The difference between Constantinople, City of Istanbul, and Istanbul
Unknown source, just found it on Facebook and last trace I found is this Reddit post but it isn't marked as OC: https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/gmky0e/the_difference_between_constantinople_city_of/
That's nobody's business but the Turks
I saw exactly this comment under the Facebook post I mentioned in the description. And I'm afraid to ask but - is it a nationalistic thing or is it a joke I'm not getting?
if LLMs behaved like this we'd say they're overtrained on the data and start over. Internet commenters are more predictable and robotic than AI now
I'm going to pretend you aren't being an asshole for your own reasons, and explain why this kind of comment is a good thing.
What you're missing is that shared cultural touchstones connect people. Comments like this aren't robotic responses to preset conditions.
They're humans reaching out to each other through screens to connect, even if it's only some tiny and essentially frivolous thing. That's a good thing. It's the entire point of being human, to connect and share and hopefully help each other get through the ugliness that life brings.
Where you see predictability and rote habits, the rest of us see a shared experience. The other people in the thread popping off the lyrics or making related jokes, we're all engaged in letting each other know that we aren't alone, that there's parts of each of our individual lived experience that can be directly related. It means we have the ability to stop seeing just words on a screen, and for just that moment see someone we've never met and likely never will, as part of our in group.
Friends in real life do this kind of thing. There's phrases, and songs, and poems and book quotes, and movie lines that can be shorthand for shared experiences. It brings joy with it. Have you never seen a group of people say something that's seemingly random and dissolve into laughter?
That's what this kind of thing is. It's strangers partaking in one of the benefits of friendship. Making each other smile or laugh a little.
If llms acted like this, they'd be one step closer to being actual artificial intelligence because it would make them part of that circle.
My homie across the screen. You stepped into that circle and tried to poop in it. Did that bring you joy? Did you smile? If it did, then great, you're one of the lucky ones that can find happiness in attempting to piss on someone's picnic. If it didn't, then what are you doing?
I recently learned that Istanbul is actually a Greek based mashup word for "in the city"
If you look deep enough, pretty much every city's name is actually some banale description of the location or some guy who was relevant to it's founding.
Examples of this in the cities of Scotland that we can actually trace the etymologies of:
I only recently learned that Budapest was originally two separate cities on opposite sides of a river named Buda and Pest.
The rivers here are names of colors.
Actually, it likely means "in/to/into Constantinople" (p. 240), and Constantinople itself is named after Constantine the Great.
So is Al-Madinah (literally 'The City') in KSA.
Makes me wish I could register “the pen” as a trademark or something and start selling pens under that name. I wonder if that also makes it impossible for anyone ever find this brand online.
The rest of Turkey’s a lot smaller than I expected
you beat me to it
I can't believe Istanbul actually is not Constantinople.
(Not that it's any of my business..)
What's the difference between the city of Istanbul and Istanbul? Is it like a regional state with the same name that the city lies within?
Yes, from what I understood, the "Istanbul" is a state.
I was trying to find that facebook post where people explained it but Facebook just says "fuck you, you saw it, there's no way to get it back". I can't believe they went away with this "feature" ...
It's Miklagard (old Norse name for the city)
"Gard"means wall/fence and is incidentally where you get gorod in Russian/Slavic languages I think.
Also where you get "yard" in English
this confused me since "gård" absolutely does not have the meaning of fence/wall in modern swedish, and looking at wiktionary it seems in ancient norse it only slightly had that meaning, with other meanings being the more sensible to me "city", "region", and "yard".
The word gard still means fence in Norwegian. Still in use i the words "Skigard" (using the original meaning of the word ski as wood split lengthwise) and "steingard"
What about Byzantium?
As a colorblind person, this is really hard to grok.
grok
Understand (something) intuitively or by empathy.
Thank you, Commander Data.
It's crazy what you find out about a city's name if you look into it.
This is outdated, its way bigger now, especially in the east
There is an office district, and villas being built
Also, a highway was made to connect land in a flat spot near the middle of the peninsula where urban developers for some reason made a second city there
Istanbul was Constantinople. Now it's Istanbul, not Constantinople.
So if you've a date in Constantinople, she'll be waiting in Istanbul.
I hope this helps any single people.
If you have a date in Constantinople, I doubt they are still waiting unless you hurry very hard
A date in Constantinople:
Even old New York was once New Amsterdam.
I hope this helps some people on first dates.