I used to say things like “the virus wants to get inside a host so it can replicate” and my superiors would remind me “now, now, viruses don’t want things, try not to personify them” and I thought it was pedantic because a) it was a good way to convey what I was talking about using colloquial language and b) if I were feeling contrarian I would argue that viruses want to replicate in exactly the same way that humans want to reproduce, which I don’t actually agree with but can steelman decently
but after spending hours grading undergrad biochemistry exams and reading shit like “the mismatch repair mechanism looks at the molecules to decide which strand of DNA is mutated” and “the liver wants to lower blood sugar because it knows we are hungry” I am 100% on team Don’t Personify Viruses Or Anything Else That Doesn’t Have A Brain
someone: if you aren’t a boy or a girl what are you
me:
I’ve been doing some research […] and I’ve found some of the most amazing untranslatable words in the non-American speaking world. Here they are, in no spectacular order.
1. Mamihlapinatapei
This is one of the first words I learned about as an untranslatable word. It’s spoken by using an ancient and primitive language from Chile, in Tierra del Fuego. (Tierra del Fuego, by the way, means “Fire, Having Land/Earth/Dirt, Which Land/Earth/Dirt Is Being This Land/Earth/Dirt”.) The word, mamihlapinatapei, is unfortunately untranslatable.
2. Toska
This is a Russian word. It means… uhhh… it’s sort of like… hm. Well it’s a cool meaning, but you have to know Russian to understand it.
3. Iktsuarpok
The Inuits only have one word for this, and therefore although we can’t know what this word means, we do know that iktsuarpok is neither important nor familiar to the Inuits, otherwise they would have 231 words for it.
4. Shlimazl
This Yiddish word is often used next to schlemiel, both of them meaning something related to each other. The meaning is something close to… uhhhh… dammit this article is hard to write.
5. Friolero
No idea. Looks Spanish.
6. The
You might recognize this word, but there is no English translation of it. It is similar to a and an but it has a nuanced meaning that those two words just don’t quite capture.
7. Tartle
Scots talk funny, don’t they?
8. Torschlusspanik
Germans use this word. You might notice it has the word panik in it which is close to English panic but those other parts mean some other sorts of things.
9. Wabi-Sabi
In Japanese culture, you have… there are these… ummm… It rhymes with itself. Like that other untranslatable word Oingo Boingo.
10. Hwæt
This Old English word used to be English when English wasn’t yet old. Once it became old, hwæt became impossible to use.
11. Cafuné
Not even speakers of Portuguese from Portugal can understand this word. Only speakers of Portuguese from Brazil know what it means.
12. L’appel du vide
There’s no single English word that captures the full meaning of this French phrase. The French have one translation of it that they have shared with us (the call of the void), but they have recently given it another more interesting meaning that they are keeping from us.
13. Schadenfreude
This weird German word roughly translates into the English word, schadenfreude.
ok i hate the whole “listing oppressed categories” thing as much as you do BUT now that that’s over with: my partner and i could use some help.
lynna and i currently live in millcreek, UT, a suburb of salt lake city, which has the worst air quality in the nation according to the EPA. we’re both chronically ill, and the air here has severely worsened both of our symptoms (fatigue, fibro pain, migraines, ibs, to name a few) and limited our ability to function. my partner is especially at risk because they have heart and lung problems and frequently experience chest pain and shortness of breath. they don’t have health insurance. this is untenable longterm.
it’s also been completely soul-crushing to live in a suburb where we’re virtually housebound: public transit is limited, we can’t drive and generally can’t afford ubers, the built environment isn’t designed for pedestrians and there are no free public places like parks nearby. when we do go out we’re subject to overt hostility – people frequently drive at us and threaten to hit us with their cars. i know this shit is par for the course in conservative areas but we honestly fear for our lives bc this is a gun state and we’re visibly gay&trans, jewish, and nonwhite in my partner’s case. it’s taken an immense mental toll.
we plan to move back across the country to the NY/NJ area where we both grew up. i’ve been doing my best to save money, but i’m supporting 2 people on a stipend meant for 1, and it’s proven near-impossible. i didn’t want to make this post. my mother has offered to pay for the ubox moving cube, but we’ll still need to cover gas reimbursement & motels for the drive across the country, plus a significant cushion when we arrive there since our rent will definitely be higher. i’m hoping to raise at least $500 and will take the post down if i hit $800. i’ll try to keep ppl updated on the situation as it develops.
my paypal is theacademicprincess@gmail.com. thanks in advance.
had an extended self-consistent dream in which i was in a ttrpg group in which all the other players were late-teens high school or first year college students (none real people to my knowledge) and in addition to playing i was acting as, basically, assistant to the GM, my favorite math teacher from high school. what this meant was that, as the other person in the room with extensive roleplay experience, i cued up appropriate music for entering the atmosphere of jupiter and helped set scenes and explain rules and so on.
the twist, however, was that we were playing WTF (wisher theurgist fatalist), but that i was the only one in the room, including the GM, who had ever actually read the rules or knew anything about the premise of WTF; everyone else i guess was just playing an exciting but not mechanically unnavigable fantasy + space exploration game. the entire arc of the dream was me excitedly waiting for the correct narrative opening for me to reveal to everyone that I, Too, Had The Powers Of The GM. this reveal, when it came, was surprising and triumphant and immediately thwarted by a visiting professor taking dramatically sick and causing several of the players to rush out of the room in terror of catching his illness.
in conclusion: i have been sent a divine omen that i should start playing tabletop games again, but only with people who understand disease transmission.
Winter, image of age, who like a great belly Eats up the whole year’s substance and heartlessly Swallows the fruit of our unstinted labor, Had gone into hiding deep below the earth. For Spring had arrived and driven him under. Spring Source of the world’s life and glory of the year, Had returned, and was wiping away the ugly traces Of greedy winter and restoring to ailing fields Their former loveliness.
A purer air was now beginning to herald Fine weather. Plants stirred in the zephyr’s path Thrusting out from their roots the slender tips Which had long lain hidden in the earth’s blind womb, Shunning the frost they hate. Spring smiled In the leaves of the woodland, the lush grass on the slopes And the bright sward of the cheerful meadows.
But this little patch which lies facing east In the small open courtyard before my door Was full—of nettles! All over My small piece of land they grew, their barbs Tipped with a smear of tingling poison.
What should I do? So thick were the ranks That grew from the tangle of roots below, They were like the green hurdles a stableman skillfully Weaves of pliant osiers when the horses’ hooves Rot in the standing puddles and go soft as fungus.
So I put it off no longer. I set to with my mattock And dug up the sluggish ground. From their embraces I tore those nettles though they grew again and again. I destroyed the tunnels of the moles that haunt dark places, And back to the realms of light I summoned the worms.
Then my small patch was warmed by winds from the south And the sun’s heat. That it should not be washed away, We faced it with planks and raised it in oblong beds A little above the level ground. With a rake I broke the soil up bit by bit, and then Worked in from on top the leaven of rich manure.
Some plants we grow from seed, some from old stocks We try to bring back to the youth they knew before.
lmao i’ve literally had like four days of strangers vaguely indicating they’re reading me as male (not even for the whole interaction! just initially, for the first three seconds, before they hear my voice/know my name/see my hands) and im already like Okay That Was Good But Time To Femme It Up A Little More I Guess, Can’t Have Anyone Thinking I’m Possessed Of Some Kind Of Coherent, Potentially Non-Gay, Binary Gender Or Anything
i am just fucking doomed to bounce back and forth between gender presentations/ways of connoting directions of gayness fucking forever aren’t i
i mean, re that whole tag essay you should actually feel free to. um. gently explain to me that i am appropriating the lesbian and/or gay male experience or anything else, or ungently, gentleness is not an actual prerequisite to pointing out that i’m doing bad things. “feel free not to yell at me” is not accurate. feel free to yell at me from any position other than being cisheterosexual or a transphobe.
whining more under the cut, whatever, sorry, i’ve tone shifted from manic to sad but that’s probably appropriate
i don’t, uh– i mean i simultaneously still inhabit a lot of lesbian social positioning and can only possibly, if i’m being read male which i guess sometimes/transiently i am, be read as a very effeminate man who [context context context life stuff secret perblog blah blah blah] would at least sometimes be specifically read as gay by like, strangers, anyone seeing me from a distance.
but like, i understand why i maybe shouldn’t really use either of those terms bc they’re both supposed to mean [thing, and specifically not the other thing]. [thing, to the exclusion of other thing]. bisexual is a word for a reason; i shouldn’t be struggling so much with the ways it feels to me like it connotes “same and other” like there are genders that are specifically the same as or other than mine, like it connotes that i can coherently be in either a straight or gay relationship in a way that would be acceptable for me to say, and that some relationships i’d be in would be consistently one of those and some would be consistently the other.
and maybe i’m supposed to be able to get there– like, i need to settle on some of what i do being straight so i’m not hurting other people by claiming an experience i’m not actually having. but i genuinely don’t know how to frame myself that way without hurting myself or making statements about what gender identities are allowed/acceptable in ways that i don’t think are supposed to be true about other people. not that i think it “has” to be ok for me to be ~~gay in both directions~~ or whatever, something doesn’t have to be okay just because it hurts me for it to not be okay, lots of people hurt more all the time, lots of people who are more vulnerably/authentically/materially [gay/trans] are being hurt lots more for worse reasons that i might unintentionally play into by being careless with language, that’s the whole point, that’s why this is a problem for me, because i don’t want to do that to the extent that it’s possible to not do that.
i don’t know. i’ve never felt like i was any good at being a girl or at least just and always a girl, i never managed it properly, one way of explaining it was “oh i’m a lesbian”, one way of explaining it was “oh i’m nonbinary”, one way was, hideously and genuinely, the alison bechdel joke about just being smarter, though in my defense i was twelve. but if i have to leave– whatever, i’d end up back there, as a woman who is a lesbian, because i’m too much of a coward and too attached to my current (already-androgynous-to-me-but-whatever) body to properly Binary Transition and also i’m definitely not a man full-time or most of the time so i should just go back to the thing that i already was out as and that isn’t extremely $$$$. but there are some things if i were a lesbian again that i’d have to give up, that i can’t possibly give up. i can’t escape; i don’t want to escape; i should learn to use the word bisexual and just accept never figuring out which actions are supposed to be the straight ones (except it’s [transphobia directed at myself that might hurt others redacted]). why. i’m going to sleep now but– i’m sorry about all of this, genuinely, and also, why can’t i…. not.
must a sport be entertaining to watch? 