Leah

@dreamsofvenus

Linguist in LA. Vitam faciunt balnea vina Venus.

337 Siguiendo273 Seguidores830 Publicaciones

Bluesky

¿Es tu perfil?Reclámalo y dreamsofvenus.dirty.social es tuyo.Reclamar perfil

Leah@dreamsofvenus· 3d

I would never miss a chance to share my language bookshelf!

Leah@dreamsofvenus· 18d

Why is facebook pushing posts from groups that I'm not in with AI slop images protesting AI data centers, what is even going on here

Photo-style image that's obviously AI generated, with a picture intended to show Arizona natural beauty I guess. It's all well rendered in the details but the totality is very weird and chaotic. Superimposed in the middle of says "Arizona, Not For Sale Not worth giving up an inch of this to a data center"

The image is screen shotted from Facebook and over the image at the bottom you can see the first few lines of text from the post which say: "Texas residents are increasingly pushing back against the idea that every stretch of Arizona desert ... should be turned into a massive data center."

Presumably it says Texas first because someone for some reason is churning these out at scale for every state and region, and the name of the game is slop quantity not quality.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jul 13

Don't patronize me, Google

Screenshot of an email from Google informing me that my website got 20 clicks in the last 28 days

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jul 7

Nice argument. Unfortunately I have already depicted myself as the smug Soviet soldier in a snappy jacket, and you as the bedraggled German soldier who just surrendered at Stalingrad.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jun 15

Fantastic thread. I had no idea this was a thing. Delighted that my home state Arizona makes it on the board. Even better, that led to me finding on google maps an Arizona Fried Chicken in Indonesia with this logo

Photo of a drink cup from AFC, with the name of the chain and a rooster (?) with a sheriff hat in front of some saguaros.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jun 11

🤔

From the Wikipedia page for the Rebecca Riots: "The accepted leader of the first protests, Thomas Rees (Twm Carnabwth), wore women's clothes when leading attacks. Some versions of the story say that these were borrowed from a woman called Rebecca living near his home at the foot of the Preseli Hills. The story states that this woman was an old maid and her clothes were borrowed because she was the only woman tall enough and large enough in the village. Local records do not bear this out—and the wearing of women's clothes was an established part of traditional Welsh justice (the Ceffyl Pren, 'wooden horse'), of which Twm Carnabwth is remembered as a notoriously enthusiastic participant."

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jun 1

Shared on fb by my former prof. Love the implication that linguistics and intelligence are polar opposites

Photo of a military recruitment office in Brooklyn. One panel says: "From linguistics to intelligence there are a lot of cool jobs"

Leah@dreamsofvenus· May 26

I'm learning so much here

An entry from the Parvum Verborum Novatorum Lexicum: "hot pants" are translated by "brevíssimae bracae femíneae"

Leah@dreamsofvenus· May 23

Current state of languages you can get voting materials in here in LA county

Photo of our voting sticker, which has the phrase "I voted!" in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Tagalog, Russian, Armenian, Farsi, Gujarati?, Japanese, Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, Burmese, Bengali?, Indonesian, Mongolian and Telugu.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· May 21

Fantastic bit of historic trivia from the Jewish Language Project

Leah@dreamsofvenus· May 11

Plenty of tough desert for sure, with real water and energy concerns. But IDK, here's a random Wikipedia photo showing the view along the river from a downtown bridge in Nevada's 8th largest city. Looks like there's space and resources for a couple more people in Elko

Photo from the Wikipedia page for Elko, Nevada. It shows a river flowing peacefully with trees and green grass on each side, and small hills or mountains in the distance. There is a bridge and some signs far in the distance down the river but otherwise you wouldn't know this was an inhabited area at all.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· May 11

extremely funny thing to say about Nevada specifically

Population density map of Nevada showing that almost all of the state has a population of less than 1 person per square mile

Leah@dreamsofvenus· May 8

Important LA transit news

Screenshot from a news article about the completion of the extension for the Purple line which they have for some reason renamed the D line:

"Metro officials emphasized the convenience of avoiding traffic while traveling underneath Wilshire Boulevard.

'You don’t have to sit in traffic,' Stanley said. 'You can ride the D.'"

Leah@dreamsofvenus· May 7

Semantics 1 instructors: time to update your "Who is the current king of France?" examples

Paragraph from the article linked by OP: “In [Montaclair's] view, the medal is not a forgery. A forgery implies that there is a genuine medal. As the genuine philology medal does not exist, his medal cannot be a forgery,” Lallois said.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Apr 23

Happy birthday to a real one

Text of the poem "Telemachus' Detachment":

When I was a child looking
at my parents' lives, you know
what I thought? I thought
heartbreaking. Now I think
heartbreaking, but also
insane. Also
very funny.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Apr 16

If you let me write a website for kids this is the kind of shit I would come up with

Screenshot from kiddle.co which is apparently a Kids Encyclopedia. Presumably some kind of scrape/transform with LLMs using Wikipedia data? I say that because for some reason they have an article on the Old English medical spell/prayer/recipe "wið færstice." This is the text of the first two paragraphs of the article:

"Wið færstice is an old medical text written in Old English. It's found in a collection called Lacnunga, which is kept at the British Library. The name Wið færstice means 'against a sudden or sharp pain'.

Long ago, people believed that sudden pains, like a sharp stitch, could be caused by witches, elves, or other spirits. This old charm was meant to help cure such pains. While some experts think it might have been for rheumatism, it could have been for other kinds of sudden pain too."

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Apr 13

Did everyone else know that Francisco Franco styled himself "protector of Islam" and sponsored a hajj during the Civil War?

Paragraph from an article in the London Review of Books: "In 1937, Franco sponsored a hajj to Mecca. To transport pilgrims, his government took the Spanish steamship Dómine (‘O Lord’), outfitted it with a mosque, and renamed it al-Maghrib al-Aqsa, the Arabic for Morocco. On board, the Spanish government organised Sufi liturgies and ritual sessions of dhikr, the invocation of God’s name. Styled as the ‘protector of Islam’, Franco met with the pilgrims in Seville, in the Royal Alcázar’s Islamicate throne room, where he delivered a speech framing Spain as a new Mecca. In the Arabic translation, Franco speaks in Quranic idioms; the general, al-khaniral, himself becomes Muslim. ‘It is difficult to overstate the sheer political strangeness of this moment,’ Eric Calderwood has written. For the Francoists, the appeal to ‘Hispano-Arab’ unity was a way to frame Spanish colonialism as superior to its counterpart in France, a foreign invader that used tactics of divide and rule against Arabs and Berbers to destroy Moroccan unity. (The Spanish colonial regime’s support of the Moroccan nationalist movement – legalising political parties and even financing several of them – paved the way for Moroccan independence in 1956.)"

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Apr 13

We don't talk enough about how the old lady whispering hush appears to have a full set of Loebs

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Mar 31

this post on tumblr really nailed the vibe for tdov this year

Screenshot with text that says "Happy trans day of visibility!!!! 🎉🩷🤍🩵🎉". Underneath is a still from the Lord of the Rings movie showing Frodo collapsed in a miserable hear on some rocks in Mordor or somewhere while the light from the Black Tower shines on him. He looks like he is extremely not enjoying this moment of visibility.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Mar 19

Marianne Williamson tweet from 2019 saying that love won the Battle of Stalingrad

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Mar 15

Mixed bag but yes absolutely a lot of that. IIRC one guy just left for a full time Wehrmacht propaganda job, before resuming his academic work after 1945. Then you have cases like whatever this is.

Translated snippet from the German Wikipedia page for Martin Schede: "Schede had also been president of the German Oriental Society (DMG) since 1939. The Aryan Paragraph was finally introduced there in 1940. He negotiated with the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) to have its "Turkestan Working Group," whose main task was the training of military mullahs for certain SS and Wehrmacht troops , incorporated into the DMG. This so-called "field mullah" complex belonged to the "Reich Foundation for Regional Geography," which the SS had been operating under various names since the end of 1943. The planned integration into the DMG, which was negotiated during 1944 and to which Schede had agreed according to SS records, did not materialize due to the war."

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Feb 21

*Yamnaya vampire voice* Actually that one wasn't ours

Screenshot showing the etymology section from the Wiktionary page for sabulum (Latin word for gravel): "Traditionally derived from Proto-Indo-European *sámh₂-dʰ- (compare Ancient Greek ἄμαθος (ámathos), ψάμμος (psámmos), English sand, and possibly Old Armenian աւազ (awaz)) with a diminutive suffix -ulum. However, according to the EIEC, such a reconstruction is phonotactically impossible. More recent scholarship considers the Latin to be from a European substrate, with the original form *(p)sam- or *sab⁽ʰ⁾-. Under this view, the terms listed with *sámh₂-dʰ- are cognate and derived from the same substrate continuum, but not the ones listed with *sem(h₂)-."

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 21

Average linguist I fear

History section from the Volapük Wikipedia page: "Volapük was first created by Johann Martin Schleyer, who was a Roman Catholic priest. As Schleyer met an old German peasant who could could not write to his son due to the linguistic barrier, he was very symphathetic, causing him to decide that there should be a means of international communication. He first created a 'National alphabet', which could express the sounds of every language in the world. However, his alphabet system did not gain any recognition, which caused him to develop insomnia. During one sleepless night, he believed that God told him not to despair, and had called him to create an international auxiliary language. Schleyer first published a sketch of Volapük in May 1879 in Sionsharfe, a Catholic poetry magazine of which he was editor. This was followed in 1880 by a full-length book in German. Schleyer himself did not write books on Volapük in other languages, but other authors soon did, such as Comprehensive Volapük Grammar by Alfred A. Post, A Complete Grammar of Volapük by A. K. Linderfelt, and A Handbook of Volapük by Andrew Drummond."

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 13

The mighty Santa Cruz, pictured here at near-peak flow

Aerial photo of the Santa Cruz river flowing through the outskirts of Tucson. Well, not so much flowing. The channel is mostly dry and dusty but you can see a little trickle in the middle that just kind of sadly stops and disappears. There's also an area in the channel where a few green plants have managed to grow, standing out from the beige desert dirt.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 11

Joots!

High heel calf boots made of denim. Honestly I don't know how to alt text this in a way that can convey how bananas this article of clothing is.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 10

Choosing signs for tomorrow

Photo of posters on a wood floor: "Only Losers Work For ICE"; "Fuck ICE", "Dykes Against ICE", "Quo usque tandem abutere Donalde patientia nostra?"

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 7

Come to think of it, they went after the Greeks in that hearing too!

Testimony continues:

"MRS. FLANAGAN: Put in the record that he was the greatest dramatist in the period immediately preceding Shakespeare.

MR. STARNES: Put that in the record because the charge has been made that this article of yours is entirely Communistic, and we want to help you.

MRS. FLANAGAN: Thank you. That statement will go in the record.

MR. STARNES: Of course, we had what some people call ‘Communists’ back in the days of the Greek theater.

MRS. FLANAGAN: Quite true.

MR. STARNES: And I believe Mr. Euripides was guilty of teaching class consciousness also, wasn’t he?

MRS. FLANAGAN: I believe that was alleged against all of the Greek dramatists.

MR. STARNES: So we cannot say when it began."

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 7

Brings to mind the House Unamerican Activities Committee hearing where they investigated whether Christopher Marlowe was a Communist

Screenshot showing HUAC testimony between Representative Starnes and Halley Flanagan of the Federal Theater Project:

"[Starnes quoting Flanagan:] ... They intend to remake a social structure without the help of money—and this ambition alone invests their undertaking with a certain Marlowesque madness.” You are quoting from this Marlowe. Is he a Communist?

MRS. FLANAGAN: I am very sorry. I was quoting from Christopher Marlowe.

MR. STARNES: Tell us who Marlowe is, so we can get the proper reference, because that is all that we want to do.

MRS. FLANAGAN: Put in the record that he was the greatest dramatist in the period immediately preceding Shakespeare.

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 1

Most extraordinary of all to me (but tucked in a corner you could easily miss!) was a set of tablets, including the Tripod Tablet that proved Ventris' analysis of Linear B as Greek!

ke-re-a2 *201 VAS[
ti-ri-po-de , a3-ke-u , ke-re-si-jo , we-ke *201VAS 2 ti-ri-po , e-me , po-de , o-wo-we *201VAS 1 ti-ri-po , ke-re-si-jo , we-ke , a-pu , ke-ka-u-me-no[
qe-to *203VAS 3 di-pa , me-zo-e , qe-to-ro-we *202VAS 1 di-pa-e , me-zo-e , ti-ri-o-we-e *202VAS 2 di-pa , me-wi-jo , qe-to-ro-we *202VAS 1 [
di-pa , me-wi-jo , ti-ri-jo-we *202VAS 1 di-pa , me-wi-jo , a-no-we *202VAS 1

Leah@dreamsofvenus· Jan 1

Rounded out the year by visiting the extraordinary "Kingdom of Pylos" exhibit at the Getty Villa, which included treasures from the Griffin Warrior's tomb - apparently their first time outside Europe.