I love how this makes it seem like Bonaparte is just a career choice

Dima is fine with any/all prepositions

Dima is fine with any/all prepositions

The answer to the question of how Danish plural morphology works, btw, is: “Total chaos. Abandon all hope.”

I searched “Danish plurals” on google trying to make sense of my duolingo lesson and google told me: “The plural of danish is ‘danishes’ or ‘Danish pastries’.”

My plans to make pierogi from scratch are always foiled by the visceral revulsion I feel whenever I google recipes and see the word “pierogies”

My plans to make pierogi from scratch are always foiled by the visceral revulsion I feel whenever I google recipes and see the word “pierogies”

Going through some of my old photos and I found this portrait of a robin. Such an elegant creature.

i generally prefer reading yiddish written in the alef-beys but sometimes there's something undeniably good about seeing it transliterated into roman script

The children yearn for the blogs

If it’s true that people prefer video to text, why is it that half the videos I see are just someone stupidly pointing down, telling me to read the caption, and then the caption is six paragraphs of awkwardly formatted text that I have to rush through before the algorithm serves up another video?

Also someone (not naming names) clearly got a little greedy when they were handing out vowels and just got back in line like five times. “The 26 vowel phonemes of Standard Danish…” gtfø

Dreamt I had a bumper sticker that said: “Don’t Honk I’m Just an NPC*: *I’m (N)ever not thinking about the (P)olish-Lithuanian (C)ommonwealth”

Doing some Danish in Duolingo to prepare for my upcoming honeymoon, not expecting to be able to speak but just to be able to connect letters to sounds in order to read signs, pronounce place names, etc., and I just have to say, speaking as someone with an academic linguistics background: wtf?

The world is missing this morning

The world is missing this morning

I just learned that a nuclear accident in which a critical mass of fissile material is accidentally created is called a criticality excursion, which sounds so cute. Just a jaunty little neutron picnic.

Portland! This looks great and you should come. Feb 21, 7:30 PM. Bonus: it’s at my work, so you could stop by and see the very desk that I cry at every day.

Smoked salmon cream cheese is a staple of many Jewish events and we have a whole cheesecake holiday, so why have I never seen a smoked salmon cheesecake? And should I remedy that for Shavuos this year?

Every AI video I see has people defending it by saying “but this really happens!” and I can’t figure out if the logic is A) my cat does this, so this must be a real video of a cat doing this; or B) my cat does this, so it doesn’t matter if the video is real because it’s showing a real phenomenon

Another score from the free Judaica table at shul. Perfect for those of us who feel like it’s just not Pesach without that certain ominous sense of impending doom.

At this rate, the ancient crafts of artisanal snooping—the eye at the peephole, the twitching curtain—will be lost to future generations

I love walking down the hall in my access-controlled building and seeing half a dozen Ring cameras pointed at me. It’s almost impossible that you could get an unexpected visitor at your door here so the only real functionality is spying on your neighbors.

Another score from the free Judaica table at shul. Perfect for those of us who feel like it’s just not Pesach without that certain ominous sense of impending doom.

Genuinely linguistically puzzled by the inclusion of “we” in the pronoun labeler. All the rest of the options seem to be 3rd-person pronouns; how does “we” function as a 3rd-person pronoun? What does “we” cover that “they” doesn’t?

Unless your friends are directly involved, this seems like questionable advice

Now he’s fully in my lap—he’s not usually a lap cat—purring loudly. I was only gone for an hour!

I came home and my cat jumped off his tree and galloped across the apartment toward me so fast that he whomped right into the wall. Yelling the whole way.

Unless your friends are directly involved, this seems like questionable advice

We put on an all-Yiddish community production of fiddler on the roof in Philadelphia and cast member and local artist Sofie Rose Seymour created the most amazing show poster that ever was

In my tree we’ve got early-adopting Quakers who felt unwelcome in England, aristocrats who found themselves needing to leave France rather expeditiously right around 1789 or so (and Haiti shortly thereafter), and a whole host of folk just getting the fuck out of Mecklenburg for various good reasons

Trying to get my mother-in-law, who recently moved to Portland from somewhere significantly sunnier, to stop calling rainy days “ugly”, “miserable”, “nasty”. If that’s your attitude about half the days of the year, you’re going to have a bad time here.

In my tree we’ve got early-adopting Quakers who felt unwelcome in England, aristocrats who found themselves needing to leave France rather expeditiously right around 1789 or so (and Haiti shortly thereafter), and a whole host of folk just getting the fuck out of Mecklenburg for various good reasons

The early bird gets the sunrise

Unsolicited cat pic

Unsolicited cat pic

How can you tell if a house cat (or a bodega cat!) has a gilgul - a human soul trapped between worlds - inside it? In my upcoming class we'll read a Yiddish memoir excerpt that provides some questions to determine if your cat is actually a dybbuk exploreashkenaziculture.blogspot.com/2026/01/new-...

Met someone on my evening walk

Met someone on my evening walk

Got a pelmenitsa for my birthday (hbd to me 🎉) and I’m a little baffled by the description on the packaging calling it a “Russian ravioli maker” because surely anyone who would want to use one would know what pelmeni are?

Got a pelmenitsa for my birthday (hbd to me 🎉) and I’m a little baffled by the description on the packaging calling it a “Russian ravioli maker” because surely anyone who would want to use one would know what pelmeni are?

Experiencing new things is a great way to keep life interesting, but having to dive for cover from gunfire on my evening walk was a new experience that I think I could have done without.

I saw this on the free table at shul and couldn’t resist bringing it home. It’s bright and ridiculous, and just look at the sly smirk on that face. You know that’s a gefilte fish who’s up to something.

Sitting does not depend on fitting.

Sitting does not depend on fitting.

Oops. Due to the relentless march of time—which, to be fair, I couldn’t possibly have been expected to know about—I missed yesterday. Choose 20 paintings, etc. Day 8. ‘Oranges and Lace Curtains at the Ezra Pound House in Hailey (The Pequod meets the Albatross)’, Susanna Bluhm, 2019.

Oops. Due to the relentless march of time—which, to be fair, I couldn’t possibly have been expected to know about—I missed yesterday. Choose 20 paintings, etc. Day 8. ‘Oranges and Lace Curtains at the Ezra Pound House in Hailey (The Pequod meets the Albatross)’, Susanna Bluhm, 2019.

No new pictures—where are you mentally? (sign says “I don’t want to go to work, I want to live in the woods”)

Sorry to report that Dima is a very tough negotiator and I was forced to concede to nearly all his demands.