ok, so it's quiet because i can't watch tv
Jul. 3rd, 2025 12:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tsuki_no_baraso yes. i'm all moved in. :D the movers came like fifteen minutes early - i was ready for them - i showed them around the place and said "everything goes except the ficus" because i wanted to put it in my car and they were very efficient and didn't have to take the legs off my couch to get it out the door! (the guys who moved me in did.) but did have to disassemble my bed and take the legs off my dining room table. it took them five hours and fifteen minutes to move all my shit. my sister came over to be moral support and after the movers were done she went back to the old place with me to eat lunch (we sat on the dining room floor because, you know, there was no furniture) and clean up. she cleaned the stove, i swept and wiped down the kitchen counters. there was A LOT of dust under my bed. O.O and then my roommate showed up to get rid of the plant pots on the back porch - why she didn't do it sooner i have no idea - we'd had this whole conversation last week about when i would be around and i thought she needed me to let her in because she'd turned in her key, but no. she still had it. so why did she have to come over when i was there? who knows! she's someone else's wtf-magnet now.
i tried to set up my internet and cable in the new place, failed utterly, and spent like an hour on the phone with comcast while they tried to fix it. (and failed utterly.) a tech was supposed to come today but is apparently coming tomorrow? and in the meantime i hooked into some free-floating unsecured wifi so i could get online today to get some work done. after comcast was unable to help me my sister and i went out for dinner, came home, discovered the internet had not magically turned itself on, she went home, i unpacked some clothes so i'd have something to wear. because sunday
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tamalinn had a birthday brunch (mexican food, delicious) and then we went to her house to play games and pet the dog, and after that i went to the grocery store - it's right around the corner from me! but i might still go to the store that's closer to the old apartment - and sat outside the coffeeshop that's near the aforementioned former grocery store and eventually went home.because i couldn't count on the home internet i went in to work monday and tuesday, enjoyed the a/c, told fellow admins about the move, met the new admin (admin f) who replaced one of the admins c who just retired, tried to figure out the best commute. it takes longer than it used to and i'm at the mercy of the bus schedule but overall it's not bad. and i used to take the bus when i worked for tax people so it's not like this is totally unfamiliar.
so far i have unpacked:
a wardrobe box full of coats (like i need them in this weather :| )
a wardrobe box full of clothes and art
a wardrobe box full of random bedroom stuff
almost all my suitcases (except the one with my shoes in it) (see below)
dvd's
cd's (altho i seem to have lost a bunch of classical cd's)
silverware
kitchen knives (so i can cut up a lettuce for a giant salad)
the salad spinner (so i can wash the aforementioned lettuce)
two (2) cereal bowls
the teapot
all the bathroom stuff
a box of clothes and hangers
i have not unpacked:
a bowl large enough for the aforementioned salad
a can opener
...which is only important because i like chickpeas in my salad but i have no way to open the can. oy.
things i don't love:
there's no overhead light in the bedroom or the living room
it gets very dark in the bedroom without a light
there's not as much cross-breeze as i was hoping for
the ceilings are low
i can't put hooks over the top of the doors or the doors won't close
which mostly means i can't hang my shoe thing on the closet door if i want to close the closet door (which i do) but if i don't hang my shoes i don't know where to put them. the closet ain't that big. this will require some creative thinking. also another couple of lamps.
(there's no cross-breeze in the bedroom but there is in the kitchen! which is nice altho not helpful when i want fresh air to sleep in.)
i miss the front porch in the old place and i haven't met any dogs yet and it's very weird living alone and not having to share the kitchen or the bathroom and not having to deal with someone else's clutter. i haven't even unpacked enough to make my own clutter. it's also really quiet. every so often i can hear someone out in the hallway or outside and this afternoon i could hear someone vacuuming in the apartment next door but otherwise it's kind of like i have the whole building to myself. but so far i like this place. i think i'll stay. :D
in totally other news the old guard 2 (2 old 2 guard, mamma mia here we guard again) is out and i know this because gif sets are appearing on tumblr. no one tell me nothing. i don't want to know until i see it myself.
Not a GREAT week when it comes to ending sexual violence.
Jul. 2nd, 2025 09:08 pmmuccamukkBrad Pitt, who is known to have struck his wife and his children then perpetuated lawfare on them for years to the point where several of his kids no longer want contact with him, has the number one movie right now. Best opening weekend of his career. Most of the coverage doesn't even mention the violence.
On the anniversary of Tortoise Media publishing allegations of rape and sexual assault against Neil Gaiman, Netflix is dropping season two of The Sandman. Meanwhile, Gaiman is forcing one of his victims into arbitration. Not because she's libling him, but because she broke an NDA. Everything's gone very quiet, which I assume is what he wanted.
Some thoughts from smarter people:
Rebecca Solnit: Cynicism Is the Enemy of Action.
Tarana Burke: Tarana Burke doesn’t define #MeToo’s success by society’s failure.
Some people want to judge the movement on specific outcomes, so when a case is overturned, Burke said, “people are like, ‘Oh the #MeToo movement has failed.’” Instead, she said, such outcomes are proof of the difficulty of the work.
“It’s not about the failure of the movement; it’s the failure of the systems,” Burke explained. “These systems are not designed to help survivors, they’re not designed to give us justice, they’re not designed to end sexual violence.”
“When we bind ourselves to the outcomes of these cases, we are constantly up and down with our disappointment, our highs and lows,” Burke continued. “What they tell us is just how much work we need to change the laws and the policies but most importantly, to change the culture that creates the people who commit, who perpetrate acts of harm.”
My alt-Mummy film
Jul. 2nd, 2025 11:51 pmjames_davis_nicollImagine an Egyptian film company wanting to make a movie about idiots waking a horror in Canada that only the Egyptian lead can resolve.
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(no subject)
Jul. 2nd, 2025 11:38 pmconuly posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
agonyauntOur house sits on a heavily wooded hill, and there isn’t much in terms of street lights—and no sidewalks. Though there are only a few houses on our bend of the road, we get people speeding through. We have new neighbors. The mother’s behavior is going to end in tragedy.
The neighbors have several very small children. The mom, for some unholy reason, thinks nothing of letting them bike in the street. She lets her babies ride around well ahead of her as she strolls leisurely several yards behind. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it myself.
My husband has already had a close call with one of the kids. He was backing out and the toddler zoomed right behind the bumper. Luckily, my husband was paying attention and was fast to put his foot on the brake. Even going as slow as he was, just a few miles per hour, it would have been a tragedy if he hadn’t been alert.
The mother’s reaction was to lay into my husband for not being careful enough! The kicker is that she said her kids have a right to play in the street. (There is a park five blocks away, but that is too far for her to go, apparently.) My husband said it was a bad conversation.
What do we do here? It would haunt me if one of these kids got hit because their mother was too lazy to care.
—Blind Corner
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Who were the Galatians? How did they get where they were?
Jul. 3rd, 2025 01:49 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
languagelog_feedWhen 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
- "Roman curse tablets" (1/24/25) — Gaulish inscriptions
- "An early fourth century AD historical puzzle involving a Caucasian people in North China" (1/25/19)
[Thanks to Elizabeth J. W. Barber, J. P. Mallory, and Douglas Q. Adams]
Daily Check-in
Jul. 2nd, 2025 06:02 pmstarwatcher posting in fandom_checkinThis is your check-in post for today. The poll will be open from midnight Universal or Zulu Time (8pm Eastern Time) on Wednesday, July 2, to midnight on Thursday, July 3. (8pm Eastern Time).
How are you doing?
I am OK.
12 (54.5%)
I am not OK, but don't need help right now.
10 (45.5%)
I could use some help.
0 (0.0%)
How many other humans live with you?
I am living single.
7 (31.8%)
One other person.
9 (40.9%)
More than one other person.
6 (27.3%)
Please, talk about how things are going for you in the comments, ask for advice or help if you need it, or just discuss whatever you feel like.
ten. good. things.
Jul. 2nd, 2025 11:22 pmkaberett(Yeah I'm struggling with the ukpol news at the moment, and feeling especially bleak about this FOI response in particular. Maybe I will manage to pull together a post of useful "please write to your MP about the UC/PIP bill" tomorrow, given I've got them all open in tabs to do so anyway.)
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[ SECRET POST #6753 ]
Jul. 2nd, 2025 06:08 pmcase posting in fandomsecrets⌈ Secret Post #6753 ⌋
Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.
01.
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Notes:
Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 13 secrets from Secret Submission Post #965.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.
You think one plus seven seven seven makes two
Jul. 2nd, 2025 04:55 pmsovayIf 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
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.
(no subject)
Jul. 2nd, 2025 10:31 pmhunninghamIt's been almost 30 years since Tony Blair's landslide victory. And I am still pissed off about the way he & his government dropped the issue of proportional representation as soon as they got into power.
Still pissed off about Tony Blair full-stop. Not sure what I expected - that he'd get elected and then nip into a handy phone booth & come out wearing his 'S for Socialist' t-shirt?
JR Dawson launch party!
Jul. 2nd, 2025 04:41 pmmrissaMy friend J.R. Dawson is launching their second book, The Lighthouse at the End of the World, and I get to be part of the festivities! We'll be at Moon Palace Books at 6:00 p.m. on July 29, having a lovely conversation about this book and the previous book and other stories and life in general, and you can come join in the fun!
