If you can get swans to trust you enough, usually through food-based bribery, they will let you stroke their necks. They are wonderfully soft and stroky.
This is fascinating. The Arabic words for minute (as in 1/60 hr) and second (as in 1/60 min) are the same as the words for minute (as in very small) and second (ordinal number 2). And English, it seems, got it from the Arabs via Medieval Latin.
Same in Hebrew, unsurprisingly I suppose. דק/דקה and שני/שניה, which are cognate to the Arabic words. I'm not sure whether Hebrew got it from Arabic or whether they both got it from common Semitic roots, though.
@Colin Watson The suggestion from that Wikipedia article (which I’ve not researched further so may be total bobbins) is that it’s from the flourishing of science in the Islamic world, although that’s a world that’s always had Jews in so 🤷♀️
I can easily believe it's of Arabic origin due to sheer numbers of mediaeval scientists. Just wondered, as Wiktionary's etymology wasn't clear either way
@Juliet E McKenna Probably didn't have to cope with OU word limits! (Just took a quick look at In Verrem. Quite pleased to find that I can still make out a fair bit of it in spite of my last properly using Latin three decades ago!)
It is more than a single sentence, much, much more. It is a gateway to another world: an abstract world of symbols and relationships. It is a single thread of Inrda's net, interfused with reflecting jewels, containing within it ripples of the whole history of symbolic thought.
Nay! [always a good word in situations like this]. Verily! [even better] I put it to you, [forgot this was a law assignment for a moment] your worships and honours, taking into account the principle of totality [adjusts headgear] that indeed, no sentence can ever be singular.
Let’s talk about resistance after a conqueror takes power. Specifically let’s talk about this bendy yellow building, and what it shows us about the moment the Florentine Republic finally fell to its kleptocratic/proto-capitalist banking-fortune Medici conquerors 1/?
Great thread, and I am sure it is even better in the book, which I am definitely looking forward to. But, as we used to say elsewhere, couldn't this (also) be a blog post, the better to share with people who aren't here.
@davidsegarra More of the book is about the mythmaking of the Renaissance later, so 19th century things, modern historians, about why they claim the Renaissance was the first period to copy the classics and thus erased people like Al Andalus. So while I don't talk about the specific people they erased as much as those who did the erasing, the ideas are in there.
@lispi314 300 years of monarchy, first under local conquerors, then, when they died out, under the Hapsburg overlords, then the unification of Italy in the 1800s. When the unification armies came and drove out the Hapsburg governors, Florence re-established the republic finding the descendants of the last men who had been in the ruling council of the last republic, and had them gather as a new senate to vote to join the nation of Italy.
Interesting observation. When talking one-to-one to a woman I don't know well my brain flips into the before-transition mode, where I'm hyper-aware I pose a threat.
I seem to remember there was somewhere off the coast of Norfolk or Suffolk at some point where new mothers went to register their births as it was unparished, so they didn't have to acknowledge the father. The memory is a bit of a muddle, but I can't find any reference to it.
The wonderful folk over at @trans_rescue@mastodon.social have been working their butts off with a very limited budget to help get trans folk out of dangerous places.
I've pulled together a collection of my stories. These were first written on twitter, some I've reposted here over the years but this is the first time a collection of them has been available.
If you want to acquire a copy of this collection all you have to do is send me proof of a £5 or more donation to Trans Rescue in a DM. (Please for the love of all that is holy redact any bank details) and I'll send you a link to the file with 60 stories and more than one hundred pages of kinky smut.
Note: trans rescue have nothing to do with this, do not hassle them about it, I'm doing this entirely on my own and if they ask me to stop I will.
yeah, guess it just mails them out. forgive our clanky donation system. our web dev is done by volunteers who are awesome, but are working in their spare time.
Feeling proud of myself. I contacted a therapist who should be able to help me with my fun new anxiety issues, and also started some work on them on my own, of which I may say more at a later date.
So you're speaking a sentence in Portuguese, are you? Well you have 0.5 seconds to decide between a subordinating conjunction or a preposition/naked adjective, AND IT WILL DETERMINE THE COURSE OF THE REST OF YOUR LIFE!
Weird anxiety episode day 3. Seems to be receding somewhat. Heart pounding and adrenaline rushes keep happening a bit but maybe less severely? Got sleep in a couple of three hour batches from what I remember. Have attempted to contact a therapist to process some of this.
There is something magical in turning one thing into another. Celebrate your magical ability to turn good news into anxiety with this mug! Get yours here >>> shop.newsthump.com/product/mag…
Sometimes we sleep, or may as well. The world of possibilities that contains and is contained by a day too much and too overwhelming to be but observed slowly through a fog. What shall I do today? Toss a coin.
Sometimes we remember, or remember feeling. To fetch from the vaults of memory is to remember afresh, and to remember afresh to feel afresh. To feel afresh is to reason afresh and it is all still true: this is still was still am still me I, feeling. But nevertheless afresh.
Sometimes we reach out. So fortunate I, who can be held without holding and still feel the warmth. Waves over waves.
Bit sad not to be able to join in the general trans Dorley Hall love-in but I read maybe 300 pages and the non-consensual and imprisonment aspects of it seem to trigger a lot of anxiety, so it's perhaps not the book for me. And that's OK.
The Baby Box helps families prepare for the arrival of their baby. New babies need a surprising amount of stuff! Scotland’s Baby Box is packed full of clothes, bedding and lots of other useful things to help give your baby the best possible start in …
Update: After this blog post was written, we learned Meta revised its public "Hateful Conduct" policy in ways EFF finds concerning. We are analyzing these changes, which this blog post does not address.
This is an official translation of the law allowing Greenland self governance. Under it, for Greenland to become independent (to do with that independence what it may) it requires a majority in a referendum of the people of Greenland, an independence agreement with Denmark, and approval of that agreement by the Greenlandic and Danish parliaments. english.stm.dk/media/10522/gl-…
A drunk sailor might fall in, but fall over when they fall out, and as they fall down, fall overboard, it falling to their solicitor to whom their estate would fall.
He never enjoyed snow, unlike his brother. The first time we had deep snow Bilbo spent 10 mins diving forward and skidding headfirst into it. Benji has arthritis now so is a snow/ice wimp like me.
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