#from informal sources or with such specificity

[elodieunderglass]

But there must be a way to save hobelars in the cultural memory right? Can we reprint the document that has the poem?

Just yesterday, i had heard my friend say something along the lines of war is rock paper scissors and i accepted that without a second thought and your post about hobelars came at the right time to add delightful nuance. And i want to remember and share about hobelars

References: this post where I note, on a post about medieval mounted warfare that articulated this as knights and horses in armour charging pikemen, that the overlooked mounted unit of the “Irish” hobelar - a lightweight cavalry skirmisher, mounted nearly-bareback on pony-horses called hobbies - would have neatly fitted into the gaps in that narrative. Here’s another post about hobbies i wrote too.

By asking, you are doing the work. Thank you./.

In their time, hobelars were a useful unit of medieval warfare; originally in defending themselves against the English, and then used abroad against others. A contemporary poem, which describes the Siege of Calais, mentions a hobelar on a hobby, describing their fighting style; but the only copy of this poem on the internet is a single badly scanned document of a book from the 1840s that will be reasonably difficult (but not impossible!) to source on paper.

There have been a total two books written about hobelars - one in 1914, and one in 1954 - and they are mentioned in passages of two or three out-of-print books about medieval warfare. They have a Wikipedia article which contains incorrect information like claiming that the hobby is the same horse as the Connemara Pony (it isn’t.) There is one single medievalist who has published recently and sparsely on hobelars, and necessarily he does this by arguing with The 1914 and 1954 Guys. He has not brought in any horse knowledge or political connectedness to his theses, but he’s all I’ve got, so I cling to him like he clings to the other two guys.

Irish Hobbies, the hobelar’s little horses, fare a bit better. Before going extinct, they gave their name to “hobbies,” activities done for pleasure, and we still use “my hobbyhorse” to describe our personal passions. @mylittlehony , a Horse Expert, produced an incredible list of mentions of hobbies in sixteenth and seventeenth century literature, including in other languages, which is literally an advancement on the internet’s collective knowledge of hobbies. Any piece of work you’re doing here is a contribution.

Still, without any in-print documentation, or active scholars, or any interest in them at all, they’re a very niche hobby! As I said in the post you’re asking about, a well-placed EMP could destroy all of our knowledge of hobelars and prevent us from making connections to recover them. .

To answer your question? That’s what PhDs are for. That’s what they’re supposed to give to humanity. Spending three years of dedicated research time, learning and gathering all the sources available, and collecting every lost scrap of data about hobbies and hobelars that has been scattered and lost. We know they’re in the quartermasters’ receipts, where they were described as cheap units without special equipment; we know that an English king specifically prevented hobbies being exported to Scotland fight against him, because they would have granted the Scottish an advantage. There are documents that mention them sidelong and sideways and misspelled, and a PhD could delightfully be spent fossicking about in libraries and archives and museums, working out exactly what their “darts” were like, and whether hobbies ambled or paced, and what social class hobelars had been in Ireland, and how far they made it in Wales, and whether they WERE the missing piece of European horse archers, and whether hobbies DID come from Spain, and maybe even whether the Thoroughbred racehorse has any hobby in them at all. The person doing this PhD could probably recover the shape of the extinct horse, the fighting style of the rider, and so on.

And they’d publish their papers, and their thesis, and on the Internet and in the backups and in the journals and in the great library of their Alma Mater and in their own home, that knowledge would be stored and connected, networked and made accessible, known and signposted, forever. Resilient to loss, resistant to disruption, a piece of work to add to humanity’s grain store - designed and destined to outlive you.

That’s what a PhD is. That’s why they’re meant to be done.

Why haven’t they already? Obscurity, probably; and as I’ve written, medievalists tend to take the tone of English and French kings to dismiss Celtic influence as primitive and negligible. There have to be intersecting spheres of nerdery to make the person who will take this on. They will probably have to be a horsegirl first, a medievalist second, and probably from a Celtic culture themselves, to better pierce through the political layerings; they ought to be the kind of nerd who gladly takes on the case of the underdog; and, ideally, be someone with a lot of hobbies. Just as you can see the missing shape of the hobelar, you can see this person and know that someday they may answer the call.

(Possibly even because of these posts. That’s, secretly, part of why I write them like I do. They’re not ragebait or clickbait; they’re go-to-grad-school-about-it-bait. I hope to catch someone someday.)

But in the absence of some person taking on this PhD, here’s how I’m doing my part.

The reason I am tumblr’s biggest hobelar apologist is because I have a character in a larger writing project who is a time-ghost of a hobelar and his hobby. They appear in a pattern in the story, which is called Throw Your Heart Over, based on the saying for jumping: throw your heart over the hurdle and your horse will follow it.

I toy with the idea of The Hobelar being the originator of the saying, after jumping a notable hurdle on his hobby.

But it won’t be enough to just self-publish an ebook about it, especially since it won’t break containment. The best way to get a correct answer on the Internet is to post a slightly wrong answer, in a tone of authority, and have everyone pile in on you for the joy of being the one to correct you.

So I’m going to write something provocative and tantalisingly incorrect-sounding about hobelars, just to provoke and annoy. It will have to be ragebait of unparalleled mastery. I will have to construct a scene that is SO WRONG, and somehow get the story SO IMPOSSIBLY POPULAR, that hopefully someone will be forced to do, like, a YouTube essay to horsesplain my sins to me, and THEN they’ll discover that first they must do a PhD.

And when they call me out, after four years of study, and tell me I have no idea what I’m talking about, I will lower my eyelashes demurely 🫦 and say oh dear what a shame if people started acting like they’d always known about hobelars because of all this, and a breeding project started trying to recreate the extinct Irish Hobby, and a video game came out about them or something, or anything. if I fuck it up again will you do more? Do you prommy??

So I’ll say: once upon a time, Killie’s ancestor was a hobelar. And he fucked up - or something, I don’t know what yet - and he asked his hobby to jump a pike-wall -

And the people will be jumping up and down saying THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT- he wasn’t there, he wasn’t wearing that, he didn’t ride that way, he probably wasn’t barefoot, NOBODY CAN JUMP A PIKEWALL, that can’t be right!!

And i said: none of this was right-! It’s a story about generational trauma. Nobody should have been there. And he grabbed mane, and asked for the jump, and the horse didn’t want to, but she trusted him -

And it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen like that -

And it didn’t happen, and it didn’t happen like that -

And people will say: it never could have happened, and CERTAINLY not like that -

And I’ll say - and everyone else should say this too - make an OC or tell a story or find some way to hang on: some of what our ancestors gave us was garbage!! Some is useful!! Some should be lost and some should be kept!! And if academia won’t keep it then we will! Until they come and do it better!

We’ll all say together: he threw his heart over and she follows it still; and they’ll never land! and they’ll never land!!!!

[lathbora-virann]

I was just going to put this in the tags and then it got too long lol but I literally actually called this months ago???? Like in December??

I think it was just in the tags on a random post, but I straight up said that I thought the darkspawn were actually 'working' for the Titans the entire time. They're connected to the collective maddened Titan dream hivemind—consciously/deliberately working to free them, while unconsciously being physical manifestations of their madness, rage and vengeance.

I'd love to know the specifics of how the very first ones came to be and if the Titans chose to make them or if it was something like a number of ancient dwarves somehow getting blighted and reconnected to those mad dreams? But the darkspawn have been essentially functioning as replacement dwarves, but probably without the level of intelligence and strategy needed to break into the Fade—at least in the beginning. We know from how they were presented in Origins that they did display intelligence and and signs of culture, but they also needed leadership and direction to be able to organise effectively #joinyourunion

So the Titans then went to the early humans because they could only communicate through dreams while trapped in the Fade, and the dwarves were cut off from theirs. I assume the elves would have been seen as the 'enemy' and the kossith/qunari wouldn't have been in Thedas at that point, so neither were a feasible option for the Titans. They were able to use the dragons who became the Archdemons as conduits to communicate, which leads to a thousand other questions.

Both the dragons and the Titans have been referred to as “the blood of the world”, with so much of everything ultimately coming back to lyrium and dragon blood—and we do see here in the art and screenshots that both the Titans and dragons were literally being used as power sources by the Evanuris. Some of the other newly released concept art shows a lot of dragons flying around inside a Titan at “the centre of Thedas”, so at one point we were clearly supposed to explore what the hell the connection is between the two.

There seems to be enough evidence to suggest that at some point in the worldbuilding the Archdemons were originally ancient dragons connected to different Titans, but as guardians? Allies? Enemies? More children somehow? Maybe there was something in the whole shared blood of the world connection that was needed to free the Titans' trapped souls and reconnect them with their physical forms?

That idea could still work with those ancient dragons ending up being conquered and bound by the Evanuris as part of their war with the Titans, so Solas wouldn't be lying—just omitting massive pieces of information which is his usual MO. And speculating wildly, but maybe when the spirits were first becoming the ancient elves, they did initially view the Titans as primordial gods.

I'll end by adding that it felt to me like once the Evanuris became blighted it acted like a parasite or that zombie fungus that takes over ants and moves them to stand where the fungus can spread its spores over the rest of the colony and infect them all. So ironically, once they were blighted, the Evanuris were being manipulated to want what the Titans wanted and do what the Titans needed (i.e. freeing themselves by ripping open the Veil and blighting the world), while unable to see it themselves, believing that they were genuinely creating a beautiful and better world (i.e. another glorious empire for them to rule over again).

Matt Rhodes posted the final concept art of the Black Codex. But the most interesting thing is the notes that go with it.

The false gods decide to release the full power of the titan souls, which have become twisted with madness in their captivity. Solas tries to stop them.

Unable to stop them, Solas instead creates a Veil between the physical world and the magical. He binds the Veil to the blood of the false gods, turning them into the locks on their own prison.

Early humans discover the ruins of the elven empire. Using knowledge scavenged from the ruins, Tevinter spreads across Thedas as a crude copy of the elven empire.

From their prison in the Veil, the spirits of the titans lure power-hungry Tevinter magisters into the Fade to release them. Instead of a city of gold, they find a Black City. The first Blight is released.

So the magisters were originally lured to the Black City not by the evanuris, but by the spirits of titans?

Because this version is different from what Solas told Rook.

[kedreeva]

I’m realizing how little I actually know when it comes to breeding anything; tho I’m specifically interested in quail. Do you have any books or any resources you can recommend?

I don't have any one resource that would tell you everything in the same place, it really depends on what exactly you are looking to learn. Housing? Feed? Biology? Genetics? Medical info? I don't know of any centralized source of info, as I didn't get any of my information from one source.

What I CAN tell you sight unseen is to never trust one person telling you something is The Only Right Way, and do your best to corroborate any claims made too confidently. This won't always work (for example, cases where "everyone knows" but it hasn't actually been researched/studied and no one can tell you HOW they know something, just that "everyone" knows it), but it WILL serve you well when trying to tell the difference between COMMON advice and GOOD advice.

Because what I ran into a LOT when trying to research quail care is that a LOT of advice on their care is made up, and a lot of the knowledge being handed out about genetics is faulty, or being explained by people who don't have all that great a grasp on genetics. When I was trying to find info on what to look for between wild type and SLB quail, I sat through a ten minute video of someone explaining the differences and how to breed for it, when what she was explaining on the breeding was... backwards and showed a lack of understanding in how to do what needed done. Upon contacting that person directly I was told that having SLB-free birds "wasn't as important as she thought" and then she straight up told me that I should focus on something else (despite having said plainly that WT was what I wanted to work on).

So, I guess if you have a specific question, first try finding the info by web search (for example, if you wanted to find out what to feed, "quail nutritional requirements science" will bring up scientific research done on the nutritional requirements of quail. You can base your feed off of that. Same can be done for most things, searching a term and adding "science" or "research" will help you find scientific articles on the subject.

Behavior questions you can go to forums for. Backyard Chickens (the website) forums may be a good place to start, and I would be HIGHLY leery of facebook groups, as there's a LOT of anti-science folks on FB. Either way, or if you go elsewhere, remember to ask for sources if someone gives you some specific info that you can't corroborate via searching for it. "Personal experience" is a more reliable "source" when it comes to behavioral stuff, compared to care/medical info.

Genetics.... well, good luck lol. I'm still piecing together info, myself, and it's confusing because different people use different terminology. They'll call a bird Egyptian and then talk about the roux gene and not explain that it's the same gene. They'll say Tibetan and Rosetta, but not explain that they are the same gene, but in homo or het form. It's a nightmare to learn, it is NOT straightforward in the community.

I'm sorry I can't give you more than that. My care is mostly based on prior knowledge of bird care and a few quick searches for scientific care info. I didn't get into the genetics and whatever else until I was 3 years into it and had a question I couldn't find by searching the web.

[fairestbeard]

Carmy's darkest secret

CONTENT WARNING !!!!!

Distressing opinions, egregious cornplating, predictive- serious potential spoilers if true.

TRIGGER WARNING: Substance ab*se, Suic*de, Mental illness.

I'll just come right out and say it.

I think Carmy might be an addict.

And I don't mean addict like a workaholic or perfection addict like we've been saying here.

I think Carmy might be an actual addict.

In fact, more specifically, I think Carmy might be a heroin addict.

"Woah! WTF, are you crazy?"

Hopefully. Hopefully I am..

I've never wanted to be more wrong in my life. And I want this meta to be so clown worthy, to be actual comedy in retrospect because it gets me properly laughed at for how wrong it is.

But walk with me here...

An unreliable narrator?

I've discussed previously in this meta my opinion of how the story of The Bear is being told from Carmy's perspective and his subjective mind, and so, the visuals and general ambience including how we perceive the characters are at least partially controlled by him. One thing that convinces me of this is how the show literally starts inside his head (the bridge dream) which sets the tone for the rest of the show.

An unreliable narrator can be defined as any narrator who misleads readers, either deliberately or unwittingly. Many are unreliable through circumstances, character flaws or psychological difficulties. In some cases, a narrator withholds key information from readers, or they may deliberately lie or misdirect.

Source: jerichowriters.com

Carmy could very well fall under the mentally impaired unreliable narrator but I think he is possibly just a dishonest narrator. Because he seems to be purposefully evading vital truths (lying by omission and substitution).

Another character in media that fits this dishonest narrator description is Fleabag of season 1. Up until the end we were with her, we sympathized and empathized with her. We cried and laughed with her. We fully understood her anger at Beau for doing what she did (won't spoil the plot for those who haven't watched it). And even at the end you still are with her. She manages to get you to see yourself in her and it's all in the power of how she tells her story.

Carmen, the drunk

I had too much to drink

I didn't think, I didn't think of you

Half A World Away - R.E.M ("The Bear")

One interesting assumption about carmy is that he is completely sober, a teetotaler, in fact. I've seen people make jokes about how he would be so light brained that he'll get drunk on nothing. Because we've never seen him drink. We've seen his confusion and anger discovering that Mickey had a drug problem he didn't know about. We see how much he despises Donna and the trauma she brought them through her drunkenness. So it's very fitting that we assume he wouldn't drink or use substances at all because that is the logical response.

But what if Carmy was actually drunk for at least all of season 1?

An unreliable narrator, especially in the 3rd person narrative, will leave clues. The pilot starts by showing us an idea of what Carmy was dealing with; unpaid bills, unreliable vendors, an outdated system and an untrusting and disrespectful staff. In between those flashes we see shots of half drunk bottles. Now those bottles could have been there for any number of reasons. Maybe it was left there by Michael. Maybe it was cooking wine. Except in the coming episodes you realize that they didn't really have anything on the menu they cooked with red wine and the bottles kept changing in content so they were obviously active bottles.

There's another spot the difference magic trick happening in these shots. Can you see it? Hint: our mother of victory.

The shots are saying something.

"Hands" was the first full on attempt to call our attention without telling us that Carmy had a problem. I said in a recent post that you had to pay attention to the shots used in the show as ask yourself "why that shot?" everytime.

The episode starts out with shots of full bottles on the table when he's interacting with Syd. We also see the bottles full after he sends Richie and Syd of to the store and he's talking to Sugar about joining Al-Anon which he seems resistant to. However, by the time Richie gets back, finds Mickey's letter and tries to deliver it to Carmy, a whole 1½ bottles of the wine is gone. This is in one afternoon, in the space of at most 2-3 hrs. No casual drinker could ever drink that much alcohol in that space of time. We are dealing with an alcoholic.

We also see that he has lapses in memory (a classic symptom of alcoholism) at the end of the episode when he discovers that the cigarettes that caused the day's mishap was actually left by him, which made him seriously consider joining Al-Anon.

Sleep walking:

Sleep walking can be triggered by alcohol (I've experienced this first hand). He says to Nat that it happens to him from time to time and she immediately brings up Al-Anon, telling him he can ask for help.

Withdrawals

Carmy shakes a lot. He's fidgety and can't stay still most times. Knowing his history and current state of mind we blame his neurotic nature. What we don't consider is that Carmy sometimes is having the shakes- a sign of withdrawal. The first time they show this is in "Dogs" at Cicero's party. We see shake off the shakes while making the hotdogs and having a laugh with Richie and Cicero.

We also see this happen in "Ceres" in the flashback with Michael making Braciole. If I had to guess, this is why Michael cut him off from the restaurant. Imagine two addicts working together? He probably felt Carmy going out in the world and finding inspiration would make him opt for a better and maybe get clean.

Some other scenes with Carmy showing signs of withdrawal:

- In the meeting with Cicero in "The Beef" his hands are clenched almost the whole time to curtail the shakes.

- Tomorrow in his Ever scene with Luca you can see his hand shaking as he raises his voice to Luca before chef Terry intervenes.

- When Chef Fields says "Are you shaking? Are you nervous?" to Carmy. Carmy isn't nervous, he in withdrawal.

- In "Omelette" ...and this one broke my heart...

The table scene with Syd.

It's not the side effects of the cocaine

I'm thinking that it must be love

Station to Station (David Bowie)

Mood swings and erratic behavior

One thing we've all come to get used to is Carmy's volatile disposition. He has the tendency to erupt or spiral dramatically at anytime showing us how extreme it can get in episodes like Review and The Bear. Behavior like this can be exacerbated by alcoholism.

For Carmy, it's a recurring pattern in season 1, he's irritable and shitty during the day but gets nicer and friendlier after he's had a bottle and half later in the day. We see this pattern play out in Hands, Brigade and even Ceres in his interaction with Syd.

Neglecting responsibilities

Anyone who's watched Carmy would call him the hardest working chef. He's fast and always seems busy, but there has been many instances of him abandoning his responsibilities in S1 and S2. That whole bit about "dialing business" while Syd is everything else was just a bullshit way for Carmy to hole himself up in the office and get drunk and not have to also worry about the day to day. Not that he conciously intends for it to be that way, but because his head is messed up, it ends up that way. He does this in season 1 with the excuse of Al-Anon and he does same in season 2 with the excuse of Claire. He tells Sydney to care about everything more than anything because he doesn't trust himself to care enough.

Self isolation

We heard him describe to the Al-Anon crowd how he self isolates. We attribute this to him reacting to the heartbreak from Mickey's treatment of him, but should we believe him? Because self isolation is also another symptom of alcoholism. He found a station for himself were he could exist in a kind of bubble and the more people he cut out of his the quieter his life got. One thing with self isolation is that it gives you less people you care about to make you feel guilty about your substance abuse. You get to do without the extra work having to hide and constantly lie to people.

Carmy's family history of alcoholism:

We see this hinted with the Al-Anon pamphlet "Alcoholism, the family disease". This is a hereditary mental illness that has been passed down the Berzatto family.

In Fishes, apart from Donna being drunk and Stephen commenting that everyone had drunk too much, we briefly see an old woman passed out on the couch, shown between shots of red wine, that is never acknowledged. This suggests a family where being passed out drunk is a normal sight or maybe for that particular person. I'm thinking by the age of them, it's probably their Nonna. I remember Nat subtly informing us in Ice Chips that Donna's mum was worse than Donna.

Fairest creatures :

We always associated this with the poem, so interpreted it as his secret desire for kids. But maybe they really are referencing the wine house in California (I think it was @gingergofastboatsmojito that highlighted this wine house), as an indication of his wine drinking habit. It could also hold both meanings since The Bear does a lot of killing many birds with a stone.

Timeline of Carmy's present day substance abuse:

– Wakes up from a drunken slumber where he dreams of the bear at the bridge

– Tries and repeatedly fails to keep his drinking in check all of season 1. Culminates in the Review debacle.

– Attempts to quit again (I think) in "Pasta" by filling his time and trying to find fun. Getting closer to Syd. Meets and rejects Claire.

– His disposition seemed to have started changing in "Sundae" he's showing cracks in his mood. Looks like he's going through the motions cooking at the apartment. Tries to bump up the fun by doing a taste tour but abandons it when Claire calls him because in reality he was abandoning the idea that he could do it clean. So his sobriety probably lasts only about a week.

– In the beginning of Honeydew you can see him falling apart already. He looks like very stressed out and unable to concentrate. He's obviously been disappearing because he doesn't seem to be up to date on what's happening at the restaurant.

– By "Pop" he is fully hanging out with the party crowd. We see that he's been disappearing for a while now.

(On a side note: I wonder if the sign that says Ziggy on the calendar in Bolognese is referencing Ziggy Stardust, as in The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust.)

– Is in full withdrawal by friends and family. Probably contemplating giving sobriety "his full focus". Another version of Review happens again as he loses control mid service.

Tomorrow:

The opening sequence of tomorrow was very interesting. He walks into the dark restaurant, death stares two glasses of wine and an ashtray of cigarettes. Clears and vigorously cleans the table, then kicks the bar cart in disgust. This is a dramatic summation of how he felt about alcohol, this thing that has upended his life. We also see him start his R&D process by dumping a bottle of red wine in a pot, repurposing his addiction. In a normal setting the alcoholic would dump all the alcohol in the sink to start the sobering process. He also tries to reorganize his life in an effort to cope with it.

We see him mentally go through his journey as a chef and his journey as an addict with markers made with the music alone. There are moments of flow, moments of drama and moments of crises. Each time the dissonant section of the music plays, I think, represents either a crisis that leads him back to another cycle of addiction, or his addiction coming to a head.

We see him stoop and look at four spots before the episode comes to a close. The spots are never shown. But if I had to guess, I'd say those spots were: the fridge, the locker room, the bar cart and the clock.

S3 is about getting it out of his system:

I think Carmy is yet again trying to beat his addictions. I think this is the first time we are actually witnessing him rawdog his depression in real time without his substance clutch and that is why he is so insufferable. Season 3 is Carmy in long-term withdrawal and detoxification and it's not an easy process. It's hard and it's ugly. The dramatic marker (substitute storyline) for this point in his life is his quitting cigarettes. The cigarettes, as well as representing itself, also represents his other addictions and so at his last count with Syd, Carmy has been sober for 41 days + the following days that count to the Ever funeral.

[moonlit-tulip]

Translation as Re-Compression

Translators often talk about the impossibility of producing a single perfect translation of a work, capturing all its nuance and sounding fully natural in its newly-translated form.

Non-translators often find this unintuitive.

As an intuition-aid, then: consider it through the lens of compression algorithms.

Language is a form of lossy compression which can be applied to thought in order to format it for communication with others. We have large-and-many-layered thoughts which we render into words, losing a lot of their nuance in the process.

Different languages compress the same thoughts differently, losing and keeping different details. For example, English defaults to bundling information on people's genders in with many third-person references to those people, while Japanese does a lot less of that; Japanese, meanwhile, defaults to bundling information on siblings' relative ages in many references to their siblinghood, while English does a lot less of that.

This leads to a serious problem for translators. Because it leaves them two major choices.

The first choice: take the original language—already an output of a lossy compression-process—and run further lossy compression on it in order to convert it to the target language in reasonably-efficiently-packed form. At the cost of this further loss-of-information, you can have the information that is left come out reasonably well-compressed and thus easy to consume in the new language.

The second choice: take the original language and translate it with as little further loss as possible, even at the cost of compression-efficiency. Translate every Japanese 'imouto' to 'little sister', and not just 'sister', even if the result sounds stiltedly redundant in English, because otherwise information from the Japanese will be lost. Thereby, preserve as much of the original work's content as possible, but in a far-less-efficient form in the target language than in the source language.

(As a somewhat-more-specific analogy, for those who happen to be familiar with music formats: MP3-to-AAC conversion versus MP3-to-FLAC conversion. The former is a lossy conversion of an already-lossy format; it produces an AAC which has lost information relative to the source MP3, but takes up similarly-little space. The latter is a lossless conversion of its lossy source material, so lacks that degradation-of-output-quality, but in exchange it takes up a lot more space than the AAC output would have and a lot more space than the original MP3 did.)

Notably, however, it leads to a lot less problem for original creators producing versions of a work in multiple languages. Because they're not working from a lossy base: they have access to the original thoughts which the work is a lossily-compressed rendition of. And so they can, with relative freedom, create multiple equally-compressed renditions of those thoughts with only partial overlap, rather than one being constrained to have its content be a strict subset of the other. (Like, to continue the prior analogy, converting a lossless source-file both to MP3 and to AAC, such that both output-files are well-compressed and neither output-file is unambiguously behind the other in terms of net information retained.)

Those two choices map pretty closely onto the frequently-discussed-by-translators tradeoff between translations tuned to flow well and sound good in the target language and translations tuned to preserve the full detailed nuance of the source language. But I think the compression framing can be helpful in understanding exactly why it's a forced tradeoff, why there's no magical perfect translation which succeeds in both of those goals at once. It's not just an issue of translation-skill; there are fundamental information-theoretic limits at play.

(The third option, the technically-not-translation route of the original creator producing the work multiple times in different languages from their original source thoughts and thus bypassing the tradeoff between the prior two choices, isn't one I've seen talked about as much, likely because creators with the necessary level of skill in multiple languages to pull it off are relatively rare.)

[chthonic-cassandra]

can i ask what is the best way to get several different cool perfumes with complex notes without spending a bunch of money? (or is in fact the only way to get it to capitulate to putting aside and spending a bunch of money on it….) are there recommended like…packages/ways to obtain samples of x number of scents? your perfume logs are always so intriguing and it’s been making me wonder.

Okay, so I don't want to blithely say that it's easy not to spend a bunch of money on perfume because, like any pastime centered around physical objects with a collecting component, it's pretty common to spend a bunch of money on it! I think that the particular intersection of perfume as consumable (in a slower, more gradual way) + luxury item + containing a lot of variety and specificity can really facilitate that in its own fashion.

But, at the same time, samples are very very much a thing in the perfume world and can be obtained from a number of sources. When someone (including myself!) seems to be wearing a wide range of different perfumes all the time, they are typically working from a substantial collection of samples.

@amarocit wrote a great post about how to get into perfumes which was specifically centered around living in Europe but most of the information is applicable to people living elsewhere, and includes a lot of specific suggestions about where and how to obtain samples. In my own experience, which is not so extensive or wide-ranging at that, a lot of brands do readily sell sample or smaller/travel sizes of at least some of their fragrances, either individually or in sample packs, and there are also some pretty robust internet communities of perfume fans who resell or trade both samples and bottles of perfumes at lower prices, or who decant perfumes not usually available in sample sizes.

I realize I stopped specifying this on my logging posts a while back, but for the past year I've gotten into and nearly exclusively been wearing perfumes from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, which is an independent company making oil-based perfumes with a gothic/nerdy sensibility. Oil-based perfumes are really their own thing, and may seem weird or inconvenient if you're accustomed to alcohol-based perfumes, but I personally really like using them for a variety of reasons, though I've gone through periods of exclusively using alcohol-based ones in the past and there may come a time when I do more of that again. BPAL has been around for a while and has both its own fan community and its own detractors, but their perfumes work really well for me and what I want out of fragrance at this stage in my life. One thing that they most certainly do have are a lot of easily accessible samples, since they both sell sample sizes of their general catalog perfumes and also include free samples in every order; this means there are a ton of BPAL samples floating around the world all the time, and so it's probably one of the companies from which its easiest to end up with a varied collection.

[aliciavance4228]

Did the author of Shadow of Perseus ever realized that by trying to make Andromeda a "heroine in her own right" she accidentally turned her into a more submissive, voiceless and vulnerable woman than in the original myth where she's just a "trophy for the hero"?

Not only that she willingly sacrifices herself, but the Oracle of Ammon didn't even specifically asked for a human sacrifice to begin with (one hundred goats would've been just fine) and then, after Perseus frees her, she considers trying to sacrifice herself again next day. She then ultimately ends up sacrificing herself a second time as well, but in a metaphorical sense. After Perseus murders Phineus she instantly becomes desperate and offers herself to Perseus just so that he won't kill anyone else. During her time spent on that ship she used to tell herself that her tribe is no longer in danger now that she's not there, because this was the only thought that helped her cope with the fact that she didn’t die on that day.

So far we got not only this erroneus idea that the myth becomes more progressive if we have Andromeda choosing to sacrifice herself (when if anything it's just linked in the belief that women should always put other people wishes over theirs because otherwise they're heartless), but a huge saviour complex that comes out of nowhere. Crown of Serpents does the exact same mistake, but at least in that book we are told about how ever since a young age her parents always had great expectations from her, and how she always had to play a role or prioritize her family and kingdom over herself to the point where she became a people-pleaser.

Next we have her race, ethnicity, homeplace and culture. Now, Greek Mythology already reflects ancient greeks' awful beliefs regarding non-greek "barbarian" people that would be considered racist or xenophobic nowdays. In this case despite the fact that Andromeda's home is usually placed either in Northern Africa, Middle East or India (depending on the source), and she's most conventionally known as the princess of Aethiopia, she still has a greek name and greek ancestry, and portrayed as looking greek in the vast majority of ancient depictions of her. It gets to a point where lots of poets described her as being "white as marble" or at least paler compared to the other aethiopians, most likely because in this way she could've been "foreign" or "exotic" while still fitting into ancient greek beauty standards. However, it should be simultaneously pointed out the fact that most of the time ancient authors never visited the places they were writing about, nor had enough access to information as we have nowdays. Now take into account the lack of knowledge in geography because many places still weren't discovered by them yet to begin with (just try to follow an ancient map and you'll get what I'm talking about) and from this perspective this lack of accuracy also becomes justified.

In this case though we have a 21th Century author who, despite of living in an era where one can get access to any sort of topics they're searching for with only one click on Google and supposedly has the awareness and intellect of recognizing the previously mentioned awful beliefs people had thousands of years ago, takes a much worse move in the process of writing Andromeda's POV. Not only that she doesn't deconstruct or counteract outdated perceptions on different northern african cultures, but plays along numerous stereotypes and prejudices linked in said cultures that come from Orientalism in order to fit a western perception on these people and tickle the superiority complex anglo-saxon people are usually characterized by. She basically essentializes these societies as static and undeveloped compared to the superior, developed, and marvelous "white culture", therefore creating an imaginary world that can be easily put on paper, analyzed, described and studied instead of doing the effort of reading more than one or two Wikipedia articles and being like: "Got it!"

Andromeda as a princess? That is surely a greek projection since everybody knows that these people still haven't discovered bronze yet, let aside have complex structures such as castles or palaces. Therefore it would've been much more accurate and realistic to have Andromeda as a tribal woman who sleeps in a tent, drinks from ostrich shells instead of cups and didn't know greek until she had to learn it on that ship, let aside how to read and write.

Last but not least, let's talk about her relationships with men. This book is supposed to be a Feminist women which adresses the misogyny and Patriarchal standards of those times, so it would've made sense to keep Phineus as Andromeda's disgusting uncle whom she was initially engaged with before she met Perseus, right? Wrong, because apparently in this retelling not only that he isn't disgusting, but he isn't her uncle to begin with, but her childhood friend and the "son of her father's friend" (I'm wondering if her father's friend was also her grandfather...) whom she willingly wanted to marry, because what could be more progressive than sanitizing the actual predators from the original source material? Meanwhile, Perseus is demonized to the point where he murders her fiancé, kidnaps and rapes her, when what made their love story interesting to begin with was the fact that in this myth Andromeda chose to marry the man she loved instead of the one her father wanted her to marry and willingly left her home for him, thus breaking the socio-political norms of those times. Furthermore, not only that Andromeda ends up being held captive and repeatedly violated by the man who destroyed her life, but the author of this retelling came to the conclusion that the best way she could give Andromeda agency is by having her trying "fix" Perseus and turn him into a good man, then slowly starting to gain feelings for him. It's clearly a better alternative than having Andromeda fell in love with Perseus just like in the original myths from the start, right? I mean, it's not like there's a veeerry specific term ment to define a victim's romantic feelings for their own abductor during captivity or something... How was it called again? Sweden's capital? Nah, I cannot remember it! And of coursly this type of dynamic cannot be considered insensitive or problematic, let aside be linked in hundreds of years of opression and slavery, or the way white men rationalized for centuries their abusive, non-consentual relationships with their black female slaves! And what better way to empower your female character than through sexuality, amairite?!

Not to mention the casual projection of racist stereotypes and prejudices she receives even from her own mother-in-law, or the fact that in the last chapter she turns out to be pregnant:

Sure, you could write about actual women who were left pregnant via rape, but ultimately decided to give birth to their children and explore motherhood, such as -Oh, yeah... - Danaë, Perseus’ mother! But noooooo, let's have one of the few women from Greek Mythology who never got kidnapped, raped or cheated on throughout her entire life remain pregnant with her abuser's child, whom she clearly doesn't want and only reminds her of her trauma but will carry on and give birth to anyway, because that's clearly a better message that truly speaks about women's bodily autonomy and wheter or not they want to still be mothers after their sexual abuse! Thank God we have this Greek Mythology Feminist Retelling authors to enlighten us about female empowerment and how to fix the grossly misogynistic myths that do not manage to satisfy our modern sensibilities! 🙌

[caspercryptid]

Hello everyone I am so unbelievably pissed about the NaNoWriMo situation that i'm going to take my massive stack of writing and craft books and my English degree and channel all my rage into making an email newsletter to send craft-oriented writing prompts and tips during the month of November. Say No to NaNoWriMo, but yes to WriMo. You get it.

I'm not going to make this have the same goals as Nanowrimo-- I'm not reskinning it but less ableist, I just really think having a whole month where people focused on their work is pretty cool and I want to keep up that spirit. This is going to be informal and run by Just Me, though I'll make a discord server if it's clear there's interest. Direct questions to @nowrimomo , which I literally just made and so will look like a skeleton currently.

I'm going to include prompts from various professional sources with options for Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Fanfic, so everybody can get in on this. It doesn't matter what you write, but we should all Write More.

[gideonisms]

see there's a significant amount of people who enjoy a spooky story but do not also like RPGs and I think rq failed to realize this in their marketing post-tma. It's just like how MOST lesbians like weed and own a gaming computer but not all of them

[maeamian]

Actually research skills are hard to learn especially unsupervised so maybe telling people to just "Go figure it out" especially if you already know they've been failed academically in other ways, might actually be a great way to just send them to a PragerU video on the topic.

[littlemizzlinguistics]

Bilingual YouTubers with educational channels who use local sources to tell us stories and give us information that we wouldn’t have known about or been able to access otherwise, you guys are my favorite people and I love you!

[wonder-worker]

Cratesipolis in the Ancient Sources

314 BCE: "Polyperchon's son Alexander, as he was setting out from Sicyon with his army, was killed by Alexion of Sicyon and certain others who pretended to be friends. His wife, Cratesipolis,​ however, succeeded to his power and held his army together, since she was most highly esteemed by the soldiers for her acts of kindness; for it was her habit to aid those who were in misfortune and to assist many of those who were without resources. She possessed, too, skill in practical matters and more daring than one would expect in a woman. Indeed, when the people of Sicyon scorned her because of her husband's death and assembled under arms in an effort to gain their freedom, she drew up her forces against them and defeated them with great slaughter, but arrested and crucified about thirty. When she had a firm hold on the city, she governed the Sicyonians, maintaining many soldiers, who were ready for any emergency."

— Diodorus Siculus (Book XIX)

308 BCE: "At this time, while Ptolemy was sailing from Myndus with a strong fleet through the islands, he liberated Andros as he passed by and drove out the garrison. Moving on to the Isthmus, he took Sicyon and Corinth from Cratesipolis."

— Diodorus Siculus (Book XX)

308 BCE: "Cratesipolis, who had long fought in vain for an opportunity of betraying Acrocorinth to Ptolemy, having been repeatedly assured by the mercenaries, who composed the guard, that the place could be defended, applauded their fidelity and bravery; however, said she, it may be wise to send for reinforcements from Sicyon. For this purpose, she openly sent a letter of request to the Sicyonians; and privately an invitation to Ptolemy. Ptolemy's troops were dispatched in the night, admitted as the Sicyonian allies, and put in possession of Acrocorinth without the agreement or knowledge of the guards."

— Polyaenus: Stratagems

307 BCE: "But on learning that Cratesipolis, who had been the wife of Polyperchon's​ son Alexander, was tarrying at Patrae, and would be very glad to make him a visit (and she was a famous beauty), [Demetrius the Besieger] left his forces in the territory of Megara and set forth, taking a few light-armed attendants with him. And turning aside from these also, he pitched his tent apart, that the woman might pay her visit to him unobserved. Some of his enemies learned of this, and made a sudden descent upon him. Then, in a fright, he donned a shabby cloak and ran for his life and got away, narrowly escaping a most shameful capture in consequence of his rash ardour. His tent, together with his belongings, was carried off by his enemies."

— Plutarch (Life of Demetrius, 1.9.3)

[thisisindeedausername]

i feel like theres probably a Gravity Falls to analog horror pipeline

[pathetic-gamer]

my toxic trait is going overboard on research for stuff that doesn't matter and then expecting everyone else to do the same.

i tracked down a crunchy pdf of a dense history book from the 60s about magical weapons in irish mythology for the sake of a one-shot fanfic that like maybe a hundred people will read, which is my prerogative, but that is SUCH an unrealistic and unreasonable standard to hold anyone else to

an artist I like asked where to find references to design a character with some degree of historical accuracy and i fuckin. i fuckin gave them the name of a historian. i could have said "oh here's a website with pictures" "look at this cool collection of replicas" but no. no of course not. read this 600 page dissertation and this encyclopedia from 1923 but also read this critique of that encyclopedia from the 70s. this is normal.

[tempestclerics]

.

[definitelynotshouting]

I have no idea how you manage to do extensive research if I was at your place I would do research and then be wrong about everything

OWDNWKDNWKD IM CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT THIS IS IN REFERENCE TO TBH.... but really its just about hunting down the right resources and doing a lot of cross-referencing for me!!! I really enjoy learning new stuff and highly value accuracy so i have a lot of fun fishing for scientific papers and going on research binges for information i can use in a story-- sometimes it takes a minute to sift through the academic language so i can understand what its saying, but usually i can get the gist of what im reading, which helps a lot when i start cross-referencing with more layman-friendly articles :]