor. Mansour barely knew them, just another fragment in the Agora, a minor border species of the Orion Arm. The Murida; a few tens of billions of pseudo-rodents with barely FTL-capable vessels. Mansour understood why the Emperor had an interest in such a pityful society his praetorians could rein in within a month -- they reproduced fast and were hard-working. Perfect slaves. The patronage would be brutal. Everyone knew it.
None cared.
Fatima Mansour glanced at the other major civilisations of the Agora and found little more than disinterest. Humanity's closest allies, the blue-skinned Pleiadians and hive-minded Messer, were frozen in place, uncertain, knowing that a negative vote would put them on a collision course with the posthuman Empire. The Weavers in Light, clad in their shadowy tentacles, were lightyears above the fate of a few billion mammals; even Ö-Three-Eyes, six thousand years old, seemed eager to leave the Agora. The war against the Great Chain had broken something in her, a subtle mechanism led bare to starlight. Once upon a time, thought Mansour, she would have had flown to the defense of the Murida -- but she was weary, the weight of hundreds of failed empires on her tentacles. Her flame was gone and so was the best hope of the interstellar pseudorodents. On the opposite aisle, the people of Kush seemed in the middle of a heated debate, but Mansour suspected they were already discussing the next vote, on the oh-so-crucial matters of red flower trade quotas, though it was hard to say what exactly motivated a civilisation made of a myriad of societies and species integrated within each other, each representative requiring a different environmental suit to survive at the Agora. The noble Perseians seemed utterly bored, much like the Weavers, albeit the humanoid uploads did not entertain the same kind of wearyness -- they simply considered the Agora as a waste of time. The excessively peaceful Gardeners were looking in the opposite direction, their many tentacle-eyes drifting away from the small niche of the Murida, as if ashamed to witness another victim of Imperial adventurism. The only ones Mansour held some hope for were the Vriij and the Scythians. The militant squids undulated in their aquarium, visibly agitated, clicking threats and insults at each other -- Mansour wasn't well-versed in their sonar dialect, but she caught a few slurs levelled at posthumans, which she took as a good sign. As for the Scythians -- the mysterious cowled humanoids that took names from ancient Earth were impassible, their representatives frozen like fossilized sequoias. But they had already taken steps against the Posthuman Empire. There was hope still. Maybe a coalition could form. Maybe.
One hour after the beginning of the Emperor's speech, which also marked the opening of the vote, ninety-five percent of the galactic assembly was abstaining, out of fear and disinterest. Many minor civilisations, keenly aware of the fact that they were next, had voted against, but votes were proportional to sophont population and their voices meant little. Only the Human Empire and a few client species had voted in favour -- but it was enough to secure the vote. The Murida representatives had seemingly already accepted their fate. They were silent.
Mansour's Walkman clicked, reaching the end of the cassette. Love On A Real Train stopped, leaving but the silent chaos of the Agora in her ears. She removed her headphones, sweeping imaginary dust off her disco jacket and reached for the voting button. Sol and its communal stars had five hundred representatives, but they had already voted in parliament -- Mansour represented them all when she pushed the slider towards NO. In the absence of overwhelming support in favor of the annexation, Mansour's vote was enough to tip the balance against the Emperor.
There was silence. Even the Weavers in Light appeared to take a sudden interest in the assembly. Never before had any major civilisation moved against the militaristic posthuman splinter. To see their parent species go first had something tragic to it -- for even the least learned races knew it meant war. Open conflict between two members of the Agora -- but why would the Emperor blink? The world had proven at length that it didn't care, and the glory of Sol was long passed. With the victory against the Great Chain, Humans had gone complacent and so had their Pleiadian and Messer allies. They were prey, now.
The Emperor turned towards Mansour. His words echoed a split-second before his lips moved -- his flesh was a puppet, his voice that of the nuclear core beating at the heart of his titanic armor.
"There are ten legions at the edge of the Sol bubble. On my order, they move and the relic you call Earth falls within a day. You have no weapons. No armies. No fleets. Nothing. Will the Pleiadians and Messer die for you?"
"We shall," said a blue-skinned lady and an insectoid hivemind at the same time. The Emperor looked unfazed.
Mansour coughed, tapped her antediluvian microphone to check if it was working and said, avoiding the gaze of the Emperor, not out of fear but pure disinterest:
"It is with a heavy heart that I must bring grave news to this assembly. Due to unforeseen consequences of a diplomatic overture, it appears we will have to interrupt all outbound trade from the Sol Bubble."
The first to react was a Kushite envoy -- a strange but marvellous thing, a sapient plant with golden leaves undulating in the wind. Its translator turned pheromones and pollen into thought and voice.
"...what, what do you mean, all outbound trade?"
"Your translator is functioning correctly, oh regal ambassador of the Stellar Orchard. With the current threats levelled at the Sol bubble by the esteemed representative of the Empire, as well as the disorder caused by the possibility of patronage on the Murida civilisation, the conditions for the safe and expedient displacement of our trade ships are no longer present. All planned convoys will be postponed until further notice, and ships currently in the black will be recalled to Messer and Pleiadian fortress-planets where they shall receive safe haven."
"Even current ongoing convoys? Our losses shall be..." said the plant.
"...astronomical, I know. But as a fellow master of trade, you understood that we cannot endanger our productive elements."
Chaos erupted in the Kushite ranks. Mansour was well-aware of the nuclear bomb she had just dropped in their well-ordained niches -- the Kushite bazaars were premier redistributors of human goods, be they physical or digital, and many of them stood to simply disappear with an interruption of commercial relations with Sol, with no way to easily find another monopolistic partner. In a few words -- the simple declaration human representatives had agreed upon -- Fatima had put the metaphorical backs of several tens of billions of interstellar businessmen against the wall.
Mansour didn't linger on the chaos she had created, for she had another fuse to light.
"Esteemed members of the Agora," she said, "in the past few decades, many of you called Sol to help and none found us deaf. Market-mistresses of Kush, do you remember the interstellar trains of grain, fungus and medicine that were ferried, without counterpart, by Sol as the city-planet of Decima fell victim to plague and famine? Vriij, do you recall the secrets of dark matter and faster-than-light travel we gave you when you left your waterworld, so that the Great Chain would not catch up with you? Perseians, do you remember the Pyramid World we saved from a supernova, carrying every single one of its casked souls into your purview, the void and the dark creatures you battled aeons ago claiming thousand of our own in return? Gardeners, do you remember when you scurried the galaxy for an answer to a plague that ate the very fabric of your life, and we offered you both knowledge and asylum? And you, Scythians..."
A cowled figure tilted their head to the side, answering in Mansour's place.
"The Scythians never forget."
Another figure said:
"The Scythians always remember."
And another:
"The music. The lights. The colours. The stories of Sol. The joy they bring us."
And another:
"The Scythians understand your words. They understand the choice you force upon us. You or them."
And another:
"Music or eagles. Kindness or blade-sharp gold. Interstellar disco balls or star-fortresses. Beauty or the fac-simile thereof. A choice easily made."
And another:
"A choice for warriors."
The last statue lowered their hood. Underneath, they had no face; just a pristine white surface, yet it bristled with wicked joy.
"Ansibles have been opened once more. Orders have been given. The myriads are already on the move. A hundred thousand ships are departing from Balcora within the day. Hyperluminal veterans of the indiran wars, moving apace in the great veil, six million times faster than photons. We shall meet at Terra. And here we shall be your bulwark."
Mansour nodded and leaned back. The Vriij jumped on the opportunity and inside their aquarium. The oldest squid clicked; the translator echoed a second later.
"The Vriij remember too. We owe you a world. If Terra faces war, then we shall answer in kind. We will be giving orders to recall the border fleets and direct them to Sol. A motion to call for general mobilisation is being sent to the parliament as we speak."
It was followed by a slur that the microphone staunchly refused to translate. A great Kushite sophont, smooth as bloody silk, shimmered towards a jewelled podium. His voice was pure honey.
"The city-planet of Decima remembers indeed, ambassador. On behalf of the Great Khans of Unruled Space, whose mothers came from Decima, I say: fear not. To the ranks of the Scythians we will add our own. Nimble and towering, elegant and savage, swift and lumbering, the ships of the star-steppes shall fly the banner of war once more. May the imperial kin cry our names in fear and hatred."
"And it will not be said that we cannot keep the arteries of trade open," said the golden flower, "hence you can count on the privateers and mercenaries of my corporations. Arrangements will be made. Prices will be negotiated."
A Gardener world-tree added, rustling leaves in the translator:
"The children of the moss are slow but firm. Hold, and you will find us."
Then came a Perseians dynast, and her quantum wings gleamed in the colours of a black hole when she said:
"I am Eletharna, seventh of her name, off-branch of the great tendril mind of the Pyramid World. I am the dynast of Meroe, mistress of the Scutum-Centaurus arm, spear of the unbelievers, hammer of the necromants and commander of the Black Armada. To Sol, I have a debt of more than life. And to Sol a million ships shall follow."
Her final word was followed by silence. The Emperor took a step forward, then leaped. He switfly reached the niche of the envoys of Sol and unsheathed his sword. It had a flaming blade, razor moving through atoms so neatly it didn't produce any wind. He raised it high above Mansour.
"Words, words, words!" he yelled, "but as death closes in, she does not dare fight! And you would die for her? My strike is merely mercy for weakness!"
Mansour raised her hand in a feeble attempt at protecting herself. The sword rushed towards her then--
A dull sound.
The blade was suspended over her forehead, so close she felt the imprint of the edge on her psionic headband. The weapon was now split in several parts that were not quite broken but distributed across three-dimensional space, stretched upon an invisible four-dimensional object. Ö-Three-Eyes stood between Mansour and the Emperor. For the first time since the war against the Great Chain, she had moved from her permanent seat at the Agora. She looked formidable once more. All her irises were open, even the third one, even the secret one; and despite his strength, despite his power, the Emperor could not move, for Ö-Three-Eyes held him in a hyercubic net he could not even see.
"None innocent died in the Agora in a millenia," she said, "and none innocent shall die today. Lower your weapon, Emperor, or face me and become a footnote in the history of this venerable house."
The Emperor blinked and looked Mansour in the eye.
"You disgust me. You are weak. Harmless. You don't fight, you don't defend yourself, you just...make music, trade and explore the world. You do not even have the decency to fight your own wars. You are a daughter of Sol! You were born on a hard, unforgiving world! You are apex predators! You should strive to take your rightful place, not cower under the shadow of Scythians and Perseians! We should be akin!"
Mansour was undisturbed, almost disappointed to still be alive.
"We are nothing of what you describe. The Earth is a mundane world and even now we are not its masters, merely passengers. It didn't turn us into apex predators or hardened survivors, not more than it made us weak or pampered. It merely taught us the fundamental lesson every single spacefaring species learned. Adaptability. Choice. We are social animals, Emperor. And society means choice. Ideological, technical, philosophical choices of what we consider to be the right path for us as a collective. Maybe our pacifism is a mistake, maybe one day there won't be anyone to help us and we will fall. But it is a choice we made in good conscience, a choice we collectively understand and support. You, on the contrary, are merely enforcing made-up instincts. A drive to conquer, destroy and colonise, born of this body you and your praetorians made for yourself, a body whose only goal is war. You try to justify this with an appeal to what you consider to be the deep nature of humankind -- but it is no less a choice than our peacefulness. There is no human nature but the one we craft for ourselves and you made it clear what manner of horrors you want to be remembered for. I may be wrong, I may be mistaken, I may be deluding myself, but I do not tell myself that I act due to some mysterious and universal human nature. You are not a son of Sol. Merely a pale, cowardly imitation. And your days are counted."
"Crone. You are..."
"Weak, kind, feeble, compassionate, foolish, fragile and surrounded by friends. In short -- Human. The word you are looking for is Human."

Hi! Thank you Adam for this topic. At the beginning of my writing experience on this sub I have written about the role of maths in my life and education. I insisted on social determinism in education. Today the subject is a little different because I have chosen the red level.

Do you think math is important? Why or why not? If so, how can we make sure people who learn become more motivated about it? If not, what should we be focusing on teaching children instead?

In Feminist education of Girls by Madeleine Pelletier, the author recognizes that everyone has an opinion about which field is the most important while the most important is the method of learning and not the field itself. And yet, I think that maths plays an important role in our society. I will explain why this role is important in education, regarless of aprobation by people, then I will suggest some ways to teach them- knowing that I have no expertise in education or in maths.
First of all, after simple and trivial (as mathematicians say) elements like additions or proportionality that pupils learn at primary school, I think that maths train some logical mind. Furthermore, our world is a technological one and maths serve in many fields. For these two reasons, maths is nowadays a way to select students. One hundred years ago, this role was played by latin which was really prestigeous. So this is a tool to select people. I think that maths is more democratical than literature for example, because literature demands an important background and a cultural experience, while even poor people can do maths without this cultural knowledge. It depends on the country but I met a Moroccan woman who said to me that in Morocco, literature is a cursus for black sheeps.
In our society, maths are very useful. I will take the example of linguistics. In this field, vectors are used to see how near can be two lexical items for instance. We see words and meanings in terms of probability and statistics and probabilities are really used. In order to analyse corpus, some knowledge in analysis (for example, logaritmic function) are required. And others fields do alike. In France there is a cursus called "Maths and Computer Sciences for Human and Social Sciences". Of course using only maths and quantitative methods is not sufficient. I have ever heard that economic science can be reduced to maths or physical models. I think this is reducer.
So how to make pupils more interested in maths knowing the situation? This is a complicate question because I observe a mental block with maths which is stronger than with fields like History for example. I think this is also gender-related: personaly I hate when girls say "Oh, I hate maths" because they reproduce gender stereotype. But I think that playing little logical games can help. When I was eleven I was fascintated by a representation of the Gaussian curve with little balls. In literature at primary school there are moments when children learn technics of reading and other when they have to read or to listen a story for pleasure. In maths it would be the same.
( Sorry for the long text! If you can also correct this old text, thanks :) https://www.reddit.com/WriteStreakEN/comments/wk3ngl/streak_13_maths/)

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Source: mr_unloved1s

Philadelphia 76ers (49-23) @ Golden State Warriors (38-36)

• Game Time: March 24, 2023 @ 10:00 PM EDT
• Venue: Chase Center - San Francisco, CA
• TV: National: NBA TV, Philadelphia: NBCSP, Golden State: NBCSBA
• Radio: Philadelphia: WPEN, Golden State: KGMZ-FM
• NBA Game Summary / Charts

Matchup History

Date	Location	Result
12/16/2022	Philadelphia	Win 118-106
12/11/2021	Philadelphia	Win 102-93
11/24/2021	Golden State	Loss 116-96
04/19/2021	Philadelphia	Loss 107-96
03/23/2021	Golden State	Win 108-98

Season Stats

Team	PTS	REB	AST	STL	BLK	TO	FG%	3P%	FT%
76ers	115.4	41.0	25.3	7.8	4.8	12.8	0.486	0.389	0.835
Warriors	118.4	44.2	29.6	7.1	3.9	15.7	0.477	0.382	0.794

Team Leaders

	76ers	Warriors
PTS	Joel Embiid (33.2)	(21.8) Klay Thompson
REB	Joel Embiid (10.2)	(9.1) Kevon Looney
AST	James Harden (10.8)	(6.8) Draymond Green
BLK	Joel Embiid (1.75)	(0.82) Draymond Green

Eastern Conference Standings

Rank	Team	W	L	Pct	GB	Conf	Home	Away	L10	Strk
1	Milwaukee Bucks	52	20	0.722	-	30-15	30-7	22-13	7-3	W 2
2	Boston Celtics	50	23	0.685	2.5	29-16	26-9	24-14	5-5	W 1
3	Philadelphia 76ers	49	23	0.681	3.0	30-16	26-11	23-12	9-1	W 1
4	Cleveland Cavaliers	47	28	0.627	6.5	31-15	29-8	18-20	8-2	W 3
5	New York Knicks	42	33	0.56	11.5	28-19	20-17	22-16	4-6	L 3
6	Miami Heat	40	34	0.541	13.0	21-24	25-13	15-21	7-3	W 2
7	Brooklyn Nets	39	34	0.534	13.5	26-20	19-16	20-18	4-6	L 5
8	Atlanta Hawks	36	37	0.493	16.5	22-23	20-15	16-22	4-6	L 1
9	Toronto Raptors	35	38	0.479	17.5	20-23	23-14	12-24	4-6	L 2
10	Chicago Bulls	34	38	0.472	18.0	25-23	20-17	14-21	6-4	L 1
11	Indiana Pacers	33	40	0.452	19.5	23-22	19-17	14-23	5-5	W 1
12	Washington Wizards	32	41	0.438	20.5	19-26	16-19	16-22	2-8	L 4
13	Orlando Magic	31	43	0.419	22.0	17-28	18-19	13-24	4-6	W 2
14	Charlotte Hornets	23	51	0.311	30.0	14-34	12-24	11-27	3-7	L 1
15	Detroit Pistons	16	57	0.219	36.5	7-38	9-29	7-28	1-9	L 4

League Scoreboard

Away	Score	Home	Status
Indiana Pacers	-	Boston Celtics	7:00 pm ET
San Antonio Spurs	-	Washington Wizards	7:00 pm ET
Detroit Pistons	-	Toronto Raptors	7:30 pm ET
Houston Rockets	-	Memphis Grizzlies	8:00 pm ET
Charlotte Hornets	-	Dallas Mavericks	8:30 pm ET
Milwaukee Bucks	-	Utah Jazz	9:00 pm ET
Chicago Bulls	-	Portland Trail Blazers	10:00 pm ET
Phoenix Suns	-	Sacramento Kings	10:00 pm ET
Oklahoma City Thunder	-	Los Angeles Lakers	10:30 pm ET

^{Posted: 03/24/2023 05:00:00 AM EDT, Update Interval: 5 Minutes}

Intended Major: - Fine Arts (second intended major: art history)
Hooks: - no hooks
Demographics: - Female/Asian - International student studing abroad - Private high school in Massachusetts - No financial aid needed
UW GPA: (school doesn't do gpa but my counselor calculated for me) - 3.99/4.00 (Straight As except one A- sophomore yea had 3.97 gpa end of junior year so assuming it'll be 3.99 as I am taking 4 aps and 1 honors and got all As senior mid term) - no ranking
SAT: Test optional 💀 for most colleges except USC, NYU, and CWRU but got 1480 (super score of 800 math & 680 english)
Honors/AP & test score: (Total 8 aps - full year courses so can't take more than 5 major classes per year)
Sophomore: - AP stats - 4 - Honors Chem
Junior: - AP chem - 4 - AP AB calc - 5 - APUSH - 3 (not submitted)
Senior: - Honors Math (highest math course at school) - AP art - Ap art history - Ap bio - Ap english
Awards: scholastic art regional gold key & 4 other international level awards for painting
EC: 1. Art club head
Co-President & Head Planner (11-12) Member (10) - Hosted welcoming art space through weekly crafting and organized jewelry fundraisers. Gave $372 to (specific name of the organization). Worked with (specific name of our school's environmental club).

1. Town community art project about asian/asian american culture & life

Art Liaison (11-12) - Created series of art pieces about Asian/Asian American cultures and lives. Communicated with local store owners and librarians to showcase works.

1. Student Council

Boarding Community Representative (10-11) - Attended weekly council meetings to discuss reported school issues and petition for events like wellness days, sports day, and spirit week.

1. School literary arts magazine

Design Editor (11-12) Member (9-10) - Collaborated with other editors to select and arrange paintings, photos, and writings. Participated in weekly meetings for final publication.

1. Volunteered at art center

Student Teacher Art Assistant (11-12) - Helped teachers with class preparation, cleanup, and material distribution. Guided 2-12 year olds with accessory making, ceramics, and paintings.

1. Summer art programs @ Columbia & Yale

Art Student (11-12) - Learned drawing techniques using charocoal, pastels, ink, etc. Applied history and principles of typography; resdesigned images for (title of the book).

1. International association club

Tri-President & Event Planner (12) Member (9-11) - Hosted activities to encourage international student interaction in school community. Held monthly events. Did cooking night with Asian Affinity club.

1. Badminton Club

Founder & Co-President (11-12) - Arranged meetings with athletics department to petition for club to be spring fitness option. Worked with supervisor and taught basics to members.

1. School Tour guide (9-12)

Student Tour Guide & Admission Liaison (9-12) - Gave school tours to prospective boarding students. Demonstrated tours to new guides and worked with admission to provide virtual meetings.

1. Varsity fencing

Fencing, Foil Fencer (9-12) - Participated in daily after-school practices and taught beginners basic foil rules and postures. Competed in both friendly and competitive matches.
Essays (I would say my essays are pretty good and polished. Very authentic)

• PS: It's about how I used to be a realist when I was young but as my dad asked opened ended questions I slowly started to think about a life goal for myself. And that I realized how impactful my dad's way of asking question was after he passed away. basically j emphasizing that I am a risktaker and a dreamer lol (sounds much better in my actual essay I promise lmao)
  
• community essay: I mainly focused on to show how I worked w students and administrators to better the community and how much I cared abt my boarding community (advocating for others)
  
• intended major essay: mentioned art project & summer programs and said that seeing the art's power to communicate and art's inevitable presence in modern made me wanna pursue art
  

Portfolio: pretty good; used bunch of different art mediums(painting, charcoal, pastel, coding, digital painting, sculpture, and more)
Overall theme: love of art and promoting community wellbeing (and some sort of using art to talk abt social issues or personal emotions)
Recommendations - AP AB calc teacher - Ap Art teacher - School principal I believe she wrote to only few students if not only me (additional recommendation)
Interviews - Got interviewed only from Columbia(ED), Upenn(RD), and Cornell(RD) but most schools I applied dont offer interviews. - I think all my interviews went pretty fine. I was rlly nervous so i prob used wrong tense or words few times but upenn interviewer told me after one of my answers that it is a very good answer and cornell interviewer told me im a very impressive woman lol
Additional - Dad passed away last summer. - No financial aid needed. - Sister goes to NYU - Got fee waived from CWRU and WashU( i dont think this means anything tho)
College list
Accepted: - UCSD - UCI - UCD - Case Western Reserve (got offered their Baker-Nord Scholars Program) - WashU☺️
Deferred: - Columbia - Umich
Waitlisted: - Tufts smfa - UCSB
Rejected: - UCLA🤢
Pending: - Stanford, Upenn, Brown, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Carnegie Mellon(CMU), USC, UCBerkeley, NYU
I'm grateful for what I got now, but hoping for more to come in my way :)

The MPhil is not in the rankings and the Judge school is relatively new, can it still compete with other top Finance Programs in Europe or even US because of the Cambridge Brand?
How do recruiters see the MFin, MPhil and MBA from Cambridge?
Thanks!