why did you put literally the worst of the major Texas cities on there and none of the others? Lol

Seattle, but only because it's the only one of these cities that I have cousins in. All of my other cousins are in Minnesota, and there might be one in Austin or Houston. (I know she's somewhere in Texas but not exactly where)

"Irish doesn't have a word for please, you have to say if it be your will" buddy do I have news for you about "please"

"Irish doesn't have a word for hello you have to use a shorthand religious blessing" buddy do I have news for you about "goodbye"!

"In Polish the word for car is that which walks by itself" BUDDY what do you think an AUTOMOBILE is?

you have got to understand that your mother tongue is not the model of language. all your words have secret histories and layers of meaning just the same as other people's words. the word you think of as just a word has etymology, it wasn't handed down from God as a finished word. English doesn't have a word for movie you have to either refer to the recording medium or use a short version of "moving picture", isn't that cute?

Okay, so, the French word for "potato" is "pomme de terre", which literally means "apple of the earth", roughly.

One time, I was talking to my kid, and because I am Like This, I said "apples, or as the French call them, the potatoes of the trees". Haha. See what I did there?

Anyway, sometimes I tell this story to people, because I think it's funny and witty. Twice so far, native French speakers have responded to this story with "... FUCK" or words to that effect, because they did not know this. They simply had a sound that referred to potato, and had no semantic content past "potato". And then they said "potatoes of the trees? what?" and then they thought about French and potatoes and they thought about apples, and about "pomme de terre of the trees" and they actually heard the term "pomme de terre" as adults who knew about apples and etmymologies, and they said "FUCK".

And I think that's absolutely beautiful.

I mean, I think it's interesting, the difference between "please" (contracted from "an[if] it please [you]" and "by your will"! I think it's neat to think about how different if adjacent things got cut down to being "the thing you append to a request/etc to make it Polite Request rather than a Command/Demand" - some languages don't even have a thing that you just . . .append like that, they use OTHER ways to indicate that difference.

Or some are like German and literally just stick the SAME tag word (bitte) onto like six different situations to Indicate Polite, rather than having six or seven different ones. Why have "pardon" and "please" and "you're welcome" when you could just say "bitte" for all of them? (And I think a couple more, but who knows.) Much more economical!

It's fascinating to think of the different ways we get through the chaotic process of language development over various societies.

But also yes it's nifty to note the point where things that were Separate Words That Meant Things get shortened/mentally tagged off as just "the mouth sounds that indicate a different thing."

Like when people are arguing about fantasy place names and how silly they are and I point out that they live by the Rocky Mountains. And they have a similar moment as the pomme de terre one described above, because even if they noticed "rocky mountain" as a smol, they have probably spent decades with it just being The Mouth Noises (or The Text Shapes) that mean Those Mountains and have not actually stopped to think that we really did call a mountain range "the Rocky Mountains."

Another fun offshoot of the ''pomme de terre'' thing: In German, there is a French loanword for french fries, "Pommes Frites."

This came up in my (USA) German classes, and we were warned that this term is an exception to the usually consistent German pronunciation rules, since it uses the French pronunciation. You might also notice that the phrase drops the "de terre" part that distinguishes "potato" from "apple" in French, making it literally equivalent to "fried apples."

Well, when I lived in Germany for a while, I soon discovered that this actually goes further. "Pommes," pronounced according to German pronunciation rules (roughly pahm-mehs), is also a commonly used term for french fries, obviously formed by truncating the longer phrase and localizing the pronunciation.

So you can walk into a German restaurant, order using a mutated French word for apples, and receive a specific style of fried potatoes. I love that.

^The above example has made me once again appreciate how bizarre the shorthand for french fries in my language is. You see, in Finnish french fries are called ranskalaiset perunat, french potatoes. And of course you can't shorten that just to the second word, since it's the generic word for potato (a quick look at the institute for Finnish language reveals the word peruna originally referred to a pear, later taking its current meaning and a differend word adopter for a pear. But I digress), so in menus and elsewhere it's shorted to ranskalaiset, literally "the french." So it's perfectly normal here to ask for the french as a side dish to your steak of whatever.

Or to order a person from Hamburg with french people in a fast food place.

Finnish uses the same conjugation form for "with" and "on". So basically "an apartment with a balcony" and "an apartment on a balcony" are the same. (Asunto parvekkeella) This also causes some hilarity: because the Finnish word for egg, muna, is also colloquially used for dick, you could ask for a "hampurilainen munalla ja maito rahalla" which means "a hamburger (paid for) with dick, and milk (paid for) with money". "Munalla" typically means "with egg", like if you want a fried egg in your hamburger. And expanding on the french fry thing: I actually just had a burger with halloumi fries. The word "ranskalaiset", the french, is used for anything that can be french fried. Regular fries, sweet potato fries, halloumi fries, they're all "ranskalaiset". Usually there's a compound word like "bataattiranskalaiset" for sweet potato fries or "halloumiranskalaiset" for halloumi fries, but it's still the french.

Henry Kissinger will turn 100 in three days unless something really great happens.

Likes charge. Reblogs cast.

Personality test, is 80f/26c too hot for you?

YES

Nope, it's barely comfortable. My comfort temp is in the 30s Celsius.

“Girls gays and theys” <- uninclusive while trying to be inclusive. Bad. Makes me uncomfortable.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and other distinguished guests” <- inclusive but far, far too formal

“Alrighty gamers” <- Incisive of everyone, informal, and fun to say.

“Everypony” <== pisses everyone off.  flawless

"Friends, enemies, and those still under review"

“OI! THE LOT OF YOU.” <—succinct, to the point, effective. 

"Attention K-Mart Shoppers" <- qualifies as vintage

OYEZ! (yelled loudly enough to hurt) <- silences SCA people, confuses the rest.

Truly such a beautiful day for their majesties the new king and queen may there rule be long and prospero- BLIMEY! ITS PRINCESS DIANA AND SHES GOT A STEEL CHAIR

finally completed my dnd quiz! featuring a mix and match of 30 races and 14 classes, discover who you would be in the forgotten realms! i'd be a satyr artificer :)

Satyr sorcerer!

Specify in the tags please what species or breed of animal you would choose as a witches familiar if the most obvious were off the table

Let's have fun with this

For example for me it would be a great white shark

Also yes men you can interact with this poll too

You’ve finally done it. You’ve proven the existence of magic; discovered how an ordinary human cast spells to control that immense arcane power. There’s just one problem making you hesitate about publishing your findings: spellcasting looks so very… STUPID…

This is literally just how spellcasting works in WoW. Spellcasters' capes flutter and they stick their butt out like they're farting.

CHANGED YOUR LOOK?! YOU LOOK FUCKING AWESOME, FRIEND!!!

NEW HAIRSTYLE?! NEW HAIR COLOUR?! NEW CLOTHES!? HAD THE OL' TEETH WHITENED?! DEBUTING THAT NEW POST-SURGERY BODY?! TOTAL MAKEOVER?!

NO MATTER HOW BIG OR SMALL YOUR CHANGE, YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING TO MAKE YOU FEEL MORE LIKE YOU!!! OR TO EXPERIMENT WITH WHO YOU MIGHT BE!!! EITHER WAY - THAT'S COOL AS FUCK AND YOU LOOK RAD!!!

(feel free to tag me in a photo - i'd love to see it)

I got my hair cut at a proper barbershop for the first time since the start of COVID. @slightlyaggressiveaffirmations

I used my vacation to get my hair cut and go to the pool. I would've done both of those things even if it wasn't Easter week. I did literally nothing out of the ordinary all week.

Mark the electrician has been here for five minutes and he’s already said “well that’s…weird” twice from the other room and frankly I’m afraid to ask.

It’s not good when skilled tradesman are standing in the middle of your room pinching the bridge if their nose, is it?

Mark just referred to the wiring in our bedroom as “creative” and “interesting”.

This is fine.

And now he’s taking apart the ceiling. I’m not worried, are any of you worried? I’m not, haha, it’s not like this house was previously owned by someone who would do something stupid like try to wire their house themselves…or store tins of varnish under the furnace behind a secret alcove…

Ha ha…

Ha.

Hm.

Fuck.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE’S NO NEUTRAL WIRES??!?

WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT’S GROUNDED INTO THE SCREWS HOLDING UP THE CEILING LIGHT???!?!!

This post crosses my dashboard every so often and every time, I’m reminded of when I discovered that my whole house was grounded to a gas line.

Good times.

IT WAS WHAT?

Suddenly my old apartment having the switchboard send 20 amps into a 10 amp wire doesn’t sound as bad as I thought back then.

A house I lived in during my teenage years was designed by the person who built it and lived in it (he died, and we bought the house from his widow and her elderly mother). I don't know much about the house since my parents always withhold important information from me, but I think it's miraculous that it didn't have any electrical fuckery. Like, we did a bit of renovating before we moved in, and I don't recall seeing an electrician there once. Imagine this: a house designed and built by an eccentric rich guy in the 1960s or 1970s, looks like a nightmare from an aesthetic/architectural point of view, and not a single electrical wire is wrong or out of place in any way.

Oh dear gods no. We haven't made a good Eurovision song since like the 1980s and we're sure as fuck not starting now.

Puet rimpuilevaa lasta talvivaatteisiin: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni Kuomista niinku

Purjehdit myrskyssä: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni ruorista niinku

Käyt kokemassa ennätyssaaliin verkoista: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni kuoreista niinku

Rämmit juhannustunnelmissa "oikopolkua" pitkin takaisin mökille: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni tuomista niinku

Sytytät kädet täristen saunan pesää: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni tuohista niinku

Yrität ampua jousella darrassa: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni nuolista niinku

Estät varkaita fyysisesti pääsemästä sisään kauppaan: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni puodista niinku

Pitelet pussin suuta auki kun joku toinen ahtaa sinne haravoituja lehtiä: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni muovista niinku

Harrastat seksiä maksullisten kumppaneiden kanssa: pidän kaksin käsin kiinni huorista niinku

I had to switch from my dysphoria sweatshirt to my dysphoria hoodie today. Don't call me out like this.

This time's accidentally kinda hot when sick look: Starfleet officer in distress. (Okay, I did cheat a bit and put the communicator on for the photo).

I now realise I put the communicator on the wrong side after all, despite my best efforts. Ah well. Maybe I'll redo this sometime when I'm not sick and have cleaner hair.

I love Star Trek, and already think you're cute as heck. So this photo just combines two things I like and think are cool. <3

a QPR is a QPR because the individuals in it decided it is. not because friends ‘don’t live together and kiss eachother,’ or ‘because friendships aren’t this committed.’ that’s not how this works. friends can do anything and as long as they have the intent for friendship, it’s a friendship. you can defend QPR’s without pushing amatonormativity.