I can tell Iām not getting nowhere with ya 
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Okay, I promise you one thing - if I ever plan on visiting Finland (and Iām not sure if this is ever going to happen), Iāll let you know 
Slightly different topic, but when I was taking German in Uni, he often talked about how we should be grateful for how few verb conjugations there were in German. There are evidently over 900 in French. Wouldnāt surprise me at all.
Of the (latin-based) languages I know, I think the simplest is Spanish:
- At one end of the spectrum, Finnish is clinically logical, has almost no exceptions and is totally trivial to pronounce, but the grammar to achieve that is quite convoluted.
- At the other end of the spectrum, you have English, which seems to have simple rules, but really is quite a random mess where anything goes and pronounciation is haphazard at best.
- All the other languages are a mix of rules and exceptions that is more or less annoying to learn and pronounce.
but I find Spanish to be the best combination: it has a few exceptions, but itās mostly regular and the grammar is really quite simple and so is the pronounciation. The only trouble Spanish can give you is knowing the local vocab in the many Spanish-speaking countries around the world - something the RAEās dudas can easily solve.
Speaking of English, hereās a video of a clever guy called Ed Rondhaler who wanted to simplify English spelling. I really like the little demonstration he used to promote his idea:
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I used to love that video, I was so sad when I heard Ed had passedā¦ Seemed like such a nice guy.
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Hereās a random point of discussion
What are your opinions of of dna sequencing and or genotyping such as ancestry or 23andme
Semi related to biohacking I wonder, as we are using more advanced methods to understand ourselves betterā¦ granted not altering, but more altering our perception and sense of connection
Part of me is curious and interested
Part of me is paranoid of itās abuse
Thoughts?
I used AncestryDNA.
The actual service itself isnāt very useful in terms of their āinsightsā, but they allow you to download your raw data (of what they sequenced at least) as a text file.
I then plugged that into the service Promethease (cost me $12 at the time), which has been very insightful. That links certain SNPs in your DNA with various conditions, diseases, and disorders, through the free database SNPedia.
AFAIK AncestryDNA is one of the only major companies that donāt (at least right now) immediately publish to US law enforcement DNA databases.
The potential privacy issues do indeed scare me, mainly with the idea of insurance companies getting a hold of it in the future, but IMO the benefits outweigh the risk, at least for myself. My mom also had hers done, and by comparing her reports to mine, I can see fairly easily what genetic disorders she passed down to me. She has a lot of really bad health issues, and so if I could see them coming for myself, I could prepare potentially. Indeed, I seem to have inherited a significant portion.
On a less serious note, it showed that my motherās ancestry was not at all like it was supposed to be, according to what her parents/my grandparents told her. After doing some more research, the DNA was proved to be correct, there was a misconception in early family history that had confused several generations about where they came from.
(my great grandfather had been part of the fraternal organization the Improved Order of Red Men. Seeing his membership info after he passed, my grandparents assumed he was Native American. In reality, the Improved Order of Red Men is a 100% white organization, modeled after the way white men dressed as Native Americans during the Boston Tea Party. Finding this out explained a lot.)
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I had no idea this was a thing. Thatās ridiculous.
Yep. Last I checked, several companies (including FamilyTreeDNA as the biggest) are incredibly loose with their data.
It looks like AncestryDNA sadly still complies with warrants, which isnāt surprising considering theyāre a US organization, but itās not quite as bad as others where either law enforcement just has to ask nicely, or the ones that just immediately give the info without anyone even requesting it first. It looks like 23andme is āsafeā as well, their website states:
āWe will closely scrutinize all law enforcement requests and we will only comply with court orders, subpoenas, search warrants or other requests that we determine are legally valid. To date we have not released any customer information to law enforcement.ā
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Call me paranoid, but I aint giving such companies my DNA and hope that none of my family members does.
IIRC there was a DNA leak recently? One of those companies made a whoopsieā¦
Tbh I fear that they sell that shit to insurance companies and other dystopian stuff like that, and in 5 years I dont get normal insurance because they can read in my DNA that I have XYZ. Not too far fetched imo.
Was super annoying seeing people all over social media share their results and saying things like āOoooh, iām 0.15% Nigerian!ā ā¦ the results are very misleading and people often donāt seem to understand how to interpret them
I read into that matter a bit, simply because I think it is extremely interesting - I have no clue what to do with those insights (except for maaaaybe starting on a healthier lifestlyā¦ dunno^^), but I think it is always a benefit to know much about yourself. In what possible way ever.
Problem is, almost all of those companies actually sell your data and earn quite a bit of money with that. Not necessarily to the government, but to various pharma companies and the like. And thatās really not okay for meā¦
So I stumbled across Nebula, which has a slightly different idea. Full genome sequencing, yes, and afterwards you can decide if some companies may contact you, if they are interested in your data. For doing so, you can fill out some forms, so those companies can see if you are interesting for them (especially if you have any possibly-DNA-related diseases). If you do not want it, nobody will sell your data and you have to fill out no forms at all, this is all optional.
At least that was the way I understood it, some time ago. Might have changed, or I might have missed something, but for me it was the most trustworthy of those DNA sequencing companies 
And yep, Iām still considering sending my DNA there
edit: and @Pilgrimsmaster - how on earth do you keep track of all the stuff someone wrote here some months ago? Thatās truly impressing!
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Is this an actual recognized word in a dictionary somewhere?
Because if not, German has this beat by a lot 
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Ah, saw your answer too late, sorry - yes, that is another big problem.
On one side, the one you mentioned, when it comes to your family tree - thanks to centuries of travel and migration, it is very likely that many of us are at least 0,15% Nigerian 
So I think if you donāt have any specific things in your family you want to check, this heritage is relatively pointless.
The other thing that gets easily misinterpreted is the āhealth dataā. People see a specific DNA structure that is associated with a specific disease, and freak out because thatās kind of a death sentence. But just because you have some genes, it doesnāt mean they have to be active. And thatās the point that actually gets me hesitating - Iām afraid I might know that intellectually, but it might still worry me too much if I suddenly find such a little nice breast-cancer-timebomb or something like thatā¦
Well, usually thereās a distinction between very long āmade upā words that are grammatically correct but never used, or used solely in technical settings (like long chemical names) and actual words that are in common usage. In analytic languages like French, the distinction is very clear: the longest non-specialized word is anticonstitutionnellement and you canāt add shit to it to make it longer because thatās not how the language works. In fusional or agglutinative languages (or partially so, like German), the distinction is much less clear.
Lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas isnāt in the dictionary, but then neither is any combination of words that hasnāt generated its own specific word form (and most words in Finnish derive from 2 or 3 other, simpler words etymologically). However, that title is known to have been used in the Finnish military, and is not far-fetched here.
Lucky guess???
Actually, just a loser
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Well, the longest german word in the Duden German dictionary is Kraftfahrzeug-Haftpflichtversicherung, which means motor vehicle liability insurance.
But the longest word with a āuseā is actually a name of a law: Rinderkennzeichnungs- und RindfleischetikettierungsĆ¼berwachungsaufgabenĆ¼bertragungsgesetz (yes, I know there are hyphens, but it still counts as a single word in German), shortened to RkReĆAĆG which means āCattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation lawā from Mecklenburg-Vorpommen, repealed in 2013.
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