digging-holes-in-the-river

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

Anyway, that’s the last thing I’ll be posting here for a while, because I’ve decided to take a break from Tumblr. (I’ve been thinking about it for a few days, but I wanted to wait until my commission was done. And it was totally worth waiting for; I am thrilled!)

But anyway, Tumblr has come to seem more like a burden than a source of enjoyment (since I feel obligated to scroll through my entire dash, even if I end up skipping a lot of the posts). Instead of thinking “I wonder what’s on Tumblr” I think “well I’d better read Tumblr so I don’t get too far behind”.

Which is interesting, because it’s basically the opposite of all the previous times I’ve quit Tumblr -- in those cases I felt dangerously addicted, and couldn’t seem to put the website down, and felt like I needed to actively ban myself from it so I could focus on other things. It’s much nicer to be leaving because I just don’t feel like using the website anymore!

I’ll still be around, on other parts of the internet. I think most people know how to contact me.

I’ll probably still check some of your blogs individually.

Anyway I wish you all well!

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

Songs in all languages are welcome. Thank you! :) This is cool.

Anyway, if anyone knows any more songs about stealing livestock, please send them to me!

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

¿Me pasas el agua? by Ibai

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

Anyway, if anyone knows any more songs about stealing livestock, please send them to me!

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

“Night Guard” by Stan Rogers:

Forty-four's no age to start again But the bulls were getting tough and he was never free of pain Where others blew their winnings getting tanked Most of his got banked saving for the farm

He never thought she'd wait for him at all She wanted more than broken bones and trophies on the wall But when he quit and finally got the farm She ran into his arms and now they've got a kid

He was star of all the rodeos but now they rob him blind It took eighteen years of Brahma bulls and life on the line To get this spread and a decent herd But now he spends his time pulling night guard

He told her that he'd got it for the game A "Winnie" 303 with his initials on the frame Riding in the scabbard at his knee. Tonight he's gonna see Who's getting all the stock

Seventh one this summer yesterday Half a year of profits gone, and now there's hell to pay The cops say they know who, but there's no proof The banker hit the roof, and damn near took the car

He was star of all the rodeos but now they rob him blind It took eighteen years of Brahma bulls and life on the line To get this spread and a decent herd But now he spends his time pulling night guard

He hears the wire popping by the road Sees the blacked out Reo coming for another load This time, it's not one they take but two Two minutes and they're through, and laughing in the cab

And here'll be the end of this tonight 'Cause all the proof he needs is lying steady in his sights It may be just the worst thing he could do But he squeezes off a few, then make his call to town

He was star of all the rodeos but now thet rob him blind It took eighteen years of Brahma bulls and life on the line To get this spread and a decent herd But now he's doing time pulling night guard

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

I guess I should post the two songs I know about stealing cattle!

This is “Shades of Grey” by Cry Cry Cry:

We made Oklahoma a little after three Randy, his brother Bob, and my old GMC We had some moonshine whiskey, some of Bob's homegrown We were so messed up we didn't know if we were drunk or stoned Randy was a sad sack, tall, kinda frail Bob was a raving maniac, crazier than hell Been kicked out of high school several years ago For kicking over port-o-cans at the 4-H rodeo Since they done their little dance right outside the law Popped twice in Oklahoma and once in Arkansas And I don't know what possessed me to want to tag along 'Cause I was raised a Christian and I knew right from wrong Right or wrong, black or white Cross the line you're gonna pay In the dawn before the light Live or die by shades of gray We stole two charolais heifers from Randy's sweetheart's pa And sold them at the livestock sale outside of Wichita We got nine hundred dollars and never did suspect The world of hurt we'd be in once we cashed that check

Next day we heard the story on the local radio And made our plans that very night to go to Mexico And I swear we would've made it if it wasn't for the shine I got sick about the time we crossed that Kansas line Right or wrong, black or white Cross the line you're gonna pay In the dawn before the light Live or die by shades of gray I was lying in the bar ditch praying I would die When a light came on above us, and a voice called from the sky A half dozen unmarked cards came screeching to a halt They grabbed Bob, he started screaming that it was my fault

There were men and dogs and helicopters flying all around They had the brothers on the pickup hood and me down on the ground Then Bob flew all to pieces but Randy he held tight When a black man in a suit and tie stepped into the light He told his men to turn us loose and they put down their guns He said these are just some sorry kids, they ain't the ones

Right or wrong, black or white Cross the line you're gonna pay In the dawn before the light Live or die by shades of gray They left us by the roadside downhearted and alone Randy got behind the wheel, said “Boys I'm going home” So we turned round and faced our fate hung over but alive On that morning Oklahoma late April ninety five

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

Thanks! This is much appreciated!

digging-holes-in-the-river: Please tell me of the poems about livestock raids? I know exactly two songs about stealing cattle and that is such and oddly specific thing that I’m always hoping for more cattle-stealing songs.

The Tain Bo Cuailnge is the most notable one, but you get stuff about cattle raids elsewhere, including in the Mahabharata and the Rig Veda – e.g. from RV 10.38:

asmin na indra pṛtsutau yaśasvati śimīvati krandasi prāvasātaye | yatra ghoṣātā dhṛṣiteṣu khādiṣu viṣvakpatanti didyavo nṛṣāhye || 

O Indra, in this battle great and glorious, in this loud din of war help us to victory, Where in the strife for kine among bold ring-decked men arrows fly all around and heroes are subdued.

There’s not a whole lot in the Germanic tradition, AFAIK. Until the re-emergence of cowboys in America.

‘Cyclops’ originally meant ‘cattle thief’ < *pḱu-klōps, but was reanalyzed as cyclo- ‘wheel’ + -ops ‘eye’ after the loss of cy- ‘cow’, hence his one eye.

That’s all I know, but there’s this thing, which may or may not be relevant

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

Hello friends! I'll be visiting Silicon Valley from Jan 9 to Jan 16. If we are Tumblr mutuals, or if we've talked to each other and I know who you are, there's a decent chance I'd be interested in meeting up. So let me know if you want to hang out, and if time/logistics permits it, perhaps we will see each other!

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

(a) This thread makes me feel triumphant for having my PDFs in order; suddenly the three weeks I spent on this task don't seem like such an OCD waste of time.

(b) Mendeley has some ability to read PDFs. If you import all your PDFs into Mendeley it will get the titles and authors right at least half the time (except for really old papers that were scanned in; it doesn't seem to have the OCR to deal with that). Assuming that it runs the same title/author detection algorithm on each PDF, it should be able to detect duplicates even if it gets the title/author wrong

Mendeley is owned by Elsevier and I think that in order to use it you have to make an account on its weird attempt at an academic social network. Also it likes to detect papers that have my name on them (whether they were written by me or not) and add them to my library automatically. This frustrates the hell out of me, because (as mentioned) I am seriously OCD about my paper organization, and I don't want a tool automatically downloading things that it thinks I want.

But overall Mendeley is great and I highly recommend it.

I have like 173859403243 pdfs of academic papers clogging up My Downloads, My Documents, My Pictures, and a dozen other folders and my laptop is literally groaning under the weight of their combined 23 GB, just absolutely begging me to do something about them, but I utterly refuse to even attempt to organize them, all of them are going to stay 435-out1_2015 (1) (1) (2) (copy).pdf forever

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

Photosynthesis is the process of harvesting energy from sunlight and storing such energy in chemical bonds. Plants, algae, and Cyanobacteria–or, green things–are known for oxygenic photosynthesis, which uses water as an electron source and releases oxygen as a waste product. Some types of bacteria can do anoxygenic photosynthesis, which uses other electron sources and does not release oxygen. The energy yield from anoxygenic photosynthesis is lower and the process requires both light and an absence of oxygen. 

The innovation of oxygenic photosynthesis allowed the predecessors of Cyanobacteria to harvest more energy from sunlight. Non-photosynthetic life also had more energy available to them as a result of the increased productivity of photosynthetic bacteria. It was catastrophic. Oxygen was toxic to most living things at the time; the increase of environmental oxygen led to the first known mass extinction in the history of carbon based life on Earth.

The life-forms that survived either had mechanisms of reducing the damage from oxidative stress or restricted themselves to a few anaerobic niches. The cells that started producing oxygen in the first place dealt with the fallout via proto-multicellular arrangements. Cyanobacteria need fixed nitrogen, and they also need to conduct oxygenic photosynthesis. These processes cannot happen in the same cell because one of the enzymes in the nitrogen fixation pathway cannot function in the presence of oxygen. So Cyanobacteria forms filaments with two cell types: photosynthetic and nitrogen fixing. Every cell in a cyanobacterial colony depends on the products of both chemical reactions.

More generally, multicellularity was advantageous because it enabled cellular division of labor and specialization, which allowed cells to harvest more energy and/or obtain more nutrients. Photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation is just the simplest example of multicellular specialization.

Divide and conquer, multiply and consume.

The formation of more complex multicellular body plans required novel innovations to make such body plans viable. Nutrient distribution, waste disposal, structural integrity, and coordination of all this are some commonly observed features of multicellular life. All of those systems require cell specialization and mostly function to deal with the consequences of being multicellular.

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

GOLD RITUAL

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

That fact that anyone working with food in America doesn’t have guaranteed paid sick days is a health hazard to the public.

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

I realized yesterday that this song makes a single reference to it being Christmas time, and therefore qualifies as a Christmas song.

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

topics apparent in traditional christmas carols that have Strangely Disappeared from modern canon:

the devil

the lord of this manor better give us booze or we’ll burn his house Down

alternatively, give us some cash

this plant is Red like the blood of Childbirth

i was wooed in the sheep field

what up, it’s the Devil again

goods or tuppence may be exchanged for a viewing of this wren we’ve killed

SWORD DANCE TUNES

we sing in thanks of the maidservant who let the mob into the laird’s home

dancing is a sin but do you think i’m gonna stop

unlikely

the apple crop better be good or next year it’ll grow fertilized with your blood

the winter is cruel but the laird is crueler

the church is also cruel

it’s lucky to give us money. in this case, the luck is not getting stabbed

really there are so many bangers

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

So here’s something I realized is disorienting (in a good way) about the Southern Reach trilogy: the sinister and consuming force is referred to as the brightness.

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

Everyone’s going on about having a ‘traditional, old-fashioned Christmas’, but when I burst into the house covered in green paint and demand a champion strike my head from my shoulders with my own axe so that I may return the blow next year, I’m ‘scaring Grandma’.

[digging-holes-in-the-river]

This page is extremely informative. Too long to quote the whole thing, so I’m just posting the link.