... I still didn't say much, though, when I was travelling in the mountains one time, and it was put up as a serious point of discussion whether the earth was flat or round.
28.01.2026 07:14 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0@shjsat.bsky.social
aspiring village cartographer
... I still didn't say much, though, when I was travelling in the mountains one time, and it was put up as a serious point of discussion whether the earth was flat or round.
28.01.2026 07:14 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0I find this an important difference in social situations. If I think someone is intransigent or spouting madness, I tend to keep my counsel out of politeness; but I've learned that with Arabs, if they say something I find really insulting, it's really better if I say why I disagree.
28.01.2026 07:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0A big mouth billie bass (an electronic decoration released in 1999) playing Green Day's Basket Case in a crappy audio resolution, in a studio surrounded by real audio equipment.
TIL that in 2024, Green Day rereleased their 1994 album Dookie in 15 "Demastered" formats meant to be inconvenient and even poorer in quality than the original.
Formats include a Game Boy cartridge (system not included), an answering machine, & a Big Mouth Billie Bass.
What a stupid, genius idea.
Arabic proverb of the day with pretty exact parallels in Irish and Latin:
"Silence is the sign of consent"
الصمت علامة الرضى
al-ṣamt ʿalāmat al-riḍāʾ
Irish:
Con·éitet nád fúacair.
"Whoever does not denounce accepts"
Latin:
Qui tacet consentit.
"He who is silent consents"
A famous example of this in a regional dialect is the "Da Bears" sketch from Saturday Night Live (May 18, 1991).
youtu.be/NhMqjHEDmcU?...
George Wendt was born in Chicago.
As a kid, I only knew this type of devoicing through this sketch. We loved to imitate this accent in Alabama.
This makes me so uncomfortable.
27.01.2026 11:00 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0cover to Eiffel 65's single BLUE (DA BA DEE) with three men on the front smoldering at the camera—two very serious 1998 haircuts and one bald guy. Only their heads are really in the frame and they are super serious about their song BLUE.The guy in the middle kinda squints at you like he is about to do a sick snowboarding stunt, at least that's my impression. The guys on the right and left have those tiny European goatees that barely show up in the low-resolution image of the cover that I got from Apple Music. What are these weird black and white coats they are waearing? Are they special suits or something? I do not know, they are barely in the frame. In the background on the right you can get a jumpscare from the little blue guy who appeared in the music video, if I remember correctly. Side note: I keep trying to get through the YouTube 10-hour version of this song but it keeps resetting me to the beginning. :(
*puts on serious face*
*bro is on my left, other bro is on my right*
*all caps*
*deep breath*
DA BA DEE
يا دكتور، سامحني
إذا قد نُشر المقال باللغة العربية، فليكون النشر من جديد ضد قواعد المجلة، صح؟ ولا فيه ظروف مخففة؟
www.nature.com/palcomms/jou...
"Village cartographer"! 😂
27.01.2026 07:30 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0If you're cold, they're cold
27.01.2026 05:41 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0My absolute favorite thing is when someone starts an online conversation by disagreeing with me, then says "sorry I don't have time to talk rn"
27.01.2026 05:40 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Flag: DON'T TREAD ON ME BUT DEFINITELY TREAD ON PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT ME
Screenshotted tweet: (Guy with a Punisher skull tattoo and a Dont Tread On Me flag on his truck): he should have complied with them
AI-generated image of a grim dystopian police state with tracking cameras everywhere and a guy grins and says to another "we sure owned the libs. lol"
My Facebook feed is nothing but memes pointing out the hypocrisy between January 2021 and January 2026. I thought these were pretty good.
27.01.2026 05:34 — 👍 6 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I have not. I saw a clip from Harry Potter where he was shouting in Latin, and I had the not-so-novel thought, "What makes Latin so special?"
27.01.2026 05:09 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I meant to say "Omani Arabic".
It would be fun to look for specifically *Omani* borrowings in east African languages.
In the case of darīča making its way to Somali, there are probably other explanations. There are even Balochis in east Africa, so ..
At first I wrote "Omani" but then I think it's used in Yemen too (but I don't remember) ... so it could have travelled to east Africa from Yemen ... and then I just gave up and wrote "Arabic"
27.01.2026 02:46 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I didn't want to list all the dialects but it's used in the Gulf states and Oman, and Oman controlled Zanzibar for a while, so it could have gone from Omani Arabic to Swahili ... but there may be some other explanation
27.01.2026 02:29 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Here is a fun borrowing:
Somali dariishad 'window' ultimately comes from Persian دريچه darīča.
I wonder if the route was:
Persian darīča
~> Arabic drīša, pl. drāyiš
~> Swahili dirisha, pl. madirisha
~> Somali dariishad
But I am not sure about the intermediary languages.
What they really need is got-support:
"What have they got here?"
>>>> Got a text from Aramex saying I have to call them
>>> Called the number, beep-booped with the bot
>> The bot asks me to leave a phone number so they can text me 🤦♂️
If ancient Romans wanted to do magic spells, did they just wave a wand and shout in everyday Latin, or did they have to shout in some other language?
26.01.2026 06:17 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 3 📌 0Yes, it's past bagha present yabī. It is found in various Arabian dialects, people also say yabā yabghā yabghī
26.01.2026 05:06 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I'm surprised the author puts al-Hgūg and not li-Hgūg. 🤔
26.01.2026 04:51 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0An interesting coincidence with Hawaiʻian "kahuna" (pl. "kāhuna"): "priest, magician, expert, doctor"
But only in Hawaiʻian; in Proto-Polynesian it would be *tafuŋa, and in most Polynesian languages it looks more like that than like the Hawaiʻian.
Wait what? We've always called falling ice pellets "hail" in Texas and Alabama. Sleet is basically unknown to me, though. I associate hail with tornados.
25.01.2026 19:11 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Listening again and now I am less sure it rhymes with FILE. It is, to me, a pretty foreign dialect feature:
25.01.2026 19:04 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0ugh, I have the hardest time pronouncing OIL.
Rating: 0/10, probably my least favorite English word.
Fun tangent:
People in mh family circle reference this Andy Griffith song in which BOIL rhymes with FILE. But I do not know if any of my family members say it that way.
youtu.be/Eu77tX7uDvc?...
The forthcoming #OpenAccess journal Bibliothèque Ouverte d’Égyptologie (BOE) permits diverse methods of formatting & citation.
What a good way to reduce wasted time.
Is this a new trend in scholarly publishing?
If not, it should be.
#Egyptology #LangSky
boegyptologie.github.io/en/about-2.h...
Ah Wikipedia has one.
But I wonder how many of them are suspcious deaths.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...
It seems a number of people in ICE custody have fallen dead to "medical distress" at the Fort Bliss location, Idk. I was thinking about making a list since I have nothing better to do at the moment.
24.01.2026 23:59 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0