shannonpurdyjones

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I'd really appreciate it if people could stop calling RFK Jr's. fuckwitted modern campaign of destruction on modern American public health "medieval."

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Your disordered thinking has bewitched me fair maiden

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been down a rabbit hole of latin sexual vocabulary because i'm looking at some words from pompeian graffiti and while i knew that the word cinaedus was used to refer to men who took a passive role sexually i didn't realize it was also the name of a fish that pliny the elder mentions. turns out we've been naming fish horrible horrible things for millennia. who in the ancient world was out there calling this poor fish a faggot

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Maintaining a diversity of ongoing personal projects is important because it enables you to procrastinate on one by aimlessly tinkering with another, thereby creating the possibility that you'll finish one of them by accident.

[shannonpurdyjones]

people bitching about the usage of "too modern" words in fantasy or historical fiction is sometimes justified, but ultimately I think it's a waste of time because

all words exist within a specific time frame and it's pointless to avoid the fact that you're writing with the language of your own time

which words are actually "newer" than other words is sometimes wildly unintuitive

according to the dates given in the Oxford English Dictionary, if you wrote a book set in 1897, you could have your characters say "fuckable," (1889) "sexy" (1896) "uncomfy" (1868) "hellacious" (1847) "dude" (1877) "all righty" (1877) and "heck" (1887), but not "wiggly" (1932) "moronic" (1910) "uptight" (1934) "lowbrow" (1901) "fifty-fifty" (1913) "burp" (1932) "bagel" (1898) or use the word "rewrite" as a noun (1901)

[shannonpurdyjones]

SPJ's Word Hord: Book recs and what I'm reading

A review of Proto by Laura Spinney

So I'm about halfway through Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global by Laura Spinney. I normally finish books before reccing them, but y'all. This book is so profoundly good I can't hold it in any longer.

Sanskrit. The Iranian language family. Hindi, and most other Indian languages. Germanic languages (of which English is one btw, for those who may not know). Armenian. Greek. Slavic languages. Romance languages, and countless others. All descended from one herder language that bloomed on the Eurasian Steppe thousands of years ago. But where did it originate, and how did it spread so wildly even as countless other ancient languages fell silent? These are the questions linguists have asked for generations, and which Spinney aims to answer in Proto.

The book is laid out well as it sets up and moves through various histories and prominent theories on the origin and spread of Proto Indo European, the Neolithic language theorized to be the parent of over half the extant languages spoken on earth today. Spinney uses a threefold cross-disciplinary approach to make her case for how this one rather small language migrated and mutated as it went, combining evidence from the fields of linguistics, genetic analysis, and archeology to paint a vivid, nuanced picture of the migration of languages and peoples in our early history.

It's a testament to her writing style and voice that such an academic subject never feels overly weighed down by technical jargon. Rather this story of Us feels as intensely readable as a good novel. The writing is concise and informative, yet also poetic and moving at times. Spinney clearly did immense amounts of research for this book, but what shines through even more than her extensive knowledge is her passion for the topic, and clear love for our fellow humans of the deep past. This is a must-read for anyone who geeks over linguistics or ancient human history.

For audiobook readers: Emma Spurgin-Hussey's narration is spectacular. For me the text is just meaty enough that I find myself wanting to go back and reference earlier sections or reread passages, so I'm switching over to the hardcover. If such things don't bother you, the audiobook is otherwise great.

*Puts indy bookseller hat on* As of today (8/28) Proto is being reprinted and is therefore backordered at the publisher until about 9/8. So don't get mad at your indy bookstore THAT YOU ARE TOTALLY ORDERING FROM INSTEAD OF USING AMAZON RIGHT?? if they can't get it for a week or so. It's worth the wait. Also congrats to Laura Spinney on selling more copies than Bloomsbury expected her to, given how quickly they're having to do a reprint. We love to see it.

For the peeps without a local indy, consider ordering from Bookshop.org to support indy bookstores around the country.

[shannonpurdyjones]

Eurasian Red Squirrel/ekorre. Värmland, Sweden (September 1, 2021).

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found this three year old draft buried in my files. is it funny? I don't remember

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in a medieval groupchat nobody would make fun of your typo they would just assume that its a new spelling youre going with and roll with it

[shannonpurdyjones]

henceforth, the first saturday following the first new moon following the autumnal equinox shall be known as WESTER

this day shall have no observations beyond an exercise of calculating when it will fall.

[shannonpurdyjones]

"why do people conflate top/bottom and Dom/sub" because we haven't socially destigmatized kink. that's literally it.

[shannonpurdyjones]

gluggafoss, hvolsvöllur

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[shannonpurdyjones]

Ultimately, you can like or dislike any character for whatever arbitrary reason. It's neither activism nor a moral failing, don't let the internet convince you otherwise. On the other hand, if you consistently find yourself lacking any interest in the, e.g., female characters of the media you engage with that may be a sign of some unconscious biases you need to examine.

[shannonpurdyjones]

Something that I get chills about is the fact that the oldest story told made by the oldest civilization opens with "In those days, in those distant days, in those ancient nights."

This confirms that there is a civilization older than the Sumerians that we have yet to find

Some people get existential dread from this

Me? I think it's fucking awesome it shows just how much of this world we have yet to discover and that is just fascinating