the purpose of a system is what it does

This is the language of genocide.

Friends from Iran have started asking about how long the medication that need refrigeration can last if the electricity cuts off… :( This is such a desperately frustrating thing. Sitting & waiting if a criminal mad man decides to murder thousands & perhaps millions of ppl, & we can’t do anything.

in my variety of english, we just say "it" for this

Dream Vision; A Nightmare (1525), by Albrecht Dürer, who died #onthisday in 1528. The watercolour and accompanying text describe an apocalyptic dream he had on the night of 7-8th June 1525. More art depicting #dreams here: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-dreams #OTD

Saturnian verse of the day: summe deum regnator, quianam me genuisti? "Highest ruler of the gods, whyever did you beget me?" from Naevius' Song of the Punic War

One of the towns that Israel is detonating, Khiam, is where they ran their notorious torture prison during their previous occupation of South Lebanon. If you know Soha Bechara's story, that was in Khiam. bsky.app/profile/ayou...

Israel detonated Naqoura village in South Lebanon

Israel struck my home town of Ain Saadeh just now

"papa, does the easter bunny talks english?" - "ja. und deutsch. und spanisch." "und ein bisschen französisch." - "genau."

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

have you ever noticed that, in a lot of old language textbooks, pronouns, articles, and other determiners actually occupy the Wackernagel position (in that they are presented after noun declension but before verb conjugation and anything to do with syntax)

two more Saturnian verses: "ibi manens sedeto donicum videbis me carpento vehentem en domum venisse" (for Od. VI.295–6) Nausicaa to Odysseus: "Sit and wait there until you see that, riding in my carriage, lo, I have come home."

"There's only one way to effectively fight against a dominant language: to take an 'atheist' position and thus to not *believe* in the prestige of that language, to be convinced of the total arbitrariness of its domination and authority."

This is just unabashed white nationalist Great Replacement rhetoric from the White House.

Christian Baghdadi Arabic Reported speech kǝn+perfective كن+الفعل الماضي šāfǝt ǝmm-ki شافت امكي ‘she saw your mother’ kǝn-šāfǝt ǝmm-ki كن شافت امكي ‘apparently she saw your mother’ samaˁ l-axbāġ سمع لاخباغ ‘he heard the news’ kǝn-samaˁ l-axbāġ كن سمع لاخباغ ‘I was told that he heard the news’

Lady Philosophy, upon catching Boethius being attended to by the Muses: "Who let these melodramatic little harlots in to see this sick man, they who not only don't relieve his sorrows with medicine but even nourish them with sweet poison?" Boethius, C of P, 1P1

Four people killed in a US-Israeli drone strike, and two of them are my distant relatives, from my ancestral village. They were just hiking in the mountains. Age 14 and 17. This is such shit.

Apparently the US is taking Iranians in this country hostage now:

"Gazas Kinder wollen leben Staatsräson ist dagegen"

Israel’s new death penalty law, which exclusively targets Palestinians, did not come out of nowhere. It's passed down from scaffold the British built under military courts established by British Mandate in 1937, after 1936 uprising. The rope, as it always has been in Palestine, is for Arabs only.

got these gems at the used bookstore today

Iranian student informed me that the health center she grew up getting vaccines at was destroyed

yes you fucking morons free preschool for everyone or it becomes just "free preschool for the poors" and then you call them leeches and ask for tax breaks when really we want free preschool for everyone because we want smart well adjusted kids why is this so hard? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/n...

toddler just said "mein Tun-So-Computer" "so tun, als X" (lit. to do as though X) is how to say "pretend that X" so this is a pretty clever way (though probably not the normal way) to say "my pretend computer"

If the wealthy can get you thinking about who deserves basic needs and who doesn't, they win. They don't care if you think wealthy people are the ones who don't deserve; establishing that it must be earned is the key. With that done, they can just keep expanding the definition of "undeserving."

being able to sit patiently with other people's thoughts, sit patiently with your own, and make both of those processes legible to someone who is not you is very valuable. if you can find a new way to do this that is fantastic news but I suspect it will at least resemble the model we've inherited

need this in unicode so i can bid the group chat farewell in style

we gotta send so many guys to the Hague

"when half of your dreams come true"

full list of German words that i have learned from the toddler that she has learned via the stuff she watches on youtube: die Kletterwand (climbing wall) buddeln (to burrow, dig into sth) die Straßenwalze (road roller or what i would call a steamroller)

Just talked to a friend whose brother in law was the chief architect & project manager of this bridge. He’s crying uncontrollably. It’s heartbreaking on a personal level.

toddler says someone is "bad of" her (=böse auf sie) if they are mad at her

Please help my friend Sharif. His accounts here are always deleted, as is the case for most of the displaced Gazans desperately seeking assistance. No amount is too small.

For going to space in Syriac, from a translation of the Star Trek (TOS) prologue I tried about a decade ago:

sound robotic >5 years ago: Affirmative. Requisite changes will be implemented immediately following approval. sounding robotic now: That modification isn’t just important, it’s necessary. While any change can be difficult to make, I’m certain this will be different. Let me know when you’re ready!

Itaque remedia, quae paulo ante acriora esse dicebas, non modo non perhorresco, sed audiendi avidus vehementer efflagito. "And so the medicine that you said before was more biting I'm not only not trembling at, but—eager to listen—I'm earnestly pleading for." Boethius, C of P, 3P1

Vix, inquam, rogationis tuae sententiam nosco, nedum ad inquisita respondere queam. "I barely recognize the meaning of your question, much less am I able to respond to your inquiries." Boethius, C of P, 1P6

They took a whole year of her life. ❤️‍🩹

It seems we just bombed some residential buildings in an attempt to kill a former diplomat who was trying to facilitate negotiations. A civilian trying to *end* hostilities, surrounded by other civilians in their homes. We are completely lost.

i reject the premise of safe return

UPDATE: Two hours ago, Nurul Amin Shah Alam's death was ruled a homicide by the Erie County Medical Examiner.

👀

"Ahmed Al-Harsh waited outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis on Monday to meet his son, a toddler and the only other survivor of his entire family. ... Al-Harsh’s entire family was killed in the attack—his four-year-old daughter, his father, mother, brother, sisters-in-law, nephews, and nieces."

We’ve done the impossible, everyone: losing a war with no objectives.