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Posted by Aleksandra Wrona

Many people misremember the iconic line, likely confusing the animated Disney film with the original fairy tale.
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Episode 2643: Is This a Dagger Which I See Invite Me?

There's something visceral about daggers. I suppose that's true of anything that can eviscerate you.

But daggers always seem to be more evil than other weapons, such as the noble sword. You can use this to your advantage by having the villains use nasty daggers. A lot of games will have them be less effective or deal less damage than swords, but you don't have to be beholden to such rules. Just have your evil dagger-wielding villain be as effective or moreso than someone fighting with a more powerful weapon, and watch your players react in fear.

aurilee writes:

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

A dagger? Odd thing to focus on at the moment with the rest of the environment, but alright. I'd argue those aren't exactly evil runes on it though. Mostly because the resolution isn't good enough for me to tell that they're anything more than a bunch of vertical lines. A more interesting observation is that it's got a couple key teeth behind the blade tip, which is probably what the GM refers to with the "spiked" descriptor. Perhaps "present this dagger at" is code for "use this key to unlock"; that'd be a neat addition to the treasure hunt comments the party are making for themselves.

As for the second part of the text, I think I can imagine quite a bit. So whatever the marvellous surprises end up being, they'll probably be a disappointment. Unless Kylo figures out the Factory location and has it orbitally bombarded just before the group gets there and can enter. Now that would be a great way to keep the contents all a mystery for people to only imagine.

Transcript

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Posted by Victor Mair

When I was a wee lad and went to bible school each week, I had a hard time comprehending just whom were all of those epistles in the New Testament addressed to.  Of course, there are many other books in the New Testament, a total of 27, but the ones that intrigued me most were the 9 Pauline letters to Christian churches that we refer to as "epistles".  I was most captivated by these 9 books and I wanted to know what kind of people they were, what their communities were like, what their ethnicities were, and, above all, even way back then, what languages they spoke.

These communities were called:

Romans
Corinthians — Paul wrote two epistles to them
Galatians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
Thessalonians — Paul also wrote two epistles to them

I knew who the Romans were, and what language they spoke, so no problem there.  Moreover, I was aware from a sense of architectural history that a Corinthian capital column was a Greek creation.  Several of the others had a Greek ring to them as well.  But the one that attracted my attention above all the others was the letter to the Galatians, who were located in a region of Anatolia known as Galatia.  Somehow Galatians didn't seem to fit the Mediterranean paradigm that I suspected for the other communities.

Only much later did I learn that the Galatians were a type of Gauls, i.e., Celts, who had migrated from what is now France to what is now Türkiye.  What, pray tell, would have driven them there so far from the north to the south, when most population movements during the Holocene Epoch (last ten thousand years) generally were from south to north?

The Gauls and their confrères were outstanding miners.  They mined a variety of minerals, including gold, iron, and tin.  The latter was important in its own right, but also for alloying with copper to produce bronze, the metallurgy of which the Celts were renowned for.  Above all, however, the Celts / Gauls were masters of saltmining, which is reflected in these toponyms:  Hallstatt, Hallein, Halle, G(h)alich.

Even today, though, when I think of Celts, a bucolic picture of shepherds with their flocks comes to mind, and it's not difficult to imagine that, just as the Celts went wandering in search of metal sources, so they were ever in quest of better pastures for their sheep.

It is no wonder that, being the skillful shepherds that they were, the Celts would become the premier wool weavers we know them to be.  It just so happens that one of the textile types they perfected was diagonal twill.  If you add some colored thread into the warp and the weft in a repeated pattern, you get plaid, beloved of the Gaelic Scots still to this day. It is not an accident that the earliest and best preserved plaids in the world are found in the salt mines of the Celtic areas of Europe, as well as in the bogs of northern Europe, whose tannin preserves organic materials, including plaids and other woolen textiles (not to mention human bodies!).  The only other place on earth I know of for the early conservation of woolen textiles, including very early plaids from the same period as those in the northern European bogs and Celtic salt mines of north central Europe, is the Tarim Basin, especially Qizilchoqa (near Qumul [Hami]) and Zaghunluq (near Chärchän [Qiemo]). both of which have highly saline soils and exquisite Bronze Age woolen textiles, including plaids.  I have tasted the deposits exposed in a tunnel 400 meters down at Hallstatt and from the tableland where Ur-David (Chärchän Man) was discovered.  You can use them as table salt to flavor your food.

The Celts / Gauls certainly had a wanderlust, and that would explain what brought them to Anatolia — and other far-flung places.

 

Selected readings

[Thanks to Elizabeth J. W. Barber, J. P. Mallory, and Douglas Q. Adams]

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Posted by Grace Deng

While social media users claimed ICE's budget would increase to $48.5 billion, the actual overall number was even higher.
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Posted by Laerke Christensen

Connecticut is among several states that uses the herbicide Diquat to combat hydrilla, an invasive plant species that grows in water.
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Posted by Jordan Liles

Online users discussed this matter in June and July 2025. Muir began anchoring the ABC News TV program "World News Tonight" in September 2014.
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Posted by Anna Rascouët-Paz

After the U.S. Senate voted to pass the "Big Beautiful Bill," rumors circulated about the consequences of deep cuts to Medicaid.

You think one plus seven seven seven makes two

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 04:55 pm
sovay: (PJ Harvey: crow)
[personal profile] sovay
I was so transfixed by the Bittersweets' "Hurtin' Kind" (1967) that I sat in the car in front of my house listening until it was done. The 1965 original is solid, stoner-flavored garage rock with its keyboard stomp and harmonica wail, but the all-female cover has that guitar line like a Shepard tone, the ghostly descant in the vocals, the singer's voice falling off at the end of every verse: it sounds like an out-of-body experience of heartbreak. The outro comes on like a prelude to Patti Smith.

If I had a nickel for every time I heard two songs about mental unwellness within the same couple of hours, actually I'd be swimming in nickels, but I appreciated the contrast of the slow-rolling dread-flashover of Doechii's "Anxiety" (2025) with Marmozets' "Major System Error" (2017) just crashing in at gale force panic attack. Hat-tip to [personal profile] rushthatspeaks for the former. I must say that I am missing my extinct music blogs much less now that I spend so much time in the car with college radio on.

"Who'll Stand with Us?" (2025) is the most Billy Bragg-like song I have heard from the Dropkick Murphys and a little horrifically timely.

Non-musically, I think I might explode. The curse tablets are not cutting it.

Farm share, week 4

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 05:41 pm
magid: (Default)
[personal profile] magid
Things are getting heavier now…
  • 2 bunches of mixed beets with greens
  • 2 heads of cabbage (I chose medium-small green cabbage over Napa or the frilly cabbage)
  • 10 summer squashes/zucchinis (I chose a mix)
  • 12 pickling cucumbers (I chose smaller ones; I think the big ones get a bit bitter, and the seeds too large for my preference)
  • 2 bunches of dill
  • 1 pound of basil
  • 8 heads of young (uncured) garlic
  • 2 pounds of mixed young lettuce leaves (gorgeous, but 2 pounds is more than I’ll get through, so I swapped 1 pound for another 4 heads of garlic)
  • 8 baby bok choy (I think they’re Shanghai bok choy, because the stems are light green; I chose small ones because really, 8 is plenty)

First thoughts: stir-fried bok choy with garlic, scapes, scallions, some type of mushroom, and tofu. All the green salads. Dilly cucumber salad. Sauted beet greens with lemons and walnuts. Asian-ish cabbage slaw with lime-miso-sesame oil dressing, plus cashews/peanuts, scallions. Roasted beets. Roasted summer squash. Dilly pickles. Pureed basil stored in the fridge under olive oil for later use.

Did Drew Barrymore come out in 2025 announcement?

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 08:37 pm
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Posted by Jordan Liles

Snopes located the origins of the rumor about the actor and talk show host, and found the complete truth.
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Posted by Anna Rascouët-Paz

It is not unusual for models of international repute to obtain this visa for people with "extraordinary abilities."

Commonly Spoken Languages In Toronto.

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 06:12 pm
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Posted by languagehat

Brilliant Maps has a page with two terrific images, one “a colourful map of Toronto’s most widespread languages” shown together, and another, “54 Languages in Toronto,” with separate (tiny) maps for each language showing where in the city each is spoken; they “are both the work of Alex McPhee, aka Pronghorn maps,” and there’s a link to his site, where you can buy copies if you so desire. I do love this sort of thing, and there’s a lot more information at the Brilliant Maps link.

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Posted by Laerke Christensen

Noem said the alleged cannibal was an example of how former President Joe Biden let "the worst of the worst" enter the U.S.

Murderbot TV adaptation good!

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 07:19 am
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So...

I signed up for Apple TV the other day expressly so I and my weekly media-watching buddies could take a break from our usual Asian fare to see their production of Martha Well's Murderbot. (Heaven knows I don't need yet another streaming service, but...) We binge-watched the first 8 half-hour episodes last night.

I am astonished and delighted (and envious) with how well the show has managed so far to stick to the original story -- they are still in the first volume, All Systems Red. So great to see something that isn't part of the endless stream of media retreads and remakes we are plagued with. Casting is pretty great as well -- one could identify nearly all of the characters in their first appearance, before they even opened their mouths.

And they totally get the humor of the story. Granted the tales are action-heavy, but though the Tor book covers are wonderful pieces of art, nothing about them even hints that any humor will be found beyond them.

Given the dry commentary on corporate shenanigans in the stories, I was meta-amused by the fact that Apple streaming won't play on my Chromecast; happily my son the IT support found the way around (going directly from my laptop.)

It looks like the first season of these half-hour episodes will cover All Systems Red; let's hope it is successful enough to go on to another volume and season.

Recommended.

Ta, L.

posted by Lois McMaster Bujold on July, 02
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Posted by Nick Hardinges

The rumor circulated after U.S. President Donald Trump said he deserves the award for helping to hammer out peace deals between warring countries.

Two nations divisible

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 11:12 am
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Posted by Victor Mair

[This is a guest post by Barbara Phillips Long]

There is an interesting sidelight in commentary about an article in the New York Review of Books, which posits that the U.S. is two nations under one government, where the two entities exchange political power. The link to the NYRB (paywalled) article is here.

The Language Log topic comes from the commentary at the Lawyers, Guns and Money blog, which wonders aloud about how the Greek word/concept "polis" gets translated in various languages:

The concept of two nations doesn’t really track with the concept of political power remaining in “the people’s hands,” since the basically mystical concept of “the” people is usually thought, as a matter of political legitimation at least, to be more or less synonymous with the idea of “the” — as in one — nation.

This I think is somewhat obscured by the usages of the English language in regard to the underlying concept. Here’s the official government translation of the Constitution’s preamble into Spanish:

Nosotros, el pueblo de los Estados Unidos, con el fin de formar una Unión más perfecta, establecer la justicia, garantizar la tranquilidad nacional, atender a la defensa común, fomentar el bienestar general y asegurar los beneficios de la libertad para nosotros mismos y para nuestraposteridad, por la presente promulgamos y establecemos esta Constitución para los Estados Unidos de América.

“El pueblo” — literally “the town” — conjures up a more concrete and less metaphysically vague concept than “We the People.” Someone more learned in such matters can no doubt explain how the Greek word “polis” ended up being translated so much more literally in some languages than others, but I think this historical accident, if that’s what it is, could have considerable psychological/practical significance.

(source)

I thought Paul Campos made a good point about how "We, the people" does not convey the same rhetorical flourish in every language. Language Log readers are likely all aware of the pitfalls — and illuminations — of translation, but I confess I am curious about how many and different ways the Preamble and the concept of "polis" are expressed.

 

Selected readings

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Posted by Joey Esposito

The story appeared to originate from a popular YouTube channel that publishes artificial-intelligence slop.
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Posted by Megan Loe

President Donald Trump toured the Florida migrant detention center informally known as "Alligator Alcatraz" on its opening day.

ICYMI | The Most Famous Facelift on TikTok

Wednesday, July 2nd, 2025 07:30 am
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Candice Lim and Kate Lindsay discuss an American woman in her 50s who is going viral for her plastic surgery journey. Michelle Wood is a mom who traveled to Guadalajara to undergo several procedures, including a facelift and a chin implant. She documented her journey before and after the procedure, creating intrigue, curiosity, and surprisingly positive responses online. TikTok reacted similarly when Kylie Jenner revealed the details of her boob job and broke the internet within the same week. So what do Wood and Jenner’s transparency say about the way women are talking about their bodies, and their surgeries, in 2025?

This podcast is produced by Vic Whitley-Berry, Daisy Rosario, Candice Lim, and Kate Lindsay.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

(no subject)

Tuesday, July 1st, 2025 09:01 pm
ursamajor: Tajel on geeks (geeks: love them)
[personal profile] ursamajor
When [livejournal.com profile] belladonna shares a tweet that got screencapped and put up on Insta:

@ madisontayt_: imagining a vegan who won't drink nyc's tap water because of the microscopic shrimp
@ TheWappleHouse: The what now


and I was like "Yeah! There was this whole thing about NYC's tap water possibly being not kosher because of copepods in the water supply a few years back. Which might've meant that NYC bagels, whose lauded taste and texture were credited to the tap water used to boil them, were potentially treyf. But then other rabbis weighed in and said as long as the proportion of these microscopic crustaceans was less than 1/60th of the total volume, it was okay by the principle of בטל בשישים (bitul b'shishim/beteil beshishim), thank you Shabot6000."



... and then I realized "a few years back" was 21 years ago.
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Posted by Jordan Liles

An assistant news director for Florida's Voice, a publication promoted by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, reported this on X in late June 2025.
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Posted by Jordan Liles

Online users needlessly warned family members, friends and social media followers of a years-old, fabricated cyber threat in the summer of 2025.
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Posted by Jack Izzo

Snopes was able to identify the individuals in the photo, but the social media account that posted it appeared to have been deleted.
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Posted by Nur Ibrahim

The former president did not say Democrats scream "the sky is falling" when Republicans cut the government budget.
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Posted by Joey Esposito

DHS posted the image in support of a new migrant detention facility that conservatives dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."
sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)
[personal profile] sovay
Rabbit, rabbit! I had to go for my annual physical this afternoon, but I stopped by Porter Square Books afterward to collect a book for my mother and look what was part of their summer sea-display:



I had wanted to write about so many queer films for June, but the month disappeared. Fortunately before we ran out of the formal observance of Pride, [personal profile] rushthatspeaks and I made it to Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Querelle (1982) at the Coolidge. It was adapted from the 1947 novel by Jean Genet, but I have never seen anything onscreen that more resembled the novels of Chip Delany. Meant in sincere compliment, it is one of the sweatiest films I have ever seen. It looks like it smells like a porno theater. Its antihero is straight out of Tom of Finland with his sailor's tight, tight white trousers and muscular cleavage revealed by the barest excuse for an A-shirt, his boyish, chiseled, louche face under his insolently cocked bachi in the sullen, enticing haze that never varies from the sodium-smoke of just after sunset or just before dawn, a perpetual cruising hour. The sea-wall of its fantasized Brest is studded with stone phalli, anatomically complete with slit and balls. All graffiti in town is dicks. The chanteuse of the dive bar sings Wilde like Dietrich, but some of the construction workers with their buff hard hats are playing video games while the naval lieutenant who pines for Querelle records his poetically criminal obsessions into a portable tape recorder. The bare-chested, leather-vested cop at the bar actually is a cop outside of it, where he looks just as fetishistic in his fedora and black leather trenchcoat. Every interaction between men looks like a negotiation or a seduction whether it is one or not, although on some level it always is, regardless of the no-homo excuses manufactured to allow their bodies to meet. Constantly, metaphysically, literally, this movie fucks. Its hothouse, bathhouse sexuality must have come in just under the cutting wire of AIDS. I have no idea what it would offer a viewer with no sexual or aesthetic interest in men except its philosophy, although as my husband notes the philosophy is actually quite good, deconstructing its hard masc signifiers as much as it gets off on them, dissolving in and out of the words and ultimately the life of Genet; the theatricality of its interlocked sets and swelteringly flamboyant lighting would look entirely natural on the stage. It quotes Plutarch and stages a hand job that without a glimpse of cock would have caused mass apoplexies in the Breen office. (Send it back in time, please.) It was my introduction to Fassbinder and if I had seen it as an adolescent, I imagine it would have had much the same effect as Tanith Lee. It was introduced by the series programmer wearing leather in its honor and a T-shirt for Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (1963). It made a superb date movie.

Birthday Loot 2025.

Tuesday, July 1st, 2025 07:58 pm
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Posted by languagehat

As I anticipate my chicken curry and lemon bars, I’ll mention some of the gifts that have come my way. There was a group of movies, for some reason all Asian: two by Tsai Ming-Liang (Rebels of the Neon God and Vive L’amour), Mother by Bong Joon-ho (I loved his Parasite and Memories of Murder), and the new 2-Blu-ray Criterion edition of Seven Samurai (replacing my ancient DVD), one of my favorite movies (I last watched it in conjunction with a reread of The Last Samurai and am due for another viewing). Oh, and I almost forgot Gimme Shelter, one of the greatest and most troubling of rock movies. My lovely and generous wife gave me this Mingus box set (7 CDs!). And I got a book of great Hattic interest: Taiwan Travelogue: A Novel, by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (her name has the tone marks on the cover, the first time I remember seeing that). The NY Times review by Shahnaz Habib (archived) gives an idea of what I mean about its interest:

Aoyama Chizuko, a Japanese novelist, is traveling around Taiwan with O Chizuru, a brilliant translator with deep knowledge of the island’s layers of culture. Having received an official invitation to conduct a lecture series, Chizuko plans to spend a year on the island writing travel articles for Japanese publications. […]

Who better to answer these questions than a translator, adept in the language and culture of the colony and the colonizer? Translation, after all, can be both a capitulation and an act of resistance to the soft power of an empire. Having mastered the master’s toolbox, the translator understands precisely how cultural domination works.

Perhaps this is why Yang fashions “Taiwan Travelogue” as a nesting doll of translations. Richly detailed conversations about food, for example, serve as code for the growing erotic tension between Chizuko and Chizuru, which remains unspoken.

Beyond this, the book itself is presented as a fictional translation of a Japanese novel written by Chizuko years after she returns to Nagasaki. According to this framing device, the novel was published in Japan in 1954, and translated into Mandarin twice, first by Chizuru, and then decades later by Yang. There are multiple afterwords and many footnotes from both fictional and real translators. It all amounts to a virtuosic performance of literary polyphony.

In her disorientingly convincing afterword, Yang, writing as the book’s fictional translator, recounts how she discovered Chizuko’s novel by following a breadcrumb trail of archival material. (To complicate matters further, Yang Shuang-zi is actually a pseudonym, but, for your sanity and mine, I refer to her as the author in this review.)

A few pages later, the novel’s English-language translator, Lin King, writes in her own (real) afterword that she consulted the Japanese translation of “Taiwan Travelogue” for help with certain terms, noting the irony of turning to “the Japanese translation of a Taiwanese novel that claims to be a Taiwanese translation of a Japanese novel.”

I imagine I’ll be posting about it in due course.

Update. A couple of later-arriving novels: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward and A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar.

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Posted by Taija PerryCook

“They said, ‘We’re going to shoot them. Is one o’clock OK?' I said it’s fine," Trump said during a recent NATO summit.

OUT: Project Blue Beam. IN: Project Blue Meme.

Tuesday, July 1st, 2025 04:07 pm
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It never fails: something weird happens in the sky and suddenly everyone is talking Project Blue Beam. Do they ever stop to consider it may be the work of Project Blue MEME? 



I hope you'll join us for the next chapter in the Lucifer's Technologies series, The Occult History of Artificial Intelligence. This one's going to blow the brains straight out of your skull, so remember to don protective headgear.


Prepare to be lonely then.



















Piers Morgan and Susan Boyle are getting married?

Tuesday, July 1st, 2025 02:38 pm
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Posted by Aleksandra Wrona

A rumor falsely claimed the English broadcaster and Scottish singer were engaged, using AI-generated images to support the story.

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