No idea. I was in high school then, and am retired now. The lady who owned the bindery where I worked closed the shop in the 1980s and has been dead for 15 years.
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).
Interesting. It's not in the Oxford Dictionary of English powering the Dictionary bundled with macOS, and it's not known to dictionary.com, so I'd say it's fairly obscure.
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".
What was the call quality like? I'd imagine fairly good simply from the better microphone placement given the size of the thing.
PS: My old Blackberry can do 2.5+ days on a charge since I mashed the earphone socket and can't use it to listen to music. The music application seems to drain the battery for some reason.
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 am surprised people are so flippant about injuries to the head. How many times do we hear stories of people dying from being punched and hitting their head on the curb/ground ? Or the long term effects of concussion.
Helmets work. Governments around the world wouldn't be making them mandatory just to screw with people.
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!
I've heard that from others and got a similar impression after I did well on the ASVAB (US military aptitude test) and was speaking with a recruiter. It's possibly true, but it's also possible (and a less malicious explanation) that they just know you won't be happy in the position yourself and may not perform well as a result. In hindsight, the career path I was interested in in the military would have made me very unhappy, and although I thought the program they were steering me toward was quota driven, I suspect I actually would have done better in that program and been more interested.
I had a similar experience, wherein a National Guard recruiter actually talked me out of joining the army for that reason.
I also flirted with the Navy nuke program as I was finishing up my EE degree, but decided to abort the process mid-stream. At my first job after graduating my cubemate was a former Navy electrican, stationed on a carrier. What he told me about the nukes made me happy I chose to abort.
I served in a non-nuke role on a nuclear submarine for 4 years in the late 90's. My two cents:
If you already have a college degree or are close to finishing, it's best to stay away from the military completely unless you seriously plan on making a career of it. As a civilian you'll have lots more opportunities for adventure and for making a positive impact in the world. Also avoid the trap of letting the military pay for your degreee in exchange for X years of service.
If you're thinking of joining the military prior to college as an enlisted sailor, go for it. You'll meet lots of very interesting people that you otherwise wouldn't, and you may develop some good habits that will help you later. Your personal definition of what is "hard" will probably change considerably.
But DO NOT join for more than 4 years. Any less and you'll be stuck scrubbing bilges the entire time. Any more and you'll go crazy from the lack of freedom, and your math/science knowledge will have seriously atrophied by the time you get out and continue your studies.
This brings us to the nuke program. Unless things have changed since I was in, nuclear power school requires a 6 year commitment. It's definitely not worth it. The skills aren't really that transferable and, judging from the many nuclear-trained sailors I knew, the work really can't be that difficult. Trust me, if you can get through beginning algebra, you can get through nuclear power school. Recruiters will try to flatter your ego and make you feel like a genius when you get a qualifying ASVAB score. I was told I got a perfect score on the ASVAB, and I'm more proud of the hippo I managed to color with a crayon when I was 5 years old. Quick, as fast as you can: What's 4/2? 2*3? 5-1? Next question: If a gear turns clockwise, what direction does the gear touching it turn? Congratulations! You qualify for nuclear power school!
Finally, in the likely chance that you end up serving on a nuclear carrier, you'll be working with some of the biggest dirtbags this side of humanity. Imagine sleeping in a dorm full of people who only joined the navy because they couldn't make it on the outside as drug dealers.
A common argument is that they think intelligent people will become bored with the job and eventually leave it.
It is certainly possible to be "overqualified" for many sorts of jobs for exactly this reason, but the police are the only ones that I have ever heard of that actually test candidates to weed out those "easily bored" smart people. Other companies, for some reason, get by just by excluding people with impressive resumes.
Could just be the same logic that gets used in any job search quite often of "they're overqualified for this role and so will quickly get bored and move on [and I don't have anything more suited to them]", which wouldn't be specific to the police at all.
