This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
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Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
This is the lounge. You can discuss anything you want, but you will do it kindly.
Status: Heavily Moderated; Previous thread
pHred
That’s one heck of a comment.
And yes, I’d noticed the commenter’s name on the comments list at ETEV, but no comment, but Dana’s been all over the place lately, so they (FM) probably spent a good long frustrating while in moderation.
Nick
Good luck! Here’s hoping there’s no shenanigans!
Congratulations, The Mellow Monkey! Hope mother and baby recover fine, and learn to get along well. :)
PatrickG
People are definitely assholes, and you are most definitely not one of them. I’m glad the guy had you around to help him out.
Speaking of homework problems, I just found out last night that my daughter has actually been hiding some homework from us so we wouldn’t make her do it. Oh, dear.
Happy birthday!!! to MM’s newest great-niece and all her family (especially her probably-feeling-knackered mum).
me too (and appalled).
I can’t think of anything more ghastly than having people crowding round while busy giving birth. In hospital with partner and (properly qualified professional as per UK system) midwife, plus self, plus, in due course, sprog and nobody bloody else, thank you very much! Much nicer to have visitors a bit later, when you feel up to it and can enjoy them.
Is this (family crowding round) A Thing in the different countries inhabited by the Horde? Hoo, cultural differences … !
:-D Hope everyone is well, and that it’s a lovely visit.
JAL @463
QFT !
Oh dog – the nonsense they throw out about having a child “read correctly at just the right level” – it makes me want to HULK SMASH!!!! For my son, who was reading well above his grade level they kept giving us a hassle about him reading things that “were too hard” when they problem was that they were boring him to death.
With my daughter, she has been struggling a bit but she loves books. So instead of encouraging her they have her reading these stupid little paper phonics books. ARGH!
Also re: homework. My six year old has homework every night. My eleven year old hasn’t had any homework yet. DOES THIS MAKE ANY SENSE ???
Just, ARGH!!!!!!
Can somebody tell him it’s not his fault?
The whole “primary school kids having homework” thing creeps me out a bit, anyway.
I mean, why? Why do they need homework (this isn’t an attack on you; you didn’t put it into the curriculum)? The best excuse I’ve heard is that it’s training them to have good homework habits for when they’re older. Which got me thinking: why do they need those? Why do we routinely expect even older kids to complete hours of extra work after their working day is done?
isn’t this kind of just a stealth way of training them to be good little drones when their corporate
ownersoverlords expect them to work overtime, and be available by e-mail 24 hours, and never take time away from their work – only the workplace, and only when necessary? I’m not suggesting it’s a great conspiracy, just that we’ve accepted the normalized idea that “work should be done at home”, not least because we’ve been trained from an early age that this is what people do, and we’re ingraining it more and more with each generation.And the worst part is, it’s counterproductive. We haven’t evolved to maintain concentration and focus for endless hours, and we don’t keep effective mental faculties beyond a certain limit.
You all have my sympathy. The kids’ antipathy to the whole idea seems so reasonable, is (IMO) probably why it’s so hard to effectively argue against. It sucks, and it’s pointless, and they can sense it, and there’s playtime, and we’re losing sunlight day by day, and can’t I just go play for a bit?
A bit rupt, so forgive if I miss anything here…
Og
I’m so sorry. That is awful.
MM
Congrats!
PatrickG
May Thor bless you. That was an awesome thing you did.
JAL
Sorry for your troubles. And never feel weird about sharing them here.
General homework discussion:
I was like that when I was kid. I tested very well, but wouldn’t do the homework. Part of it was just laziness, but I think (even though I couldn’t have expressed it then) that I found homework stupid and kind of insulting. “I got the lesson. I prove it on tests again and again, why do I have to do this extra busywork at home?”
I don’t have kids, so I’m reluctant to offer advice on stuff like this. But maybe if homework was made into a sort of game, with points and such? Maybe if the kid thinks it’s about showing off their smarts instead of being forced to regurgitate facts for no reason… But then it also becomes more work for the parent. I dunno. Wish I could help.
2kittehs – she hated all wet food, so it was probably just her. It’s more between the shoulder blades, but still in “scruff” area. The only thing we had to watch for, which happened a couple of times, was piercing all the way through to the other side of the fold so then the saline squirted out entirely…
UnknownEric – oy, that’s tough. We went through something similar last year with Child 1, and there was lecturing and tears (mine) and Big Important Long Talks. I tried to emphasize that we weren’t mad at him (really), that it wasn’t about him being smart or dumb, it was all about time management and organization and learning how to do that, and that we’d help in any way we could, and that the worst feeling is being behind and not knowing what to do about it and ignoring it just makes the problem and the feeling worse, so the only thing to do is tackle it head-on and fight through doing it and we’d do whatever it took to get the homework environment right and whatever planning tools he needed obtained etc. I feel for you.
Hey, everyone,
Was there a DOS attack on FTB last night? I tried to get on for a couple of hours last night (MT) and either got 404 or was directed to some kind of internet service website. But I don’t find any mention of it. Weird.
Sue
opposablethumbs
I don’t know how common it is, but I’ve experienced it a couple of times now here in the USA. People get bitter and offended if they’re not in the delivery room, people want to go and cluster in the waiting room and then crowd in as soon as the birth is done, etc. I understand the excitement–I’m very happy for my niece!–but if I have no reason to be present for such an intimate life event then I’m more than happy to wait around until I feel less invasive.
I imagine my sister will be hurt if she’s not “invited” to my hypothetical births*, which would be an unwanted source of stress for something that’s stressful enough on its own.
*Yes, I’m young enough to have a hypothetical birth in my future while also having great-nieces. My mom had her children spread out over three decades. I’ve been feeling old before my time since I was ten as a result. :D
Hey all!
I just moved my dish drain rack to the other side of the sink, clearing a nice big work area right next to the stove!
It only took me thirteen years to figure that out. I’m a genius.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/18/1330602/-Stephen-Colbert-blasts-the-militarization-of-our-SCHOOLS
Yep, the military equipment for schools issue was covered on Colbert.
Thank you everyone! Hearing praise about my comments really does help. I never received such about my writing before, even in school. I feel much better from your words and getting some sleep.
I think being back on a daytime schedule is fucking me up. It seems to coincide with my slide. Any other night owls (with or without depression) get the same thing? I feel so much better, more alert and aware, being up at night. Up all day is just a fucking drag. Even though I can do the same things plus more because I can vacuum, it feels worse. Like I can’t focus. The heat doesn’t help either because I cannot handle it at all, it makes me sleepy even if I slept all night.
The schedule I was on right before this seemed so much better. I slept for several hours before getting Little One up and several hours after getting back home. Up several hours before getting her and stayed up until the early morning. But then one day I was late getting up to get her, got yelled at by Landlord, and was too paranoid to go back to it. *sigh*
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Rowan vet-tech
Thank you but with four cats running around seeing more pets just makes me go “Oh, more trouble.” lol
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Dalillama, Schmott Guy
Thanks. After having slept on it my biggest issue is being my own worse enemy. I’m just getting my thoughts down atm, which has lead to two long rant type sections, which makes me go “this isn’t a book review. with all these links and shit it’s a discussion post”. But I have started really on the positive aspects so fretting over the end result is silly. And asking for help right now is pointless since it’s not even a rough draft, just notes. It’s just frustrating the fuck out of me because it’s becoming so hard to make myself write it out.
Maybe once I get the brainstorming/notes/whatever the fuck part done I’ll ask for your help. There’s not just the rant sections I’m concerned over. It’s also morphed into a series review (3 books) since I read them back to back and didn’t review in between, which means they feel like just one experience and separating them is hard. Oy. Lesson learned.
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rq
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
There’s no questions on the homework, it’ just a box to fill in book name and who they read it to. After I asked about chapter books, there was a note on the following homework page about asking our kids questions making sure they understand what they’re reading. But there wasn’t anything specific and Little One says they aren’t asked about it in class. She understands what’s going on in the chapter book, obviously or she wouldn’t be reading it so I dunno what’s going on. I’ve since decided to say fuck it, and just write the chapter book and the pages on the homework. The fucker can call me, instead of rushing me off the phone like last time if there’s a problem.
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pHred
Exactly! I’ve always read above my level in school yet it’s not like until 4th/5th grade where that was praised by my school librarian. Being an 8th grader reading at a college level, teachers started to go on about preparing for test and how great it is that I was ahead then. Where did they think I got ahead? Sure as fuck wasn’t through sticking me with picture books.
Where is just the love of reading? Just shove ’em in boxes then prep ’em for those damn tests. Ugh. They’re sucking all the fun out of it and they wonder why kids don’t wanna read!
As far as homework is concerned for her in 2nd grade, it’s a 5 sheet packet, including the one mentioned for filling out reading books, that they have a week to complete.
She gets it done quick enough and doesn’t give me problems about doing it, thank god. She does need to work on her math and writing but there’s games for the former online (way more fun) and I’m trying to get her creative writing (or journaling) so it’s not just a bland drag. But again, that whole “I did my homework!” obstacle. Last year they did journal entries in class and she loved that. Kids are so creative and need outlets for expression so I don’t get why it’s all writing given sentences. Don’t they do that enough in school?
Reading ya’lls stories make me so worried for next year and beyond. I mean, I knew given the school system it’d be an uphill battle but damn.
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Speaking of cats, I have a consistant in the back of my mind worry about my cat.
She’s the fattest of our four. Not like Garfield fat but big enough that she doesn’t (can’t?) jump up places like Little One’s top bunk. The other cats jump off my table up or go up by the window. She doesn’t even try. I don’t think she’s even gone in that window anymore since she has to jump from my futon bed up there. She loves windows and is in the front one a lot though. The highest place she gets to (a white top shelf) seems really awkward getting up and down for her. But she loves that shelf and lays on it all day. She’s not active either, definitely not as much as the other cats when they’re running around at dusk and dawn.
I’ve watched her but she doesn’t seem to be eating more than the others at all. We don’t willingly give them people food and she doesn’t try to get it at all. It’s the skinniest one, Little One’s cat, that gets in cabinets to eat the bag of treats and licks plates clean in the sink. We can’t afford trying out new foods and such so I’m at a loss to not just why she’s so big but to help her lose weight as well.
Then there’s her weird purr. It’s really low and hard to hear but I get close enough to hear it, it sounds…rusty. Reminds me of those old trucks you have to try several times before it starts. Sometimes I swear it sounds like she has to clear her throat. Is that something to be concerned about?
She’s perfectly fine otherwise and she doesn’t seem bothered by any of it at all though.
Then there’s mom’s damn dog who only eats cat food. We’ve bought him dog food but he won’t touch it. Mom thinks it’s cute and says he thinks he’s a cat but he’s so skinny! He was practically starving when she took him in and he barely looks any better now. Sure no ribs are showing but he’s like a terrier or something mutt with a scraggly coat who just looks so. skinny. Where are his organs?!? Last time she took him to the vet he got a clean bill of health but still. He relentlessly begs for people food, again because of Mom. He’s her lap dog, her baby and she doesn’t want to do anything about him at all. He’s not ours and is unhappy here no matter what we do. Ugh. I have nothing against dogs and feel bad for disliking him so much but he’s endlessly annoying and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
Good parody ad for a Republican political candidate:
Daily Kos link.
Oh, damnit. I forgot the comment numbers don’t copy over anymore. Sorry everyone. That’s a new habit I’ve got to get into. Blargh.
Daily Kos link.
Oh! I forgot to mention. Roomie’s been following the NFL arrests and such of abusive players. He’s actually paying attention, shocked, dismayed, and happy they’re dealing with it. We had a wonderful conversation about it and related issues in atheism and gaming.
Considering his previous shrugging and such about these issues, especially in gaming (he’s a big gamer. loves league of legends, won’t “buy” critiques of female’s clothing etc), so it’s a big step forward. Apparently there’s just been another arrest that happened yesterday that he heard of just a couple of minutes ago. He really shouted out loud when hearing it.
We also segued into the owner who was forced out for racists remarks and hoping the owner of the Washington Racists will slip up soon. He’s all for that and mentioned how certain broadcasters are refusing to say the name and everything. ESPN still shows the logo though but there’s slow progress and hope. At the very least, it’s widening his views and permeating his bubble of non-SJW-ness.
TheMellow Monkey
Uff. About the last, last, last thing I want in the delivery room immediately post-delivery is a crowd – friends, family, students, I don’t care, get the fuck out of my face. And no, it’s not a ‘let me be with my baby!’ type of GTFO, but definitely a ‘I’m fucking tired and you’re all annoying as fuck and I feel like shit’ type of GTFO.
But, obviously, many people feel differently, so more power to them. As long as they don’t make public birth mandatory, because I don’t exactly feel the rush to be in anybody else’s delivery room (barring specific requests for very specific reasons).
JAL
I’m about to mail out a package for you (via Portia), just a quick question – is there anything (small and mailable) by way of… well, anything, mittens, books (a bit tough considering the selection in this country), paper plates, walnuts, etc. that I can add in, just for the heck of it? For you and/or Little One? Chocolate is a given.:)
+++
Some days were made for not going to work, but thank goodness for legal drugs available and permissible in the workplace.
(I don’t often plan on drinking four+ cups of coffee, but when I do, I mean it. I figure not drinking it at all on a daily basis will even out the potential health costs.)
So, stuff is happening.
Anyone have any information on/experience with SBA loans and starting a business they’d be willing to share?
My nick at the gravity mail if more details are needed.
Oops. Sorry for spamming the thread but I’ve gotten a sudden burst of activity going on here. There’s one question/issue related to the book review I want to run by you guys.
The best books, I’ve found, that are set in/about different cultures usually include words from the people’s language. Yet this book, like so many others, doesn’t do that. They used “simplified Chinese honorifics” and apparently fucked them up so badly. (Information learned through reading Chinese people’s reviews. Also, really fucked up the naming characters part as well) That’s the only attempt at inclusion with everything else being so very clearly western. Oh, except the token chopsticks and kimonos (yes, I know).
I’m trying to list good examples of using the original language or ideas for good words to substitute in but I’m so ignorant on the subject and the good examples through books I’ve read are all Japanese, which I’m not bringing up since the author fucked up by failing “pan-Asian” as it is. Usually it’s with food (there’s mention of sweet sticky buns being sold, but that brought up cinnamon bun images and google leads me to believe the author fucked that up as well), clothing, or titles such as something besides prince. (Does using prince alongside emperors annoying anyone else? It really, really clashes and irritates me whenever I hear it. )
So any suggestions on words or articles that tackle the topic would be greatly appreciated.
If not Prince, then what is the heir to the Emperor? Just the Heir? I honestly don’t know.
Me, personally, I’ve always wanted to be ‘Her Magnificence, the Grand Vizier’.
(Sorry, JAL, can’t really help you out. :) )
rq
Aw, thank you! But we’re good (or at least I can’t think of anything. Def. no need for mittens in this hot ass hellhole lol), chocolate will be lovely though. :)
Oh goody, America is sending us 16 tanks and armored vehicles. Woot! (Not for the police, though.)
rq
Np. I know both prince and emperor are English translation but it bugs me, probably irrationally. I went looking it up and the Wiki about titles for Chinese ruling class left me really confused. The Japanese books I’ve read used the Japanese words for their titles but clearly that’s not applicable here. (It’s super easy to figure out while reading and doesn’t let you forget the culture so it’s a great example of it) Though the families’s names are Japanese, who are ruling all of Asia apparently, so maybe it might be? I dunno but that brings back the shitty “Asian cultures are all alike” crap going on in this, as the defenders call it, pan-Asian future world. It’s such a shoddy world building that I just hate it all. I really enjoyed reading it, story- and character-wise, but thinking about it really kills a lot of that. However, the responsibility of enjoying problematic media is knowing why it’s problematic and when talking about it to mention that so I’m trying really hard to get this right.
Is there a fearsome hat? There ought to be a fearsome hat.
Urk. I had a great comment, but here’s a link for children of emperors – they’re mostly princes and princesses (in translation), or grand dukes and duchesses. If that helps any.
Also, are there any other ‘pan-Asian’ titles you can look into, like Vietnamese or Korean? Or even Indian (or is that too ‘pan-Asian’?)?
A quick internet search yielded up the afore-mentioned Prince/Princess, Imperial or sometimes not. Being adopted and having ‘Caesar’ appended to one’s name tended to signify an heir to the emperor’s throne. Also, King – as subordinate to the Emperor, also only for the heir.
And there’s always Sith Lord, really. ;)
Anne
I’d only do it nurturingly enough if there was a fearsome hat. With lots of feathers. I love feathers on hats.
(I dream, one day, of going to Ascot with the most ridiculous headdress I’d never wear anywhere else and have a smashing good time.)
@Lynna, #17:
:snicker:
“What actually works if we want to increase gender diversity in corporate America?”
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/18/3569218/women-boards-quotas/
In Norway, setting up quotas worked. And, no, it did not lead to “token” women nor to women feeling like they were tokens.
JAL #522
While there are things originating in China that probably could be described as sweet sticky buns (Mostly ones filled with bean, lotus, or other vegetable pastes), I can’t think of anything that actually is called that, in any translation.
It’s worth noting here that what the correct words (or correct transliteration of them, anyway) are will vary greatly depending on where in China the characters are at the moment. The Chinese language has many, many regional dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible. Not to mention that there are 50-odd other ethnic groups in China besides the Han, who all have their own languages too. (China and India are about the closest things to Pan-Asian nations there’s ever been, what with how many ethnicities the have and how big a chunk of turf they’ve got).
Prince(ess) is the correct title for the child of an emperor/empress, although in many cases they will have other titles as well. Ferdinand III, for instance, was the Prince of the Holy Roman Emperor (before he was the Holy Roman Emperor), but was also, separately, the King of Bohemia, King of Hungary, King of a bunch of other places, Duke of several more, etc. etc. etc.
After emperor, most other traditional Chinese and Japanese titles don’t really map very well into English, and you’re better off using them as-is without even trying to translate. (I’m also not convinced that Emperor is actually the best translation for the Japanese head of state either, but it’s the one we’ve been using for centuries now and I don’t think we’re going to stop).
*all the grog* for Nerd.
Fuck the American “health care” system.
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*careful hugs* for CaitieCat.
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*mega-hugs* for JAL.
We are here, and we care.
If you need to vent, then let ‘er rip!
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PatrickG, that is a Good Thing that you did. Compassionate. Kind. Considerate.
Humane.
I know that assholes must clock in at approximately one-per-customer, but day-am, why do so many of ’em have to show it off?
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*hugs* for Giliell.
I (seem to) remember you having trouble with college before.
Perhaps you are actually dealing with a Clown College? Perhaps dosing the administration thereof liberally with a bucket of whitewash would help? Maybe with a *napalm!* chaser?
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*also hugs* for carlie.
Respiratory illness sucks, and depression sucks and lies.
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Congrats on the new great-niece, Mellow Monkey!
Mmmmm…niece loaf….
:)
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Yeeeeah….
I’m gonna have to get to Page 2 later.
Stupid Shockwave&Chrome crashes.
Frustrated and annoyed.
And kinda stabby.
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@ awakeinmo and others who responded similarly:
It actually makes me kind of sad to be appreciated for a bare minimum of human decency. I called a cab, got him a glass of water, bummed him a cigarette, and hung out with him for 10 minutes until the cab got there. I didn’t leap a tall building! But that’s my issue.
Er wait, it’s the Horde’s fault! You’ve indoctrinated me into your no-cookie culture! I USED TO WANT COOKIES AND NOW I CAN’T HAVE THEM. EVAR! And cookies are nice! Damn you all!
Anyway, rambling mode off. Thank you for the kind words.
TV Tropes article on the Scunthorpe Problem! Read all the examples, most of them are hilarious – put a pillow on your desk, though. :-)
Paywalled pdf! Abstract (references removed):
“We sequenced the genomes of a 7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight 8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporaryhumansto show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: west European hunter-gatherers,who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to Near Easterners; ancient north Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, who contributed to both Europeans and Near Easterners; and early European farmers, who were mainly of Near Eastern origin but also harboured west European hunter-gatherer related ancestry. We model these populations’ deep relationships and show that early European farmers had 44% ancestry from a ‘basal Eurasian’ population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages.”
Go here and look at the figures! They’re probably not behind the paywall.
Highlights (references removed):
“Near Eastern migrants from Anatolia and the Levant are known to have played a major role in the introduction of agriculture to Europe, as ancient DNA indicates that early European farmers were distinct from European hunter-gatherers and close to present-day Near Easterners. However, modelling present-day Europeans as a mixture of these two ancestral populations does not account for the fact that Europeans are also admixed with a population related to Native Americans. To clarify the prehistory of Europe, we sequenced nine ancient genomes (Fig. 1 and Extended Data Fig. 1): ‘Stuttgart’ (19-fold coverage), a ~7,000-year old skeleton found in Germany in the context of artefacts from the first widespread farming culture of central Europe, the Linearbandkeramik [Linear Pottery Culture]; ‘Loschbour’ (22-fold), an ~8,000-year-old skeleton from the Loschbour rock shelter in Luxembourg, discovered in the context of hunter-gatherer artefacts (Supplementary Information sections 1 and 2); and seven ~8,000-year-old samples (0.01–2.4-fold) from a hunter-gatherer burial in Motala, Sweden (the highest coverage individual was ‘Motala12’).”
“Stuttgart has mtDNA haplogroup T2, typical of Neolithic Europeans, and Loschbour and all Motala individuals have the U5 or U2 haplogroups, typical of [ancient European] hunter-gatherers (Supplementary Information section 4). Stuttgart is female, whereas Loschbour and five Motala individuals are male (Supplementary Information section 5) and belong to Y-chromosome haplogroup I, suggesting that this was common in pre-agricultural Europeans (Supplementary Information section 5).”
The Methods section reveals that sex was determined only by looking for Y-chromosomal DNA.
“We carried out large-scale sequencing of libraries prepared with uracil DNA glycosylase (UDG), which removes deaminated cytosines, thus reducing errors arising from ancient DNA damage (Supplementary Information section 3).”
That is smart. Otherwise, U would be read as T instead of as C.
“The ancient individuals had indistinguishable levels of Neanderthal ancestry when compared to each other (~2%) and to present-day Eurasians (Supplementary Information section 6). The heterozygosity of Stuttgart (0.00074) is at the high end of present-day Europeans, whereas that of Loschbour (0.00048) is lower than in any present human populations (Supplementary Information section 2); this must reflect a strong bottleneck in Loschbour’s ancestors, as the genetic data show that he was not recently inbred (Extended Data Fig. 2). High copy numbers for the salivary amylase gene (AMY1) have been associated with a high starch diet; our ancient genomes are consistent with the direction of this observation in that the Stuttgart farmer had the highest number of copies (16), whereas the ancient hunter-gatherers La Braña (from Iberia), Motala12, and Loschbour had lower numbers (5, 6 and 13, respectively) (Supplementary Information section 7). We caution, however, that copy count in Loschbour is at the high end of present-day humans, showing that high copy counts of AMY1 cannot be accounted for entirely by selection since the switch to agriculture. Both Loschbour and Stuttgart had dark hair (>99% probability); and Loschbour, like La Braña and Motala12, probably had blue or light coloured eyes (>75%) whereas Stuttgart probably had brown eyes (>99% probability) (Supplementary Information section 8). Neither Loschbour nor La Braña carries the skin-lightening allele in SLC24A5 that is homozygous in Stuttgart and nearly fixed in Europeans today, but Motala12 carries at least one copy of the derived allele, showing that this allele was present in Europe before the advent of agriculture.”
Isn’t that fascinating?
“We used the ADMIXTUREGRAPH software to fit a model (a tree structure augmented by admixture events) to the data, exploring models relating the three ancient populations (Stuttgart, Loschbour, and MA1 [a 24,000-year-old skeleton from Mal’ta in central Siberia]) to two eastern non-Africans (Onge and Karitiana) and sub-Saharan Africans (Mbuti). We found no models that fit the data with 0 or 1 admixture events, but did find a model that fit with 2 admixture events (Supplementary Information section 14). The successful model (Fig. 3) confirms the existence of MA1-related admixture in Native Americans, but includes the novel inference that Stuttgart is partially (44±10%) derived from a lineage that split before the separation of eastern non-Africans from the common ancestor of WHG and ANE [Western European Hunter-Gatherers and Ancient North Eurasians]. The existence of such basal Eurasian admixture into Stuttgart provides a simple explanation for our finding that diverse eastern non-African populations share significantly more alleles with ancient European and Upper Palaeolithic Siberian hunter-gatherers than with Stuttgart […], but that hunter-gatherers appear to be equally related to most eastern groups (Supplementary Information section 14). […] The ANE–WHG split must have occurred >24,000 years ago (as it must predate the age of MA1), and the WHG and Eastern non-African split must have occurred >40,000 years ago (as it must predate the Tianyuan individual from China which clusters with Asians to the exclusion of Europeans). The basal Eurasian split must be even older, and might be related to early settlement of the Levant or Arabia before the diversification of most Eurasians, or more recent gene flow from Africa. However, the basal Eurasian population shares much of the genetic drift common to non-African populations after their separation from Africans, and thus does not appear to represent gene flow between sub-Saharan Africans and the ancestors of non-Africans after the out-of-Africa bottleneck (Supplementary Information section 14).”
(Links added.)
“We infer that EEF [Early European Farmers] ancestry in Europe today ranges from ~30% in the Baltic region to ~90% in the Mediterranean, consistent with patterns of identity-by-descent (IBD) sharing (Supplementary Information section 18) and shared haplotype analysis (chromosome painting) 29 (Supplementary Information section 19) in which Loschbour shares more segments with northern Europeans and Stuttgart with southern Europeans. Southern Europeans inherited their European hunter-gatherer ancestry mostly via EEF ancestors (Extended Data Fig. 6), whereas northern Europeans acquired up to 50% of WHG ancestry above and beyond what they received through their EEF ancestors. Europeans have a larger proportion of WHG than ANE ancestry in general. By contrast, in the Near East there is no detectable WHG ancestry, but up to ~29% ANE in the Caucasus (Supplementary Information section 14). A striking feature of these findings is that ANE ancestry is inferred to be present in nearly all Europeans today (with a maximum of ~20%), but was absent in both farmers and hunter-gatherers from central and western Europe during the Neolithic transition. However, ANE ancestry was not completely absent from the larger European region at that time: we find that it was present in ~8,000-years-old Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, as MA1 shares more alleles with Motala12 (SHG) than with Loschbour, and Motala12 fits as a mixture of 81% WHG and 19% ANE (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Fun with math:
“Two sets of European populations are poor fits for the model. Sicilians, Maltese, and Ashkenazi Jews have EEF estimates of >100%, consistent with their having more Near Eastern ancestry than can be explained via EEF admixture (Supplementary Information section 17). They also cannot be jointly fit with other Europeans (Supplementary Information section 14), and they fall in the gap between European and Near Easterners in PCA (Fig. 2). Finns, Mordovians and Russians (from the northwest of Russia) also do not fit (Supplementary Information section 14; Extended Data Table 3) due to East Eurasian gene flow into the ancestors of these north-eastern European populations. These populations (and Chuvash and Saami) are more related to east Asians [including Hàn Chinese!] than can be explained by ANE admixture (Extended Data Fig. 7), probably reflecting a separate stream of Siberian gene flow into north-eastern Europe (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Perhaps importantly, all of these people look entirely European, with the Saami/Sami/Sámi in particular being gleaming white, blond and blue-eyed; the Saami, Finns and Mordvins all speak Uralic languages, as many of the ancestors of the northwestern Russians did, while the Chuvash language is a West Turkic one.
“A second question concerns how the ancestors of present-day Europeans first acquired their ANE ancestry. Discontinuity in central Europe during the late Neolithic (~4,500 years ago) associated with the appearance of mtDNA types absent in earlier farmers and hunter-gatherers raises the possibility that ANE ancestry may have also appeared at this time.”
I wonder if this finally identifies the arrival of the Indo-European language family in central Europe.
The figures show several more interesting things: the Basques overlap with the people living around them; the Hungarians overlap almost completely with the Croatians, though some of them have a tiny bit more ANE ancestry; the Turks span a huge range from (overlapping with) the Bulgarians and Greeks to (overlapping with) the literal Caucasians and Iranians; the Ashkenazi Jews overlap with the Turkish Jews, but also the mainland southern Italians, Sicilians and Maltese; the Sardinians, in contrast, are very distinct from all of mainland Europe (closest to non-northern Spain), being very close to the Canary Islanders and to Ötzi; the Stuttgart individual is close to Ötzi and the Canary Islanders as well.
Austria-Hungary’s were archdukes & archduchesses based on a forgery that was immediately recognized as such, but later implemented anyway. :-D
Some of the Persian satraps called themselves kings. The King of Kings was explicitly fine with that – it only increased his own status.
TV Tropes article on the Scunþorpe Problem! Read all the examples, most of them are hilarious – put a pillow on your desk, though. :-)
Fun fact: I fell victim to the Scunþorpe problem while trying to submit this comment.
Paywalled pdf! Abstract (references removed):
“We sequenced the genomes of a 7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight 8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporaryhumansto show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: west European hunter-gatherers,who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to Near Easterners; ancient north Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, who contributed to both Europeans and Near Easterners; and early European farmers, who were mainly of Near Eastern origin but also harboured west European hunter-gatherer related ancestry. We model these populations’ deep relationships and show that early European farmers had 44% ancestry from a ‘basal Eurasian’ population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages.”
Go here and look at the figures! They’re probably not behind the paywall.
Highlights (references removed):
“Near Eastern migrants from Anatolia and the Levant are known to have played a major role in the introduction of agriculture to Europe, as ancient DNA indicates that early European farmers were distinct from European hunter-gatherers and close to present-day Near Easterners. However, modelling present-day Europeans as a mixture of these two ancestral populations does not account for the fact that Europeans are also admixed with a population related to Native Americans. To clarify the prehistory of Europe, we sequenced nine ancient genomes (Fig. 1 and Extended Data Fig. 1): ‘Stuttgart’ (19-fold coverage), a ~7,000-year old skeleton found in Germany in the context of artefacts from the first widespread farming culture of central Europe, the Linearbandkeramik [Linear Pottery Culture]; ‘Loschbour’ (22-fold), an ~8,000-year-old skeleton from the Loschbour rock shelter in Luxembourg, discovered in the context of hunter-gatherer artefacts (Supplementary Information sections 1 and 2); and seven ~8,000-year-old samples (0.01–2.4-fold) from a hunter-gatherer burial in Motala, Sweden (the highest coverage individual was ‘Motala12’).”
“Stuttgart has mtDNA haplogroup T2, typical of Neolithic Europeans, and Loschbour and all Motala individuals have the U5 or U2 haplogroups, typical of [ancient European] hunter-gatherers (Supplementary Information section 4). Stuttgart is female, whereas Loschbour and five Motala individuals are male (Supplementary Information section 5) and belong to Y-chromosome haplogroup I, suggesting that this was common in pre-agricultural Europeans (Supplementary Information section 5).”
The Methods section reveals that sex was determined only by looking for Y-chromosomal DNA.
“We carried out large-scale sequencing of libraries prepared with uracil DNA glycosylase (UDG), which removes deaminated cytosines, thus reducing errors arising from ancient DNA damage (Supplementary Information section 3).”
That is smart. Otherwise, U would be read as T instead of as C.
“The ancient individuals had indistinguishable levels of Neanderthal ancestry when compared to each other (~2%) and to present-day Eurasians (Supplementary Information section 6). The heterozygosity of Stuttgart (0.00074) is at the high end of present-day Europeans, whereas that of Loschbour (0.00048) is lower than in any present human populations (Supplementary Information section 2); this must reflect a strong bottleneck in Loschbour’s ancestors, as the genetic data show that he was not recently inbred (Extended Data Fig. 2). High copy numbers for the salivary amylase gene (AMY1) have been associated with a high starch diet; our ancient genomes are consistent with the direction of this observation in that the Stuttgart farmer had the highest number of copies (16), whereas the ancient hunter-gatherers La Braña (from Iberia), Motala12, and Loschbour had lower numbers (5, 6 and 13, respectively) (Supplementary Information section 7). We caution, however, that copy count in Loschbour is at the high end of present-day humans, showing that high copy counts of AMY1 cannot be accounted for entirely by selection since the switch to agriculture. Both Loschbour and Stuttgart had dark hair (>99% probability); and Loschbour, like La Braña and Motala12, probably had blue or light coloured eyes (>75%) whereas Stuttgart probably had brown eyes (>99% probability) (Supplementary Information section 8). Neither Loschbour nor La Braña carries the skin-lightening allele in SLC24A5 that is homozygous in Stuttgart and nearly fixed in Europeans today, but Motala12 carries at least one copy of the derived allele, showing that this allele was present in Europe before the advent of agriculture.”
Isn’t that fascinating?
“We used the ADMIXTUREGRAPH software to fit a model (a tree structure augmented by admixture events) to the data, exploring models relating the three ancient populations (Stuttgart, Loschbour, and MA1 [a 24,000-year-old skeleton from Mal’ta in central Siberia]) to two eastern non-Africans (Onge and Karitiana) and sub-Saharan Africans (Mbuti). We found no models that fit the data with 0 or 1 admixture events, but did find a model that fit with 2 admixture events (Supplementary Information section 14). The successful model (Fig. 3) confirms the existence of MA1-related admixture in Native Americans, but includes the novel inference that Stuttgart is partially (44±10%) derived from a lineage that split before the separation of eastern non-Africans from the common ancestor of WHG and ANE [Western European Hunter-Gatherers and Ancient North Eurasians]. The existence of such basal Eurasian admixture into Stuttgart provides a simple explanation for our finding that diverse eastern non-African populations share significantly more alleles with ancient European and Upper Palaeolithic Siberian hunter-gatherers than with Stuttgart […], but that hunter-gatherers appear to be equally related to most eastern groups (Supplementary Information section 14). […] The ANE–WHG split must have occurred >24,000 years ago (as it must predate the age of MA1), and the WHG and Eastern non-African split must have occurred >40,000 years ago (as it must predate the Tianyuan individual from China which clusters with Asians to the exclusion of Europeans). The basal Eurasian split must be even older, and might be related to early settlement of the Levant or Arabia before the diversification of most Eurasians, or more recent gene flow from Africa. However, the basal Eurasian population shares much of the genetic drift common to non-African populations after their separation from Africans, and thus does not appear to represent gene flow between sub-Saharan Africans and the ancestors of non-Africans after the out-of-Africa bottleneck (Supplementary Information section 14).”
(Links added.)
“We infer that EEF [Early European Farmers] ancestry in Europe today ranges from ~30% in the Baltic region to ~90% in the Mediterranean, consistent with patterns of identity-by-descent (IBD) sharing (Supplementary Information section 18) and shared haplotype analysis (chromosome painting) 29 (Supplementary Information section 19) in which Loschbour shares more segments with northern Europeans and Stuttgart with southern Europeans. Southern Europeans inherited their European hunter-gatherer ancestry mostly via EEF ancestors (Extended Data Fig. 6), whereas northern Europeans acquired up to 50% of WHG ancestry above and beyond what they received through their EEF ancestors. Europeans have a larger proportion of WHG than ANE ancestry in general. By contrast, in the Near East there is no detectable WHG ancestry, but up to ~29% ANE in the Caucasus (Supplementary Information section 14). A striking feature of these findings is that ANE ancestry is inferred to be present in nearly all Europeans today (with a maximum of ~20%), but was absent in both farmers and hunter-gatherers from central and western Europe during the Neolithic transition. However, ANE ancestry was not completely absent from the larger European region at that time: we find that it was present in ~8,000-years-old Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, as MA1 shares more alleles with Motala12 (SHG) than with Loschbour, and Motala12 fits as a mixture of 81% WHG and 19% ANE (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Fun with math:
“Two sets of European populations are poor fits for the model. Sicilians, Maltese, and Ashkenazi Jews have EEF estimates of >100%, consistent with their having more Near Eastern ancestry than can be explained via EEF admixture (Supplementary Information section 17). They also cannot be jointly fit with other Europeans (Supplementary Information section 14), and they fall in the gap between European and Near Easterners in PCA (Fig. 2). Finns, Mordovians and Russians (from the northwest of Russia) also do not fit (Supplementary Information section 14; Extended Data Table 3) due to East Eurasian gene flow into the ancestors of these north-eastern European populations. These populations (and Chuvash and Saami) are more related to east Asians [including Hàn Chinese!] than can be explained by ANE admixture (Extended Data Fig. 7), probably reflecting a separate stream of Siberian gene flow into north-eastern Europe (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Perhaps importantly, all of these people look entirely European, with the Saami/Sami/Sámi in particular being gleaming white, blond and blue-eyed; the Saami, Finns and Mordvins all speak Uralic languages, as many of the ancestors of the northwestern Russians did, while the Chuvash language is a West Turkic one.
“A second question concerns how the ancestors of present-day Europeans first acquired their ANE ancestry. Discontinuity in central Europe during the late Neolithic (~4,500 years ago) associated with the appearance of mtDNA types absent in earlier farmers and hunter-gatherers raises the possibility that ANE ancestry may have also appeared at this time.”
I wonder if this finally identifies the arrival of the Indo-European language family in central Europe.
The figures show several more interesting things: the Basques overlap with the people living around them; the Hungarians overlap almost completely with the Croatians, though some of them have a tiny bit more ANE ancestry; the Turks span a huge range from (overlapping with) the Bulgarians and Greeks to (overlapping with) the literal Caucasians and Iranians; the Ashkenazi Jews overlap with the Turkish Jews, but also the mainland southern Italians, Sicilians and Maltese; the Sardinians, in contrast, are very distinct from all of mainland Europe (closest to non-northern Spain), being very close to the Canary Islanders and to Ötzi; the Stuttgart individual is close to Ötzi and the Canary Islanders as well.
Austria-Hungary’s were archdukes & archduchesses based on a forgery that was immediately recognized as such, but later implemented anyway. :-D
Some of the Persian satraps called themselves kings. The King of Kings was explicitly fine with that – it only increased his own status.
Test: Scunthorpe
Jal regarding your blob kitten: have you taken her to the vet to get her checked for arthritis and/or diabetes? Being overweight but not eating a ton can be an early stage of diabetes (before they start losing tons of weight). Or you might even have the fabled hypOthyroid cat.
Are all the kitties free-fed, or meal fed? If you can, switch ’em to meal feeding so you can truly monitor how much they eat and if you use dry food, you can separate fatcat into a hallway and roll kibble down it for her. Using that method (“Burn a calorie Henry, you can do eet!”) we got an old hospital cat to lose 5 pounds over 2 years. We didn’t change a single other thing. Just that smidge of exercise chasing a kibble at a time helped massively.
/takes of vet tech hat.
And now, now I must photograph a snake.
I can’t post the link to the TV Tropes article on the Scunþorpe Problem, because that very problem exists on Pharyngula. Still, I suggest you figure it out and read all the examples: most of them are hilarious – put a pillow on your desk, though. :-)
Paywalled pdf! Abstract (references removed):
“We sequenced the genomes of a 7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight 8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporaryhumansto show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: west European hunter-gatherers,who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to Near Easterners; ancient north Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, who contributed to both Europeans and Near Easterners; and early European farmers, who were mainly of Near Eastern origin but also harboured west European hunter-gatherer related ancestry. We model these populations’ deep relationships and show that early European farmers had 44% ancestry from a ‘basal Eurasian’ population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages.”
Go here and look at the figures! They’re probably not behind the paywall.
Highlights (references removed):
“Near Eastern migrants from Anatolia and the Levant are known to have played a major role in the introduction of agriculture to Europe, as ancient DNA indicates that early European farmers were distinct from European hunter-gatherers and close to present-day Near Easterners. However, modelling present-day Europeans as a mixture of these two ancestral populations does not account for the fact that Europeans are also admixed with a population related to Native Americans. To clarify the prehistory of Europe, we sequenced nine ancient genomes (Fig. 1 and Extended Data Fig. 1): ‘Stuttgart’ (19-fold coverage), a ~7,000-year old skeleton found in Germany in the context of artefacts from the first widespread farming culture of central Europe, the Linearbandkeramik [Linear Pottery Culture]; ‘Loschbour’ (22-fold), an ~8,000-year-old skeleton from the Loschbour rock shelter in Luxembourg, discovered in the context of hunter-gatherer artefacts (Supplementary Information sections 1 and 2); and seven ~8,000-year-old samples (0.01–2.4-fold) from a hunter-gatherer burial in Motala, Sweden (the highest coverage individual was ‘Motala12’).”
“Stuttgart has mtDNA haplogroup T2, typical of Neolithic Europeans, and Loschbour and all Motala individuals have the U5 or U2 haplogroups, typical of [ancient European] hunter-gatherers (Supplementary Information section 4). Stuttgart is female, whereas Loschbour and five Motala individuals are male (Supplementary Information section 5) and belong to Y-chromosome haplogroup I, suggesting that this was common in pre-agricultural Europeans (Supplementary Information section 5).”
The Methods section reveals that sex was determined only by looking for Y-chromosomal DNA.
“We carried out large-scale sequencing of libraries prepared with uracil DNA glycosylase (UDG), which removes deaminated cytosines, thus reducing errors arising from ancient DNA damage (Supplementary Information section 3).”
That is smart. Otherwise, U would be read as T instead of as C.
“The ancient individuals had indistinguishable levels of Neanderthal ancestry when compared to each other (~2%) and to present-day Eurasians (Supplementary Information section 6). The heterozygosity of Stuttgart (0.00074) is at the high end of present-day Europeans, whereas that of Loschbour (0.00048) is lower than in any present human populations (Supplementary Information section 2); this must reflect a strong bottleneck in Loschbour’s ancestors, as the genetic data show that he was not recently inbred (Extended Data Fig. 2). High copy numbers for the salivary amylase gene (AMY1) have been associated with a high starch diet; our ancient genomes are consistent with the direction of this observation in that the Stuttgart farmer had the highest number of copies (16), whereas the ancient hunter-gatherers La Braña (from Iberia), Motala12, and Loschbour had lower numbers (5, 6 and 13, respectively) (Supplementary Information section 7). We caution, however, that copy count in Loschbour is at the high end of present-day humans, showing that high copy counts of AMY1 cannot be accounted for entirely by selection since the switch to agriculture. Both Loschbour and Stuttgart had dark hair (>99% probability); and Loschbour, like La Braña and Motala12, probably had blue or light coloured eyes (>75%) whereas Stuttgart probably had brown eyes (>99% probability) (Supplementary Information section 8). Neither Loschbour nor La Braña carries the skin-lightening allele in SLC24A5 that is homozygous in Stuttgart and nearly fixed in Europeans today, but Motala12 carries at least one copy of the derived allele, showing that this allele was present in Europe before the advent of agriculture.”
Isn’t that fascinating?
“We used the ADMIXTUREGRAPH software to fit a model (a tree structure augmented by admixture events) to the data, exploring models relating the three ancient populations (Stuttgart, Loschbour, and MA1 [a 24,000-year-old skeleton from Mal’ta in central Siberia]) to two eastern non-Africans (Onge and Karitiana) and sub-Saharan Africans (Mbuti). We found no models that fit the data with 0 or 1 admixture events, but did find a model that fit with 2 admixture events (Supplementary Information section 14). The successful model (Fig. 3) confirms the existence of MA1-related admixture in Native Americans, but includes the novel inference that Stuttgart is partially (44±10%) derived from a lineage that split before the separation of eastern non-Africans from the common ancestor of WHG and ANE [Western European Hunter-Gatherers and Ancient North Eurasians]. The existence of such basal Eurasian admixture into Stuttgart provides a simple explanation for our finding that diverse eastern non-African populations share significantly more alleles with ancient European and Upper Palaeolithic Siberian hunter-gatherers than with Stuttgart […], but that hunter-gatherers appear to be equally related to most eastern groups (Supplementary Information section 14). […] The ANE–WHG split must have occurred >24,000 years ago (as it must predate the age of MA1), and the WHG and Eastern non-African split must have occurred >40,000 years ago (as it must predate the Tianyuan individual from China which clusters with Asians to the exclusion of Europeans). The basal Eurasian split must be even older, and might be related to early settlement of the Levant or Arabia before the diversification of most Eurasians, or more recent gene flow from Africa. However, the basal Eurasian population shares much of the genetic drift common to non-African populations after their separation from Africans, and thus does not appear to represent gene flow between sub-Saharan Africans and the ancestors of non-Africans after the out-of-Africa bottleneck (Supplementary Information section 14).”
(Links added.)
“We infer that EEF [Early European Farmers] ancestry in Europe today ranges from ~30% in the Baltic region to ~90% in the Mediterranean, consistent with patterns of identity-by-descent (IBD) sharing (Supplementary Information section 18) and shared haplotype analysis (chromosome painting) 29 (Supplementary Information section 19) in which Loschbour shares more segments with northern Europeans and Stuttgart with southern Europeans. Southern Europeans inherited their European hunter-gatherer ancestry mostly via EEF ancestors (Extended Data Fig. 6), whereas northern Europeans acquired up to 50% of WHG ancestry above and beyond what they received through their EEF ancestors. Europeans have a larger proportion of WHG than ANE ancestry in general. By contrast, in the Near East there is no detectable WHG ancestry, but up to ~29% ANE in the Caucasus (Supplementary Information section 14). A striking feature of these findings is that ANE ancestry is inferred to be present in nearly all Europeans today (with a maximum of ~20%), but was absent in both farmers and hunter-gatherers from central and western Europe during the Neolithic transition. However, ANE ancestry was not completely absent from the larger European region at that time: we find that it was present in ~8,000-years-old Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, as MA1 shares more alleles with Motala12 (SHG) than with Loschbour, and Motala12 fits as a mixture of 81% WHG and 19% ANE (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Fun with math:
“Two sets of European populations are poor fits for the model. Sicilians, Maltese, and Ashkenazi Jews have EEF estimates of >100%, consistent with their having more Near Eastern ancestry than can be explained via EEF admixture (Supplementary Information section 17). They also cannot be jointly fit with other Europeans (Supplementary Information section 14), and they fall in the gap between European and Near Easterners in PCA (Fig. 2). Finns, Mordovians and Russians (from the northwest of Russia) also do not fit (Supplementary Information section 14; Extended Data Table 3) due to East Eurasian gene flow into the ancestors of these north-eastern European populations. These populations (and Chuvash and Saami) are more related to east Asians [including Hàn Chinese!] than can be explained by ANE admixture (Extended Data Fig. 7), probably reflecting a separate stream of Siberian gene flow into north-eastern Europe (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Perhaps importantly, all of these people look entirely European, with the Saami/Sami/Sámi in particular being gleaming white, blond and blue-eyed; the Saami, Finns and Mordvins all speak Uralic languages, as many of the ancestors of the northwestern Russians did, while the Chuvash language is a West Turkic one.
“A second question concerns how the ancestors of present-day Europeans first acquired their ANE ancestry. Discontinuity in central Europe during the late Neolithic (~4,500 years ago) associated with the appearance of mtDNA types absent in earlier farmers and hunter-gatherers raises the possibility that ANE ancestry may have also appeared at this time.”
I wonder if this finally identifies the arrival of the Indo-European language family in central Europe.
The figures show several more interesting things: the Basques overlap with the people living around them; the Hungarians overlap almost completely with the Croatians, though some of them have a tiny bit more ANE ancestry; the Turks span a huge range from (overlapping with) the Bulgarians and Greeks to (overlapping with) the literal Caucasians and Iranians; the Ashkenazi Jews overlap with the Turkish Jews, but also the mainland southern Italians, Sicilians and Maltese; the Sardinians, in contrast, are very distinct from all of mainland Europe (closest to non-northern Spain), being very close to the Canary Islanders and to Ötzi; the Stuttgart individual is close to Ötzi and the Canary Islanders as well.
Austria-Hungary’s were archdukes & archduchesses based on a forgery that was immediately recognized as such, but later implemented anyway. :-D
Some of the Persian satraps called themselves kings. The King of Kings was explicitly fine with that – it only increased his own status.
I can’t post the link to the TV Tropes article on the Scunþorpe Problem, because that very problem exists on Pharyngula. Still, I suggest you figure it out and read all the examples: most of them are hilarious – put a pillow on your desk, though. :-)
Paywalled pdf! Abstract (references removed):
“We sequenced the genomes of a 7,000-year-old farmer from Germany and eight 8,000-year-old hunter-gatherers from Luxembourg and Sweden. We analysed these and other ancient genomes with 2,345 contemporaryhumansto show that most present-day Europeans derive from at least three highly differentiated populations: west European hunter-gatherers,who contributed ancestry to all Europeans but not to Near Easterners; ancient north Eurasians related to Upper Palaeolithic Siberians, who contributed to both Europeans and Near Easterners; and early European farmers, who were mainly of Near Eastern origin but also harboured west European hunter-gatherer related ancestry. We model these populations’ deep relationships and show that early European farmers had 44% ancestry from a ‘basal Eurasian’ population that split before the diversification of other non-African lineages.”
Go here and look at the figures! They’re probably not behind the paywall.
Highlights (references removed):
“Near Eastern migrants from Anatolia and the Levant are known to have played a major role in the introduction of agriculture to Europe, as ancient DNA indicates that early European farmers were distinct from European hunter-gatherers and close to present-day Near Easterners. However, modelling present-day Europeans as a mixture of these two ancestral populations does not account for the fact that Europeans are also admixed with a population related to Native Americans. To clarify the prehistory of Europe, we sequenced nine ancient genomes (Fig. 1 and Extended Data Fig. 1): ‘Stuttgart’ (19-fold coverage), a ~7,000-year old skeleton found in Germany in the context of artefacts from the first widespread farming culture of central Europe, the Linearbandkeramik [Linear Pottery Culture]; ‘Loschbour’ (22-fold), an ~8,000-year-old skeleton from the Loschbour rock shelter in Luxembourg, discovered in the context of hunter-gatherer artefacts (Supplementary Information sections 1 and 2); and seven ~8,000-year-old samples (0.01–2.4-fold) from a hunter-gatherer burial in Motala, Sweden (the highest coverage individual was ‘Motala12’).”
“Stuttgart has mtDNA haplogroup T2, typical of Neolithic Europeans, and Loschbour and all Motala individuals have the U5 or U2 haplogroups, typical of [ancient European] hunter-gatherers (Supplementary Information section 4). Stuttgart is female, whereas Loschbour and five Motala individuals are male (Supplementary Information section 5) and belong to Y-chromosome haplogroup I, suggesting that this was common in pre-agricultural Europeans (Supplementary Information section 5).”
The Methods section reveals that sex was determined only by looking for Y-chromosomal DNA.
“We carried out large-scale sequencing of libraries prepared with uracil DNA glycosylase (UDG), which removes deaminated cytosines, thus reducing errors arising from ancient DNA damage (Supplementary Information section 3).”
That is smart. Otherwise, U would be read as T instead of as C.
“The ancient individuals had indistinguishable levels of Neanderthal ancestry when compared to each other (~2%) and to present-day Eurasians (Supplementary Information section 6). The heterozygosity of Stuttgart (0.00074) is at the high end of present-day Europeans, whereas that of Loschbour (0.00048) is lower than in any present human populations (Supplementary Information section 2); this must reflect a strong bottleneck in Loschbour’s ancestors, as the genetic data show that he was not recently inbred (Extended Data Fig. 2). High copy numbers for the salivary amylase gene (AMY1) have been associated with a high starch diet; our ancient genomes are consistent with the direction of this observation in that the Stuttgart farmer had the highest number of copies (16), whereas the ancient hunter-gatherers La Braña (from Iberia), Motala12, and Loschbour had lower numbers (5, 6 and 13, respectively) (Supplementary Information section 7). We caution, however, that copy count in Loschbour is at the high end of present-day humans, showing that high copy counts of AMY1 cannot be accounted for entirely by selection since the switch to agriculture. Both Loschbour and Stuttgart had dark hair (>99% probability); and Loschbour, like La Braña and Motala12, probably had blue or light coloured eyes (>75%) whereas Stuttgart probably had brown eyes (>99% probability) (Supplementary Information section 8). Neither Loschbour nor La Braña carries the skin-lightening allele in SLC24A5 that is homozygous in Stuttgart and nearly fixed in Europeans today, but Motala12 carries at least one copy of the derived allele, showing that this allele was present in Europe before the advent of agriculture.”
Isn’t that fascinating?
Continued in the next part because I added too many links.
Austria-Hungary’s were archdukes & archduchesses based on a forgery that was immediately recognized as such, but later implemented anyway. :-D
Some of the Persian satraps called themselves kings. The King of Kings was explicitly fine with that – it only increased his own status.
Continued (the figures might be outside the paywall here):
“We used the ADMIXTUREGRAPH software to fit a model (a tree structure augmented by admixture events) to the data, exploring models relating the three ancient populations (Stuttgart, Loschbour, and MA1 [a 24,000-year-old skeleton from Mal’ta in central Siberia]) to two eastern non-Africans (Onge and Karitiana) and sub-Saharan Africans (Mbuti). We found no models that fit the data with 0 or 1 admixture events, but did find a model that fit with 2 admixture events (Supplementary Information section 14). The successful model (Fig. 3) confirms the existence of MA1-related admixture in Native Americans, but includes the novel inference that Stuttgart is partially (44±10%) derived from a lineage that split before the separation of eastern non-Africans from the common ancestor of WHG and ANE [Western European Hunter-Gatherers and Ancient North Eurasians]. The existence of such basal Eurasian admixture into Stuttgart provides a simple explanation for our finding that diverse eastern non-African populations share significantly more alleles with ancient European and Upper Palaeolithic Siberian hunter-gatherers than with Stuttgart […], but that hunter-gatherers appear to be equally related to most eastern groups (Supplementary Information section 14). […] The ANE–WHG split must have occurred >24,000 years ago (as it must predate the age of MA1), and the WHG and Eastern non-African split must have occurred >40,000 years ago (as it must predate the Tianyuan individual from China which clusters with Asians to the exclusion of Europeans). The basal Eurasian split must be even older, and might be related to early settlement of the Levant or Arabia before the diversification of most Eurasians, or more recent gene flow from Africa. However, the basal Eurasian population shares much of the genetic drift common to non-African populations after their separation from Africans, and thus does not appear to represent gene flow between sub-Saharan Africans and the ancestors of non-Africans after the out-of-Africa bottleneck (Supplementary Information section 14).”
(Links added.)
“We infer that EEF [Early European Farmers] ancestry in Europe today ranges from ~30% in the Baltic region to ~90% in the Mediterranean, consistent with patterns of identity-by-descent (IBD) sharing (Supplementary Information section 18) and shared haplotype analysis (chromosome painting) 29 (Supplementary Information section 19) in which Loschbour shares more segments with northern Europeans and Stuttgart with southern Europeans. Southern Europeans inherited their European hunter-gatherer ancestry mostly via EEF ancestors (Extended Data Fig. 6), whereas northern Europeans acquired up to 50% of WHG ancestry above and beyond what they received through their EEF ancestors. Europeans have a larger proportion of WHG than ANE ancestry in general. By contrast, in the Near East there is no detectable WHG ancestry, but up to ~29% ANE in the Caucasus (Supplementary Information section 14). A striking feature of these findings is that ANE ancestry is inferred to be present in nearly all Europeans today (with a maximum of ~20%), but was absent in both farmers and hunter-gatherers from central and western Europe during the Neolithic transition. However, ANE ancestry was not completely absent from the larger European region at that time: we find that it was present in ~8,000-years-old Scandinavian hunter-gatherers, as MA1 shares more alleles with Motala12 (SHG) than with Loschbour, and Motala12 fits as a mixture of 81% WHG and 19% ANE (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Fun with math:
“Two sets of European populations are poor fits for the model. Sicilians, Maltese, and Ashkenazi Jews have EEF estimates of >100%, consistent with their having more Near Eastern ancestry than can be explained via EEF admixture (Supplementary Information section 17). They also cannot be jointly fit with other Europeans (Supplementary Information section 14), and they fall in the gap between European and Near Easterners in PCA (Fig. 2). Finns, Mordovians and Russians (from the northwest of Russia) also do not fit (Supplementary Information section 14; Extended Data Table 3) due to East Eurasian gene flow into the ancestors of these north-eastern European populations. These populations (and Chuvash and Saami) are more related to east Asians [including Hàn Chinese!] than can be explained by ANE admixture (Extended Data Fig. 7), probably reflecting a separate stream of Siberian gene flow into north-eastern Europe (Supplementary Information section 14).”
Perhaps importantly, all of these people look entirely European, with the Saami/Sami/Sámi in particular being gleaming white, blond and blue-eyed; the Saami, Finns and Mordvins all speak Uralic languages, as many of the ancestors of the northwestern Russians did, while the Chuvash language is a West Turkic one.
“A second question concerns how the ancestors of present-day Europeans first acquired their ANE ancestry. Discontinuity in central Europe during the late Neolithic (~4,500 years ago) associated with the appearance of mtDNA types absent in earlier farmers and hunter-gatherers raises the possibility that ANE ancestry may have also appeared at this time.”
I wonder if this finally identifies the arrival of the Indo-European language family in central Europe.
The figures show several more interesting things: the Basques overlap with the people living around them; the Hungarians overlap almost completely with the Croatians, though some of them have a tiny bit more ANE ancestry; the Turks span a huge range from (overlapping with) the Bulgarians and Greeks to (overlapping with) the literal Caucasians and Iranians; the Ashkenazi Jews overlap with the Turkish Jews, but also the mainland southern Italians, Sicilians and Maltese; the Sardinians, in contrast, are very distinct from all of mainland Europe (closest to non-northern Spain), being very close to the Canary Islanders and to Ötzi; the Stuttgart individual is close to Ötzi and the Canary Islanders as well.
Regarding the dog that only eats catfood, there’s no problem there. Cats can’t get by on dogfood oftentimes, but the other way ’round is no problem (cats need more meat and less filler in the kibble than dogs).
Nerd
Sympathies on being screwed over by the American Health Crap system.
On a completely unrelated note, because I know there’s come other Stan Rogers fans here:Fogarty’s Cove is becoming a gravel quarry.
rq
Oh, that links very interesting. Thank you. I very much appreciate the simplified versions. My head starts hurting when discussing royalty. Their family trees, titles and disputes are just such a mess when I try to comprehend it.
I wonder why they mention the Japanese titles for princes/princesses but don’t for Chinese. Maybe because they still have them? Maybe I’m just barking up the wrong tree here.
————
Dalillama, Schmott Guy
Ah. Do you know what those would be called by chance? Because since this is a white author that speaks mainly to her white audience, I figured even if most people don’t assume the American type sticky bun, it’d be useful to point out. Dropping the actual name of such a desert in Chinese would make for good example of integrating some of the countries language in a book. Even if it doesn’t make it into the review, I’m curious. Googling lead to mostly steamed buns that sound delicious but clearly not what the book was speaking about. Since I don’t know, well, anything I couldn’t get farther in googling.
Oh. I just totally did that “Chinese are monolith” shit, didn’t I? Fuck. Sorry.
It’s set in New Beijing an undefined amount into the future as a cop out to just completely dilute it with Western influence and mix in all kinds of Asian names from different countries. So it reads more like a New York Asian ghetto where they’re all shoved into one area since hey, they’re all interchangeable anyways. Granted, I could see people from everywhere flocking to the new country capital of unified Asia but it feels so sloppy with its barely there descriptions being dominated by western influence.
You make an excellent point and I imagine include such facts about China’s diversity would’ve helped so much with its world building or at least making it feel like it’s set in China at all.
Oh, I guess I am barking up the wrong tree as far as princes are concerned. I wonder why that reads so oddly to me. Maybe I just haven’t been exposed to it enough and am hung up on princes being for kings. Hmmm. I’ll have to reflect on that more.
Ah, that certainly explains that then.
Do you have an idea for what would be a better translation? Just curious.
Thanks for your input. I’ve certainly have more to think about it and it’s all making me more uncomfortable with how the author handled everything leaving the readers to grapple with the implications of her work. Hmm.
Rowan vet-tech
She’s been to the vet but never specifically for those. I’ll start looking into getting her seen.
They are free fed. I’ll try out the meal feeding and hopefully won’t get overturned by their annoying my fellow humans.
I’m guessing the hallway rolling would be best on tile? We only have carpet and one short hallway so I’m having a hard time picturing that working but I’ll definitely give it a shot.
Thank you for your advice. Obviously I hope nothings wrong with her but it’s nice not being brushed off as just a worry wart.
——————–
Dalillama, Schmott Guy
Thank you. That’s a relief.
Jal, we in the vet med field would MUCH rather deal with a ‘worry wort’ than a ‘nothing’s wrong despite the fact that my cat’s leg just fell off’ type. A routine blood panel would rule out diabetes/hypothyroidism and a host of other things. Changing to meal feeding (yes, it can be annoying during the initial change over) will also very much help her lose weight, just in that act alone. Your vet can give you advice on how much to feed and how to adjust it based on your creature.
As for rolling kibble, tile or carpet works. It’s mostly the need to galumph after the kibble that helps to burn that calorie.
on yet another tangent, I always thought galumph was a ‘fake’ word. But then spell check didn’t get mad at it so I looked it up and it’s a real word. I am amused.
Justin Trudeau isn’t perfect, but he has the right idea on women’s rights (spec., abortion).
“Rupt!
Stoopid question time… Is there a list of “forbidden words” that is published somewhere on FtB? I’ve gone through the Pharyngula Comment Policy and could find nothing. Not that I want to use garbage language (bigotry etc), I’m just curious.
Rowan vet-tech
The latter absolutely baffle me.
Ah. Yeah, I was just reading up on tips to making the switch. There’s also the problem of them getting in the cabinets to eat out of the bag. They’ve broken one side of it’s hinge now and we’re out of duct tape. That’s a problem. Hmm. Sadly, they can open every cabinet (we’ve only got the two that can fit the bag anyways) so I’ll have to see if someone has a spare baby lock or see how much they run nowadays.
Luckily though, it’s just me during the day during the week so I’ll get this situated hopefully by Monday so I can get 5 days in of the habit before Roomie and Little One are bothered by it. I don’t see much point trying it right now when they can eat as they please anyways.
i mean switching to feed times makes so much sense but I never thought it through I guess. :(
cicely
I prefer to think of them as the University of Monty Python
JAL
You seem to be dealing with a case of obnoxious teacher :(
When #1 started to read silently, I simply informed everybody and then it was OK. I mean, switching from reading aloud to silent is a Big THing, for a kid to do so by herself way ahead of time is wonderful, so why punish her with boring reading aloud.
ATM she doesn’t do books, but she loves playing quiz games on her tablet. That means she’s reading quite a lot and she needs good reading comprehension, especially since her favourite quiz is actually for adults…
+++
Oh, and she did her homework today in acceptable time.
YAY!
re:cats
I’ve actually decided to just give feed time a go anyways starting now. I’ll figure something out for the cabinets out soon enough.
Also, I think my cat knows. She’s been more active than usual with sitting next to me for pets and straight attacking Little One’s pones (the kind that have hair).
—–
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
YAY!
*ponies. Jeez.
House Republicans worked about 3.5 days last week, and about 3.5 days this week (being generous, you could replace 3.5 with 4, but that’s not really accurate since most of them leave early on what they consider to be their last work day of the week).
Holy crap! (they thought) that’s a lot of work! We’d better take some time off. Accordingly, they adjusted the Congressional Calendar so that they can go home today … and they will not come back for a long time.
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/nice-work-if-you-can-get-it-0
Glenn Beck acts like a doofus, a dangerous doofus, again:
Right Wing Watch link.
Today the insurance company aggregated their fecal matter, and the hoist and air mattress have made their appearance. The guy from the equipment company was so bad about explaining stuff, I will ignore most of what he said, as I was trained earlier this week at the nursing home, and they made more sense. Also, with the original mattress in place, the rails wouldn’t prevent a fall, so that was corrected. The Redhead will be transported home, being picked up in about 60-90 minutes. This time of day, I expect an hour transit time. Baby bird (nickname due to the feeding method) will return to the nest.
Her friend, a retired CNA, doing duty while I’m at work was also trained by the nursing home. The health care nurse for the wound care (which I was also trained on) called, so things are looking up.
A single payer health care system is badly needed.
Nerd
Yay for baby bird returning to the nest!
I hope the transport goes well, with everyone in good spirits and good physical shape, and hope the recovery proceeds according to plan!
Right-wingers and Republican politicians who are also rabid right-wingers said a few more stupid things yesterday:
Right Wing Watch link.
Re: titles of the children/heirs of emperors, that’s really dependent on the specific system, but “prince(ss) imperial” and “grand duke/duchess” seem to be the two main patterns.
The Austro-Hungarian pattern seems – like much of AH imperial court protocol – to have been designed to be confusing. As near as I can tell, the pattern went like this:
Emperor > King > Archduke > Duke > Prince. The non-royal titles came lower.
A bit of googling informs me that the title granted to the heir of the imperial Chinese throne was 皇太子, “Great Imperial Son.” This may not have been used at every moment in history.
Giliell –
Did you get a chance to see me coming in late on the Butler discussion @451 on the last page of this lounge? Dalillama also was good, saying some quite useful things one comment above mine, @450.
Hope the reading & writing is going well.
–)->
Nerd
I only have hugs to offer.
MM
I forgot
Congratulations on mini-niece.
Our midwives told us that they would kick out superfluous persons due to “them getting in the way of people who need to do their work” if the family was bothering the woman and that they would tell any family in advance that their policy was to only allow X people where X was the number agreed on with the woman, so that they could never pressure her or argue with her ’cause she didn’t make the rules.
Now, I don’t get it either. If a friend asked me to come with them and support them, I would, but I wouldn’t go watching for watching’s sake.
Mr.’s aunt, who’s childless*, asked me if she could watch a birth when I was pregnant with #1. At that point I said no, because I had no fucking clue what I was getting into, but when I was pregnant with the little one, I offered her that she could watch, because I was pretty comfortable with her and I now knew what birth meant. She’S also one of my favourite people. She simply stood quietly in a corner, so that was OK. It was imensly important to her, and something she wanted to experience in her life, but just like with bungee jumping, I have no clue why.
*used correctly as in wanted but couldn’t
Scott Lively has made a career out of inciting anti-gay violence, particularly in Africa and in Russia. Now Lively is claiming that a Human Rights Campaign report that names him as one of the people who “export hate” is evidence that the Human Rights Campaign is “trying to incite murder against me.”
More from Mr. Lively:
Right Wing Watch link.
http://www.hrc.org/campaigns/exporters-of-hate
CD
I did, did you see my reply?
I admit it’s short, but I think it#s a fundamental difference of approach.
Also, the University of Monty Python sucked out all my energy today, I simply don’t have spoons for dealing with that shit, it sends me tumbling down into a bad place
@Lynna:
Ugh. That’s not funny. That’s not ironic. That’s not poetic. That’s not just.
That’s just sickening.
Scott Lively: Colossal jerk.
@Giliell:
No, apparently not. I’ll go look.
Nerd @50, Glad to hear things are looking up when it comes to caring for the Redhead at home. Can you imagine what it would be like if the Redhead had to handle all of these details herself?
Newt “the world revolves around me” Gingrich decided he has not made a big enough splash in the media recently, so he hopped on the Right Wing Conspiracy Train to add his voice to those claiming that immigrants coming across the southern border of the USA could be carrying Ebola.
Maybe Newt just needs a geography lesson, with pointed references to the fact that the countries affected by the Ebola virus are all in West Africa. The southern border of the USA does not abut Africa, nor does any part of South America.
Right Wing Watch link.
Crip Dyke:
Yes indeed. I know you said it’s not funny, and I agree, but I still hope that Colbert or Stewart get ahold of this news and give it the sarcastic treatment it deserves.
Just wondering, question for book readers: when you choose a new book by a new author (or maybe by an author you know), how do you go about choosing the book? Title? Cover art? Blurb? Reviews? Recommendations? A combination of factors?
I’m curious, because I know I choose a lot of books by title and or cover art: 1Q84 because I was born in 1984, Neverwhere because I just loved the title and the art on the copy I bought, Fortress in the Eye of Time for the cover art, They Shall Know Our Velocity! for the Latvian coin on the cover, Neuromancer for the title… I could go on, but somehow these superficial factors, in combination with a reasonably good blurb (doesn’t have to be informative, just… good?), have led me to rather excellent reads. Rarely have I chosen a book merely on a blurb factor, but I have chosen a book merely on a title or cover art factor. With extremely few disappointments.
How do you choose books, if you don’t mind sharing?
Lynna
Newt Gingrich is simply several million years behind the times. He slept through the great tectonic migration, I’m sorry to say.
@Giliell:
You want to cite the book and page? I’ll go back and reread – apparently I don’t remember what was going on correctly, or I’m mixing and matching things she wrote in different places in my memory.
If you don’t have the spoons to satisfy my curiosity, I totes understand.
In general I find Butler to be a philosopher that relies quite a bit on circularity. While certain things can be mutually reinforcing – some real life dynamics are causally circular, like warming in the arctic causing the melting of arctic ice which changes the albedo which causes more absorption of solar radiation which resulting in warming in the arctic causing the melting of arctic ice – and so circularity in a model is not a guarantee that the model is not realistic, I’ve found too much of her argument not to go anywhere productive.
Certainly gender is invoked and reinforced in mandatory heterosexuality. Saying that this is creating a “desire for the other” though, isn’t that the same thing as saying “heterosexuality” in this instance?
Like I said, I’ll have to read it again, but I’ve never been a fan. And whether she means something profound that I simply was unable to derive from her writing or whether she sees profundity in the mundane, her fans (and fanatics who seem to outnumber her simple fans) haven’t been able to show that they’ve derived any deep understanding that escaped my reading.
On the other hand, I have little use for spending a lot of time on unravelling her in a borderline-debunking way. It’s not that what she says is (often) wrong; it’s that she (often) takes so much time to say things that I find trivial. While I’ve learned things from her, I wouldn’t even take the time to understand her save that I have to communicate with people who find her valuable and want to use her language and ideas in conversation.
@Lynna, #62:
I can see that. Scott Lively’s statement? Not funny.
Colbert’s riff on Lively’s statement? Potentially very funny.
I wasn’t hoping for it before you said anything, but that would really be the most good I can foresee coming out of this.
I’m ‘rupt at the moment, bc I’m *finally* working. Just got off and I want a nap. I’ll catch up later.
This caught my eye though:
Morgan @43:
AFAIK, there is no public list. You can probably imagine the more commonly used (well, not by us, obviously) words that trip the filter (gendered or bigoted slurs-usually the more common ones; for instance, I don’t believe PZ has added ‘butthurt’). Sometimes I forget this, as when I’m quoting extensively from somewhere and the author uses b*tch, or c*nt. I sometimes forget about that, then hit submit and watch as my comment fails to appear.
The Daily Kos picked up the story about FLDS (fundie, polygamist mormons) using the Hobby Lobby case and related legislation to keep their top guys from being forced to testify in court about obvious child labor abuses.
Morgan @43:
AFAIK, there is no list anywhere. I just tried to post a comment responding to you, and using a tweaked spelling of *c*u*n*t* (with the ‘*’ in place of the ‘u’) and it tripped the filter. It’s mostly the more commonly used gendered and bigoted slurs that get caught in the filter.
****
‘Rupt bc I’m finally working. I need a nap. I’ll catch up later :)
@Tony!, 68:
Yay for working!!!!!
Tony:
Abstatootly a good excuse. Welcome back to being a taxpayer.
Tony
That is one good reason to be ‘rupt and tired. YAY!!!
JAL, good luck with your corpulent kitty! Patches will eat All The Things if not watched; they’ve both been on scheduled rationed feedings for years now. While it’s nice to have healthy active senior cats, their stomach-clocks always run fast, and getting waked up at 5am on weekends is not so nice. “Mom? Mom? The alarm didn’t go off. Mom, you’re going to be late with our breakfast! Mom? MOOOOMMM!!!!”. *cat escalates door-rattling until she’s flinging herself bodily at the bedroom door”. Cats
DM, I braved TVtropes and tracked down your reference. Tom Lender was right, when correctly viewed, everything is lewd.
PatrickG, you are a good and caring person, and if I had a cookie, I’d give it to you.
Giliell, yay for #1, and hoping this is the start of a happier trend.
Nerd, hugs for you and Redhead.
TMM, congratulations on your new little grandniece!
Hugs to everybody I may have missed, I dozed off after lunch and also I’ve been going around in circles trying to get some documents for Aged Mum’s application without actually driving up there.
The brain, she is fried. ++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.
Lehrer, not Lender, stupid autocorrect!
Tony! Working! Yaaaaayyyyyy!!!! *Kermit flailing dance*
SURVEY! Gender diversity in gaming!! Gamers participate! (Crossposting to T-dome.)
Blargh. I think Bramble-the-foster-kitten may have severely damaged her back falling on the litterbox. She and Blackberry are in a wire dog crate and they like to climb and so sometimes they fall off. I took her to work with me and the vet there said maybe the leg dragging was a presentation of calicivirus, which can manifest as bone/joint pain. I didn’t think so, but hey, I’m just a tech.
Well, I pulled her out to look at her and see if she’s gotten any better (today is day 3 after appt, 5 days after noticing) and she stood there… with the top of her foot on the ground. That’s not calici, that’s nerve damage.
Shit.
Tony! My favorite worker! I hope you enjoy the new job.
All right. So that’s it. I’m officially on a two book contract, with the option of writing up to four books a year for this publisher.
I’m going to go faint and then run through the woods screaming.
Mellow Monkey (I’m gonna use 83, but since second page, is it 583?)
Congrats. That’s really great news, unless I misunderstood “run through the woods screaming.”
It’s the good kind of running and screaming!
Mellow Monkey, oooooohhhhh wow! Congratulations!
@TMM:
I’m so excited for you!
GO YOU!
I will happily buy and read if you’ll trust me with your book-nym (which I know may or may not be your real nym: I’ve published under 4 nyms, and only 2 were my legal name at the time).
I really need to work on books. There’s no money in periodicals.
There’s no advance (but the royalties are generous and I know from other authors that they don’t play Hide The Money), so it’s going to be forever and a day before I actually get paid off of the royalties, thus my poverty remains the same for now, but…
WOOHOO HOPE IN SIGHT!!!!
These are romance novels (because $$$), so I don’t know how much anyone is interested in reading them, but I’d be happy to privately pass on this pen name, Crip Dyke.
Mellow congrats!!!! ….. I also politely request/demand the pen name. :D
Re-posting from the Thunderdome since it would fit better here in the Lounge…
I’ve just set up a Society6 page to sell my art prints. There’s not much on there yet, but hopefully it will reap in a humble source of income over time:
http://society6.com/brandonspilcher
If you want to see more of my art without spending a dime, visit here:
http://tyrannoninja.wordpress.com/
http://brandonspilcher.deviantart.com/
Mellow Monkey
Huzzah! That is really cool.
Have I told the Horde lately that I love you? So many exciting interesting talented kind intelligent folks round these parts. I admit I feel a bit out of place, but very happy to be around.
Mellow Monkey @83:
Hmmm, how do I put this?
What are just the right words?
Oh! I know:
I’m fucking elated to hear this. Such awesome news, for such an awesome person. I’m very, very, very happy for you. You deserve this and so much more.
Brandon yay another person on deviantart, and yay for being able to draw humans. My one critique is one that can be levied at most artists… Women have internal organs. Most waistlines don’t cinch in that tightly without the help of corsets, and even then…
Aside from that, I’m eminently jealous that you can draw people because I can’t. I can draw dragons, and that’s about it.
Not exactly a Tony Tale, but there have been two women at my new job who have offered to take me home or pick me up whenever they can (and I’m immensely grateful for their kind offer). One woman, J, took me home today. On the way, she was telling me about her boyfriend and their roommate, a woman who doesn’t like J that much though for no discernible reason. While describing the roomie, J was disparaged her style of dress. She said her roomie was a bigger woman who wore tight clothes and skimpy jeans, and pulled the “think of everyone else; no one wants to look at that”.
I’m no fan of fat shaming to say the least.
However, here was someone doing me a favor, and I wanted to say something without being overly critical of her (especially since we’re coworkers, and not good friends yet). I didn’t want to introduce my less than mainstream, but very progressive views in the manner I would online. So I responded with “You know, I’ve heard of many women who are bigger who are happy with who they are and their bodies who basically say ‘I don’t give a shit what other people think of my body’ “.
It wasn’t the ideal answer, but it was the best I could come up with at the spur of the moment. J responded with “It’s fine if fat people are happy with themselves, but…” Which I somewhat expected. I hope I put the seed of doubt in her mind, or helped cultivate an already existing seed.
****
Oh yeah, a shoutout to PatrickG in the last thread. Your actions are commendable and I thank you. If ever you were at my bar, I’d buy you a drink.
Brandon, I’m checking out your stuff now! I think Alexandrian Embrace is my favorite so far. I really like the expression on Cleopatra’s face.
TMM, I happen to enjoy romance novels, especially lately. I’ve an ambition to write them, actually.
@ Rowan
Thank you for the comment.
While I don’t usually draw dragons, I have drawn plenty of dinosaurs. None are on my Society6 page yet, but you can find some dino art on my WordPress and DA page.
“I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
“I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
I find the random capitalization in all three versions of the US Pledge of Allegiance to be vewwy, vewwy, silly.
@ 80
I just filled out that survey on diversity in games as a player. I admit that the “different physical limitations” term confused me. Are they referring strictly to the people we think of as disabled? Because I think a lot of gamers, myself included would prefer to play characters with less physical limitations than themselves. This is especially true for action-packed games.
rq @67
These days I mostly get ebooks, and Kobo keep recommending stuff (mostly that I wouldn’t read in a million years). But they do latch onto themes; I’ve got into reading cat mysteries and cat fantasy, so they’re throwing related stuff my way. Lazy person’s way of finding reading matter, lol. I’ll look at previews and if I like the writing, I’ll get the book.
When I was still buying physical books, I’d usually be looking for French history (of the “not Joan of Arc, not the French Revolution, not Napoleon and not Paris-after-the-war – amazing how little there is in the shops outside those short periods) and would trawl second-hand shops or the Net. Last lot of fiction I bought in paperback was the Phryne Fisher novels, which I’d seen around but not bothered looking at. I bought one in a half-price sale and ended up with the series.
Last book I can recall getting because of reviews (which I seldom read) was Franklin and Eleanor by Hazel Rowley (sadly her last book; she died suddenly not long after it came out). But I was interested in the Roosevelts anyway, and didn’t have anything about them, or I wouldn’t have bought it.
tl:dr it varies. :D
rq Choosing New Books
My choice is pretty much a combination of all of these. Title or Cover Art (or author, but you’re asking about new authors) gets me to pick the book up to read the summary/blurb. If I bought a novel online, I will look at the recommendations to see if any strike my fancy after reading the summaries/blurbs.
I just read Rachel Bach’s Paradoxian series because they were a Barnes & Noble recommendation when I searched for the recently discussed “Ancillary Justice” novel (Sensational book, BTW).
Mostly I look for something that seems different or a new take on what I’ve already read.
Tony @second page 94
I’m guessing that this roommate doesn’t like J for no reason discernible by J not for no discernible reason? Because from everything else you’ve related, J is putting off vibes (is quite disapproving – enough to complain to a veritable stranger) and the roommate has picked up on that.
I think you gave a decent answer since it was “on the spot”. I would have probably spent the ride saying, “Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah. Uh-huh.” because I am not quick in the moment.
Hello horde, LTRFTC, but there’s something that’s been bugging me, and I figured I’d see if anyone here’s got more insight then me. It’s about the term “hissy fit”, which has always made me uncomfortable. Obviously, using “fit” rather than “tantrum” is problematic, but it’s just occurred to me that ‘hissy’ is probably derived from histrionic, for an extra side-helping of sexism. I’ve been consciously trying to drop the term from my vocabulary, but I was curious whether anybody knew the etymology.
ajb47 @willsomeone fix these damn comment numbers????!!!!
Oops. Should have previewed better.
J actually elaborated more. The roomie is rude to her-when she even talks to her; told J’s boyfriend before she even met J that “this woman is bad for you, you shouldn’t be dating her”; apparently doesn’t take care of her dog, which angers J; J and her BF live with roomie in an apartment, but its in her name. After a few months, roomie tried to get out of the lease, telling them they had a week to find some place to go. J’s BF talked to apartment owners, who said roomie told them that HE was getting assigned somewhere so they needed to break the lease (BF is a Marine, but wasn’t stationed anywhere but Pensacola, so roomie lied to break the lease)*. J said she doesn’t think roomie likes her in the picture.
*lease stayed intact, but J and her BF are looking for somewhere else to live.
Homework and kids…
We would pick Son up at school and bring him to the office; we knew he was doing his homework, because we saw him do it…and yet, when he was in first grade (pre-Ritalin), his teacher told us at the Parent/Teacher conference, that he wasn’t handing most of it in. So we turned out his backpack, right then and there—and there was all the missing homework, compacted in the bottom of the pack. Luckily the teacher was willing to give him credit at one letter-grade penalty.
–
opposablethumbs:
Not at the hospital here in Missouri where Awesome Grandson was recently hatched—to the considerable annoyance of Other Grandmother. Then, Come The Night, she didn’t show at all (we were all in the waiting room…waiting), but waited ’til way-late the next evening. This was, in my opinion, a Good Thing, soured by the fact that she’d stressed Son’s Partner considerably for more than 2 months with her demands for some sort of magic over-ride to the rules, and how she was gonna just show up and they’d have to force her out of the delivery room.
*shaking head*
–
In elementary school, the “age-appropriate materials” were so trivial and boring, I couldn’t convince myself that learning to read was worth my time. I only really took off with it in the summer between 4th and 5th grade—when the Bookmobile started spending Saturdays in our neighborhood. Access to interesting things to read, made all the difference.
–
Giliell: Hurray! For acceptably-done homework!
–
Nerd:
Huzzah!
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rq:
When I’m not specifically buying something by a known author (I’ll buy pretty much anything by Pratchett, sight unseen!), or on a recommendation/description from someone whose judgement I trust, I’m generally shopping in a particular genre, or for a particular subject, in which case the title can help, if it grabs my attention; but usually, a spiffy title alone doesn’t “sell” me on the book. It’s the blurb that convinces me to give the pages a riffle, see if I like what I’m seeing, and if it hits at-or-near my current “target”.
I don’t trust cover art.
Cover art lies.
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Tony!:
*showers of confetti and fancy, foil-wrapped chocolates*
–
*hugs* for Rowan. I’m sorry about Bramble-the-foster-kitten’s injury.
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Mellow Monkey:
*additional showers of confetti; wide-spread Dancing In The Streets*
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Howdy, gondwanarama; Welcome In, if you’re new, and there’s a Questionnaire around here, somewhere….
I’ve always thought—without evidence—that “hissy-fit” was related to “cat fight”, i.e., two (or more, I guess) women fighting (physically or otherwise), because cats hiss at each other when they’re angry. “Hysterical”, or “histrionics” would work at least as well, though. Or possibly some combination.
This cites 1967 for the first occurence of the phrase.
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cicely:
The paperwork is filed in a drawer that only rq has the key to :)
@cicely,
Thanks for that. I hadn’t thought of the feline interpretation.
Facebook is pissing me the FUCK off with this stupid choice to force drag queens to use their real names. I don’t think it’s going to be just limited to drag queens, and I’m fearful that it may somehow extend to trans people. They shouldn’t be forcing people to choose between being anonymous and being social.
A comment I read at the Gaily Grind drove home an excellent point:
This comment I read at Michael Zimmer’s blog drives home the point even further:
****
Completely unrelated to that: Whoopi Goldberg is her stage name?!
I’m sitting at the computer, and suddenly from outside… OPERA! Stunning voice with great projection. The woman is singing sporadically, and finally I went onto my front porch to try to figure out which direction it’s from. Then she walked right in front of my condo, still singing. Amazing voice and volume from such a petite woman. As she turned a corner of the path, I applauded.
It was incredibly random, but soooo beautiful. Made my evening.
Rowan @108:
What a pleasant surprise!
I take it this doesn’t happen often.
cicely @104
Truth.
Sort of related, I didn’t read Pratchett till a friend pretty well dumped a book in my lap, because I hated Josh Kirby’s covers and got a really bad impression of the books from them.
Rowan, I’m sorry, I missed before about Bramble hurting herself. Lots of hugs. I so hope she recovers. :(
The Mellow Monkey
It’s almost 8AM, and I’m going to open a bottle of (virtual) champagne on your behalf! That is excellent news, may it go well and amazingly lucratively for you!! :)
Rowan
Hope kitty is okay!!
Hullo, gondwanarana, please dscribe your opinion on the following:
1) horses
2) peas
3) cheese
BONUS: Miracle Whip
That will be the paperwork, please submit asap so I can file it in order, unlike some ‘new’ people who took several months, oooooh the filing problems!
Welcome to the Hivemind!
Also, I hope everyone’s cats are okay. Our is, though this weekend we collect Semi-feral Kitten, so we’ll see how that goes. Any tips on introducing the two? We actually have no idea how Current Cat feels about other cats. :/
Hulk Hogan —–> Terry Jean Bollette
Why does this make me smile?
Tips for introducing cats:
# of cats +1 or even +2 of the following:
Litterboxes
Food bowls (unless meal fed)
water bowls
high value areas to perch
Because semi-feral is indeed semi-feral, start with Kitten in a bathroom or a single room with the door shut. Cats can smell each other under door. Put a pair of cat toys connected with a short string under the door so they can’t get taken, but the cats can play with each other. Try using feliway diffusers to reduce stress/tension. Do this for 3 or 4 weeks (the slower the intro, the better things will go) before allowing very limited visual time for a while, then limited interaction-if-wanted time.
Hug all around.
This article might be helpful, rq:
http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/virtual-pet-behaviorist/cat-behavior/introducing-your-cat-new-cat
Checking in.
Alive.
Partner is visiting this week.
Gracie is continuing to regain her weight, and is back to her usual demanding self.
All is right with my world.
WMDKitty @116:
Glad to hear life is going right for you. Hope it continues along that path for some time to come.
TMM
Yay! Congratulations!
rq @111,
1) Fun, but dangerous
2) Delicious
3) Essential
Miracle whip? Is that what Indiana Jones uses?
Tony @107,
The “real names” policies at both Facebook and Google have bitten both me and spouse, as our surname is also a common “rude” word. They therefore refuse to believe that it’s our real name, without birth certificates etc., and I’m stuffed if I’m handing that to Google.
Via Karen Lopez (@datachick on Twitter), I give you atheist barbie. (I would replace her reading material with something else, but hey.)
Rowan and 2kittehs
Thanks, we have to figure out the two rooms bit because we have two options: one is our very tiny bathroom, and the other is a room that is seldom used and a bit out of regular traffic zones lacking in natural light (a nice size, though).
Also, we have yet to see how semi-feral the kitten is, since she’s been around people, and been handled by people, but living in a barn with cows and other cats. I’m a bit more worried about Cat, who is middle-aged (6 counts as middle-age for cats, right?) and very aloof, except when he suddenly decides he wants some aggressive play. We haven’t figured out which territories he sees as his own, since he spends about 3 – 4 weeks sleeping in one spot, then switching to somewhere else (so, probably, everywhere).
The toy idea is great, I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, they’ll be getting their own food bowls, water bowls and litterboxes (Cat goes outside, anyway, but still – winter is coming).
Annnyway. Hoping they will love each other and become best friends.
gondwanarama @119:
I didn’t know Google had such a policy in place. May I inquire as to how you and spouse dealt with the situation?
Also, Welcome to the Lounge!
****
rq @120:
Before I clicked the link I thought “What? Is it The God Delusion”…
So earlier today I heard a new song, that to me sounds like with only a single word alteration or 2 could be the friggin’ anthem for rape apologists. Has anyone else heard the song Blame by Calvin Harris? Even as the lyrics are, it appears to be a case of “I had no control over my penis when I slept with a friend, it was totally the night’s fault.” It completely horrifies me.
Rowan @122:
Blech!
I looked up the lyrics, and you’re right.
*Trigger Warning*
.
.
.
.
.
.
Oh yeah, blame it on the night. Because the night somehow robbed your of your ability to control you damn dick and not rape someone. Fuck that noise.
Reading this Skepchick article by Jamie Bernstein raised a question in my head:
What does sexism look like to Sam Harris?
… And sorry for misspelling your ‘nym, gondwanarama. Thanks for the answers! :) They have been filed away for
blackmail purposes*ahem* future reference, to make sure you stand on the correct side of all the Deep Rifts around here (watch your step!).Tony, one bit wrong with your lyrics it’s actually “keep on waking/ without the woman next to me” So I think it’s more that he’s talking about his girlfriend/wife who left him because he slept with a female friend.
Important news:
‘Dimmer switch’ for mood disorders discovered http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-09-dimmer-mood-disorders.html
— — — — — —
Cool:
Very Long Baseline Array takes radio image of Voyager 1 http://phys.org/news/2014-09-baseline-array-radio-image-voyager.html
Inedible.
Edibility follows a J-curve with respect to both ripening and cooking.
Edible.
Prefer the regular kind.
birgerjohansson that was an interesting read. In a slightly tangential point, my mother and I have to avoid GABA agonists like the plague as they make us go crazy. Literally. We have paradoxical reactions to a lot of sedatives and stimulants. Coffee makes me sleepy, and valium makes both me and my mother extremely agitated and aggressive, to the point that I have a medical bracelet for the entire benzodiazepine family.
Rowan @126:
Not that it’s a big deal, but are you sure? I’ve checked two sites, including this one and the lyrics are still
Stop scaring me, media everywhere!
Rowan, Tony:
From the lyrics I’d infer he song was intended (with the usual caveats re: magic) to be about the narrator cheating on a regular partner (for not the first time, it seems) rather than the sex itself being nonconsensual; still, that is some seriously thoughtless-at-best ambiguity. O.O
Rowan vet-tech,
Jeez, that must make life complicated. You illuminate the point that all human beings are different and medical effects cannot be taken for granted. I am fortunate to have boring, standard-issue responses to *most* medications.
Pretty damn sure. If you actually listen to the song, he’s slurring a bit but it sounds like ‘without’. There’s no s sound in that phrase of the lyrics at all, so there’s not an ‘is’
Azkyroth:
You may be right. Perhaps I misread the lyrics.
Birger, yeah… it makes life ‘entertaining’ to be sure. I took dexadrine once in highschool to help with my ADHD because I’d habituated to ritalin. The result was rather impressive moodswings. I spent an hour outrageously happy, then like someone flipped a switch I became completely despondent, also for approximately another hour, then another switch and I was suffused with rage. I had to let my teacher know what was happening and asked to be excused due to the meds, because if I didn’t leave I was going to start hurting people. I spent that hour kicking and cursing at a BBQ pit.
I also can’t have most opioids because I’m *too* sensitive to them. I stopped breathing while completely conscious on morphine because breathing wasn’t worth the effort, and hydromorphone/dilauded dropped my blood pressure to 60/40. Vicodin also caused respiratory depression and an almost comatose state. I can handle Tramadol okay though.
Azkyroth: That’s the impression I got as well. As I said, just change a couple words and tada! Rape apology anthem. Not the guy’s fault, it was a force of nature, or it was the alcohol or whatever. Creepy creepy sleazy song.
Tony @121:
I sent a strongly-worded email to Facebook, along the lines of “Where the hell do you get off, telling me my name is offensive, etc.”, which seemed to do the trick. SO couldn’t be bothered with the fight, so went for Firstname OldLastName-NewLastName, which doesn’t seem to have triggered the naughty-word filter.
Google isn’t as strict, but periodically youtube throws up a popup saying (approx.) “Dear RealFirstName RealLastName, please stop using an obvious pseudonym. Your experience will be better, blah, blah, blah”.
@ Tony!
You near St. Louis, MO? I’ll be there this weekend. :)
I believe this is the second time you’ve offered to buy me a drink. At some point I’ll have to hunt you down and collect!
Just had a thought:
The people complaining about the attention being paid by the media to the NFL players committing acts of domestic violence against their wives and girlfriends…
Are they the same ones complaining about the media attention being paid to the NFL players who are “disciplining” (that isn’t fucking discipline, it’s child abuse, under the guise of the socially acceptable corporal punishment) their children?
Women and children as the property of men…
MM
Yay!!! Kermit arms
rq
By now I’m mostly author and recommendations hopping and shopping. The fights within the Fantasy & SciFi community (authors and readers) have brought a great number of people to my attention, and like a snowball system each one points to another one and they talk about books and colleagues and so on. Anthologies are also great to see if you like an author, so is the reading excerpt function for e-readers. Because just because an author can write, and can write stuff I’d like doesn’t mean I like the author’s style (can’t get into Scalzi for some reason. Love the guy, he’s wonderful, but I just can’t)
CD
Oh, I’m glad to have all of you for talking these things through
The bok is gender troubles and it must be around page 60ish. It’s of course the only part I didn’t mark or write a note on, because I wrote the note on Pharyngula *rolleyes*
Please keep in mind that most of this is based on her writing but not her writing but my understanding and elaboration.
I think that point with Butler is that she really takes this cultural studies, philosophical approach. She expects readers to be very familiar with the concepts and terms of this field, which makes her hard to read, even though I am relatively firm on the subject.
No, I don’t think so and I think this is where we greatly differ in our understanding. The passage is not about actual desire in any actual person as such, but about the social construct of desire and desirability.
First of all, I think it’s clear that social conventions and constructs greatly influence our desires. That doesn’t mean they’re artificial and somehow not real, but they’re not this “This is me, my inner deeper elf* that somehow floats free from society”. They shape our ideas about what is right and proper and what is deviant. I mean, there weren’t generations of people who fetishize latex who dies with their desire unfulfilled because latex hadn’t yet been invented, yet the desire in somebody who does so now is therefore no less real. But that’s an aside.
*It’s supposed to be “self”, but I’ll just leave that.
The whole part deals with the societal construction of desire, of heterosexual desire. Butler doesn’t do so, but I think you can clearly trace it back to the judeo christian myth of origin, where men and women are created seperately and differently, specially made to “complement” the other. This is how heterosexuality is constructed, as being incomplete without the Other, as needing this fundamentally different yet similar creature for fulfillment. The binary is clearly established as something unchangeable and also as fudamentally true. This differs greatly from the Greek myth where men and women were created as 2 headed creatures with 4 arms and legs, some being mixed sex, some being same sex, who got then seperated and are constantly searching for the Other who is the second half of their soul, but that Other can be the same sex.
Homosexuality, of course, challenges this construction. And again, this is not about people’s individual desires. Because I doubt that apart from political lesbianism any non-straight person ever fucked thinking “Ha! I’ll show them that their whole social construct is bullshit!”. Same as heterosexual people usually don’t love and fuck each other in order to maintain mandatory heterosexuality.*
Homosexuality shows that there is absolutely no need for these fundamentally different complementing Self and Others, making the whole foundation that there are these completely seperate entities tremble. And I think we see this in the reactions to homosexuality:
One reation is the hostile approach: denying that gay men actually love, they only lust (maintaining the concept that lust and sexual desire are male) and denying that lesbians actually lust, they just love and reject sexuality as such (maintaining the concept that women are not really sexual beings, but oh so emotional).
The other one is the “inclusive” apporach**, in which homosexuality gets folded into mandatory heterosexuality in order to maintain and support the binary, the Self and Other. Lesbians get seperated into femme and butch, gay men into masculine and effeminate, any gay couple is presupposed to have the man role and the woman role. The very fact that a homosexual couple shows that gender roles within a family are made up bullshit gets used as an argument in favour of gender roles.
Yes, patriarchy is a sleazy liar.
Now, back to my initial thought about why homosexuality isn’t the powerful wedge against mandatory heterosexuality and patriarchy that it could be: Because it is still maintains the binary, the Self and the Other. Without this basic construct, how could it be?
This may also explain bi-erasure and a hostility towards bisexual people who are one step further. They, IMO, are a bigger threat to the binary construct, though the name itself still carries the baggage. Greta Christina recently wrote an article on words, why pansexual is actually a better term because it denies the binary and includes people who do not identify along it.
*It just struck me that the “opposite” of political lesbianism is corrective rape: An attempt to forcefully maintain mandatory heterosexuality. I don’t think that it could be made any clearer where the violence lies.
**my terminology
Oh, also, I sorted taht college shit out.
Now, if you study part time, you need to apply each term AGAIN (and yes, I have to prove the existence of my kids each time).
Apparently, if you stop studying part time, you need to tell them, too. Because I could easily have figured out that if I don’t apply for any special provisions I have to apply for having the normal stuff again, too *fatal eyeroll*
On those song lyrics (I’ve never heard the song, don’t intend to), even if it’s about cheating rather than rape, it’s still sleazy and disgusting, still him claming he has no control over who he has sex with. Oh, couldn’t help committing adultery, sorry, blame it on the night, not me choosing to have sex with someone not you!
::hurl::
(I’m using adultery advisedly, not because married > unmarried partnership, but because cheating is way too weak a word for my feelings on this.)
Cheers fireworks confetti sparklers champagne for Mellow Monkey and for Tony! It’s lovely to share your good news, thank you!
Not real opera in my story by any means, nor any trained voices by any means – but this suddenly reminded me of a day many years ago when I was living in a tiny shared flat in Paris in one of those old-ish buildings with a central light well. A couple of friends were visiting, we had lunch or something and while we were washing up afterwards (transatlantic note: washing up = washing the dishes (I’ve noticed that in the exotic language some people speak, it means washing one’s hands before eating – or is even a euphemism for going to the loo, but in Brit it means solely dishes)) we got into a mock-opera singing battle about how men should be in the kitchen – no, women! – no, men! (It was totally silly in execution – the singing battle was a game and a joke and quite obviously so, I think – but we were doing a fair pastiche of operatic duet clichés). It was great fun, we improvised the tunes and the words and had a great over-the-top operatic battle across the light well from one window to another for about 5 or 10 minutes. When we wound it up, we heard applause from one of the other flats – they must have been able to hear the whole thing very clearly, which we hadn’t stopped to think about – which was slightly embarrassing but very sweet.
Ok, i wrote a post yesterday but it never appeared. At first i thought it would be trapped in the filtered limbo, but now i think i never even posted it O_o
I’ll try again.
(Sorry the posts i’m referencing to are from the previous Lounge page)
@452 Crip Dyke
Wow, you are good…
Aside from the bit about people wearing clothes that attract attention not really bothering me at all, you were bang on on everything else.
First off i’d like to say that you are indeed correct that many of the characteristics that turn me off are not at all tied to being camp just as they are not tied to gender, and i should have been more clear about this in my post.
You are right that i can identify most of those traits specifically, and you are absolutely fucking right that by using the shorthand i’m actually neglecting to address the majority of the traits that matter to me, which are not tied to the “camp”, “nelly”, “fem”, whatever stereotype. Nevertheless there are some which could be said to be more camp-specific, like certain gestures or addressing others in feminine form (i really do not apreciate a gay man calling me a “queen” or a “bitch”). Specifically the gestures are difficult to address without assigning them a feminine quality. Mind you, it’s a minor thing for me….i care a lot more about so many other things that are not tied to the idea of campness and which i can definitely address on their own.
The fact that i felt it necessary to use the shorthand to address many characteristics i’m not interested in shows me how much my prejudice is still alive and kicking, because it depends entirely on the stereotypification of camp men.
Also, like you said, by focussing on the characteristics that i can identify directly, i’m painting a picture which is sufficient, unlike if i focus on the shorthand which leaves so much unaddressed and unspecified.
Thank you very much for your post, it has been illuminating!
@429 Dalillama
Yeah, it’s less problematic with physical traits, but when it comes to non-physical ones it gets more complicated to avoid gendered terminology. Nevertheless, you and Crip Dyke are right that i can focus on what i can comfortably identify and that it’s probably more than sufficient.
@425 The Mellow Monkey
Oh, don’t worry, if anything i did that to myself by going on and on about hairy armpits xDD
* a joke because obvs everybody pitches in with housework, not just men. In retrospect the lyrics could have sounded a bit straw-feminist-like … note to self: need better lyrics. It was fun, though.
It’s funny, things like the film Take it like a Man, Ma’am were radically consciousness-raising when they came out simply because reversal was a great way of making-strange the unquestionable-invisible-simple-homespun-common-sense of sexism in the workplace and home. These days they would probably be seized upon as Aktchul Reel Evidents by the lovely people who rave about how castrating feminazis want to treat them the way they treat women :-/
Woohoo! Tony! is working again and TMM will be getting paid too!
We’re struggling through potty training with an out of sorts daughter. I don’t know what it is, but she keeps getting annoyed at nothing at all and starts crying. Maybe it’s age, maybe the potty training, maybe something else. Who knows?
hugs to bassmike
If you really think it’s the potty training, slack it off for a few weeks. I don’t think you’ll get any faste results when she’s not ready and is disturbed by it.
The Ig Nobels are in!
Ig Nobel winners: Using pork to stop nosebleeds http://phys.org/news/2014-09-ig-nobel-winner-pork-nosebleeds.html
NEUROSCIENCE: Jiangang Liu, Jun Li, Lu Feng, Ling Li, Jie Tian and Kang Lee, for their study “Seeing Jesus in Toast,” and trying to understand what happens in the brains of people who see human faces in a piece of toast.
Also, Eigil Reimers and Sindre Eftestøl, of Norway, accept their arctic science award for testing how reindeer react to seeing humans who are disguised as polar bears.
Thanks Giliell you may well be right. Possibly she feels the pressure to do things right, but can’t help getting it wrong occasionally. We’re trying to follow the principle of praising her when she uses the potty, but not telling her off when she doesn’t. If she’s distracted she forgets, which is to be expected.
bassmike
What Giliell said – if it could be the potty training and she’s stressing, don’t rush it. Either let her have the choice, or just leave the option out in the open without pushing it for a while.
We had issues with Eldest until he was 3.5, because he had a lot of trouble pooing – mostly because he was, for the most part, near constipation most of the time due to holding it in for about 2 or 3 days. And it was just a sudden *click*, after we’d been through the stress and then the de-stress (after all, people don’t really stay in diapers forever), plus the start of regular daycare. Same with sleeping without a diaper overnight, one day he jsut said no, he doesn’t want to, and that was it – getting there, though, was a huge, huge waiting game of super-patience and a lot of dirty pants. :(
Middle Child was easy, but Youngest is showing signs of being more like Eldest: he knows the toilet is there, he knows how to use it, and he knows he’ll be rewarded for it, but the effort of pooing hurts him too much to do it properly – so he’ll wait until evening or early morning, when he (still) has a diaper on, and then he’ll go off quietly in his little corner where no one can see, and do everything his own way.
(We had friends who had to resort to laxatives with their daughter, because she would hold it in for over 3 days at a time. But even they got through it, and so did their daughter!)
Basically, don’t rush it too much if she’s distressed, don’t get angry for her not using the toilet (you can express disappointment or a ‘better luck next time’, but no anger – sometimes it’s hard!), and give it some more time. There’s no set schedule you have to follow, anyway. Good luck! (and *hugs* if wanted)
Ta rq . It’s not as if she’s that distressed really, just that she seems to get angry and tearful at nothing. We ask her what’s wrong, but she won’t say anything. Whether that’s because she doesn’t know herself, or that she doesn’t have the vocabulary as yet, I don’t know. It’s hard not to keep asking her if she needs the potty as if she’s engrossed in something she forgets about her bladder. As it is, I won’t be changing our carpets any time soon!
On the plus side she’s already showing interest in my guitar and knows how to pluck the strings without being told. Which I think is pretty good for a 2 1/2 year old. We’re luck enough to have a large range of musical instruments for her to try which is good. Though she’s a bit small for a double bass at the moment.
…and yes… *hugs* always appreciated!
In happier news, I managed to get my daughter to finish all her homework last night with relatively few temper tantrums. And even those were mild compared to previous ones. A small slice of success!
opposablethumbs @144, I love your opera-in-the-flat story!
I have a question for people who are knowledgeable about economic issues than I am:
Are there legitimate arguments against increasing the minimum wage?
Mordor, he wrote: how the Black Country inspired Tolkien’s badlands http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/19/how-the-west-midlands-black-country-inspired-tolkien-lord-of-the-rings
Saad @154:
I’m hardly an expert on this matter, but what little I’ve read points largely to “no”. One of the more common criticisms against raising the minimum wage is that it will kill jobs (I’ve read figures of 500K being lost if the minimum wage is increased).
Here is an article from the New Yorker on demonizing the minimum wage:
Here is an article on the supposed harms of raising the minimum wage:
bassmike
Sounds like she’s just worried about something, so easing off any external stressors that can be eased off is probably a good idea. And yeah, given her age, she’s probably having a hard time expressing herself, so try role-playing games with her toys or something, make up stories, and see what she comes up with on her own. Does she like to draw? Ours like to just draw anything (even Youngest, who is still in a very abstract stage), it seems to help them sort themselves out internally. Plus more hugs, and music therapy. Good luck!
I’m impressed with her guitar skills. :) I, on the other hand, have a dancer on my hands. :)
Linkmania:
Bill Gates says progress made on new ‘next-generation’ super-thin condom http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/bill-gates-says-progress-made-on-new-next-generation-super-thin-condom/
Hooray!
— — — —
DNA study reveals third group of ancient ancestors of modern Europeans http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/09/dna-study-reveals-third-group-ancient-ancestors-of-modern-europeans/
Lunadong fossils support theory of earlier dispersal of modern man http://phys.org/news/2014-09-lunadong-fossils-theory-earlier-dispersal.html
Thanks for the help rq . I’ll take your and Giliell’s advice and see how things go over the weekend. I’d put her in nappies for a while to relieve the stress, but she refuses to wear them!
From what I read music/dance have a beneficial effect on a child’s development. Not that we’ve ever pushed anything, but we always try and encourage her.
BTW: with regard to books by new authors I tend to go on recommendation. I have a few people who have similar tastes in literature and music and they are very helpful in introducing me to new stuff.
Have a great weekend everyone! Tony! I hope the bar is busy (but not exhaustingly so!)
Kevin by my reckoning your wedding is this weekend. Good luck and I hope it all goes brilliantly.
bassmike
Have a good weekend, hope something works out!
Oh, and don’t put her ‘back’ in nappies, it’s a real blow to their dignity. Just, during play, set a timer for yourself to at least ask her every 20 or 30 minutes. If she says no, believe her, and remind her on the next circuit. And, I guess, buy more underwear. :P :)
*hugs*
…Oh. Now PZ has approved all my attempts that got caught in the spam filter, and in each one I forgot to insert the link to the abstract and figures as opposed to the pdf. But if you clicked on the link to the pdf and couldn’t penetrate the paywall, you were sent there anyway.
Other than that, I haven’t caught up, except I notice there’s lots of good news! ^_^
The confusion here is greatly exaggerated by the fact that the English word “prince” is used to translate two quite different German titles: Prinz, which almost exclusively means “son of a king”, and Fürst*, the independent noble rank you mean here.
* Related to Generic Scandinavian fyrst and English first, which makes it similar to Latin princeps = prim-cap[u]t-s = “first-head-y”.
B-)
Take a look at the countries that have a higher minimum wage than the US – that’s most of the halfway rich ones – and figure it out.
Tony, #156,
Thanks for those.
The only argument I had been familiar with so far was the one about unemployment. Basically: Aw, we sympathize with you poor workers, but don’t you see if we give you enough money to live decently we’d also have to let you go? So count your blessings and shut up.
Tony, I’m glad you spoke up when your new coworker started fat-shaming her roommate. Touchy situation. Maybe she won’t do that in front of you anymore (too much to hope for that she will stop fat-shaming).
The other day I heard a group of young men and women age-shaming an older woman. She didn’t hear them, thank goodness. It was along the lines of “no one wants to see that” when an older woman wore a tank top to visit a fruit stand in the mall parking lot. It was a hot day, and the woman was not indecent in any way. She can wear what she likes. She is not required to be invisible.
Scroll down to the video here to see an entertaining presentation from Rachel Maddow on the utterly unbelievable shenanigans in which Kris Kobach, Kansas Secretary of State, is engaging. The video begins with a summary of other news, but at about 3:00 it segues to the story of Kobach and Senator Pat Roberts.
For those who like to read instead, the text at the link provides a good summary.
WTF, Southerners? Really?
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/regional-differences-children-corporal-punishment
So cool! What Slipped Disks Tell Us About Half a Billion Years of Evolution
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3 Magazines That Should Exist.
(hat-tip to Indian Country Today Media Network)
–
Tony!:
So that explains where my hanging file has gone!
:D
–
*return-hug* for chigau.
–
WMDKitty:
Excellent! May this fortuitous state of affairs continue!
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gondwanarama, it is my sad, sad duty to inform you that you have failed to correctly answer 2 out of 3 Required Answers.
The correct answers to the questions you missed are:
1) Evil, in an Elemental Planar way.
2) An Abomination Unto Nuggen.
However, I feel that you deserve extra extra credit for
I *snortled*.
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“One little Jewish radical…”? Sheesh. Pat Robertson was always a flea-brained doofus, but I swear he has gotten worse. Daily Kos link.
So I finally went and looked up Nuggan.
Now I don’t know whether ‘Abomination Unto Nuggan’ is an insult or a compliment.
I. Am. So. Fucking. Angry.
That fire I told you about?
It was a training session! There’s an empty flat on our floor, which is why I assumed the fire had been in that other neighbour’s flat, and they used it for a training session with fire in a flat, with lots f smoke and an injured person.
Without telling us.
I was scared and worried for more than half an hour about our safety and I was worried sick for two days about the health of our neighbour, just because they thought it would be cool to stage a fire without fucking telling anybody.
Fucking inconsiderate assholes.
rq@168:
The way cicely uses the phrase (such as ‘peas are an abomination unto nuggan’) I’m going with choice C: not a compliment :)
On misleading book cover artwork, Glen Cook’s Garrett P.I. book series is famous for a completely different-from-story portrayal of the lead character (Garrett):
One of the earliest books in the series also showed people carrying guns, and indoor electric lights (and a telephone?), despite the Garrett fantasy-world being medieval / magical.
In one sense, however, this injoke-ish mis-depiction is not misleading: It’s very clear from the cover art that this a detective (private investigator) series in an atypical setting.
Giliell @169:
That’s incredibly shitty. They should have alerted everyone that this was a practice exercise.
Giliell
That is fucking inconsiderate.
There have been firefighter and emergency team rescue training sessions going on all over the place for the past couple of weeks (mock train crash, terrorism training at the national library, fire emergency at the library, etc.), and every single time, it has been announced well beforehand via at least two forms of media.
I can’t believe they didn’t give you any advance warning. :( For people who are supposed to be supportive of the community, that’s damned shitty.
Remember all those Happy videos of people dancing in Tehran? Six of them are getting lashes and prison time. For dancing. :(
Ten of the best collective nouns: “From a murder of crows to a misbelief of painters, […] the intriguing origins of [some] favourite collective nouns”.
(Sentences were suspended, but still.)
Yes, and I’m going to call the firedepartment AND the housing company, because they approved of that shit.
Giliell, that is disgusting and bad, and wrong. They are just lucky none of the actual residents was hurt!
Giliell #169
Amazing.
I wonder, was the person they carried out part of the training
or a genuine heart-attack that they caused?
Moment of Mormon Madness, tiny-brained leaders category. The President of BYU-Idaho posted a reminder to students about the BYU-I dress code, and about OBEDIENCE. He outed himself, once again, as a small-minded, brain-washed, mormon doofus.
http://imgur.com/zdAvSUl
rq @174, Those were some of the best videos ever. I enjoyed watching them many times. Such a spirit of joy. And there were all kinds of people featured, different sizes, different looks, differing levels of skill. It was awesome.
I noticed that the lashings and prison time were all suspended sentences, but now those young people are all being watched. The slightest infraction will send them to prison.
Joy-killing news.
Almost literally.
+++
In other news, I FOUND PITA BREAD!
Mordor, he wrote: how the Black Country inspired Tolkien’s badlands: “A new show called The Making of Mordor claims the steelworks and blast furnaces of the West Midlands inspired The Lord of the Rings. So did Tolkien see orcs there too?”
It’s the English midlands. Of course he saw orcs there! What else is there, there?
(Runs away…)
(Wonders what makes this such a LOUD event…?) Not made from potatoes?
Well, my sister says it’s even illegal to do that shit without informing people
Sorry to bother whoever moderates the queue but i wrote a post yesterday that must have been stuck in the filter. I re-wrote it today thinking that i never posted it in the first place and i see that it is now displayed. However, i’d much prefer the first version to be up, rather than the re-write. Would that be possible…?
Giliell,
If setting a “training” fire in an occupied building is not illegal, it should be. And if it was in fact done illegally, the bastards should lose their jobs, be fined, thrown in jail, etc.
azhael @187:
There are no moderators here. The only person who can approve a comment is PZ.
Oh, no. I got that. I miscontextualized the discussion the first time as about individual desire rather than normative desire (which I think shouldn’t even be called “desire” but wtf) but you already corrected me. I was on the “institutional/normative heterosexuality” page with you when I wrote the above.
But we still call that social construct (and, for what it’s worth, I think “social construct” is overused, since even individual desire is a social construct, so let’s specify institutional/normative heterosexuality as the construct under discussion) independent of any singular person “heterosexuality”. So what is gained by calling this “social heterosexuality” (as opposed to phenomenological heterosexuality) “desire for the other” instead of just “heterosexuality” – which includes the meanings “other” and “sexual desire” within its roots?
1. this is why I don’t think “social construct” is as useful as people think. Any category representable by language is a social construct. Using “social construct” for some things but not others miseducates folk into thinking that most of their categories are NOT social constructs.
2. I’m declaring “my inner, deeper elf” a pharyngula thing, as of now. Or maybe just a Crip Dyke thing. Or maybe I’ll forget. But I really enjoyed it.
Okay, in the dictated, supposed-to-be-true sense, you’re absitively right.
But I’d like to note that the modern anti-queer movement, especially but not only the “ex-gay” movement, specifically adopts the idea that psychological confusion can lead one to believe that this is filled or should be filled by some same-gender and/or same-sex partner. In a world of compulsory heterosexuality, there’s no reason that the Greek version couldn’t be used the same way: “Oh, sure, some people are those befuddled-sex weirdos whose other halves have genitals that look like their own, but I can’t believe that of my own son! We have a normal family, and you were raised as a normal person! You’re just confused b/c [Freud].”
You said later,
It may be useful in some circumstances to make a distinction in the original material that Patriarchy is appropriating to serve as its lies’ foundations, but I think it’s likely much more frequently useful to note that **whatever** the original material, patriarchy will lie about it.
=====================
If this seems confrontational, it’s not meant to be. I have to go, but I’m hoping to write some more thoughts about your #141 later…but if this isn’t a discussion you want to have [or if others think it should be taken to TD] I’ll stop [or move] as appropriate.
oops.
My #190 was for Giliell in response to Giliell’s #141.
I’m building a pillow fort over here in the corner. I have tea and chocolate and books. Anyone who needs to hide from the world is more than welcome to join me.
grumblegrumbleagedmumgrumblegrumblecatsgrumblegrumble and don’t ask me about politics, I might blow a gasket.
@azhael:
PZ generally doesn’t take the time to do that. We just have to live with our double posts. It would screw with number references anyway, if that sort of thing were to be removed, but mostly it’s just about not burdening PZ.
azhael #187
PZ doesn’t usually delete comments for minor editorial reasons but you can email him directly.
Click the link under his photo in the side-bar or the Contact a Monitor link.
Pea Zed is a person ? What happened to the fire-breathing baby- and puppy-eating kraken who is constantly thinking up new excuses for evilution and cooties?
Whilst I don’t think that’s been tried before, I also don’t think it will protect yer cheeseboard should the mildly deranged penguin show up.
(And the chocolate is just some extra bait…)
blf
tsk
Fire-breathing baby- and puppy-eating krakens who constantly think up new excuses for evilution and cooties are people, too.
The NY Times and Alessandra Stanley figure out: How to get away with racist, sexist, colorist and ageist tropes against Shonda Rhimes and Viola Davis
Stanley’s NY Times article, FYI, begins with this sentence: “When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called ‘How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.'”
Hey all loong time lurker here as in pre FTB and just after crackergate. Can all the regulars give themselves a pat on the back for all the heavy lifting you have done over the years. I’ve learned alot from you all and have started speaking out more too. This SJW is proud to belong in this community.
chigau, A people of fire-breathing baby- and puppy-eating krakens — Very odd collective term. How did that come about ?
blf
It’s all those multiple personalities (shy and unassuming in person, fire-breathing and tentacle-waving behind a keyboard). They qualify as one single people.
Also, we the sockpuppets. With so many tentacles and at least one sock per tentacle, you think that should be a single person? Tsk.
harle! Paperwork! Filed in perpetuity, etc., etc., please do give us your opinion on:
1) peas;
2) horses;
3) cheese;
BONUS) Miracle Whip.
There was a comfy chair around here somewhere, but looks like you’ll have to fight someone for it now. Please do so as nurturingly as possible, we don’t want to break the estrogen vibe, okay?
blf #200
IRIOTISIMBT
rq, Ah, so a people of poopyhead is the collective term for one sock-eater…
(With all those ensocked tentacles, we have just solved the problem of where socks disappear to…)
That’s it.
I can’t do this right now.
Between the story of the gay couple who were bashed, and now we have someone in the Though Leader thread who is making statements that could trigger rape victims, I am *NOT* in the mood today and I can feel my anger rising after I’d just gotten it to subside.
I’m out til later. I can normally deal with this shit, but I don’t think I have the spoons for it.
blf @196, the MDP is welcome to risk the wrath of Mr Bolty and my Flying Hamster of Doom. Or the MDP could just settle in and share the treats. I know it’s not likely, but perhaps when faced with the Wrath of the HellGoddess, MDP might consider cooperating.
Tony
*hugs*
Take care of yourself, okay?
Tony!, you’re welcome in the pillow fort. How do you like your tea? I got some new cookies at TJ’s, too – trail mix cookies. Want some?
I have et lunch, and I am going to have a lie-down before Aged Mum thinks of another excuse to call me, or before her regularly scheduled call at 4PM.
“IRIOTISIMBT”? chigau, Did you just fall over and bounce a few eyestalks off the keyboard, or Are you sending a coded message to the reptilians?
Take care of yourself, Tony!. It has really been a bad day. Walking away from it for a little while for your own well-being sounds like a good idea.
*hugs*
The Mellow Monkey
*hugs* for you, too. And Iyéska, should she peek in here and want.
The mildly deranged penguin always cooperates! She takes the cheeses, chocolates, and moar cheeses with no more holes burst through the walls, floor, ceiling, and transdimensional wormholes then get in the way.
Here’s an example of yet another way in which the rich make sure only the rich get richer, and you get screwed.
http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/09/19/3569911/massive-alibaba-ipo-proves-wall-street-is-a-rigged-game/
Okay, apparently I’m on edge tonight, too. Sudden loud shot-like noise just outside my work has put me in panic mode. I want a cigarette, but I’m scared to go outside. :/
Fuck this shit.
*checks the pillow fort*
Shields are at full strength. If she wants in, she’ll have to ask nicely. Hey, I’ve survived raising two kids and two cats. A mildly deranged penguin is nothing. Besides, there’s no cheese here anyway.
*waves rq over to the pillow fort* No smoking in here, please, but there’s plenty of room and lots of chocolate.
Just got home from my therapy appointment.
My therapist – again – called me out for “psychoanalyzing” people who have hurt me and said that my continual pattern of doing this (especially since my “psychoanalysis” features finding ways of explaining why they really couldn’t control whatever-it-was) indicates incredible compassion on my part and emphasizes how I’ll be a wonderful care provider, but doesn’t really address the fact that I got hurt, and that I need to give myself permission to be upset and say, occasionally, that so-and-so is just a self-centered jerk. Which is true, in a way that I think I really needed to hear. So that was a nice breakthrough. She also said – and I realize I agree – that I am (despite being disappointed that this is how it is) more or less okay with the status quo I have with Certain People. I’ve accepted that the status quo is what it is, that it is unlikely to change, and I’ve built up enough mental reserves to protect myself from the inevitable hurts. Which, she said, is definitely sub-optimal, but is a pretty healthy place, all told.
She then asked me if I thought I need to make a new appointment, because she didn’t really see anything else that needed to be worked on. After some thought, I agreed. She gave me her card, so that if I had a crisis I could call, but I’m feeling pretty good now.
Sorry to dump that, but I think I’ve come to a good place.
blf
I Read It On The Internet So It Must Be True
Time for another addition to our right-wingers-say-stupid-stuff file:
Right Wing Watch link.
Love the “Accuracy in Media” name. That name complies with the rightwing tradition of giving organizations a name that is the opposite of accurate.
It is rumoured the last supposedly-sentient creature who said anything like that achieved involuntary FTL speeds before pronouncing the first “A”.
That does tend to discourage penguin-powered wormholes from materializing nearby, except when she comes to complain that yer not cooperating.
You’ll have to try harder than that to scare away the Ancient Mayan Astronauts in Starship Siding Spring who will be landing on Mars next month to prepare for their reconquest of an Earth decimated by the Great Mayan Calendar Disaster of 2012.
Kind of ‘rupt, not focusing that well as i’ve not been sleeping too well these few days. General *hugs* and boiled sweets all ’round.
Lynna @ 212
In the stock market it has ever been thus. Way the hell back in the mid 1980’s when I was a rookie stockbroker for Dean Witter Reynolds, whenever there was a hot new public offering all the “favored brokers” got generous allotments to sell to their favored clients. Most of those clients would buy up huge amounts at the offering price, knowing that the stock price would pop up after the IPO. They then sold their favored shares to the stupid rubes and pocketed a nice instant profit. The favored brokers charged commissions on both the buy and sell side and made a tidy sum too. We rookies who managed to get our clients some shares only did so after the IPO, at the higher price, and made damn little commission. Did I mention that the most ill treated rookies happened to be women? Surprise. Dean Witter was then operating under a Consent Order from the justice dept. to hire women. So they did. And they made our lives hell.
Moments of Mormon Madness, Utah liquor laws category. (Emphasis mine.)
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/58424611-78/utah-restaurants-alcohol-valentine.html.csp
From this story, we can assume that the Zion Curtain issue is not dead. Mormons are still looking for ways to make all restaurants comply.
In the comments section, mormon readers did not hold back:
The choice of words in the above quote is quite revealing of mormon attitudes. Mormons are not just “good,” they are “clean.” People who drink liquor are” wicked” and “dirty.” I think I’m going to have to remember to go roll around in the garden before I have my next glass of wine. Dirty girl.
Morgan @222, That is sad and depressing. Also, not surprising. Thanks for the view from the inside.
Lynna #223
They wait until their “kids” are 21 before talking about booze?
Interesting…
Hugs offered to everyone who’s been triggered today.
****
And on that note, TRIGGER WARNING for the rest of my post. The link contains detailed descriptions of sexual assault and harassment.
http://missoulian.com/news/local/missoula-man-accused-of-sex-crimes-turns-himself-in/article_919d3230-4025-11e4-8bea-7b1893a571b2.html
This story is about a serial harasser and assailant, who is thankfully now off the streets. What struck me about it is how fortunate it was that these crimes were even reported. I’ve experienced many similar forms of harassment and assault, and I’ve never reported because I figured the police would ignore it or even berate me for being overly sensitive. And I don’t think my perception is generally incorrect, and I’d be willing to guess that he has many more victims who did not report…… but anyway, I’m glad this assailant was caught, and I hope he faces some serious consequences.
Hey, horde, can I ask your opinion on a legal issue? Too bad, cause I’m going to anyway…My organization is asking its employees to fill out a “tobacco attestation” stating whether they smoke or not. As it happens, I don’t, but my feeling is that it’s precisely none of their business one way or another. Do they, in fact, have the legal right to demand this?
I had to rush my dog to the vet at about midnight or so. She was awake, but not aware and she was breathing oddly. The vet said she was bleeding into her stomach, most likely caused by a mass on her spleen or her liver — a mass that is 70% or so likely to be malignant. Our dog was a 12 year old yellow lab that we got from a rescue organization.
They said she was saved from a puppy mill, which was believable from some of her behaviors: she didn’t know how to play or chase a ball or catch anything. She had been debarked. When we first got her, she wouldn’t do her business while on a leash, but had no reluctance to going inside her crate. She was incredibly sweet-natured, though. We had her for 6 and a half years or so.
We are lucky in that we don’t have to choose between eating and getting medical care for our dog. Not that it really entered into it, but the surgery to stop the bleeding and remove the mass would have cost a heckuva lot of money. Worse, the doctor said that if it was malignant, she might have only another 6 months. What settled it for us though was that putting her through all that surgery and recovery and most likely chemotherapy just to get a few more months would have been selfish of us.
We called her the third best dog ever (because when my wife first moved here, we got a pair from the same litter who were tied for first because we got them first). This is the first time we haven’t had a dog since February 1997.
(Warning: Wall o’ text about gaming, and not any of the political gaming stuff such as has been discussed recently, just stuff about an actual game)
Apropos of pretty much nothing, and partially because I’m excited to finally have a chance at a different game setting than the one I’ve been playing for years (not that I don’t love the game, or the groups, but I’d like some variety), I’d like to ask any folks on here who know anything about Irish for a bit of linguistic advice (or any Gaelic language, really). My character is based heavily on the historical Grainne Mhaol, with chunks of David Drake’s Daniel Leary and considerable bits of my own and the GM’s invention to fit the campaign. This has lead to a distinctly Irish-esque flavor to her, but her home isn’t actually all that much like most of Ireland, being a semi-tropical swampy province with a small harbor letting onto a large bay or small sea, and hence I can’t go by the standby Irishisms like a taste for whiskey (grains not being much available where she comes from), or staples like beef, mutton, barley and potatoes (likewise hard to grow and come by). So, I have decided that the stores on her ship consist principally of kegs of fermented catfish, barrels of a kimchee-like substance based on hot peppers and swamp cabbage, and jugs of liquor distilled from a mash made with soursop and red maple syrup. The trouble is that I need names for these dishes, for the sake of verisimilitude. I’m thinking that the liquor could be called slogtha (‘swallowed’, after schnapps, which is from Low German word meaning the same thing), the catfish choip éisc (Fermented fish), and the cabbage dish choip cál(fermented cabbage). I got all these from an online Irish-English dictionary though, so I have no idea how apt or accurate they are; hence my request. I don’t think that the GM or the other players will notice or care, but what the hell, I may as well do it right.
ajb47…. I’m so sorry. ;_; Ruptured liver/splenic masses suck beyond belief.
Well – I just wanted to stop by and say Hi !
Things around here are triggering as hell today though (especially the field work one – I can’t even go there) so I will opt to simply leave a pile of virtual chocolate sponge cake (I made one from scratch last weekend and am very proud of how it turned out.)
I am so sorry about your dog. Losing a pet stinks.
Lets see – Oh Cinder – liked the story, loathed the worldbuilding. The kimono in particular killed me. JAL ? those articles you linked I very much liked. I teach at a college and I swear it is like pulling teeth sometimes to get some cultural awareness drummed into some of these kids – they think the China and Japan are the same country and … nevermind – I won’t get started.
I have to go convince a cat to take a pill now. Urgh.
ajb47, I’m so sorry about your furry family member.
ajb47
*hugs* My entire sympathies.
Hi everyone! Would you mind doing me a small favor? Check out this video that my friend made for the NAACP, and share it around. The video is a google hangout with an interview and a powerpoint presentation about the re-entry toolkit, which is basically his baby. It provides legislative and other means of facilitating re-entry of “returning citizens”, i.e. folks getting out of prison, to society.
It is pretty dry and you can tell he’s nervous at the beginning. But his goal is to get at least 600 views, which will help convince NAACP to continue letting him do this series.
I already told him that it’s bogus that the focus is exclusively on men & boys of color and he was like, Yeah, NAACP is not exactly forward-thinking that way. But it’s still got some valuable information for anyone working in this or any related fields.
Thanks!
Re-Entry Toolkit
We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
ajb47
I’m so very sorry about the loss of your dog. Doing the right thing sometimes hurts like hell. My pooches send healing slurps.
dianne @ 227
My attorney wife says it is legal in most US jurisdictions to ask. She also says if you ask her if it’s any of their business, she’d say no, but it is legal to ask.
Once the employer is in possession of the smoking info, can they then use it to increase the portion of health insurance premiums the employee has to pay, or to use it in some other disadvantageous manner?
Anyone in the mood to do some good tonight? Ernestine’s Women’s Shelter, an organization with more than 30 years of helping women and children escape violence, is in an online race to win $10,000. That will feed all of the residents of this 32 bed shelter for an entire year.
A vote here for Ernestine’s will make a big difference in the lives of women and children. Voting closes at midnight, EST, tonight.
We’re currently trailing by 700 votes so we could use all the help we can get.
http://www.woodbineentertainment.com/corporate/WEGCares/Pages/default.aspx
Yep, if the insurance company charges a higher rate for smokers (justified by proven higher costs for smokers). I think I got a $15/pay period break because neither the Redhead nor I ever smoked.
I can think of several possible but not super-great reasons, including determining the size of “smoking-allowed” break rooms needed, concerns about clean room contamination and third-hand smoke exposure of customers, and the higher health costs of smokers given the requirements of businesses to provide health insurance.
On the other hand, I’m kind of mystified by the idea of not being able to tell if someone smokes just by the smell…
Chris Tygesen
Voted! Good luck.We’ve been in DV shelters and I hope ya’ll win.
NEW THREAD.