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Let’s Get This Babka

@numberonebabka

Icon is from “Rainy Day with Babka in New York”; header is “Birch Stand South of Cheney Cabin 2019”. Both are by Hope Gangloff

Don’t Hesitate by Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

Ok so I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of researching period food & recipes, and,,,,

"one fifteenth century recipe contains the word "Chickens" four times-with four different spellings, of which the first is "Schyconys.""

excuse me medieval people but what the fuck

there is a German cookbook, 14th century, where almost every recipe is titled "eine gute speise" ("a good food"), with notable exceptions such as "das ist auch gute" ("this is also good").

If some of you remember the comic draft I shared a couple months ago- this is the final draft! Just wanted to say another thank you from everyones input and I really hope you enjoy the finished version. It’s part of a bigger project where i’ve interviewed multicultural people and told some of their stories relating to their experience. 

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the reek of death from the Purina factory is OUTRAGEOUS. on a bad day it will blanket the Whole of Fucking Denver

I truly think there’s some kind of longstanding deal in place where people are silenced about it because I can’t fathom how this isn’t talked about more often - it seems like the first thing anyone would say if Denver is brought up: “whole fucking place reeks of purina, I mean really strongly” but somehow, nope

• it’s really interesting how the stink-corridor aligns with the economic / racial parity map of residential areas, lemme tell ya

• when I lived in Brighton I’d pay attention to the kids playing in the afternoon: if they all ran inside at the same time, the Stink was on its way

• I’m from the deep south so, when I say a place smells bad? you should listen to me about that 

• I like Denver, I do: don’t get me wrong, but, that purina stink is a strong argument for mass riots 

@bryannagraham hey! didn't see your question until just now; why does it smell like death? Isn't it a pet food company? Do they slaughter the animals in the factory? I'm sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm from the east coast and am genuinely confused

I don't think they slaughter animals on site but I don't know about it. They definitely cook it in there, though. Not at all a bad question! My speculation is all I can offer:

I think Nestle's contract with the city is really old; Denver is basically a train depot that involuntarily became a city (much like Atlanta) and the industrial rights here trump all else, despite the city's chill reputation. The effect of industry on Denver's culture is so stark and complete that p much only outsiders who moved here like me are able to see it. The way residences are clustered around Death Smells is so bizarre until you look at the history of how workers were basically trapped here by companies, over the centuries.

I think that the way Nestle operates here and elsewhere is an artifact of the lack of power that human beings have against Death Barons in the USA, over time.

There's just no way it could keep existing without corruption. It's a insane health hazard. Nestle has a hold on the legislation of this and so many other cities.

It's their right to make cheap nasty kibble; it's not our right to breathe.

what the fuck

saxo cere comminuit brum

what the actual fuck

the word for brain here is cerebrum, and it's been literally split in two

I've seen wordplay like this before in Latin, but with compound words that are clearly made up of separate parts

but "cere" is not a word and neither is "brum"

you could translate it something like

"he split his br apart ain with a rock"

and it's only slightly less unreadable than that due to freer word order

needless to say something I'd expect more from a modern experimental poem than an ancient epic

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Latin linguistic shitposting is amazing. Like, I can't recall exactly, but there's a line of poetry that says basically "Claudius lives in the mountains mountains".

Except because Latin is inflected and word order is less important, it's actually written like "in the (mountains) Claudius (mountains) lived"

And it still means the same thing. Except why the duplicate of mountains? Because it turns out, Claudius didn't live in the mountains. He lived in a valley between two mountains.

They changed the word order of the sentence and duplicate a word, to do a word-order pun about where some random guy lived! It's great, and exactly the kind of thing you can't do in English, because we depend so much more on word order.

[image 1: text reading:

1. saxo cere comminuit brum
"He split his brain in two with a rock"
This is allegedly from a battle-epic by the early poet Ennius

image 2: a reply reading, “As a non-Latinist besides very specific things: What ARE you freaking out about here?” /end ID]

i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said "we're not catholic here". now every time i'm doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.

watching reddit go into a full death spiral is like watching the specifically trans equivalent of the library of alexandria go up in flames

like yes reddit is also the only place on the internet you can get an actual answer to any question in general. but it’s also a huge centralized community database about which surgeons will fuck you over, who takes what insurance, which doctors you can trust, how to write a template therapist’s letter, insurance appeals, peer support, questions that feel too stupid to ask anywhere else, diy guidelines, “hey this is embarrassing but,” finding trans people in your area, explaining why you need PTO without getting way too personal about it, safety tips, et cetera you get the picture

TIL a family in Georgia claimed to have passed down a song in an unknown language from the time of their enslavement; scientists identified the song as a genuine West African funeral song in the Mende language that had survived multiple transmissions from mother to daughter over multiple centuries (x)

In 1997 Amelia’s daughter, Mary Moran, and other members of the Moran family were invited to Sierra Leone, West Africa, where they were welcomed in Freetown by Sierra Leone’s President and then flown by helicopter to the country’s interior.  There, in the small village of Senehun Ngola, Mary and Bendu Jabati met and sang this song together for the first time.  Years earlier, Bendu’s grandmother had told her that this song, which had been passed down in her village from mother to daughter for centuries, would one day reunite her to long-lost relatives.

In addition to finding out where in Africa her ancestors were abducted into slavery, Mary Moran discovered the meaning of the Mende song: a processional hymn for the final farewell to the spirit, it was sung in Senehun Ngola by women as they prepared the body of a loved one for burial.

(The OP's link leads to a site with a recording of the song sung by both Mary Moran and her mother, Amelia)