Cosmere [Wax & Wayne], Girl Genius, Genshin Impact, Yuri on Ice. cosplaying / fic writing · 30-some / a-souping
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Shavynel - 15% Flailing Through Life - Tumblr Blog
I was walking out of the Walmart today, and a car passed me, and I got this incredibly vivid impression. It wasn't really in words, but if I had to put it into words, the two key points would be
a). I needed to watch that car and
b). That I needed to be careful, because the driver of the car was a massive bitch.
It kind of took me by surprise, because I really had no reason to be beefing with that car, and I also hadn't really had an impression like that since I was religious, which was in my teen years. Right? It'd been a decade since I had a little voice whisper in my ear, and I'd basically written it off as nonsense.
Anyway, I watched the car, because The Spirits or whatever were very insistent that I did. Car drove fine, went into the parking spot, inched forward, and right when it should've just stopped, the driver gunned it for some reason and it ran into the curb and cracked its bumper.
So, the driver got out, and she went to the front of the car to check that yes, she had cracked her bumper, and then she turned to look at me. The parking lot wasn't empty, but we were the only two people standing in that row, and I'd probably been staring at her for tenish seconds now.
She demanded very angrily to know why I hadn't warned her of the curb. And I could have said I didn't know you were about to gun it or is it my job to help every stranger park, or even could you have even heard me, inside your car?
And all of those would have been fine, but I was really, really busy digesting that I had somehow communed with Mormon Jesus again for the first time in fifteen years, and that the communion had mostly been there to let me watch someone park badly (?), so what I responded with was:
"Because it was foretold."
And I can't tell which would be funnier, if she went silent because there's not much to be said to that, or if she went silent because in Utah, she might actually believe me, but we parted ways without more words.
I'm still kind of digesting this myself, actually.
@facts-i-just-made-up
They're a good lesson in fact checking the bare minimum (looking at least at the blog name)
@hasgavlebockenburneddownyet
What's more happy holiday cheer than cheering on the destruction of a giant straw goat?
The birds may have won 2023, but I believe in humanity's capability for arson for 2024 <3
POV: You are Dimo. You are a Jäger, one of a group who are ferociously loyal to their Heterodyne masters and famously social with each other. You have always had these touchstones to lean on.
Except…suddenly there aren’t any Heterodynes. Everything is in chaos and a mysterious enemy is ravaging Europa. For everyone’s sake, the Jägergenerals make a deal to serve under a new master, Baron Wulfenbach.
Except…the Jägers are still loyal to the House of Heterodyne. So to honor that loyalty, you volunteer to go looking for a Heterodyne. You know, in case one is hidden behind the couch cushions or whatever. And it’s rough! You are officially detached from the Jägers. You can’t come back unless you find a stray Heterodyne, whom you have no reason to think actually exists, so you’re probably going to be out here forever or until you die. Which is a real possibility, because everybody in Europa hates Jägers due to all those centuries serving some of the worst sparks in Europa. (Which, all right, is fair, but still. It’s hurtful.) But you have your fellow volunteers, a little squad of three. You have another Jäger, Jenka, checking in periodically and generally riding herd. And somewhere out there are the rest of the Jägers and the Jägergenerals, doing fine. And over the years you adapt to independence; you learn to plan, and you even find yourself giving orders to the others sometimes.
And then you find an actual Heterodyne, holy shit! She’s eighteen, alone, and green as grass, but she’s got steel in her spine and she’s a crazy strong spark; you have a new mistress! Best day ever!
Except…she gets implanted with the mind of The Enemy. That’s not great. (This happened to her after you found her. You Have Failed Your Heterodyne. ETA: Also you only know about it because you listened sneakily at the door. You’re not sure this is proper Jäger behavior.) But never mind that, she’s got it under control, you all get to Mechanicsburg and she kicks ass and does SCIENCE! and fixes the Castle and reclaims the city and at the end of it she is secure as the new Heterodyne of Mechanicsburg.
Except…
Except then something happens to Mechanicsburg. Is it permanent? Dunno. But the Heterodyne was in there. The Jägergenerals were in there. Anyone in authority in Mechanicsburg was in there. Even Baron Wulfenbach was in there.
A bunch of Jägers were not in there. And they don’t know what to do without someone giving them orders, and…look, you didn’t mean to become a General. Honest. But Jenka’s off monitoring the situation in the rest of Europa, and the only remaining Jägergeneral has somehow gone undercover on the personal staff of the new Baron. They gotta be where they are, and you gotta be where you are, managing dozens of increasingly desperate Jägers and human refugees and trying to figure out what the fuck to do next.
And then the Heterodyne shows up somehow! All is not lost! She’s determined to fix everything! And someone else can be in charge now! Yay!
Except…remember the Enemy? Yeah. She’s still in the Heterodyne’s head. There are things that aren’t safe for her to know. So you have to keep secrets from your Heterodyne, and manage those things yourself without her catching on. It’s hard, but you do it. You do it so well, in fact, that you have a sinking feeling that people are just going to keep asking you to be responsible for things. You’re doomed.
POV: You are Dimo, and you need a drink. And a vacation.
…you’ll probably get the drink?
No, Google Docs, there is a distinct difference between "cussing" and "cursing."
flower language has always been an intense source of disappointment for me
like, they all mean really generic things like “love” or “forever” or “i’m sorry”
i thought you could combine flowers
like you could just send someone a bouquet and from the combination of hibiscus and posies and tulips they’d understand “the rebel leader is dead, rendezvous at the docks at 8, bring the dog, you will need lighter fluid and a large tomato”
They found that the bat noises are not just random, as previously thought, reports Skibba. They were able to classify 60 percent of the calls into four categories. One of the call types indicates the bats are arguing about food. Another indicates a dispute about their positions within the sleeping cluster. A third call is reserved for males making unwanted mating advances and the fourth happens when a bat argues with another bat sitting too close. In fact, the bats make slightly different versions of the calls when speaking to different individuals within the group, similar to a human using a different tone of voice when talking to different people. Skibba points out that besides humans, only dolphins and a handful of other species are known to address individuals rather than making broad communication sounds. The research appears in the journal Scientific Reports.
It would be funny if nuclear waste warning messages become an attraction for future historical linguists.
I mean look at this thing:
A parallel text in 7 languages, with 4 different scripts between them! And pictograms! All designed to be preserved intact!
Baby chameleons help eliminate fruit flies
(via)
A bearcat (binturong) or as I’m going to call them, a long panda, are a species of viverrid similar to no other animal I have ever heard of but they’re basically one of those species that evolved into mustelids without being mustelids. And can look like cars, possums on in this case a scruffy long panda.
TIL "guy", as in "this guy", is an English cognate of the Italian proper name Guido. They have the same origin, which in Old French became Gui and led to Guy in English, and in Germanic became Wido and led to Guido in Italian.
But Italians don't use Guido as a general address the way we would say "hey, guys" in English and that is actually, literally because of Guy Fawkes. Effigies of Fawkes burned on Guy Fawkes Day were known as "guys", which then solely in English began to be applied to unusual or frightful characters of any kind and eventually to just, you know, guys.
And we can trace "guy" back from Guy Fawkes to Gui to the proto-germanic widuz, which it appears means "wood" in the sense both of "that desk is made of wood" and "till Birnam Wood come to Dunsinane".
(Which, as we all know, is a phrase that infuriated JRR Tolkien so much he invented a race of walking, talking trees in defiance of Shakespeare.)
Which means that if you are really intent on a non-gendered substitute for "guys", I think "what up my ents" is perfectly acceptable, linguistically speaking. Brunch with the guys? Entmoot. He's a good guy? No, they're a real ent.
So have fun with that, ents.
It would be real fucked up if anteaters and aardvarks and armadillos and pangolins were all like herons. Instead of like themselves the trundlers
A little something for Linguistics Tumblr.
So the Crunchyroll newsroom isn't a "room" so much as a Slack channel. We have news writers all over the US, in Australia, and in Japan. This means we have something akin to 'round-the-clock coverage, but it also means that our schedules respective to each other are skewed. For example, when the East Coast contingent is starting their day, the Japan contingent is shutting down for the evening.
Because of that, we started experimenting with greetings that could apply when Party A was coming in for the morning and Party B was leaving for the night. One person came up with "konbarning": a combination of "good morning" and "konban wa" ("good evening" in Japanese). It stuck.
Over the following months, "konbarning" got shortened to "barning" and other permutations. Now, a year or some later, this is how we announce our arrival:
