The Olympics aren't complete without the STONES!! #animation #olympics

“A hidden Oasis in the busy city…” #Furnal2027

Nut

Hazel

* with the possibly exception of Old Lithuanian "kasùlas" which means something like "spear shaft" and might have originally referred to something made of hazel wood.

"hazel" and "nut" appear to be traces of a lost ancient language of Europe, or of two different ones. These words exist in Celtic, Germanic, Italic but not other branches of Indo-European*.

Alright, one more blog post. Hot off the press.

...Philological Society 72/1 (1973), 127–136, & by Kim McCone, Towards a Relative Chronology of Ancient and Medieval Celtic Sound Change, Maynooth 1996, 115–119. There is in fact a huge amount of variation in palatalisation across time, but how it is connected with regional variation is unclear. /4

...concerns are a ghost problem. At his time, he had an incomplete understanding of the very complex rules for how palatalised consonants arose in Irish. Important progress has been made since especially by David Greene, ‘The growth of palatalisation’, Transactions of the... /3

...of consonants after short u, i.e. palatalised consonants where he thought there shouldn’t be palatalisation. He cites cuicce ‘to her’ beside cucae; suibi ‘jubilation’ beside subae and forms of cluiche ‘play’ from the OIr. glosses. Again we can make short shrift of this since Thurneysen’s... /2

𝗗𝗶Ⓐ𝗴𝗻𝗼𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗡𝗲𝘄𝘀 28 While the morphological variation so far (items 22–27) was all more or less easy to dismiss as evidence for dialectal variation in Old Irish, the matter is more complicated with the next item, which is phonological. Thurneysen casually mentions unexpected quality... /1

And last week's blog post. All caught up now.

[Comic][1285] & [1286] A double-page feature! Flora's feeling motivated by spite! Be sure to check out both of them by hitting next comic or visit the main site to see them combined. twokinds.keenspot.com/comic/1285/

“With paws in the clouds…” #Furnal2027

D'you ever get a stupid idea in your head and then you can't do anything else until you get it out? 🎣

Yet, culture being what it is, I can't help but read this and have intrusive thoughts likening the situation to some line delivered by some character from some film 27 years ago. Something about an obese scotsman? My poor ageing brain.

The phrase ἐσκάτθετο νηδύν "he put it down into his belly" occurs three times in Hesiod's Theogony (487, 890, 899) describing either Kronos devouring the stone offered in place of the infant Zeus or Zeus devouring Metis.

“With escalators to spare…” #Furnal2027

So my translations of al-Dani's Taysir is out! So what is this text about? It is a description of seven canonical reading traditions of the Quran authored by the Andalusi polymath ʾAbū ʿAmr ʿUṯmān b. Saʿīd al-Dānī (371/981–444/1053).

The verb ‘to worry’ has surprising family members. Within Germanic, it’s related to German ‘würgen’ and Dutch ‘wurgen’, which mean “to strangle”. A little further down the family line, they’re related to Latin ‘urgēre’ (to press), which gave English ‘urgent’. Click my new graphic to learn more:

Vidra seeks a #mystic for guidance about her future. Apparently that future involves a lot of swimming… and seafood! This #Sequence was commissioned by @fractaldiane.bsky.social #TF #Transformation #Transfur #Curse #Pirate #Otter

Attention, Starbound Daytrippers! Our pre-flight checklist is complete... we're opening Single Day Passes early! If you need a con badge for just one day, these will be opening on Thursday, February 12th. Supplies will be very limited -- don't miss your seat on the ship! 📸: Waldo

yeah, adobe created the pdf format and a whole suite of amazing programs, then then immediately pivoted to "now what if we just tore it all down?" and they've been doing that ever since

So what are we doing about it? The most important thing is early warning, monitoring the signs of a CME forming. In 2015, NOAA's Deep Space Climate Observatory began operation & as long as NOAA is funded, we should be fine. Only an absolute fool would try to defund these agencies... Oh.

Everything from Wi-Fi to satellites would experience significant induced surge currents, overwhelming or even permanently damaging electronics. We're talking up to YEARS of power outages. Did I mention this happens with regularity, as the Sun undergoes cyclical ejections of plasma?

Such events appear to happen about every 500 years. In 1859, the net effect was fairly mild, because our dependence on electrical phenomena was minimal: lighting was by kerosene lamps, communication still mostly written. If the same event happened today, it would likely ... be bad. Very bad? 😬

The event is named for English astronomer Richard Carrington who observed the phenomenon, confirmed independently by Richard Hodgson. Today, we know it was an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (ICME): a solar flare where the Sun's plasma strikes the Earth's magnetosphere.

When I come across blueing boletes I like to draw a little smiley face on them and hope that some hiker comes across it. Somehow cant find a picture among my >5,000 mushroom pics on my camera roll.

*snaps finger* Female stoat member of the band who laments that her seasonal coat change confused fans into thinking she'd been replaced by somebody else depending on when certain promotional material for the band was shot because everyone's fucking stupid, that's it, that's the angle, gotta draw.

A thank-you sketch for @viciousfeathers.bsky.social who sent me some beautiful Twyla gift art (nsfw haha). So here's their gryphon Beros considering a stoat snack.

New planet just dropped and it 1) is almost exactly Earth-sized 2) has a year that's almost exactly 1 Earth year. 3) orbits a star that is not a 💢temperamental little shit M-dwarf 💢but is instead a 🧡 good orange boi 🧡 Me for @science.org based on results presented at #RockyWorlds4: 🔭🧪

have to admit that whoever designed this little Appalachian flag idea went hard

Ive watched this about 100 times. This is why the internet was invented. Right here. Peak content.

Today my translation of al-Dani's Taysir has come out! I hope to write a little bit more about this later, but for now here is a link. And it's Open Access! www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.116...

Uploaded:

Whatever Charlie Haughey was or did, with this replica he created a historically important document that, maybe, @nmireland.bsky.social ought to try to acquire. Where is it now? /4

I am dreaming of an innocent time when it was a scandal to have a "fibreglass replica of an Ogham inscription made and transported" to one's island retreat. The really important questions are: which ogam inscription is it, where did they get their dating to "350 AD" from, how did they create... /1

No. Commonsense reform is to burn ICE to the waterline and scatter the rubble so that all of us who value a constitutional republic with a Bill of Rights can prevent such a monstrosity from ever being constructed again. And nothing above is hyperbole. God, but you are not a leader for this time.

It was awesome! We spent the first week rehearsing and performing around Yogyakarta, then the second week mostly being tourists and attending some performances in Surakarta. The group I'm in now in L.A. has floated the idea of going to Java in 2027 or 2028. I hope it works out!

On that note, Aural Archipelago is an excellent resource if you’re interested in traditional-ish Indonesian music beyond the Big 3 gamelan styles:

The two-week trip/performance tour to central Java I went on with the UC Berkeley gamelan group will always be one of my most fun memories!

There are definitely reasons to refuse to have two-hour commutes. This is one of them. (The major one being that it's unpaid labor and costs that should be calculated in when assessing job offers.)

Very glad that the volume ‘The Reconstruction of Indo-European Stop Systems: From the Traditional Model to Glottalic Theories’ (edited by Tijmen Pronk and myself) has now appeared. brill.com/display/titl... Looking forward to hearing reactions to it!

Also:

Well, assuming it works.

The long civic nightmare is over.

Sometimes I think there should be furry drop-in centres in major furry areas, like going to a gaming shop but more of a co-op or flea market model.

happening this morning in Minneapolis -- ICE agents drawing guns on observers. I reiterate again that it is only a matter of time before DHS kills more innocent people in Minnesota. Congress needs to shut this shit down right now.

Winter Cold ❄️