Leah

@dreamsofvenus.bsky.social

267 Followers 335 Following

Linguist in LA. Vitam faciunt balnea vina Venus.

Screenshot of an email from Google informing me that my website got 20 clicks in the last 28 days
Black and white photo showing that
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.
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."
Photo of a military recruitment office in Brooklyn. One panel says: "From linguistics to intelligence there are a lot of cool jobs"
An entry from the Parvum Verborum Novatorum Lexicum: "hot pants" are translated by "brevíssimae bracae femíneae"
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.
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.
Population density map of Nevada showing that almost all of the state has a population of less than 1 person per square mile
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.'"
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.
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.
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."
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.)"
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.
Marianne Williamson tweet from 2019 saying that love won the Battle of Stalingrad
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."
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)-."
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."
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.
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.
Photo of posters on a wood floor: "Only Losers Work For ICE"; "Fuck ICE", "Dykes Against ICE", "Quo usque tandem abutere Donalde patientia nostra?"
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."
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.
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
Pure gold keftiu cup from the Griffin Warrior's tomb (sadly smooshed when part of the tomb collapsed.) Egyptian art shows Minoans carrying vessels just like this.
A letter from Norbert Hirschhorn of Minneapolis: "An example of the woes of indexing known to many paediatricians was mentioned in the New York Times obituary of Waldo Nelson, author of the Nelson Textbook of Paediatrics, in March 1997. 'The book was a family affair. Dr Nelson would call out items from each page as his wife and three children wrote them down on index cards. The children were not eager to help, but Dr Nelson insisted that it was a contribution to their education. In humorous retribution, his daughter Ann introduced a line in the index. Under ‘birds, for the,’ she listed the entire book, pages 1-1413.' Nelson insisted that the entry was removed from subsequent editions."
La moneda más grande del mundo, según Guinness. Sí es muy grande.
Screenshot from Spotify showing "Compilation: The Civil War (Original Soundtrack Recording)"
Photo from our dining room. My wife sits with our toddler on her knee. Two menorahs are lit on the table, each with one light for the first night plus the shamash.
"Personal life" section of the Wikipedia page for Vincent Kosuga, one of the perpetrators of the onion fraud that led to the Onion Futures Act: "The son of a Russian Jew who converted to Catholicism, Kosuga was a devout Catholic. He donated a significant amount of his fortune to the church, and was rewarded with private audiences with three popes. Kosuga carried a .38 caliber pistol and a billy club with him at all times. He drove stock cars in his spare time and was a licensed pilot. He once survived a plane crash near Oswego, New York when the plane he was flying ran out of fuel mid-flight. He was left in a body cast after the crash, but made a quick recovery."
Text from the first paragraphs of the Wikipedia article titled "Onion Futures Act": "The Onion Futures Act is a United States law banning the trading of futures contracts on onions as well as 'motion picture box office receipts'. In 1955, two onion traders, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga, cornered the onion futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The resulting regulatory actions led to the passing of the act on August 28, 1958. As of May 2025, it remains in effect. The law was amended in 2010 to add motion picture box office futures to the list of banned futures contracts, in response to lobbying efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America."
Screenshot from the article linked in the previous comment: "Maintain meds. Exercise can give you a huge leg up on your ADHD symptoms, but it doesn't replace your medication. Don't stop your other treatments unless your doctor says it's OK."
Screenshot from the Wikipedia page for George Murray. It describes Charles Stuart as "a young man brought up in Italy whose first language was French, and whose mother was Polish."
Screenshot showing text from one paragraph in the "Bees in Mythology" Wikipedia page: "Bees have a special status for Albanians. The bee is considered a sacred animal, associated with human life. When an animal ceases to live, Albanians use the verb ngordh or cof; when a bee ceases to live, they use the verb vdes (which is used to refer to human death). Meaning that for Albanians bees are beings of a higher caste, like humans. The bee also has a special status in the Albanian customary law – the Kanun – which dedicates specific laws that deal with beehive possession, damage and theft, the value of the bee, and the ownership of swarms of bees."
Me standing in a protest crowd in a park, with my daughter in a stroller. She has a sign she made with crayon scribbles, and I have one that says "If Not Fascism Then Why Fascism Shape?"
Screenshot of part of the Wiktionary page for the Old English section of the word "os": "The genitive plural ēsa (attested in ēsa gescot 'the shot of the ēse') and names such as Esegar display i-mutation, despite being a u-stem. This is likely a fossilization from an earlier stage between Proto-West Germanic *ansu and early Old English *ons, in which i-mutation was applied to the attested declined forms due to the word’s archaic meaning, rather than its active usage."
Photo of a sling stone used in the siege of Perusia during a civil war (41-40 BCE). It is carved with the letters OCTAVI FELAS: "Hey Octavian, you suck dick!"
Photo of a sheet showing three variants of a glyph. Pronounced ohl (heart) or waj (tamal/masa).
Screenshot from the Wikipedia article on Navajo grammar: "To compare with English, Navajo has no single verb that corresponds to the English word to give. To say the equivalent of Give me some hay!, the Navajo verb níłjool (non-compact matter (NCM)) must be used, while for Give me a cigarette! the verb nítįįh (slender stiff object (SSO)) must be used. The English verb to give is expressed by eleven different verbs in Navajo, depending on the characteristics of the given object."
Photo showing some text from a recent piece in the London Review of Books: "The celebrated cavalry officer Colonel Burnaby, who had volunteered for the campaign [against the Mahdi], was heard shouting 'Isn't this fine sport, my boy,' just before being fatally stabbed in the neck."
Translated first lines from SM I 42, a spell to make Gorgonia daughter of Nilogenia fall in love with Sophia, daughter of Isara. The text reads: "Fundament of the gloomy darkness, jagged-toothed dog, covered with coiling snakes, turning three heads, traveler in the recesses of the underworld, come, spirit-driver, with the Erinyes, savage with their stinging whips; holy serpents, maenads, frightful maidens, come to my wroth incantations, before I persuade by force this one and you, render him immediately a fire-breathing daemon. Listen and do everything quickly, in no way opposing me in the performance of this action; for you are the governors of the earth."
Illustration from PGM 36. It's a line drawing that I think is a curly-haired guy holding an ankh and restraining a snake. He has a big grinning face drawn on his chest. The style looks like something a cool teenager in the 80s would have drawn and inexplicably the guy also looks like he's leaping off a skateboard.
A screenshot from the Wikipedia article about Cuffay. It says: "He was a significant player in having the Master and Servant Act amended, so employers could no longer have their employees imprisoned if they left their jobs without permission."
A screenshot showing text output from Gemini: "Sonetto del pesco: Gentil arbore, cui vista non ha pare, Quando Aprile ti veste d'un bel fiore, E mostri al mondo il tuo vivo colore, Che l'alma fa sognar fuor di suo stare. Ogni tuo ramo par che voglia amare La dolce luce e 'l suo primo calore; Poi cade il fior, con subito dolore, E nudo torni a l'aria e al suo soffiare. Ma non è morte il tuo gentil perire, Anzi è principio d'una dolce attesa, E 'l frutto nasce ch'a noi fai gradire. Matura il sole, con beltà palesa, La polpa ch'offri senza nulla dire, La grazia tua, ch'in dono s'è distesa. Sonnet of the Peach Tree: O noble tree, whose sight has no compare, When April dresses you in lovely flower, And you display your life-bestowing power, That lifts the soul beyond its earthly care. Your every branch, embracing sun and air, Adores the warmth of that first sunlit hour; Then petals fall in one swift, painful shower, And to the wind you turn, exposed and bare. Yet in this fading no true death we find, But rather, of a sweeter hope, the start, That ripens for the joy of humankind. The sun brings forth, a treasure for the heart, The flesh you offer, generous and kind, And all the grace your silent boughs impart."
A ticket dispenser machine in a pharmacy in Mexico. The sign says "toma tu turno" ("take your turn" -- informal) and the screen directly beneath says "tome su turno" (formal version of the same please).
Photo of me at the Trotsky museum making an exaggerated shrug.
Screenshot of the English-language Wikipedia page for Ernst Schwarz (philologist). The sentence I highlighted reads: "From 1939 to 1941, Schwarz was Dean of the Philological Faculty at Charles University."
Part of a text from the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM XI. 376-96): Charm to induce insomnia: Take a living bat and on the right wing paint with myrrh the following figure, and on the left write the 7 names of the god as well as: "Let her, NN whom NN bore, lie awake until she consents." And so release the bat again. Perform this spell at the waning of the moon when the goddess is in her third night, and the woman will die for lack of sleep, without lasting 7 days. This charm cannot at any time have an antidote. But if you at some time wish one, do not release the bat, but keep it in custody, and do this as well: when you want to release it, wash off with spring water [what] has been written on the wings and release the bird. But do not do this, save for a great intrigue.
Screenshot with some text from a Smithsonian article about early European reactions to the tomato. It reads: "In the 1600s, doctor Richard Surflet translated into English the Maison Rustique, or The Country Farm, a husbandry guide by Charles Estienne and Jean Liebault. The translation says of the tomato, 'This plant is more pleasant to the sight than either to the taste or smell, because the fruit being eaten provoketh loathing and vomiting.'"
"Let us sit here, sit still, Here in the sitting-room until we die; At the step of Death on the walk, rise and go; Leaving to our children's children the beautiful doorway, And this elm, And a blighted earth to till With a broken hoe."
A man standing in front of Glendale City Hall with a sign that says "No Kings" and a very detailed hand-drawn kind of creepy picture that is King John from the Robin Hood animated movie, sucking his thumb, but also has his face kind of merged with Trump's.
Header block from a 1913 Los Angeles Herald opinion piece. There is a photo of the author and the text says: "Ella Wheeler Wilcox Writes On Duties of Mothers: We Must Better the Mothers to Better the Race"
Part of an article from a 1917 edition of the Los Angeles Herald. Most of the image is a photograph of the 18-month-old baby and the text says that she recently won the "Pure Food Show baby contest for eugenics and beauty." It also mentions that she has already appeared in some movies (because after all this is LA.)
Excerpt from Alexander von Humboldt's "Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2". He tells the parrot story discussed in this thread and then the next paragraph is as follows: "We opened, to the great concern of our guides, several mapires, for the purpose of examining attentively the form of the skulls. They were all marked by the characteristics of the American race, with the exception of two or three, which approached indubitably to the Caucasian.... May we suppose that the skulls of European race, which we saw mingled with the skeletons of the natives, and preserved with the same care, were the remains of some Portuguese travellers who had died of sickness, or had been killed in battle? The aversion evinced by the natives for whatever is not of their own race renders this hypothesis little probable. Perhaps fugitive mestizos of the missions of the Meta and Apure may have come and settled near the Cataracts, marrying women of the tribe of the Atures. Such mixed marriages sometimes take place in this zone, though they are more rare than in Canada, and in the whole of North America, where hunters of European origin unite themselves with savages, assume their habits, and sometimes acquire great political influence." After that he describes how they took some skulls, including those of children, and when native folks were distressed about it, tried to convince them that they were animal remains. It cannot be said enough: Fuck this man.
Screenshot from Wikipedia, from the "Phonology" section of the article on the language Taa: "Taa has at least 58 consonants, 31 vowels, and four tones ... or at least 87 consonants, 20 vowels, and two tones ... by many counts the most of any known language if vowels other than oral modal vowels are counted as different from corresponding oral modal vowels... These include 20 (Traill) or 43 (DoBeS) click consonants and several vowel phonations, though opinions vary as to which of the 130 (Traill) or 164 (DoBeS) consonant sounds are single segments and which are consonant clusters."
Text of the poem "Telemachus' Detachment" by Louise Glück: "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."
Wikipedia chart showing the 49 consonant phonemes of Japhug. They include four stop series (voiced, voiceless, aspirated and prenasalized) and continuants at eight places of articulation (all your standards plus retroflex, alveopalatal, palatal and uvular) with only one cell of the matrix empty.