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Taiwanese Twosome: tea and Sino-Korean
Jun. 25th, 2025 06:20 pm![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
languagelog_feedEven if you can't understand spoken Taiwanese, you can learn a lot from these two videos because of the excellent visuals, plus it is nice just to hear the clearly spoken Taigi and compare terms in Taigi with their parallels in Sino-Korean.
The first is a video from Taiwan's public TV (公視台語台) on the interesting distribution of the names of tea in the world:
The second video presents the similarities between (literary) Taiwanese and Sino-Korean pronunciations:
It packs in a lot of information about the circulation of sinographs, topolects, and texts in East Asia, together with the history of individuals who were responsible for these transformational movements, not to mention the phonology whereby to explain them.
Selected readings
- "Using Sinitic characters in Korea" (7/3/15)
- "Korean oralization of Literary Sinitic" (4/23/24)
- Victor H. Mair, "Buddhism and the Rise of the Written Vernacular in East Asia: The Making of National Languages", Journal of Asian Studies, 53.3 (August, 1994), 707-751 — for me personally, the most important linguistic impact of Buddhism was its legitimization of the written vernacular in China
- "English incorporated in a Sinograph" (11/18/19) — "tea" as phonophore
- "Sinographs for 'tea'" (1/10/19)
- "Multilingual tea packaging" (4/7/18)
- "Caucasian words for tea" (1/26/17)
- "Trump tea " (1/13/17)
- "Don't Kettle " (11/4/10)
- "Don't eat the water " (3/17/15)
- "Two brews " (2/6/10)
- "cactus wawa: the strange tale of a strange character" (11/1/14)
- "Cactus Wawa revisited" (4/24/16)
- "Things you can do with 'water' in Cantonese " (4/2/19)
- "Bubble tea blooper " (9/28/17)
- "Lap Sangsouchong " (12/3/14)
- "Kung-fu (Gongfu) Tea " (7/20/11)
- "Mandarin Pu'er / Cantonese Bolei 普洱" (8/5/11)
- Victor H. Mair and Erling Hoh, The True History of Tea (London: Thames and Hudson, 2009), especially Appendix C on the linguistics of "tea".
[Thanks to Chau Wu]
The Big Idea: Chuck Rothman
Jun. 25th, 2025 05:01 pmscalziwhatever_feed
Royalty is by blood. So what if a princess wakes up in a body that isn’t hers? And what if that body was previously a corpse? Author Chuck Rothman has the answers and is here to share them in the Big Idea for his newest novel, Cadaver Princess. Follow along to see if “blue blood” really does run through royals’ veins.
CHUCK ROTHMAN:
Cunningham’s Law states that the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it’s to post the wrong answer. The webcomic XKCD created a popular meme where someone is staying up late because someone is wrong on the Internet.
The Cadaver Princess started due to someone being wrong on the Internet.
I am a storyteller. I also like to try to find new ways to do it. No Hero’s Journey for me! No planning, either. I start with a situation and see where it leads.
By the time I began writing The Cadaver Princess, I learned to lean into my strengths: short chapters and many point-of-view characters. I call it a “mosaic novel,” where a bunch of small vignettes slowly reveal the main plot (and subplots). And my goal in all this was to make it all work.
As to how this book began . . .
Matthew Foster is an excellent critic of fantasy and SF films. In his review of Boris Karloff’s The Body Snatcher, he said, “There were more movies about Victorian body snatchers than there were Victorian body snatchers.”
But body snatching was a major concern in 1831. Cadavers were needed to teach doctors. “Resurrectionists” would dig up the freshly buried, and medical schools would pay for them, no questions asked. People went to some lengths to protect the bodies of their loved ones.
I had learned this from a book called The Italian Boy by Sarah Wise, about a group called the “London Burkers,” led by John Bishop. Obscure today, their actions were more important historically than the better-known Burke and Hare, and, like them, Bishop and his crew didn’t just dig up graves at night: they turned to murder.
I decided to start with them. But since I write fantasy, the idea of a cadaver lying on the slab is too mundane, so I had her sit up. And to make the stakes higher, I said she was Princess (later queen) Victoria — in the body of another young woman.
So I had a setting and an incident. I started to write about what happened next.
I spontaneously generate ideas as I write. Most of what I’ve encountered in books about the period (not counting Dickens) dealt with the upper classes. I wanted to write about the lower classes.
I had started with the point of view of the anatomist who received the corpse, but after a few short chapters, I realized there was a better main character: Pablo Mansong, a Black man who had been taken by slavers but was freed before he got to America. The name came from Pablo Fanque. Beatles fans might recognize it; Fanque was a Black circus owner and a major Victorian impresario.
Pablo is quite at home among the poor and the street vendors of London. There are chapters about royalty, but most of the book deals with Pablo and Victoria, including the shock when someone from royalty is face to face with poverty.
I had already dabbled in what I call “hidden history” — fantasy set in a real historical setting, but with fantastic events that are not recorded in history books. I see it as the opposite of alternative history, since it doesn’t change what’s known. But there are plenty of possibilities and ways of dovetailing the events to match the records.
Since I had introduced Victoria, I had to research her. I read about how she was raised, which gave me motivation for her villain, John Conroy. I also learned of how Victoria’s governess, Baroness Lehzen, tried to protect her charge.
As I write, connections come to me. Sometimes, a scene that’s just for background becomes an unplanned but essential plot element by the end. In one scene I’m describing one of the street vendors of the era. Later on, I realize it is important for a key moment.
The real joy of writing this was figuring out how to make the connections, and how to make them dramatic. It was like a puzzle, and I enjoy putting all the pieces together.
But ultimately, the novel originated from Cunningham’s Law: correcting something on the Internet that was wrong. I just turned it into fiction.
Cadaver Princess: Amazon
Pet Shop of Horrors, volume 1 by Matsuri Akino
Jun. 25th, 2025 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
james_davis_nicoll
Each would-be pet owner gets three simple rules for taking care of the exotic animals Count D supplies. How hard could it possibly be to follow three simple rules?
Pet Shop of Horrors, volume 1 by Matsuri Akino
Unit utility
Jun. 25th, 2025 11:10 amlanguagelog_feed
The mouseover title: "'This HAZMAT container contains radioactive material with activity of one becquerel.' 'So, like, a single banana slice?'"
explainxkcd currently fails to explain the strip's implicit reference to the entry for bogosity in the Jargon File:
1. [orig. CMU, now very common] The degree to which something is bogus. Bogosity is measured with a bogometer; in a seminar, when a speaker says something bogus, a listener might raise his hand and say “My bogometer just triggered”. More extremely, “You just pinned my bogometer” means you just said or did something so outrageously bogus that it is off the scale, pinning the bogometer needle at the highest possible reading (one might also say “You just redlined my bogometer”). The agreed-upon unit of bogosity is the microLenat.
2. The potential field generated by a bogon flux; see quantum bogodynamics. See also bogon flux, bogon filter, bogus.
The Jargon File gives this explanation of "microLenat":
The unit of bogosity. Abbreviated µL or mL in ASCII. Consensus is that this is the largest unit practical for everyday use. The microLenat, originally invented by David Jefferson, was promulgated as an attack against noted computer scientist Doug Lenat by a tenured graduate student at CMU. Doug had failed the student on an important exam because the student gave only “AI is bogus” as his answer to the questions. The slur is generally considered unmerited, but it has become a running gag nevertheless. Some of Doug's friends argue that of course a microLenat is bogus, since it is only one millionth of a Lenat. Others have suggested that the unit should be redesignated after the grad student, as the microReid.
More of the (complex and contested) background can found in the 8/29/2006 LLOG post. Wikipedia's only coverage (I think) is an entry in a List of Humorous Units of Measurement., although the dimensional analysis issues are well explained in the entry on the FFF system.
Do you believe a person should be some kind of answer?
Jun. 24th, 2025 09:32 pmsovay102 °F, said the forecast this afternoon. 106 °F, said the car when I got into it. I have no difficulty believing it felt like 109 °F. The sun clanged. The electric grid of the Boston metro area was not designed to run this many air conditioners at once.
I followed Ally Wilkes from her short fiction into her debut novel All the White Spaces (2022) and I mean it as a recommendation when I say that I came for the queer polar horror and stayed for the bildungsroman. Externally, it follows the disintegration of an ill-fated Antarctic expedition over the austral year of 1920 as it comes under the traditional strains of weather, misfortune, the supernatural, mistrust. Internally, it follows the discovery of its seventeen-year-old trans stowaway that masculinity comes in more flavors than the imperial ideal he has construed from war cemeteries and boy's own magazines, that he can even invent the kind of man he wants to be instead of fitting himself fossil-cast into a lost shape. No one in the novel describes their identity off the cutting edge of the twenty-first century; the narrative resists an obvious romantic pairing in favor of one of the less conventional nonsexual alliances I enjoy so much. I am predictably a partisan of the expedition's chief scientific officer, whose conscientious objection during the still-raw war casts him as a coward on a good day, a fifth columnist on a bad, and makes no effort to make himself liked either way. It has great ice and dark and queerness and since I deal with heat waves arctically, I am pleased to report that it holds up to re-read.
Kevin Adams' A Crossword War (2018) is a folk album about Bletchley Park, a thing I appreciate existing.
I followed Ally Wilkes from her short fiction into her debut novel All the White Spaces (2022) and I mean it as a recommendation when I say that I came for the queer polar horror and stayed for the bildungsroman. Externally, it follows the disintegration of an ill-fated Antarctic expedition over the austral year of 1920 as it comes under the traditional strains of weather, misfortune, the supernatural, mistrust. Internally, it follows the discovery of its seventeen-year-old trans stowaway that masculinity comes in more flavors than the imperial ideal he has construed from war cemeteries and boy's own magazines, that he can even invent the kind of man he wants to be instead of fitting himself fossil-cast into a lost shape. No one in the novel describes their identity off the cutting edge of the twenty-first century; the narrative resists an obvious romantic pairing in favor of one of the less conventional nonsexual alliances I enjoy so much. I am predictably a partisan of the expedition's chief scientific officer, whose conscientious objection during the still-raw war casts him as a coward on a good day, a fifth columnist on a bad, and makes no effort to make himself liked either way. It has great ice and dark and queerness and since I deal with heat waves arctically, I am pleased to report that it holds up to re-read.
Kevin Adams' A Crossword War (2018) is a folk album about Bletchley Park, a thing I appreciate existing.
Linguistics vs. archeology and (physical) anthropology
Jun. 25th, 2025 12:17 amlanguagelog_feedSubtitle: "A cautionary note on the application of limited linguistics studies to whole populations"
A prefatory note on "anthropology". In the early 90s, I was deeply involved in the first ancient DNA studies on the Tarim mummies* with Paolo Francalacci, an anthropologist at the University of Sassari. Sardinia. Paolo was deputed to work with me by the eminent population geneticist, Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza of the Stanford medical school genetics department, who was unable to endure the rigors of the expedition to Eastern Central Asia.
[*Wikipedia article now strangely distorted for political reasons. Be skeptical of its claims, especially those based on recent DNA studies.]
After we had collected the tissue samples in the field, Paolo took them back to Sassari to extract and analyze the attenuated DNA. This involved amplification through PCR (polymerase chain reaction), a process that later gained great fame during the years of the coronavirus pandemic, inasmuch as it is an essential step in the detection and quantification of messenger RNA (mRNA). Indeed, two Penn scientists, Drew Weissman and Katalin Karikó, were awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work on mRNA technology, which was crucial in the development of COVID-19 injections.
Paolo's analysis extended over several years. About halfway through, I flew to Sardinia and visited Paolo in his "anthropology" lab. That was a revelation, because his whole department seemed more like it belonged to the hard sciences than to the social sciences, as I had become accustomed to for anthropology departments in the United States. Indeed, Paolo's own specialty, evolutionary biology, was full of zoological and botanical specimens, chemical reagents and apparatus, but showed little evidence of the cultural and social investigations I was familiar with in American departments of anthropology.
I told Paolo how surprised I was by the difference between the anthropology I knew of in America and what I was seeing in Sardinia. He smiled at me benignly and said, "We do physical anthropology," with a tone of voice and attitude that led me to believe that he considered physical anthropology to be real anthropology.
Enough by way of methodological preface.
Last week I posted "A cautionary note on the application of limited genetics studies to whole populations" (6/21/25) in which I decried overemphasis on genetics at the expense of archeology, linguistics, and many other disciplines that could be applied to the study of ancient populations. In this post, I will come at the juxtaposition between genetics and linguistics from the opposite angle, with history, archeology, art history, climate studies, and other relevant disciplines looking on as interested bystanders.
Once again, a claim has been made that the Xiōngnú and the Huns spoke a Paleo-Siberian Language:
Svenja Bonmann and Simon Fries, "Linguistic Evidence Suggests That Xiōng-nú and Huns Spoke the Same Paleo-Siberian Language", Transactions of the Philological Society (June 16, 2025).
Abstract
The Xiōng-nú were a tribal confederation who dominated Inner Asia from the third century BC to the second century AD. Xiōng-nú descendants later constituted the ethnic core of the European Huns. It has been argued that the Xiōng-nú spoke an Iranian, Turkic, Mongolic or Yeniseian language, but the linguistic affiliation of the Xiōng-nú and the Huns is still debated. Here, we show that linguistic evidence from four independent domains does indeed suggest that the Xiōng-nú and the Huns spoke the same Paleo-Siberian language and that this was an early form of Arin, a member of the Yeniseian language family. This identification augments and confirms genetic and archaeological studies and inspires new interdisciplinary research on Eurasian population history.
Here are the sections of the Bonmann and Fries paper:
1 Introduction
2 Earlier hypotheses on the linguistic origins of the Xiōng-nú and the Huns
3 Loanwords in Turkic and Mongolic (and how to detect them)
4 The Jié couplet and Xiōng-nú glosses
5 Hunnish anthroponymy
6 Toponymic and hydronymic evidence
In general, the appearance of the new Bonmann and Fries paper has been met with enthusiasm. Wolfgang Behr, who posted notices about the paper on X and Bluesky, has this to say about it:
There is an exciting new paper on the language of the Xiongnu out in TPS (attached), arguing,
with fresh evidence, that it was indeed Yeniseian, as first surmised by Lájos Ligeti (1902-1987) in 1950, more specifically a variety related to the Proto-Arin branch.
In passing, it also contains good arguments against the dubious ārya-,'Aryan' *[ɢ,g]ˤraʔ > xià 夏 equation proposed by Beckwith via hypothetical,"East Scythian" (for internal etymologies of the name, cf. Behr, Asiatische Studien, LXI.3, 2008, 727–754), and plausible ideas about a Yeniseian background of the notorious Eurasian Wanderwort for 'silver' (on which cf. Anton Antonov & Guillaume Jacques, "Turkic kümüš ’silver’ and the lambdaism vs sigmatism debate", Turkic languages, 2011, 15 (2), pp. 151-170. halshs-00655014).
For, among others, the reasons alluded to above, I have reservations about the findings of this paper. The tentativeness of the enterprise is evident in the hypothetical language in which it is couched: "probable / probably", "seem(s)", "(un)likely" "suggest(s) / suggestive", and so forth.
I would concede that, just as Southeast and South Sinitic languages may embody substratal Austronesian and Austroasiatic elements, Paleo-Siberian / Yeniseian / Arin may constitute a substratal component of the languages of the Xiōngnú / Huns, nevertheless we should be wary of jumping to the conclusion that Southeast and South Sinitic languages were ipso facto Austronesian and Austroasiatic and that Xiōngnú / Hunnic were Paleo-Siberian / Yeniseian / Arin languages.
When all is said and done, the base line of our researches on ancient civilizations should be their physical remains: textiles, metals, pottery, basketry, structures, associated animals and plants, middens, pits, bones, coprolites, usw.
Specifically, with regard to the identity of the Xiōngnú / Huns, we cannot ignore the Iranian inputs in the confederation, as the late Elling Eide, who worked on this problem for decades, had assembled mountains of supporting evidence. I believe that his records may still exist at his magnificent research library in Sarasota, Florida.
Finally, as Étienne de la Vaissière has demonstrated in his authoritative article on "Xiongnu" in Encyclopædia Iranica, the Xiōngnú were basically mounted warriors and nomads with steppe affinities to the west.
XIONGNU (Hsiung-nu), the great nomadic empire to the north of China in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, which extended to Iranian-speaking Central Asia and perhaps gave rise to the Huns of the Central Asian Iranian sources.
Origins. The Xiongnu are known mainly from archaeological data and from chapter 110 of the Shiji (Historical Records) of Sima Qian, written around 100 BCE, which is devoted to them. Comparison of the textual and archaeological data makes it possible to show that the Xiongnu were part of a wider phenomenon—the appearance in the 4th century BCE of elite mounted soldiers, the Hu (Di Cosmo, 2002), on the frontiers of the Chinese states which were expanding to the north. The first mention of the Xiongnu in Chinese sources dates to 318 BCE. Archaeologically, these Hu cavalrymen seem to be the heirs of a long development (the Early Nomadic period, from the end of the 7th to the middle of the 4th century BCE), during which the passage from an agro-pastoral economy to one dominated at times exclusively by equestrian pastoralism had taken place. Among these peoples, in the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE the Xiongnu occupied the steppe region of the northern Ordos as well as the regions to the northwest of the great bend of the Yellow River. Numerous archaeological finds in Inner Mongolia and in Ningxia demonstrate the existence of a nomadic culture that was socially differentiated and very rich, in which both iron and gold were in common use and which was in constant contact, militarily as well as diplomatically and commercially, with the Chinese states (in particular Zhao to the southeast).
The Xiōngnú were not hunter-gatherers and fishermen of the Yenisei Valley. I am amazed and dismayed that the linguists who propose that the origins of Xiōngnú language are to be found in Ket, Yeniseian, or other Paleo-Siberian language are oblivious to this basic reality of existence and ecology.
Selected readings
- Chau Wu, "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/19)
- "Sogdians and Xiongnu / Huns" (2/21/22)
- "Xiongnu (Hunnic) Shanyu" (7/16/21)
- "The complexities of a basic word for "barbarian" in Sinitic and neighboring languages" (6/28/20)
- "Xiongnu Official Title Danghu and Jurchen Tanggu ‘Hundred’" (1/13/25
- "Heavy Velar vs Meager Bilabial Articulations in Xiongnu Language" (4/15/22)
- [Thanks to Ted McClure]
Briefly, Venice
Jun. 24th, 2025 10:09 pmscalziwhatever_feed
For our 25th anniversary, Krissy and I were planning to go to Iceland and spend a week or so there, getting to know the country. Then the pandemic happened and we ended up spending the anniversary at home. Fine, we would just reschedule Iceland for our 30th anniversary. But then I was invited to do a convention in Iceland last year, and we tacked on an extra five days after the convention to do all the things we planned for our 25th anniversary. This left our 30th anniversary suddenly unscheduled.
Fortunately, I had a backup: I had always wanted to visit Venice, not just for Venice itself, but also, goofily, for the fact there is a Church of the Scalzi there, and a Scalzi Bridge, and, heck, why not, even a Scalzi restaurant. Honestly, how could I not go? Krissy indulged me, and on the week of our anniversary, off we went.
We spent a full week in Venice, which appeared to surprise the people there when we mentioned the fact to them. Apparently Venice is usually a couple-days stop at most, tourists grimly marching themselves from the Doge’s palace to the obligatory gondola ride to wherever else they went before they were hustled back onto a bus or cruise ship and sent off to whatever the next destination was. The fact we were in town for a whole week impressed the locals. They seemed to appreciate that we wanted to take in the city at a leisurely pace.
Which is what we did! We did have two days where we had a private guide to give us a walking tour of the city (including stops at the aforementioned Doge’s palace, St. Mark’s basilica and the Scalzi church) and to take us over to Murano to watch glass being blown. And of course we rode in a gondola, because, hey, we were in fact tourists, and not afraid to do touristy things. But most of the days there we woke up late, wandered around the city and maybe took in a museum or church, and then ate at a bunch of restaurants and hung out in a bunch of bars, mostly on the water, and watched the city go by in various boats. Venice, as it turns out, is a lovely city to just be in. Krissy and I mostly did a lot of not much, and it was pretty great.
Mind you, Venice is one of the most overtouristed cities in the world, and as a visitor you can certainly feel that, especially on the weekends, in the space between the Rialto Bridge and the Piazza San Marco. It’s Disneyland-level crowded there. I can’t complain overmuch about that fact without being a full-blown hypocrite, but we did understand that our role in town was to drop a lot of money into the local economy in order to balance out our presence. We were happy to do that, and, you know, to be respectful of the people who were helping to give us a delightful vacation. By and large the Venetians were perfectly nice, did not seem to dislike us merely for being Americans, and in any event we got out of town before Jeff Bezos could show up and make everyone genuinely angry. No one blamed us for Jeff Bezos, either.
One of the things I personally genuinely enjoyed about Venice was just how utterly unlike anywhere in the United States. Yes, I know there are places in the US where they have canals; heck, the Venice in California was once meant to have them all over the place. But it’s not only about the canals. It’s about the fact that no matter what street you’re going down, what bridge you’re crossing or what side canal you’re looking down into, parts of everything you’re looking at have been there longer than the US has been a country, and none of it accommodates anything that the US would require. There are no cars in Venice, no Vespas, not even any bikes. If you’re going anywhere, you’re walking or going by boat. It’s very weird to have no road noise anywhere. You don’t realize how much you get used that noise, even in a rural area like the one I live in, until you go some place without it. I mean, there are boats with engines. The sounds of internal combustion are not entirely gone. But it’s dramatically reduced.
As mentioned, we stayed in Venice for a week, which I think is probably the right amount of time to be in the city. We didn’t see everything it had to offer, but then we weren’t trying to; if and when we go back there will still be new things to explore. But I did get to check off visiting the Scalzi Bridge, Church and restaurant, and the last of these was where Krissy and I had our actual 30th anniversary dinner. It’s was pretty good. I did not get a discount because of my last name. Alas. Here’s picture of the interior of the Church of the Scalzi:
Slightly more ornate than the one in Bradford, Ohio, I admit. But in defense of the one in Ohio, it’s much easier to dust.
Would I recommend Venice to others? Definitely. Spend more than a couple of days. Be respectful. Spend a decent amount of money. Have an Aperol Spritz. If you’re from the US, enjoy the fact there is nothing like it in the American experience. Maybe avoid the Rialto Bridge on the weekend. And there you have it: an excellent Venetian vacation. I hope you’ll enjoy yours as much as we enjoyed ours.
— JS
today's questionable research hole was the sex ratio of adult zebra populations
Jun. 24th, 2025 10:45 pmkaberettI was trivially able to dig out an example of a documented 5:1 female:male ratio.
Why yes I am rereading The Way Out (previous commentary) for the purposes of making notes on content and structure.
(no subject)
Jun. 24th, 2025 12:37 pmsummercomfortLo! The child is dropped off to summer camp (9am-3pm), and Spouse is at work (in-person!!), which means that I am BY MYSELF for the first time in a long time! (I love spouse and child, but also, being with humans and keeping track of humans, much beloved as they are, still saps my introvert energy lol)
I think one of the things that has happened over the past few years is that my ability to deal with other people has decreased (or maybe, it takes more energy to do basic masking? I definitely understand why dad has decided to retreat to China, never to return). It's funny, since I keep trying to come up with gadget- or space-based solutions to this, only to hit the wall of "actually I'm too much of a sensitive hothouse flower for this solution." For example, I'm like "oh! noise-canceling headphones!" but I actually hate things touching my head or being in my ears, so lol that's not gonna work. Or I'm like "I'll create a 'me' corner in the bedroom with a comfy armchair and my stuff", except that it turns out that what I really need is a long stretch of time by myself??? Where I can decide what the next task is???
Another thing, is that I think my number of WIPS and to-do projects have accumulated, to a point where it's gumming up my creative generation energies. So one of the goals of this summer is to finish some out-standing projects!
This week:
- Finish stands
-> oopsie I did one wrong. I think, to fix it, I should:
---- cut out the other 3 "V"s
---- replace the wrong one with a new one (therefore no screw holes!)
---- stain and polyurethane the other 2 "Vs" plus the new one that's attached to the fixed stand
---- I need to do all of this after the current bit of polyurethane dries
Stand 1: ready for wheels and carpeting
Stand 2: needs 3 more flips+coats (as in, 1 side needs 1 more layer and 1 side needs 2 more layers). Stand 3: needs to completely swap a piece in, and then 3 more flips+coats
So maybe the order of affairs should be:
- pause coats rn, then after 3pm I can cut the other 3 "V"s and get the piece swapped in
- resume polyurethane coats tomorrow, should have stands 2 and 3 finished by then
This Afternoon:
- Maybe do some more tie-dye with Miss R?
- do typing and Chinese with Miss R
Tonight:
- prep cyanotyping
- cyanotyping
Projects:
- Serpentine Anthology
- Fix website stuff (update soupycomics, deal with maybe virus problems? figure out proper comic hosting? update SCS website?)
- New court case comic (Ozawa? or something else?)
- July 4th comic? (not certain if want do)
- Finish some fic wips
- collect Tisquantum in 1 book? (eh)
Things to watch:
- West Side Story
- Superman?
- Condor Heroes?
I think one of the things that has happened over the past few years is that my ability to deal with other people has decreased (or maybe, it takes more energy to do basic masking? I definitely understand why dad has decided to retreat to China, never to return). It's funny, since I keep trying to come up with gadget- or space-based solutions to this, only to hit the wall of "actually I'm too much of a sensitive hothouse flower for this solution." For example, I'm like "oh! noise-canceling headphones!" but I actually hate things touching my head or being in my ears, so lol that's not gonna work. Or I'm like "I'll create a 'me' corner in the bedroom with a comfy armchair and my stuff", except that it turns out that what I really need is a long stretch of time by myself??? Where I can decide what the next task is???
Another thing, is that I think my number of WIPS and to-do projects have accumulated, to a point where it's gumming up my creative generation energies. So one of the goals of this summer is to finish some out-standing projects!
This week:
- Finish stands
-> oopsie I did one wrong. I think, to fix it, I should:
---- cut out the other 3 "V"s
---- replace the wrong one with a new one (therefore no screw holes!)
---- stain and polyurethane the other 2 "Vs" plus the new one that's attached to the fixed stand
---- I need to do all of this after the current bit of polyurethane dries
Stand 1: ready for wheels and carpeting
Stand 2: needs 3 more flips+coats (as in, 1 side needs 1 more layer and 1 side needs 2 more layers). Stand 3: needs to completely swap a piece in, and then 3 more flips+coats
So maybe the order of affairs should be:
- pause coats rn, then after 3pm I can cut the other 3 "V"s and get the piece swapped in
- resume polyurethane coats tomorrow, should have stands 2 and 3 finished by then
This Afternoon:
- Maybe do some more tie-dye with Miss R?
- do typing and Chinese with Miss R
Tonight:
- prep cyanotyping
- cyanotyping
Projects:
- Serpentine Anthology
- Fix website stuff (update soupycomics, deal with maybe virus problems? figure out proper comic hosting? update SCS website?)
- New court case comic (Ozawa? or something else?)
- July 4th comic? (not certain if want do)
- Finish some fic wips
- collect Tisquantum in 1 book? (eh)
Things to watch:
- West Side Story
- Superman?
- Condor Heroes?
Tesla Takedown Tuesday
Jun. 24th, 2025 11:03 amsolarbirdToday is another Tuesday Tesla Takedown at the Lynnwood (Washington State) Tesla dealership.
4:15 PM • Tesla store – Lynnwood • 17731 Pacific Hwy, Lynnwood, WA 98037
There are several other protests, sign events, and so on today in other locations as well. You can pick your preference.
Tesla Takedown is an endurance run. Please show up to help demonstrate that going in with Trump has long-term consequences.
If you can’t show up today, you can find more actions on different days here.
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
New Interview
Jun. 24th, 2025 11:46 ammarthawellsGreat interview with Murderbot executive producer Andrew Miano:
https://www.nexuspointnews.com/post/interview-murderbot-ep-andrew-miano
First and foremost, my partner Paul Weitz read the book for pleasure, not with any eye towards adaptation, and came in with it and said, "this would make an amazing TV show." We all read it and really sparked to it and thought it was unique and special and funny, which is not something that you always get in a lot of sci-fi. [It is] also very meaningful and emotional. It was the whole package so it was very exciting and we went about it. We met Martha... One of the biggest things to focus on is how do you honor the book? How do you translate that to the screen? It's not easy, but I'm very fortunate to have Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz — two smart, talented partners — creating and running the show with their guidance and Martha's support and involvement to sort of capture and stay true to the books.
https://www.nexuspointnews.com/post/interview-murderbot-ep-andrew-miano
First and foremost, my partner Paul Weitz read the book for pleasure, not with any eye towards adaptation, and came in with it and said, "this would make an amazing TV show." We all read it and really sparked to it and thought it was unique and special and funny, which is not something that you always get in a lot of sci-fi. [It is] also very meaningful and emotional. It was the whole package so it was very exciting and we went about it. We met Martha... One of the biggest things to focus on is how do you honor the book? How do you translate that to the screen? It's not easy, but I'm very fortunate to have Paul Weitz and Chris Weitz — two smart, talented partners — creating and running the show with their guidance and Martha's support and involvement to sort of capture and stay true to the books.
The Big Idea: Travis Kennedy
Jun. 24th, 2025 03:20 pmscalziwhatever_feed
We’re gettin’ the band back together! And this time, they’re gonna rock the political climate in foreign countries. Author Travis Kennedy is bringing you the best of hair metal bands with espionage on the side in his debut novel, The Whyte Python World Tour. Follow along to see how his Big Idea will shred… your expectations of 80s bands!
TRAVIS KENNEDY:
In my debut novel, The Whyte Python World Tour, the CIA recruits a hair band to foment regime change in the Eastern Bloc at the end of the Cold War.
That’s not the big idea I want to write about here, though, and I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t dream it up on my own. There’s nearly a century of evidence that the CIA has meddled with popular music to influence public sentiment all over the world. More specifically for my purposes, there’s a longstanding rumor – made popular by the fantastic podcast “Wind of Change” by Patrick Radden Keefe (2020) – that the CIA wrote the hit Scorpions song “Wind of Change” after the Berlin Wall fell, to rally Eastern Europeans into harmony with the Western world through the power of soft metal.
By the time I heard the podcast, I had been thinking about writing a book in the world of glam metal for almost twenty years – and even earlier on some level, since I was a little kid in the 80s watching MTV even though I wasn’t supposed to. Eight-year-old Travis saw metal guys as zany party animals without a care in the world. The cool kids in the back of the bus. In more recent years, I read autobiographies and biographies and watched documentaries from the era, believing all along that there was a story to be told there that could be bigger than the standard “Behind the Music” drama about how everything was great until it all came crashing down.
I didn’t entirely know why the genre captivated me so much. The entertainment factor never let me down, of course; a lot of their adventures are objectively funny. These borderline-feral Muppets were suddenly swimming in fame and fortune, and they didn’t have any of the tools to handle either. That was a good place to start. But I did learn quickly that my childhood impression of the glam metal bands was all wrong.
Because more often than not, these guys were not the cool kids in the back of the bus. They were misfits. Outcasts. They had abusive and tragic childhoods.
They usually weren’t popular. They did badly in school. People had no expectations for them. And they didn’t have much expectations for themselves. But they had this one thing they loved and were good at.
Music.
And while they were misfits on their own, when they found each other and played together, they unlocked these superpowers. The castaways and dropouts – with their massive hair, and makeup, and spandex – dominated the zeitgeist of the back half of the 1980s. It was one underdog story after another, like the Mighty Ducks or the Bad News Bears.
There it was: that simple but true BIG IDEA, proven over and over: that when misfits and outcasts find their communities, they can accomplish really big things together.
By the time I listened to “Wind of Change,” I knew already that metal dudes shared a lot of hidden traits. They were resourceful. They were adaptable. They were willing to live in circumstances that most other people weren’t. And they were constantly underestimated.
Those are actually really good qualities for spies!
So, while the concept was still hilarious to me, it was also weirdly kind of plausible. Now I was off and running, and a fascinating thing happened – the big idea kept finding different ways of telling itself in the story. Without spoiling too much, the band Whyte Python is not the only group of underdogs in this book; and whether it’s their Agency handlers or the people living under dictatorships a world away, the spark of music becomes a pretty powerful connector for disparate outcasts who go on to accomplish big things together.
Make no mistake, The Whyte Python World Tour is a satire. But always present is the belief that art – even if that art is party metal, played by feral Muppets – has immeasurable power when it’s shared. When it means something to people, and helps them find other people who have the same feelings about it. You’re doing that now as fans of this website, and every time you give a recommendation for a book or an album or a movie you loved. Participating in culture means that you’re a part of a thousand little movements, inspiring others to seek new ideas and talk about them with each other and maybe build something amazing out of it.
So on behalf of the band, let me be the first to say: welcome to the revolution.
Tell your friends.
The Whyte Python World Tour: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop
Author Socials: Website|Band Website|Facebook|Twitter|Rikki Thunder’s Facebook|Davy Bones Facebook|Spencer Dooley Facebook|Buck Sweet Facebook
House of Shards (Drake Maijstral, volume 2) by Walter Jon Williams
Jun. 24th, 2025 08:52 amjames_davis_nicoll
Silverside Station attracts the rich, the famous, and the bizarre, as well as two Allowed Burglars bent on flamboyant larceny.
House of Shards (Drake Maijstral, volume 2) by Walter Jon Williams