Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

I really should read my own blog.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

In my day, never was longer.

Republicans in disarray!

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Just because you believe it, that doesn’t make it true.

Come on, man.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Excellent Sunday-Afternoon Read: Hardbacks

Excellent Sunday-Afternoon Read: Hardbacks <-- Cheese, Snails, Underwear...

by | 106 Comments

This post is in: 

A thread to enjoy:


You should click over & read the whole 48-tweet thread, because even the replies are great (How did I make it this far without realising that books are just information sandwiches).

Reader Interactions

106Comments

  1. 1.

    germy

    Q is too high up in the alphabet. I respect it but it has no place between P and R. Should be at the end with the weirdo/goth letters

    — Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) March 29, 2020

  2. 2.

    Catherine D.

    Yes, a basic rule of animal husbandry is to eat or geld the males not worth breeding. If only we applied the principle to humans ?

  3. 3.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Relevant to this, I visited Anopolis in Crete today. It represents 5000 years of civilization, repurposed repeatedly over thousands of years of continuous occupation.

    The site is glorious – olive trees, figs and goats among the ruins, thousand year old Orthodox churches, Byzantine ruins built from the rubble of earlier ruins.

  4. 4.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Oh, AND my youngest was on the team that found the oldest example of Greek Linear B in Pylos a few years ago, so that was cool.

  9. 9.

    Geminid

    There’s a lot of good stuff on Twitter today. The sarcastic @Ragnarok Lobster retweeted a DougJ/ N.Y.Times Pitchbot offering in tandem with an eerily similar but serious headline from a Federalist Society article.

    And the analytical @Mangy Jay has a good series of tweets supporting President Biden’s “Human Infrastructure” initiatives. These programs were strongly favored by more liberal Democrats during the primaries, Ms. Jay notes, and they need to support them now, and advocate for them to wavering moderate politicians who may be influenced by fear. Mangy Jay typically focuses on education and  public matters, but I think her dispassionate political anaysis is pretty good too.

  11. 11.

    marklar

    @germy: We actually discussed the letter ‘Q’ in one of my many tangents in class this week.

    In English, there is no need for it exist.  Phonetically, we already have ‘C’ and ‘K’.  Heck, there’s no need for ‘C’ to exist either, since its hard pronunciation is handled by ‘K’, and its soft pronunciation is handled by ‘S’.

    English is weerd.

  14. 14.

    germy

    @marklar:

    Here’s my prediction:  in 200 years “enough” and “though” will look antique.  They will be spelled “enuf” and “tho” by most people.  Our current spellings will be old english.

  17. 17.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: So eventually the ancient Egyptians will triumph?  I don’t want to walk like that – Susannah Hoffs or no Susannah Hoffs.

  21. 21.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Catherine D.: ​
    Geld then eat. Male meat animals get eaten young, once they’re at the best size they get the chop (so to speak). No point looking after them, feeding them, treating them for diseases etc. beyond that point since there’s no cost benefit to the farmer. A single ungelded ram or bull or billy-goat can service lots of female sheep or cows or nanny-goats to make more meat animals. It’s the same with roosters (although you can’t milk chickens) although the young males are usually culled after they hatch and not raised for meat.

    I sometimes wonder about Christians that sing “The Lord’s My Shepherd…” It’s almost like they don’t know what a shepherd does for a living and how She actually takes care of Her flock.

  24. 24.

    glc

    @marklar: Really it’s Etruscan which is weird. They screwed things up and then passed the result to the Romans, who tried to fix it.

    The C was supposed to be Gamma but the Etruscans didn’t have a hard g so they used C and K interchangeably, then the Romans said where’s the G and decided to put a little line in the  C and then stick it in place of the Z which was in 6th position, since they didn’t use Z. Then they started borrowing from Greek and said, oh we need a Z but where to put it where to put it oh hell put it at the end.

    We’re not the first screw-ups in this business, and very likely not the last.

    The idea that an alphabet is intrinsically superior to a syllabary is weird.  Ideograms have their uses too. You can’t really write mathematical papers without them (well, it’s been done of course, back in the day, but the results are even more indigestible).

  26. 26.

    SFBayAreaGal

    I love the connections made.

    Does anyone remember the PBS series Connections and The Day the Universe Changed? Both made similar types of connections.

  28. 28.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: I meant say that @Mangy Jay typically focuses on education and public health matters. Ms. Jay’s recent writings on her experience with the public health system when she had Tuberculosis are very illuminating. A “Betty Cracker” retweeted them the other day.

  29. 29.

    Fair Economist

    Alphabet origin is a bit more complicated, because the first true alphabet where all sounds can be written is Ancient Greek. Phoenician didn’t write vowels. The origin is intetesting because it started, like almost all writing systems, as syllabic. One branch then reduced the syllabery to one sound for each consonant. This might have been because the language drifted to have only one vowel, or more likely because they were writing for multiple dialects, and vowel sounds drift much faster than consonants.

    So Phoenician was really using a degenerate syllabery, and it was the Greeks who (mis?)interpreted it as alphabetic

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    Anybody have experience with or suggestions on at-home COVID tests? In particular, ones where you can see the results immediately and don’t have to send them off.

    My brother’s husband tested positive last Thursday (on a “formal” test). Brother tested positive yesterday (on an at-home test). Kids, age 5 and almost 7, tested negative. Brother and kids got drive-through tests this morning, results tomorrow.

    The thing is that I had lunch with my brother last Wednesday. I think the chance that I’m infected is very small—no symptoms so far—but I’d like to err on the safe side. I gave my Trader Joe’s friend a ride home from work yesterday. (Both of us were masked in the car.) Even smaller risk there, but . . .

  33. 33.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack: I have no experience with them, sorry. We get tested once a week at work. But I think I really should get some home test kits just in case. I hope you’re okay and that everyone recovers with mild-no symptoms!

  35. 35.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @SFBayAreaGal: Connections was one of my favorites. Like how the weaving machines that made Jacquard connect with computer 80 column card programming decks.  Brings out my inner Hermione Granger!

  36. 36.

    Auntie Anne

    @Steeplejack:  We’ve used the BinaxNOW home test. Delaware distributes them for free at our public libraries, but I’ve seen them for about $24 at CVS or Walgreens. Each kit contains 2 tests.

    All negative results here (hoping yours will be as well). If we had tested positive, we’d have followed up with a pcr test.

  38. 38.

    EmbraceYourInnerCrone

    @Steeplejack: just be careful   The Rapid tests have about a 15% false negative rate. Of the five people in my  COVID cluster the two that got rapid test got negative results   When the three of us who got positives (PCR test) told us hem we had it they got tested again. Both positive.

  42. 42.

    Major Major Major Major

    Super cool thread, thanks!

    I wish I remembered why the English orthographic reforms failed in the early 20th century. Who knows when it’ll finally happen, but these things can take a while. Lord knows it did in Germany!

    @Omnes Omnibus: sounds like I don’t have to since I’m living in your head rent free :)

  43. 43.

    Bill Arnold

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    no need for affect and effect nonsense.

    Is the proposal to banish the meaning of one of those words? To excise the meaning of one of them from permitted human thought?
    If so, which meaning would get banished?

  46. 46.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Bill Arnold: with very few exceptions that I basically never see in the wild, the difference can be easily determined by context so there’s no need for two different spellings, it’s functionally polymorphic already. Lawyers can retain the old spelling. But I mostly persisted in arguing this, exactly one time and years ago, because it annoyed OO. I’d almost forgotten until he brought it up!

  47. 47.

    laura

    @SFBayAreaGal: Remember it. !11! Possibly the most serendipitous occasion – James Burke was scheduled to speak at the Geary Theatre. On a whim, without tickets and in a blustery rain storm (back when such events were fairly common) my roommate and I decided to give it a go driving from Santa Rosa to San Francisco. Behold! A parking place directly in front of the theatre. We go inside the entrance and my roommate heads to the ticket counter to see if there are any remaining available seats while I go park myself on a large and comfy banquette all alone with my thoughts. I see a pair of tickets just sitting there with no owners around – seemingly just two small scraps of paper. Yes they were tickets all orphaned and alone. Up walks the roommate with the bad news the show was sold out. I show him the tickets and we decided to head in and if we got booted out when the real people showed up, at least we saw a bit of the talk. They were about 6 or 7 rows back center stage. James Burke could have jumped in my lap, and of course, he was as interesting and capable of spinning a yarn all the way out and then wrap it up all the way back. Just a bit of amazing luck and circumstance and the high of it all lasts to this day. What a great pair of series’ they both were Connections and The Day The Universe Changed. Thanks for the remembery SFBayAreaGal!

  48. 48.

    Steeplejack

    @Auntie Anne, @MP:

    Thanks, that’s just what I need! Probably should have mentioned in my previous comment that I didn’t ask my brother because things are somewhat hectic at Sighthound Hall right now. I’ve been getting updated through terse text messages.

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone:

    I get it about false negatives. I’m okay with a somewhat “rough” test, as I (so far) have no symptoms and am not planning to go anywhere in the next few days. Uh, except to pick up a test. I assess my risk as very low right now.

  49. 49.

    Chacal Charles Caltrop

    @Just Chuck:  thanks!
    In my little office we’ve come to refer to regular mail aka snail mail as “escargot.” These will be the source of my email commentary…

  51. 51.

    debbie

    Can someone who knows how get one of those unrolled threads? It’s too hot to have to click 48 times and I can’t figure out how to get it done. TIA.

  52. 52.

    oatler

    The rhythmic sploshing of penis inside vagina. That’s the source of rage that wiped out the human race QED. The dinos went extinct for a reason.

     

     

     

    tT

  57. 57.

    Steeplejack

    @zhena gogolia:

    Thanks!

    BTW, I watched That Man from Rio last night and was relieved to see that it holds up pretty well. Will be interested to hear what your husband thinks of Brasília if you get around to watching it.

  58. 58.

    Robert Sneddon

    @germy: Chinese peasantry would sometimes “revolt” by gathering outside their lordships home and singing a song about how they worked through the seasons to enrich their masters, one verse at a time with each verse ending with praise for their lord. They’d keep this going day and night for weeks if necessary. The lords would usually give in after the first three days or so.

  60. 60.

    WereBear

    Melvil Dewey, of the Dewey Decimal system, was also a promoter of “simplified spelling.” I ran across one of his articles written with it; it was excruciating to read. Slowed a person down incredibly.

    Didn’t catch on.

  61. 61.

    Redshift

    @glc:

    The idea that an alphabet is intrinsically superior to a syllabary is weird.  Ideograms have their uses too. 

    The argument in the Twitter thread isn’t that an alphabet is intrinsically superior, just that we wouldn’t have mass publishing using moveable type without it. The author explicitly states that a syllabary is easier to learn and arguably the more natural form of written language.

  66. 66.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Baud: It was fine. Nobody asked to see any of our docs once we got the PLF approved. We have a PCR test scheduled for the day of our return via Athens.

  68. 68.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @glc: I think (as the tweet thread says),  the superiority comes from the fact that the alphabet has far fewer symbols than any syllabary, making movable type printing much more practical.

    As to people reusing/changing writing systems to suit their needs: I read an interesting book** about the decipherment of Linear B (used to write a very old form of Greek), which is a syllabary.  It seems the symbols and sounds of Linear B took off from Linear A, which is the written form of an unknown language that is NOT Greek.  And then when the native scribes of Crete used Linear B to write the Greek of the Mycenaean invaders, they had to make compromises, since the syllabary symbols (and sounds) had been designed for a language that was not Greek and using it didn’t work too well, since some sounds of Greek could not be properly represented, and using the syllabary symbols forced vowels in where they didn’t actually exist in Greek.

    ** The Riddle of the Labyrinth by Margalit Fox

  69. 69.

    WhatsMyNym

    @Fair Economist:    Like all good ideas, the Phoenician alphabet was a rip off of an existing proto-alphabet…

    The earliest Phoenician inscription that has survived is the Ahiram epitaph at Byblos in Phoenicia, dating from the 11th century BC and written in the North Semitic alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet gradually developed from this North Semitic prototype and was in use until about the 1st century BC in Phoenicia proper. Phoenician colonial scripts, variants of the mainland Phoenician alphabet, are classified as Cypro-Phoenician (10th–2nd century BC) and Sardinian (c. 9th century BC) varieties. A third variety of the colonial Phoenician script evolved into the Punic and neo-Punic alphabets of Carthage, which continued to be written until about the 3rd century AD. Punic was a monumental script and neo-Punic a cursive form.

    The Phoenician alphabet in all its variants changed from its North Semitic ancestor only in external form—the shapes of the letters varied a little in mainland Phoenician and a good deal in Punic and neo-Punic. The alphabet remained, however, essentially a Semitic alphabet of 22 letters, written from right to left, with only consonants represented and phonetic values unchanged from the North Semitic script.

    via Britannica

    ETA: the Greeks adding vowels was the big change in my opinion.

  70. 70.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @Almost Retired: I loved going to Greece (Santorini, Crete, and the mainland, mainly the Peloponnesus) a few years ago, but it was much warmer in May (and humid on the mainland) than I had expected. Much warmer meaning HOT. I would go in April, or later in the fall.  I literally did not need a sweater in the evening from the time I got off an international flight in Crete to when I got on one again 18 days later in Athens.  On the other hand, we had fresh ripe tomatoes available every day.  For a Californian whose homegrown tomatoes start to come in in the middle of July, this was wonderful.

  71. 71.

    A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)

    @WhatsMyNym: Fascinating how people change things to suit their needs.  The Phonecian alphabet was designed for the sounds of a Semitic language and had to be adapted for Greek since the dominant sounds are different. Not a good example, since the Japanese don’t use an alphabet, but trying to use an imaginary Japanese alphabet to write English, since the Japanese famously don’t have the sounds R and L.

  72. 72.

    J R in WV

    @Major Major Major Major: ​
     

    But I mostly persisted in arguing this, exactly one time and years ago, because it annoyed OO. I’d almost forgotten until he brought it up!

    But it’s so easy to annoy Omnes. I seem to do it often by accident, even if I thot I was trying to agree with him…

  75. 75.

    Another Scott

    Crete is neat.  I hope to go back eventually.

    Language is neat, also too.  ;-)

    ObOpenThread:

    Interesting threadlet

    I said some time ago that Sinema in particular needs to be reminded she serves at Biden's pleasure. The wind in Arizona is not at her back and she can fall through the floor if he chooses. https://t.co/copKWB44gK

    — Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) September 12, 2021

    Politics is slow, but stuff does eventually happen.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  76. 76.

    laura

    @SFBayAreaGal: I moved to Sacramento for school in 1994 and fell for this town big time but I still have family and my dearest of friends and so Santa Rosa – and really all of Sonoma County will forever be home

    Spouse is originally from Mill Valley and we will jump at the chance to go to The City. So many of our memories are tied up in the Bay Area.

    All. The. Concerts.

  77. 77.

    Miss Bianca

    @EmbraceYourInnerCrone:

    Like how the weaving machines that made Jacquard connect with computer 80 column card programming decks.

    Funnily enough, I have just embarked on a book called Computing for Ordinary Mortals by one of the BJ commenters here who mentioned it -can’t remember their nym! – and this bit of computing history just got covered in one of the opening chapters!

  78. 78.

    Immanentize

    @Steeplejack: Bruhman sat in his small room on the west of Sighthound Hall. He looked towards the lake gleaming orange with the last touch of the sun. He watched the blue black birds begin their chaotic descents and ascents as if they could not imagine settling at all.

    And Sighthound Hall felt as if it were in that clutch as well. Far above him, Bruhman heard quiet scrapes and knocks from the tower. He could imagine his beloved there, tended to by Mrs. Compson, who everyone called “witch” behind her back. And he heard her son, Maury, climbing the far stairs, probably with some small dinner, wine and laudanum for his love, who was unwell. Was not confinement to the tower the only way to protect the children?

    But they seemed not to notice either their parent’s distress or absence. To Bruhman, they seem to have lost interest in all but the winter cellars near the old stables. Neither place was what Bruhman would consider a “good” place to visit….

  80. 80.

    Cmorenc

    @marklar:

    But ‘C’ is needed in music to use consecutive letters starting with A for scale intervals.  Yeah, yeah so there are twelve intervals and only the first seven consecutive letters are used instead of twelve, with five of the letters also having sharp (or flat if you prefer) variants…bottom line is that music is complicated enough without pedantic substitution of ‘K’ for ‘C’ to make comprehending scales more difficult.

  81. 81.

    Anomalous Cowherd

    I believe that, technically speaking, ancient Phoenician was an abjad rather than an alphabet. Abjads omit vowels, although over time they generally evolve diacritical marks which imply vowel sounds.

  83. 83.

    Nora

    @NotMax:  In shorthand (Gregg), there’s a symbol for the “ch” sound. Also one for the “sh” sound. Both are quick and easy to write.

    I can’t remember the last time I used shorthand, but obviously I still remember it.

  86. 86.

    Ken

    One of my favorite bits of alphabetic trivia is that there were several early orderings of the symbols. In some alternate multiverse we ended up with the “south Semitic” ordering, currently found only in Ge’ez.  “Now I know my E-L-H, aren’t you very proud of me…”

  87. 87.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @Immanentize:

    In the “Ding Dong Ditch” thread? Which comment? All I can see is maybe you’re referring to my comment about having posted about Belmondo’s death?

  88. 88.

    MomSense

    We are  filming music videos in the barn and now the yard is full of people who stop as they go by.  They’re staying quiet and then cheering when they get the signal from the crew that the film has stopped.

  90. 90.

    laura

    @MomSense: Please confirm that Son is playing the shreddingest of all guitars he received from you at Christmas. Word on the street is that it is imbued with magic. I imagine your heart is overflowing with all the good feels right about now, so savor and take in all the joy.

  96. 96.

    FlyingToaster

    @Steeplejack: At school they’d chosen the Binax Now antigen tests, which come in 2-packs and you should test, skip a day, test again.  15 minute wait.  About $25 at Walgreens.

    We used it for the required test before school started.    If you get a positive result go schedule a PCR test (which gets sent away).

  97. 97.

    germy

    BREAKING: President Biden has reportedly told Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi that he's ready to pressure moderate Senate Democrats to change the filibuster rule in order to pass a new voting-rights law.— Jon Cooper ?? (@joncoopertweets) September 12, 2021

  98. 98.

    Miss Bianca

    @A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): I remember staying in Crete in November, and it was warm enough to go swimming! It was a delightful experience – and of course, educational, being that we got to tour Knossos and all. One of the highlights of my hippie-dippie youth-hostelin’ Western Civ 101 backpacking European Grand Tour in the fall of 1988.

  100. 100.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @FlyingToaster:

    Thanks. BinaxNow is what I decided after getting the advice here and doing a little reading. Couldn’t find any—or Ellume—around me. Looks like I’ll be going farther afield tomorrow morning. Web search gave me some leads.

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