• GraniteM@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      3 days ago

      I adore the blessed people who write up the Simple English entries.

      Here’s the opening paragraph from Quantum Mechanics in Simple English:

      Quantum mechanics explains how the universe works with things that are even smaller than atoms. It is also called quantum physics or quantum theory. Mechanics is the part of physics that explains how things move and quantum is the Latin word for ‘how much’. A quantum of energy is the least amount possible (or the least extra amount), and quantum mechanics describes how that energy moves.

          • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            Difficult explanations of complex subjects that may not be aligned with the statistical word pattern distribution of the corpus of a dead web.

            It’s not impossible that this exact paragraph could be generated. But it was more likely crafted by someone who both understands the subject matter on a comfortable level at the very least, and who understands what parts of it are intuitive enough to create a scaffolding of knowledge that are distinctive to this topic.

            I don’t think I could have come up with anything that doesn’t use the word iota a half dozen times and then falling backwards on myself trying to get across the idea of how energy could not exist in measures that are not multiples of a minimum iota of energy (and explaining that it’s just how it is, no I don’t know how that was measured, etcetera etcetera)

    • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      5·
      3 days ago

      I do miss having languages listed on the side by default. I felt like it gave some depth to how important or culturally isolated a subject can be. For example, a short article available in 30 major languages, a long article available in 30 major languages, and a long article only available in like 3 languages would all feel just a little different.

      English is not my native language and a lot of subjects I like (or fixations I may have, knowing Wikipedians) just exist in the realm of English. So these long long pages that don’t exist in many languages have a particular vibe to them.