jdmitch

I think you are partly right, but I also think the mechanical advantage of the bicycle, even the velocipede, was significantly underestimated. You say it saves "a bit of energy going flat or downhill" but some quick calculations suggest it is twice as energy efficient just balancing along, and 3 to 4 times more efficient pedalling. These advantages aren't always realised, especially over shorter distances, but I would have thought they would be quite clear over any longer distances, or when carrying a heavy load. Perhaps this is where initial unreliability became an issue though, as the advantage of saving energy on a long journey bt bicycle would be outweighed if it was prone to breaking down, given it would be unlikely to find someone who could repair in those early days.

I think a fundamental inability to intuitively grasp the potential mechanical efficiency of the concept must have been a major barrier though.

I had a Ludlow, but sadly only have the mats now! Do you have any idea how easy they are to come across in the US these days (specifically NE)?

There are lots of Linotypes in use by hobbyists, and even commercial printers who don't do newspapers, but less regular, higher margin projects. DWRI letterpress in Rhode Island has a 'Linotype Daily' (https://dwriletterpress.net/the-linotype-daily-1) which is no longer daily, but still semi-regular. Definitely not the same vibe as the Saguache Crescent though!

I hesitate to wade into this, since I have a lot of admiration for these two men, and I am only a mediocre speaker of Pulaar, the western dialect spoken by Fulani, whose eastern dialect is Fulfulde. I have seen several variations of this story making the rounds over the last few years, and it is full of misconceptions about the Fulani communities across the Sahel, and more generally about linguistics (and language politics) of trans-national communities. It is unfortunate that in this particular article Microsoft repeats many of the errors of the Atlantic[1], and the Letterform Archive [2], and adds its own self-congratulatory spin to it.

The first misconception is that Pulaar/Fulfulde is/was rarely written. Despite the experiences of the Barry brothers, the language has been written for hundreds of years. There are manuscripts in Arabic script that attest to this - unfortunately these are generally poorly catalogued, but BU's African Ajami Library lists 25 [3] and the British Library has several collections [4]. There is a strong historical argument that the Fulani were actually the primary instigators of literacy in pre-colonial West Africa, from the 15th and 16th centuries. The practice of writing Pulaar/Fulfulde with Arabic script did without question wane in the 20th c. - particularly among the more educated and urban communities which the Barry brothers come from. This led to decreased standardisation of the language as written in the Arabic script, especially as Fulani communities came to have stronger ties to national identities than to their transnational identity as Fulani. At the same time, the general push for literacy in languages written with Latin script in the region (mostly French and English) led to a loss in language prestige for Pulaar/Fulfulde as it had less utility as a lingua franca, and was not the language of religion, trade or politics, in the way it had been.

By the 1990's, however there was substantial linguistic work done on Pulaar/Fulfulde and a modified Latin alphabet was widely in use in the linguistic and academic community, which is currently seen on almost all Wikipedia articles on the subject. This is marked by 'hooked' letters for plosives, as in Fulɓe, which this Microsoft article writes "Fulbhe." The fact that this was not widely enough known that the Barry brothers came across it before developing a new standard for writing is testament to the fragmentation within the Fulani community, but I think it also reflects the fact that they did not come at the issue from a linguistics background. Nonetheless, this pre-existing writing standard does accurately represent all of the sounds in Pulaar/Fulfulde (and also is not much different from many other African languages in the region written with a Latin alphabet). It also was used for printing a number of books in the early 2000s, and I knew of a handful of companies regularly printing books in Pulaar in Dakar, Senegal (where it is also a minority language). I once picked up an order for 10,000 books printed in Pulaar in 2005, typeset in this commonly accepted script adapted from the Latin Alphabet.

The second major misconception of the article, is that a language needs to have its own script to be accurately represented, or that having its own script enhances the literacy rate of a language. Other comments have touched on this, so I won't dwell, but from a linguistic perspective (or even from a software language perspective) the opposite is more likely to be the case. The answer to the proliferation of different standards should almost never be to create a new standard - especially one that is not at all based on the previous standards (as Adlam is based on neither Arabic or Latin abjads/alphabets). Literacy in Pulaar/Fulfulde is almost certainly better served by doubling down on an existing standard that is accessible to those who most want to access it, rather than a new standard. There are 100-150 million Pulaar/Fulfulde speakers, so even success in the range of thousands of Fulani who recognise Adlam doesn't mean it is likely to overtake the actual pragmatic literacy of those hundreds of millions who already ready on a daily basis in Latin scripts, and could easily recognise the adapted letters.

From a political perspective, there might be a value in a new unifying standard that underscores the uniqueness of Fulɓe from their neighbours in Mauritania to Sudan. But in every one of those countries, the Fulɓe are a minority, and many of their communities are nomadic/transhumant as well, further undermining their ability to integrate or oppose existing political structures. While I applaud Adlam as a commendable assertion of identity, and a valuable potential contribution to the linguistics and typography of West African languages (should it engage constructively with the field), it is politically doomed, and unfortunately lends credence to the dictum that "a language is a dialect with an army."

Pulaar/Fulfulde is an incredibly important language, but it hasn't had an army since the fall of the Empire of Sokoto in 1903 to colonial powers. It has largely been seen as a dialect because of that, despite being one of the most widely spoken in Africa (Swahili is the only other African language with a claim to have more than 100 million native speakers).

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/the-a... [2] https://letterformarchive.org/events/inventing-the-adlam-scr... [3] https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/18688 [4] https://eap.bl.uk/collection/EAP387-1

the linked article in french from an Algerian website has more pictures: https://www.tsa-algerie.com/la-neige-tombe-a-ain-sefra-pour-... and the link to the page of the photographer who took most of them: https://www.facebook.com/kbouchetata

I don't think it's that obscure in British english usage, even outside of cycling contexts (source: American living in the UK)

I just got back from Ghana, where I was evaluating an ICT in education project, and one of the people on the team that was implementing the project had this phone. At first I thought he just had an old phone, then I learned he had downgraded from a smartphone. Then I thought maybe he was doing it for ironic retro style points (which is not really "a thing" in rural northern Ghana in the way it is in London or New York). He did acknowledge a certain smugness about the "anti-style." At the end of the day, it seemed like the practical durability and the long battery life were the clinchers for his decision to "downgrade".

This is a follow-up post by the author: https://medium.com/@alicezielinski/afterword-mit-blonde-engi...

how did they do this!?!

As an avid, but fairly aggressive cyclist, I have gotten into a fair number of accidents. Some of the injuries sustained, and the ways in which other injuries would have been likely without a helmet in those situations, have convinced me that many of these studies don't take into account some very common situations in accidents. Direct head impacts are relatively uncommon, due to natural instincts to protect oneself. More common are:

- Side impact from vehicles turning across the bicycle lane. This is the most common cause of fatalities in road accidents in London, and if the vehicle is going at speed, nothing can be done with or without a helmet. Usually, however, the vehicle is slowing to turn, or just clips the rider who hasn't had time to react. When this happened to me, I banged into the side of the van which was cutting me off, and my helmet kept my head from hitting the vehicle, likely right at the temple, which could have caused significant damage.

- Unintended dismount. I find a huge number of "accidents" are really accidents that were just barely prevented by a quick manoeuver, which often leaves the cyclist on the ground. I have avoided collisions quite frequently, but still ended up doing a little barrel roll off the bike. In these cases, I may not be moving fast, but it is nice knowing my helmet will keep me from a kerb to the head.

-Scrapes and abrasions. This is the most painful injury, and one of my most gruesome accidents involved a nasty abrasion on my face - had I not been wearing a helmet, it would have probably meant about half of my scalp was rubbed off as well, so very happy to have been wearing a helmet in that instance.

The "crash test dummy" proof that we don't need helmets doesn't stack up in my experience because I think a confident cyclist is more likely to have oblique and "minor" accidents rather than major direct collisions, and major head trauma is just not going to be prevented by a $40 piece of foam and plastic.

I definitely had a friend once who was told she had received too high a score for the police job she had applied for. I thought I remember at the time some mention of the rationale being that the police force didn't want people who were too independent-thinking to simply follow orders. Maybe that was just my friend's interpretation though!

How is this not a problem for Apple's recent announcement that another company is already called "Apple Pay"?