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[Neonivek]

Whelp finished the animated movie of the Adam West Batman... AAAAAND

It just isn't as funny as it was trying.

It is hard to point to EXACTLY what was wrong but if I had to put my finger on it, it was outright the pacing of the movie. The Jokes were so fast that they came off more as references (and they WERE references... but they needed to come off as jokes)

The original Adam West had incredibly silly moments and actually had self-referential humor... They KNEW their show was silly and corny. So they were, somewhat a self-parody.

Then at a certain point the movie starts to actually pull itself from the ashes of being unfunny by instead actually having some decent drama... Which is eventually just thrown out, which is a serious shame because what they were hinting at was... actually good... (I'd tell you but spoilers)

actually here is a spoiler

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

So Batman turns evil and it is up to Robin to stop him... Even going right to a duel between Robin and Batman where he loses... You MIGHT think this leads to some sort of second duel between the two and show the experience of the years they have been together but no... Batman saves Batman through total nonsense that makes no sense if you think about it.

Then after the (anti)climax... there is a good 15-20 minutes left of the movie. Yet there is just no point because who cares. Leading to a really disappointing ending that was actually done better... in the actual show.

What is odd is they make a reference to a disappointing batman movie as a joke "Ha ha, you think the movie would end like this? we aren't that lame"... But honestly that would have been a perfect way to end it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The ending is that Catwoman says she will give herself up if he will go to Europe with her and drink tea... To which Robin goes "Holy Disappointing Ending"... Which is a Dark Knight reference. Yet Adam West Batman kind of earned that ending.

All in all... I kind of really wanted to laugh and like the movie... Yet other then smiling at the lameness of some jokes nothing.

[Baffler]

You know, we really need a good sitcom about prehistoric humans. And it needs to be utterly fucking incomprehensible on the surface level, to the point of the characters mostly communicating with grunts and gestures. Good enough directing and acting would get the point across and make it even more effective.

Interestingly enough, the "grunts, gestures, and no complex language" image of early hominids may be very incorrect. The further back into history you go, the more complex languages seem to get.

That's... not really true. All languages that we have record of are equally developed and suited toward expression of any idea, and their complexity (learning-wise) is a entirely dependent on the learner, while structure-wise complexity seems to be relatively impossible to measure since a very wide variety of means of expression is used in languages across the world, and the complexity of these means relative to each other is hard to define.
Even if there are hard parallels between two languages, say, they both have grammatical tense, and one has two tenses while the other has five, the first one likely compensates with an aspect system, or some aktionsart-based bullshit, or ridiculously unintuitive lexical constructions to express the grammatical tense meanings of the second one.

It's actually a major point in theoretical linguistics that we have no record of a defective or incomplete language (with the possible exception of pidgins, which aren't really an exception because they're only defective while used in a narrow range of contexts, but rapidly develop all the nuances of 'real' languages once they gain native speakers who use them in everyday communication. See: creole languages).
A proto-language is something that linguists would very much like to discover, because it would answer a lot of theoretical questions about the development of language in the human race (a topic that is currently treated about the same as perpetual motion or other hackery since there's literally nothing to base serious research on). But it is estimated that the human language system has been in its current state (and therefore all of its products equally complex) for a very long time. Like, start with a hundred thousand years, add more until satisfied. Again, very conjectural since there's literally no data.

Looking into that I found my own WTF for the evening, the Pirahã language. It's not a proto-language, but it's strange in its own ways.

[smirk]

You're probably right, I'm basing my opinion solely on a book I read once.

Snow Crash?  =P

It's actually a major point in theoretical linguistics that we have no record of a defective or incomplete language (with the possible exception of pidgins, which aren't really an exception because they're only defective while used in a narrow range of contexts, but rapidly develop all the nuances of 'real' languages once they gain native speakers who use them in everyday communication. See: creole languages).
A proto-language is something that linguists would very much like to discover, because it would answer a lot of theoretical questions about the development of language in the human race (a topic that is currently treated about the same as perpetual motion or other hackery since there's literally nothing to base serious research on). But it is estimated that the human language system has been in its current state (and therefore all of its products equally complex) for a very long time. Like, start with a hundred thousand years, add more until satisfied. Again, very conjectural since there's literally no data.

Dolphins were in the news recently for the observation of possible sentence structure in their vocalizations (click-baity, but eh). I don't know if there is a branch of linguistics that deals specifically with non-humans, but if there isn't there likely will be soon.

[Yoink]

Democracy must be toppled so that Canada can become a country and people could be given equal rights, which we apparently do not any of.

There are no people in Canada, silly.  
There are just Canadians. And mooses. Or meese, whichever they prefer to be called, I can never remember.

[alway]

You're probably right, I'm basing my opinion solely on a book I read once.

Snow Crash?  =P

It's actually a major point in theoretical linguistics that we have no record of a defective or incomplete language (with the possible exception of pidgins, which aren't really an exception because they're only defective while used in a narrow range of contexts, but rapidly develop all the nuances of 'real' languages once they gain native speakers who use them in everyday communication. See: creole languages).
A proto-language is something that linguists would very much like to discover, because it would answer a lot of theoretical questions about the development of language in the human race (a topic that is currently treated about the same as perpetual motion or other hackery since there's literally nothing to base serious research on). But it is estimated that the human language system has been in its current state (and therefore all of its products equally complex) for a very long time. Like, start with a hundred thousand years, add more until satisfied. Again, very conjectural since there's literally no data.

Dolphins were in the news recently for the observation of possible sentence structure in their vocalizations (click-baity, but eh). I don't know if there is a branch of linguistics that deals specifically with non-humans, but if there isn't there likely will be soon.

Whales also have stuff: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/new-evidence-that-sperm-whales-form-clans-with-diverse-cultures-languages/

[Mephansteras]

I guess this belongs here as well as anywhere.

I was playing Exanima when my music list moved on to the next album...Stardew valley. It was kind of a surreal experience.

[BlackFlyme]

Democracy must be toppled so that Canada can become a country and people could be given equal rights, which we apparently do not any of.

There are no people in Canada, silly.  
There are just Canadians. And mooses. Or meese, whichever they prefer to be called, I can never remember.

Plus tourists, mostly college kids abusing our lower drinking age, permanent non-citizen residents, and a ton of empty houses owned by people who have never and will never step foot in the country. Seriously, the government's even been taking steps to prevent so many foreign buyers.

Oh, and the Geese. Dear God, the Geese.

[Avis-Mergulus]

You're probably right, I'm basing my opinion solely on a book I read once.

What was the book called? Historians and anthropologists sometimes have an unfortunate tendency to dabble in linguistics without really having much experience with it.

And aaah, Pirahã, the little Godwin's Law of linguistics: bringing a hiccup into any discussion since neither of the participants have any trustworthy data or experience in it.
Still, the absence of recursion was the only fundamentally weird thing about it, the rest is mostly par the course. Tiny phoneme inventories are rare but not unheard of: check out Papua New Guinea, for example. Non-comparative color terms are not a given as well. Here is a WALS listing which has a bunch of languages with very few color terms (not two, though.)
And since it is my understanding that the recursion thing has been disproved, I see no reason to get hype. Well, maybe a little hype, because it's cool. But not world-ending levels of hype.

The dolphins thing is way rad, though there was really no need to use terms like "words" or "sentences" when those terms are ill-defined even for 'human' linguistics. The rest of his article seems solid to me (I have little experience with dolphins and biology/ethology/whatever, though, so I have to just assume he's citing people who know what they're doing).
Still, I hope somebody gets on that dolphin language case soon, because otherwise it will be left to marine biologists, and that won't go well.
Whale thing rad as well, even though the article seems to imply they just have segments with no segment organization levels - so basically, no morphology or syntax. Huh.

[Lord Shonus]

I'm not entirely sure how this happened, but it made it to the Manowar Facebook page.

[stabbymcstabstab]

Democracy must be toppled so that Canada can become a country and people could be given equal rights, which we apparently do not any of.

There are no people in Canada, silly.  
There are just Canadians. And mooses. Or meese, whichever they prefer to be called, I can never remember.

Plus tourists, mostly college kids abusing our lower drinking age, permanent non-citizen residents, and a ton of empty houses owned by people who have never and will never step foot in the country. Seriously, the government's even been taking steps to prevent so many foreign buyers.

Oh, and the Geese. Dear God, the Geese.

As a Native American who li as on the border, I advise not do that.

Also the geese, FEAR the geese.

[TheBiggerFish]

Fear the geese.

[Sergarr]

Welp I dug in too deep in the garbage universe of my mind and have discovered the "muffin button" that makes me feel tripping way the fuck out and I can't help but want to press it

I'm pretty sure makes me "legit trash" (c) but I love it anyway.

[Flying Dice]

Apologies in advance for vaguebooking -- You beautiful disgusting bastard, I'm not sure whether I want to shake your hand or slap you.

Two phrases of context: "tableau of stuffed toys" and "taboo sex acts".

[hops]

Apologies in advance for vaguebooking -- You beautiful disgusting bastard, I'm not sure whether I want to shake your hand or slap you.

Two phrases of context: "tableau of stuffed toys" and "taboo sex acts".

Does this involve ponies

[TempAcc]

*Preemptively adds Flying Dice to the flamethrower list