Checking copyright expiry on some poems led me to talk about poetry at dinner, and wonder aloud if poetry anthologies for youngsters from Chaucer to now are still A Thing. That is, I know these anthologies in general are still A Thing, but are bowdlerized versions still A Thing, so that young readers won't have to wonder why, say, John Donne, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, was so keen on ripping bodices?
Having wondered that, I asked my kids, which would they find more awkward, poems about death, or poems about romance "that left you wondering if you'd wandered into the wrong motel room"? They said they'd prefer the poems about death to the ones about romance.
I replied, "Because death is –" Mid-kid interrupted, "funnier!" Death is funnier. That wasn't what I was getting at, but it is pretty funny.
I'm kinda hoping one year the new pope dies the Fontana di Trevi green on St. Patricks Day. It'd be awesome!
As a bookworm raised in a working class family, I had to figure out sounds on my own. I often got it wrong, and got teased for it. Why is the "a" in Satan and satin not the same? Why is stomach "stumuck" and not "sto-mahch"? And don't get me start of hors d’oeuvres! 😡 Fortunately I had an elementary school teacher who realized I was trying to think what sounds were (and failing miserably), and she gave me much good advice.
It's why I rarely make fun of people who accidentally mispronounce a word.
The stupid neighbor award is going to the one who texted me yesterday asking if I thought the DNR could re-home the owls because he’s annoyed by all the noise the crows are making. The crows are incessantly cawing at them. Dude I live right across the street and you live four houses down. Suck it up.
We get people saying all the birds of prey should be killed because "They attack little fur babies!!!!!!"
My husband was running in the neighborhood yesterday and was bitten by someone's "baby," some kind of -doodle, he said. Not a serious bite, fortunately: just needed some antibiotic ointment and a bandaid.
In our area, it seems there may be more dogs than people, and with that a shortage of dog groomers. After waiting several weeks, our appointment date with a groomer finally arrived yesterday. My wife was very excited! Unfortunately, upon arriving and entering the business, the owners dog, a pit bull, viciously attacked our small terrier. It was very fortunate that the owners were able to pull them apart without getting seriously bit themselves. Our dog suffered non-trivial wounds from teeth and claw. A visit to the vet, no stitches, but pain meds and antibiotics. Another day, another example of people doing stupid things.
Sheesh! Sorry to hear that. Some of the groomers around here haven’t always been the most savory looking characters, either. Not sure I’d expect them to be big on obedience training…
My rule of thumb is that dogs who bite humans need to be put down. I'm not talking about when a dog nips you as you're roughhousing with it, but when they pursue and bite a human.
Fortunately, our dogs are good natured and don't bite others.
Roughhousing with dogs is not what I was talking about. Dogs know how to play, and the little nips they make when roughhousing is part of roughhousing. I'm talking about dogs that just go at you. Zero tolerance from me.
There’s definitely those that you need to knock sideways before they get a chance to sink their teeth in. Animals are lightning fast compared to our lumbering species…
What is the general consensus about when a dog bites someone (me), is it ethical to beat the crap out of the dog? I've had a few dog bites, and those dogs were sorry they ever got near me. I've had dog lovers horrified at me for beating the crap out of their dogs for biting me, doing things like threatening lawsuits.
Is it unethical to pound on a dog stupid enough to bite me?
That’s one end of the spectrum: People who anthropomorphize their pets and treat them as the absent offspring they really want to coddle. There’s untold fortunes to be made catering to that market, since most have deep pockets and are willing to spend spend spend.
At the other end of the spectrum are the totally negligent pet owners who tie their dogs up outside for years and hardly pay any attention to them. Some are so negligent they get locked up for abuse. But they can have some seriously maladjusted, unsocialized brutes tied up outside that cannot be trusted around people at all—totally unpredictable and volatile, usually scared out of their wits most of the time, and lashing out because of it.
The late Clay Mathiele made billions on those who anthropomorphize their pets. I always divided pet owners into 10 binary groups: those who treat them as moving furniture and those who treat them as heirs (those who abuse them, I'm not sure they are truly human). Mathiele founded Iams dog food for those who treat them as heirs.
Our dogs were always well trained through rewards, not punishment. Our GSP followed pointing commands and was probably the best bird dog I'll ever experience in this life. My Shepherds (2, one at a time) were so lovely they liked nothing more than wallowing around with us. There's a place in Hell for folks that mistreat animals.
That said, I don't put up with getting bit, not for a second. People that tolerate their dogs biting people...I'd never ever hit another person, but those types make me think about it.
Positive reinforcement works great with dogs, negative not so much because they don't see what they are doing as wrong. Plus they don't connect the paper they chewed 10 minutes ago as a problem to a punishment.
With our golden, turning away from him was a great punishment. He quickly learned what behaviors caused us to turn away.
Yeah, negative reinforcement makes bad dogs worse. Kurt might have better outcome beating the crap out of the owner. Except for the legal troubles. With that said, if in the middle of an attack on me or my dog (see above), I would with all vigor kick the living shiiite out of the offender.
Goldens are like that. I had a couple of them. So easy to train, about all it took was to look at them disapprovingly and they'd know they'd done wrong.
I took a linguistics course in college. We learned about phone and phonemes. But what I most remember was a discussion of a not-so-venerable Anglo-Saxon word that rhymes with “duck”.
Sort of refreshing to see an American get appointed to a high position of responsibility for running an organization who isn't an unqualified hack or outright wackadoodle.
The mothership's commentary is annoying because of their reliance on trite political categories and insistence on framing everything as a clear "this vs. that" conflict.
All the secular media do that. Not limited to TD. They don’t get the categories of politics don’t fit, and that the Pope is not going to, say, ordain women.
More like, secular media don’t do religion well. They don’t understand it.
And they were frustrated by conclave secrecy, speculating about things no one will ever know, like who was leading in the balloting. They had to talk about *something* during the wait for smoke signals.
Coincidentally, The Athletic has an article begging the sporting world to not forget UM sign stealing scandal. Come on man! Give it up! The author must be an OSU fan. Even with a national championship fairly(?) purchased with a $20M roster, they can't get over 4 years of losing to UM.
Most true Buckeye fans add that Anglo Saxon word that rhymes with duck to the name for That University Up North. We normies use TUUN, they use TFUUN. Christy didn't swear, but I truly wondered if UM was UFM...
It doesn't seem such a weird thing. The church has been around for what...about 2000 years, give or take a century...(?) America has been hanging around in its current form for about 160 years, and there have been what...about 6 or 7 popes in that time...(?).
So, we could've waited a while longer and it would have still been OK.
It was a given during the Cold War no American would become Pope. I think Leo was elected more for his ties to Latin America than to the USA. He’s as much a Third World Pope as an American.
Yeah. He's a citizen of Peru. Americans want to make it about America, which is fine with me, but it seems like a shallow read of the situation. But, getting back to what matters...
This makes me think about my struggles with Mandarin. Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, and semantics. Do it right, and magic happens. Oh...pragmatics. Ah, who needs pragmatics?
Orthography would have to be a major impediment in learning that language as an adult. It’s the most intimidating aspect for most people, I’d assume—since it is for me.
The tone language business is probably the first *real* hurdle you face as a bloody beginner, though, considering you can at first use a standardized transcription of the language into latin letters to find your way around.
We all know English spelling is a hot mess. Spanish by contrast is extremely regular. German is better than English — except that plurals of German nouns are irregular as often as not. Then there are the 3 genders - der/die/das.
The Romance languages collapsed the three grammatical genders in Latin down to two, with masculine and neuter becoming the same. The masculine nouns outnumber feminine ones by roughly two to one.
Plenty of languages don’t have grammatical gender at all—not even for people. Turkish is one of those. It’s not as confusing as some might suspect, coming from a language with gendered pronouns.
For instance, when you mention a person the second time, s/he is rendered as “it”, since “he” and “she” don’t exist.
“I saw the lady at the store. She was inspecting the apples.”
This is literally said in Turkish as:
“I saw the lady at the store. It was inspecting the apples.”
But in a language like German with grammatical gender, you have to get used to memorizing the gender marker with each and every noun. It matters in the next sentence.
“The lamp (feminine) is on the table (masculine). *She* is standing on *him*.”
It’s three genders, plus a plural, and four grammatical cases. As a beginner, it’s daunting because you have to learn memorize endings for a noun alone, an adjective + noun, a definite article + noun, a definite article + adjective(s) + noun, an indefinite article + noun, and an indefinite article + adjective(s) + noun.
Coming from English, where all that morphology was dropped centuries ago, it starts off as intimidating right out of the gate.
It's the accusative case, so I guess when you want to know which of your children ate the last doughnut, you use the accusative case? But it has been awhile since I studied it in HS.
It’s funny that while German intellectuals followed American progressives intellectuals in their gender obsessions, I don’t recall any serious ones in Germany talking about getting rid of gendered language because it’s not fair or whatever…
Language-related anecdote:
Checking copyright expiry on some poems led me to talk about poetry at dinner, and wonder aloud if poetry anthologies for youngsters from Chaucer to now are still A Thing. That is, I know these anthologies in general are still A Thing, but are bowdlerized versions still A Thing, so that young readers won't have to wonder why, say, John Donne, Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, was so keen on ripping bodices?
Having wondered that, I asked my kids, which would they find more awkward, poems about death, or poems about romance "that left you wondering if you'd wandered into the wrong motel room"? They said they'd prefer the poems about death to the ones about romance.
I replied, "Because death is –" Mid-kid interrupted, "funnier!" Death is funnier. That wasn't what I was getting at, but it is pretty funny.
A man, without permission, stepped thru our front door. My Gumbi nipped him.
Home protection. Castle defense!
Sounds like an ....interesting....day.
Who’s a good boy!
I'm kinda hoping one year the new pope dies the Fontana di Trevi green on St. Patricks Day. It'd be awesome!
As a bookworm raised in a working class family, I had to figure out sounds on my own. I often got it wrong, and got teased for it. Why is the "a" in Satan and satin not the same? Why is stomach "stumuck" and not "sto-mahch"? And don't get me start of hors d’oeuvres! 😡 Fortunately I had an elementary school teacher who realized I was trying to think what sounds were (and failing miserably), and she gave me much good advice.
It's why I rarely make fun of people who accidentally mispronounce a word.
Getting started on hors d'oeuvres is not usually the peoblem for me.
"I'm kinda hoping one year the new pope dies ..."
Homophones, homophones ... I need my kneaded biscuits plain!
I'll leave my mistake up there for my shame....
Per the Pope...I only hope that all the Catholics are happy. There's a lot of them, and it would be nice if they were all happy.
If he bought a round for all the Catholics, I am sure they would be...by the 3rd round.
That's the spirit!
oh, I meant beer, not spirits...
I don't like beer.
Me neither. I also avoid dark wines due to a red grape allergy.
The stupid neighbor award is going to the one who texted me yesterday asking if I thought the DNR could re-home the owls because he’s annoyed by all the noise the crows are making. The crows are incessantly cawing at them. Dude I live right across the street and you live four houses down. Suck it up.
🦔🦔🦔🐰🐰🐰🐰🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾
🦉
Sounds like it's your neighbors who need to be re-homed.
We get people saying all the birds of prey should be killed because "They attack little fur babies!!!!!!"
My husband was running in the neighborhood yesterday and was bitten by someone's "baby," some kind of -doodle, he said. Not a serious bite, fortunately: just needed some antibiotic ointment and a bandaid.
In our area, it seems there may be more dogs than people, and with that a shortage of dog groomers. After waiting several weeks, our appointment date with a groomer finally arrived yesterday. My wife was very excited! Unfortunately, upon arriving and entering the business, the owners dog, a pit bull, viciously attacked our small terrier. It was very fortunate that the owners were able to pull them apart without getting seriously bit themselves. Our dog suffered non-trivial wounds from teeth and claw. A visit to the vet, no stitches, but pain meds and antibiotics. Another day, another example of people doing stupid things.
Sheesh! Sorry to hear that. Some of the groomers around here haven’t always been the most savory looking characters, either. Not sure I’d expect them to be big on obedience training…
But it's their BAAAA-BEEEEE!!!!
My rule of thumb is that dogs who bite humans need to be put down. I'm not talking about when a dog nips you as you're roughhousing with it, but when they pursue and bite a human.
Fortunately, our dogs are good natured and don't bite others.
Roughhousing with dogs is not what I was talking about. Dogs know how to play, and the little nips they make when roughhousing is part of roughhousing. I'm talking about dogs that just go at you. Zero tolerance from me.
There’s definitely those that you need to knock sideways before they get a chance to sink their teeth in. Animals are lightning fast compared to our lumbering species…
What is the general consensus about when a dog bites someone (me), is it ethical to beat the crap out of the dog? I've had a few dog bites, and those dogs were sorry they ever got near me. I've had dog lovers horrified at me for beating the crap out of their dogs for biting me, doing things like threatening lawsuits.
Is it unethical to pound on a dog stupid enough to bite me?
As y'all know, Ms Pinki and I love dogs. But
A. People are ..well people
B. Dogs and animals are property
Protect people
That’s one end of the spectrum: People who anthropomorphize their pets and treat them as the absent offspring they really want to coddle. There’s untold fortunes to be made catering to that market, since most have deep pockets and are willing to spend spend spend.
At the other end of the spectrum are the totally negligent pet owners who tie their dogs up outside for years and hardly pay any attention to them. Some are so negligent they get locked up for abuse. But they can have some seriously maladjusted, unsocialized brutes tied up outside that cannot be trusted around people at all—totally unpredictable and volatile, usually scared out of their wits most of the time, and lashing out because of it.
The late Clay Mathiele made billions on those who anthropomorphize their pets. I always divided pet owners into 10 binary groups: those who treat them as moving furniture and those who treat them as heirs (those who abuse them, I'm not sure they are truly human). Mathiele founded Iams dog food for those who treat them as heirs.
Our dogs were always well trained through rewards, not punishment. Our GSP followed pointing commands and was probably the best bird dog I'll ever experience in this life. My Shepherds (2, one at a time) were so lovely they liked nothing more than wallowing around with us. There's a place in Hell for folks that mistreat animals.
That said, I don't put up with getting bit, not for a second. People that tolerate their dogs biting people...I'd never ever hit another person, but those types make me think about it.
Positive reinforcement works great with dogs, negative not so much because they don't see what they are doing as wrong. Plus they don't connect the paper they chewed 10 minutes ago as a problem to a punishment.
With our golden, turning away from him was a great punishment. He quickly learned what behaviors caused us to turn away.
Yeah, negative reinforcement makes bad dogs worse. Kurt might have better outcome beating the crap out of the owner. Except for the legal troubles. With that said, if in the middle of an attack on me or my dog (see above), I would with all vigor kick the living shiiite out of the offender.
Goldens are like that. I had a couple of them. So easy to train, about all it took was to look at them disapprovingly and they'd know they'd done wrong.
Agreed: There’s no excuse for cruelty to animals.
I hope he reported the incident. Most localities have a “first bite is free” policy but after that, action must be taken. ☠️
I don't think he did. I'd have told him to, but I wasn't here.
Well I hope he at least saw the rabies tag!
Probably not. He was trying to say both that it didn't break the skin and that there was only a little blood. Sigh.
No one ever said maintaining your man card is free and easy!
😬😳
For a Change
by Connie Wanek
Earth had become a job that required
constant customer support.
Humans didn’t seem to understand
the basics of their service.
Mrs. God suggested a standard message
when people first connected:
The Kingdom of God is within you.
“Honestly I think it gives them
a sense of agency,” she said.
But God thought the problem stemmed
from a confusing owners’ manual.
“Some of these translations are inscrutable,”
he said, paging through the dense instructions.
“What about a series of drawings,
where steps would be illustrated with a
puzzled little angel, sort of like IKEA?
And of course an extensive
FAQ on the website.”
“It’s worth a try,” said Mrs. God. “The most
important thing is that people know
they’re getting accurate information.”
“For a change,” said God.
RE: "What about a series of drawings... sort of like IKEA?"
https://theshovel.com.au/2023/06/15/trump-says-he-discarded-classified-documents-after-realising-there-were-no-pictures/
That's funny.
If Keith Richards had been named Pope, we would have had sympathy for the devil.
In Chicago, they want to know if Leo is, not a liberal or conservative, but a Cubs fan or a White Sox fan.
It matters.
His brother sez a Sox fan, but his Mom was a Cubbies fan. So who really knows.
Can you imagine thanksgiving next year, when mom asks his brother: so have you accomplished anything yet this year?
That's a great image. Two brothers and Mom, doing what families do, while passing the meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
The Undead are excluded from election to the Papacy.
Theoretically they could have elected me, as a baptized Catholic male. (if asked, I would have run away screaming).
That's true.
They probably don't have a written rule that the man have a pulse, but I think it would be required in practice.
Rules are necessary for an orderly society.
True.
I took a linguistics course in college. We learned about phone and phonemes. But what I most remember was a discussion of a not-so-venerable Anglo-Saxon word that rhymes with “duck”.
It's the verb most used as an adjective.
Good morning. 44 here & sunny, high 60’s.
The mothership is reporting on the unprecedented promotion of an American priest in Rome.
Sort of refreshing to see an American get appointed to a high position of responsibility for running an organization who isn't an unqualified hack or outright wackadoodle.
The mothership's commentary is annoying because of their reliance on trite political categories and insistence on framing everything as a clear "this vs. that" conflict.
All the secular media do that. Not limited to TD. They don’t get the categories of politics don’t fit, and that the Pope is not going to, say, ordain women.
Right. Media keeps it binary so as to not confuse their customers.
That's part of it. Also, media persons are ignorant of a lot of things and no brighter, on average, than the audience.
Any dipstick can sound smart and knowledgeable if they have at least semi-talented writers putting copy in their hands to recite.
So much for politicians... now as to media persons...
Or AI’s.
That made me laugh because it's true. That's the primary component of my general dismissive take on most of those folks.
More like, secular media don’t do religion well. They don’t understand it.
And they were frustrated by conclave secrecy, speculating about things no one will ever know, like who was leading in the balloting. They had to talk about *something* during the wait for smoke signals.
Steve Bannon and Ross Douthat, KDW must be in utter agony!!
And non religious Doug is ecstatic to have a Pope of the Poor, for the Poor, from the Poor!!
One of those (Bannon) is not like the others.
Talking heads get paid to talk. You could say they sure earn their paychecks on that score.
Never mind. I'll say it myself. They sure earn their paychecks on that score.
“Let’s say they earn their paychecks on that score.”
https://youtu.be/rjb5qHu7D9Q?si=ADApREyPHF1af1LP
There are Catholic media figures who are just as locked in on political categories.
And Catholic politicians, like Joe Biden and JD Vance. I can get seriously annoyed at Vance, he can give converts like me a bad name.
Exactly. The speculative "reporting"...I found it mildly idiotic bordering on offensive.
Well, in this case, we're talking is he a Cubs fan or a Sox fan? It matters.
That's just common idolatry. I meant the boring "progressive" vs. "traditional" concept.
Wait wait wait... Common? This could explode into a North Side v. South Side schism requiring...one of those Catholic statement of what it is things.
If he were from, say Toledo, the burning question would be is he an Ohio State fan versus a Michigan fan. That’s serious in these parts.
Coincidentally, The Athletic has an article begging the sporting world to not forget UM sign stealing scandal. Come on man! Give it up! The author must be an OSU fan. Even with a national championship fairly(?) purchased with a $20M roster, they can't get over 4 years of losing to UM.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6340851/2025/05/08/michigan-ncaa-connor-stalions-sherrone-moore/
Most true Buckeye fans add that Anglo Saxon word that rhymes with duck to the name for That University Up North. We normies use TUUN, they use TFUUN. Christy didn't swear, but I truly wondered if UM was UFM...
That is serious.
It doesn't seem such a weird thing. The church has been around for what...about 2000 years, give or take a century...(?) America has been hanging around in its current form for about 160 years, and there have been what...about 6 or 7 popes in that time...(?).
So, we could've waited a while longer and it would have still been OK.
It was a given during the Cold War no American would become Pope. I think Leo was elected more for his ties to Latin America than to the USA. He’s as much a Third World Pope as an American.
Yeah. He's a citizen of Peru. Americans want to make it about America, which is fine with me, but it seems like a shallow read of the situation. But, getting back to what matters...
Is he a Cubs fan or a Sox fan?
From his time in Peru, he might be a soccer fan.
:-)
It would be interesting, in a "doesn't actually matter" way, to know whether Peruvians consider him a Peruvian or a foreigner.
I’ve heard claims from both sides.
This makes me think about my struggles with Mandarin. Phonemes, morphemes, syntax, and semantics. Do it right, and magic happens. Oh...pragmatics. Ah, who needs pragmatics?
OK case not gender. My German is minimal.
Orthography would have to be a major impediment in learning that language as an adult. It’s the most intimidating aspect for most people, I’d assume—since it is for me.
The tone language business is probably the first *real* hurdle you face as a bloody beginner, though, considering you can at first use a standardized transcription of the language into latin letters to find your way around.
Yes, Pinyin is an amazingly consistent system. There are no exceptions or weird workarounds.
We all know English spelling is a hot mess. Spanish by contrast is extremely regular. German is better than English — except that plurals of German nouns are irregular as often as not. Then there are the 3 genders - der/die/das.
The Romance languages collapsed the three grammatical genders in Latin down to two, with masculine and neuter becoming the same. The masculine nouns outnumber feminine ones by roughly two to one.
Plenty of languages don’t have grammatical gender at all—not even for people. Turkish is one of those. It’s not as confusing as some might suspect, coming from a language with gendered pronouns.
For instance, when you mention a person the second time, s/he is rendered as “it”, since “he” and “she” don’t exist.
“I saw the lady at the store. She was inspecting the apples.”
This is literally said in Turkish as:
“I saw the lady at the store. It was inspecting the apples.”
But in a language like German with grammatical gender, you have to get used to memorizing the gender marker with each and every noun. It matters in the next sentence.
“The lamp (feminine) is on the table (masculine). *She* is standing on *him*.”
Who is responsible for evolving Latin into Italian?
Lombards and Gauls.
Etruscans?
If Trump and MAGA ever get wind of this whole *gender* thing in language... Hoo Boy!!
Richtig.
There's more than three; I had to learn den as the 4th one, and I was told there are more! 😬
It’s three genders, plus a plural, and four grammatical cases. As a beginner, it’s daunting because you have to learn memorize endings for a noun alone, an adjective + noun, a definite article + noun, a definite article + adjective(s) + noun, an indefinite article + noun, and an indefinite article + adjective(s) + noun.
Coming from English, where all that morphology was dropped centuries ago, it starts off as intimidating right out of the gate.
Ja.
That’s new to me, is that supposed to be “ non-binary”?
It's the accusative case, so I guess when you want to know which of your children ate the last doughnut, you use the accusative case? But it has been awhile since I studied it in HS.
It’s funny that while German intellectuals followed American progressives intellectuals in their gender obsessions, I don’t recall any serious ones in Germany talking about getting rid of gendered language because it’s not fair or whatever…
Good morning. It's always more polite to say "inaccurate," "incorrect," or "erroneous" as opposed to "wrong." But not as much fun.
🤯🖖
Politeness in language is always longer: more words, or at least more syllables.
There is often a fine line between “polite” and “avoiding the truth”.
I’ll try not to analyze the theology of a “Mrs. God”.