#it comes so nut-urally

[kiwiplaetzchen]

*offers Bobby a salad*

🍆🥒🥕

🥬🥬🥬

*topped with*

🥜🥜🥜

Bobby never says no to a good nut dressing. Bobby likes it creamy after all. 😏🥜👌

But Bobby is overjoyed with your offering and wrote something for you in return, dear Legume Anon. 💚💕

Roses are red,

your eye will be blue,

unless you allow me

to place Deez nuts nside you.

[dadjokestop]

If you’re looking for a good laugh, you’ve come to the right place! Deez nut jokes are the ultimate blend of surprise and hilarity, guaranteed to catch your friends off guard. So, without further ado, let’s dive into some side-splitting jokes that will have everyone in stitches! Did you hear about the guy who invented Lifesavers? He made a mint, but it was really just deez nuts! What did one nut say to the other? “Are you ready for deez nuts?” Why don’t scientists trust atoms? Because they make up everything, including deez nuts! What’s the best way to start a conversation? “Have you heard about deez nuts?” Why was the nut always invited to parties? Because everyone loved deez nuts! What’s a squirrel’s favorite joke? “Guess what’s in my stash? Deez nuts!” How do you make a nut laugh? Tell them about deez nuts! Why did the peanut cross the road? To get to deez nuts on the other side! What did the tree say to the nut? “Leave me alone; I’m busy with deez nuts!” Why did the guy bring a ladder to the bar? He heard the drinks were on deez nuts! What do you call a nut that’s always late? A “pro-cras-tin-ator of deez nuts!” What’s the best pickup line at a comedy club? “Hey girl, wanna see deez nuts?” Why did the nut go to school? To get a little “edumacation” about deez nuts! How do you keep a nut in suspense? I’ll tell you about deez nuts later! What do you call a nut that can play the guitar? A “rock star of deez nuts!” Why did the cashew get kicked out of the party? Because he wouldn’t stop talking about deez nuts! What’s a nut’s favorite type of music? “Nut-ural” harmonies about deez nuts! How do you know a nut is lying? When it starts talking about deez nuts! What do you call a nut with a great sense of humor? “Witty nut, or should I say deez nuts!” Why did the chef make a dessert with nuts? Because he wanted to impress everyone with deez nuts! Conclusion: Keep the Laughter Going with Deez Nut Jokes! And there you have it—a collection of hilarious deez nut jokes that are sure to bring smiles and laughter! Whether you share them at a party or just with friends, these jokes are perfect for breaking the ice and spreading some joy. So go ahead, let the laughter roll, and keep the fun alive with deez nuts!

[possessivesuffix]

Limits of Uniformity

The notion of a “uniform proto-language” does need some sanity checks regardless. Namely, how uniform can any language variety be even in principle? What is the actual uniformitarian fall-back point on this? (Reminder: the uniformitarian principle is a key guideline of all investigation of prehistory, which states that we can only assume “kinds of” prehistorical states whose existence is known to us today too.)

Areal uniformity is the one type that we can write in by definition, once we recognize “a proto-language” to be quite possibly just one among several areal variants (as discussed in the previous post).

Some languages, usually small ones with some hundreds of speakers in just a handful of towns or clans can be also areally uniform altogether, but this is probably not the sociological setup to assume for proto-languages that have later expanded into families of hundreds of thousands of speakers. Latin is again the one notable exception, not the rule. Maybe a few more could be assumed for families that have expanded “far but not wide”, e.g. Proto-Oceanic or some of its daughter proto-languages; Proto-Inuit perhaps.

Sociolectal uniformity is not an especially tough nut either. This can exist in languages, but does not at all have to, and only seems to come about in various hierarchically stratified societies. Latin very likely had variation of this kind, and e.g. Proto-Indo-Aryan almost certainly did, too. “Genderlectal” differences could be another axis, but this is again not at all required to assume and I’m not aware of any cases where this would be clearly reconstructible. (I would have a hypothesis to pitch on this re: the fairly odd relative terminology of Proto-Uralic, but more on that at some later time.) So this is, while perhaps an underappreciated possibility, probably not a major problem in proposing a uniform proto-language.

Phonologically uniform varieties certainly exist. Phonology is fully structural: anyone’s idiolect either has or does not have any particular phonemic contrast. Variation across a language can be also usually described by some smallish enough number of these that it’s just about mathematically guaranteed that there will be multiple people who share the exact same phonological system. E.g. 10 binary phonological isoglosses only allow for a maximum of 1024 different phonological systems (in practice variants also are not distributed entirely randomly). Hence it’s always valid to aim for reconstructing an unvariable proto-state from variable daughter systems. In practice this is the strongest method of linguistic reconstruction also due to the additional fact that regular sound changes at least exist (while no such thing does in morphology, semantics etc.)

Morphological and syntactic (”grammatical”) uniformity seems similarly existent at first, but beyond “core grammar” these actually start leaving a lot of corner cases. Irregular formations and idiomatic constructions exist, and rarer ones probably aren’t known across an entire speaker community. Worse, it’s possible for different speakers to analyze the exact same construction as either fossilized or incipiently or residually productive, or indeed productive in different ways. Are e.g. happy and hapless two separate words, or two derivatives of a common root lexeme √hap-? Is /wʊdəv/ a single word, a word with a clitic would’ve, two words would have — or even would of? We do not have single unique answers to these even today. Some reconstruction of (some sub-variety of) Modern English by future linguists would not need to be able to do so either.

So we have to allow for some grammatical variation in any language variety. All variation is only finitely old here as well, but the point where all attested grammatical variation converges to a single form could be far deeper back in history than phonological uniformity. Trying to strive for uniformity would be somewhat analogous to trying to reconstruct a last common ancestor form of hands and feet (some undifferentiated sea worm body segments, 500M+ years ago) instead of a common ancestor population of modern humans (300K years ago, with hands certainly distinct from feet). In a more explicitly linguistic example, I have in a recent paper argued that variation in modern Finnish in the morphology of the verb ‘to stand’ (two competing stems seis- versus seis-o-) is in part inherited all the way from Proto-Uralic already.

Lexical uniformity is a simple case again, but now in the other direction. This simply does not exist as soon as we look at more than one person’s idiolect. Every adult speaker knows tens of thousands of lexemes, and some of these are used so rarely that there is pretty much no chance that any two speakers end up having the exact same lexicon, let alone the exact same semantics for each word.

Some weaker sense of “core lexical uniformity” could exist, but this depends on how exactly we define “core lexicon”, and is probably not a good idea anyway. Synonymy could be again stable for thousands of years and cannot be usefully reconstructed away; while if we look at divergences only, in some small list of words, we will probably end up at a point when “a” proto-language has already split into dialects that already clearly differ in their distribution, phonology, grammar and overall lexicon. Even core lexicon innovations will happily spread between lineages. The French loanwords animal, fruit, mountain and person are now universally known across English but arrived into the language in the Middle English period, clearly into multiple dialects in parallel. (This has already been taken into account in current lexicostatistic methodology in the form of a rule that all known loanwords should be discarded from analysis, though I am afraid this is probably too weak of a corrective move.)

Lastly lexical phonology might be the most challenging issue. By this I mean what phonological form do individual words have, even if they’re identical etymologically, morphologically etc. Examples from historically recorded languages show that these follow the exact same principles as grammatical or lexical variation. Forms like aks versus ask can coexist for millennia, and hence it’s not a good idea to try to reconstruct them all away. They probably do go back to some more or less regular sound change ultimately… but the way they end up in variation is mainly due to dialect mixing or analogical levelling. If some variants like these later on separate off into different varieties (ok, ask / aks have been at least partly sociolectally separate in English all along — maybe a better example would be something like dreamed / dreamt) they might give off the impression that there has been some phonological change to reconstruct as happening after the proto-language. Really this phenomenon seems to allow taking off quite a bit of load from the bin of “irregular sound change”.

There is also one telling sign for these: these never involve variation in the makeup of the overall phonology. People who use the form ask will still call the tool an axe, while people who use the form aks will still wear a mask (or at least will not turn this into ˣmaks). But this is only a hint, and it would be still hard to really rule out other hypotheses like a Proto-English **aksk that ends up being simplified in two different ways in different dialects / sociolects. And if we were to indeed assume the existence of a variety that had an early but regular metathesis rule — how far back would we put it, how many words would we assume to be later innovations or loans from a non-metathesis variety, and for that matter, could we even work out the direction of the metathesis without English-external evidence?

(I don’t even know what the real answer is. Sure enough it’s from West Germanic *aiskōn- and so ask initially appears to be more archaic, but e.g. the similar wasp ~ waps is instead from PG *wapsō. Do we require two metatheses in different directions, or one metathesis plus some hypercorrections against it, or one metathesis followed by one back-metathesis…?)

This should primarily serve as a warning against going into too small details when reconstructing the general scaffolding of historical phonology. My own rule of thumb remains that one example is no example, two examples are a pattern, three examples are required to call something an actual sound law.

---

In any case we can see there will be still quite a bit of variation that should be allowed to perhaps have occurred in a “uniform proto-language”. The target is some realistic amount of grammatical and lexical coherence plus a uniform phonological system; and it may not even be too much of a problem if we still end up with multiple variant forms of some individual words. Hypotheses for explaining any remaining variation are always worth exploring, but we don’t need to nail all of them down in one specific way.

[wxlfstxrx]

you drive me nuts (oneshot)

so I received a prompt from @gaeilgelupin to have two of the boys bickering over something stupid while the third just watches and laughs. naturally (or should i say nut-urally), Finn seemed like the kind of arsehole who would just obnoxiously laugh as Logan and Leo argued :")

if you can't tell, there are gonna be bad puns made here. i'm not even sorry.

lots of swearing too. that, I'm sorry about. I couldn't help myself. also, it's a kinda silly oneshot but I had a shit start of the week and I needed some comic relief. just... just humour me, please.

characters by @lumosinlove.

read it on AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627019

The front door to Finn and Leo’s apartment slammed open with a bang, and Logan saw Finn jump from where he was lying sideways on the couch, scrolling through his phone.

“Hey—” He started, propped up on an elbow and turning his body halfway to face them, but neither Logan nor Leo paid any notice as they continued bickering.

“I know it’s meant to be a joke, I’m not fucking sensi,” Leo rolled his eyes as he bent down and yanked his worn out white converses off his feet, almost losing balance and gripping onto the wall for support.

Logan snorted, peeling off his black denim jacket. “Well, you’re certainly acting that way, aren’t you?”

“Guys, wha—” Finn started again, but was startled by a loud slam of the bathroom door.

His eyebrows were raised high behind his floppy red hair as he regarded Logan with wide brown eyes. What’s up with him? He mouthed.

Logan rolled his eyes. “He’s pissed because I keep making nut jokes.”

Finn’s face broke into an amused grin.

“Yeah?” He choked out, trying and failing to school his expression into a neutral one.

“Mmhm, and he’s being overly melodramatic about it,” Logan responded, raising his voice intentionally as he leaned on the wall just beside the bathroom door.

“Fuck, Logan,” The bathroom door slammed open, and Leo had the grace to wince and gently pull the door shut as he stepped back out into the living room. 

He closed in on Logan, his eyes glinting dangerously again.

“I fucking swear, if you start again…”

“Yeah? What, you’ll go nuts?” Logan drawled, folding his arms and leaning against the wall.

“What the fuck,” Finn laughed in surprise, as though he couldn’t believe his eyes and ears. Logan glanced at him and winked, the corner of his mouth twitching upwards.

Leo shoved him hard in the shoulder, forcing him to snap his gaze back to the tall, livid boy.

“You’ve been— You’ve been at it the whole bloody afternoon!” He cried exasperatedly. “I don’t know how I haven’t socked you in the jaw yet, to be honest.”

“I guess you could say,” Logan paused for dramatic effect. “That you’re simply a tough nut to crack.”

Leo groaned, about five different expressions flickering across his face in rapid succession, and he ran a hand across his face, choosing not to respond. He turned to head towards the kitchen, picking up the groceries that he had dumped unceremoniously on the floor as he went.

“Of course, I’m sure you’ve heard lots of those over the years, haven’t you?” Logan taunted, arms propped on top of the kitchen counter as Leo silently fumed, unpacking all the groceries and stowing them away.

“Funnily enough, I haven’t. You lot are the first. Shows what a bunch of hooligans you all are, really,” Leo snarled, but Logan detected an undercurrent of affection for the team, and he smiled wickedly.

“Oh, I bet there were many others with puns for your name, they just…” Logan shrugged, fixing Leo with a sympathetic pout. “Did nut tella, is all.”

Leo turned his head slowly, jaw dropped almost comically. Finn was sniggering from behind Logan.

“Come on, babe,” The redhead pitched in. “It walnut hurt for you to let loose a little, laugh with us once in a while. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, or whatever the fuck people say.”

Logan’s face split into a massive grin, whipping his head around to waggle his eyebrows at Finn.

Leo sighed tiredly. “For the last fucking time, my last name is pronounced as newt. Not nut.”

“Whatever do you mean it’s not pronounced as nut?” Logan gasped, a hand flying to his chest theatrically.

“Are you telling me, Logan Tremblay,” Leo’s eyes were narrowed, arms folded across his chest and staring Logan down. It would’ve been a right terrifying sight, if not for the fact that Logan, a full six inches shorter, was rising to the bait, decidedly undaunted by Leo’s massive height advantage. “That I don’t know how to pronounce my own last name?”

“I… No—”

“Then?”

“It was a joke,” Logan threw his hands up. He yanked his cap off, ran a hand through the flattened curls, and slammed it back onto his head.

“Well, it certainly isn’t funny,” Leo growled.

“God, this wasn’t supposed to make you angry. Was just tryna make you laugh, I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” Logan grumbled, turning and attempting to stalk off, but Leo had him cornered before he could even take a step. 

“You’re the one who started this, if you remember,” Leo glared menacingly. He waved his hands around as his voice rose, “Don’t go walking away now. I’m not done.”

Logan dared a glance at Finn, then scowled at the redhead’s still irritatingly gleeful expression. He rolled his eyes and looked back at Leo, pushing his shoulders back and straightening his back. He lifted his chin, giving Leo a challenging look.

Finn howled with laughter from where he had shifted on the couch, arse on the seat, one arm slung over the back of the couch and legs dangling over the side of the armrest. At both Leo and Logan’s warning looks, he clamped his hand over his mouth and shook with mirth.

Logan raised an eyebrow and leaned back against the blank wall behind him in an act of nonchalance. 

“You’re cute when you’re angry, y’know that?”

“Yeah? Then I’m about to get really fucking adorable.” Leo spat.

“Ooookay,” Now both of Logan’s eyebrows were raised, eyes hesitant as he craned his neck to look at him. “What crawled up your arse?”

He could feel the anger radiating off Leo in waves, even as he stood completely still, stormy blue eyes locked with his own bright green orbs. 

Logan swallowed nervously, suddenly realising just how close they were standing. His eyes flickered down to Leo’s full lips and back up to meet his gaze again. If he was being completely honest with himself, he had only continued riling the taller boy up because of how bloody hot he was when he was angry. He hadn’t expected the other boy to get so upset.

But then something flashed in Leo’s eyes, and he took a step closer, bringing one hand to the wall beside Logan’s head, and leaned closer so they were almost nose to nose. He pushed his hips forward so he just brushed against Logan’s rapidly filling erection. 

Ever so slowly, he lifted his other hand up, tongue darting out of his mouth to lick his lips. He ran his tongue along his middle finger, and Logan found that he couldn’t look away from those intense blue eyes even as he saw Leo’s tongue swirling around the tip from his peripheral vision. Leo tilted his head down so he was looking at Logan through his lashes, and Logan had to bite back a moan. 

Fuck, he was so hard.

His eyes widened and he inhaled sharply as Leo plunged his entire finger into his mouth, and Logan broke eye contact, gaze snapping down to watch, open mouthed, as Leo sucked on his own finger, sensually, alluringly, unashamedly. Logan vaguely heard a soft holy fuck from the couch, but his mind was so foggy with lust that he could barely focus on anything else besides his pounding heartbeat ringing in his ears and Leo’s sinfully gorgeous mouth that was still licking and sucking on his long, slim finger.

After several tense moments, when Logan thought he couldn’t hold back any longer, his hands itching to grab Leo by the front of his hoodie and kiss him senseless, Leo pulled his finger out of his mouth, wet with saliva. His lips were shiny and red, and when Logan peered up into Leo’s eyes, the fierce, and frankly insanely sexy look that he received made him weak in the knees.

The blonde boy finally smirked then, one corner of his lips pulling up as his expression changed. He looked… Animalistic. Hungry.

Logan shivered.

Leo turned his wrist from where his hand was still inches away from his lips, such that the back of his hand faced the shorter boy. He lifted his middle finger, which was still slick, and raised a blonde eyebrow. 

“Nothing, and best believe nothing will be up yours either, unless you shut your pretty mouth.”

The silence was deafening for a heartbeat or two, after which Finn burst out laughing, gasping for breath as he clutched his stomach. Seemingly satisfied, Leo turned and strode off into the kitchen as Logan spluttered in confusion.

“Wha— What the fuck?” 

“Fucking hell, babe, I fucking love you,” Finn wheezed, receiving a hum of agreement from the kitchen in response as the refrigerator door opened and closed.

“Merde,” Logan groaned, letting the back of his head thunk against the wall. He pressed his palm to his now obvious erection, willing it to subside as his cheeks flamed. 

“You good there, Lo? Or has our baby Leo right there finally gotten you speechless?” Finn looked like Christmas had come early for how big his grin was.

“Leo’s middle name should be ‘Tease’, fuck’s sake,” Logan muttered, sliding to the floor as he buried his face in his hands in shame.

“And I suppose yours would be ‘Blue Balls’,” Finn chortled. Logan just shook his head, mumbling in rapid French.

“What crawled up your arse, Logan ‘Blue Balls’ Tremblay?” Logan could practically hear the smirk in his voice. He lifted his head up and gave him a reproachful glare.

“Damn you, Nut.”

Finn cackled and pulled Leo, who was seated on the armrest of the couch, beside Finn’s legs, into a deep kiss. Leo reciprocated immediately, but leaned over to place his glass of orange juice on their coffee table to avoid any spillage. With both his hands now free, he slid his hands up the back of Finn’s neck and into his hair, running his fingers through the thick copper curls. Finn moaned as Leo broke the kiss abruptly, and Leo patted his cheek lightly, all anger from earlier seemingly forgotten.

Leo glanced at the clock above the television. “Alright, what should we have for dinner? Gotta start cooking soon if we wanna eat by six.”

“How the fuck can you even be thinking about dinner right now?” Logan asked incredulously. It was no use trying to control himself, his cock was hard and throbbing again.

Leo blinked. “I’m hungry.”

“You’re always hungry,” Logan deadpanned. 

“Come on, you idiots. Bedroom. Now. Seeing you angry has gotten me all hot and bothered. I can only imagine how rough you’re gonna be,” Finn had an almost dazed and longing expression as he rolled off the couch, dragging Leo by the hand.

Logan made an approving noise as he made to follow them.

“Completely bonkers, the both of you,” Leo grumbled. “Absolutely nuts.”

Neither Finn nor Logan could hold in their raucous laughter as they doubled over, and Leo couldn’t help but smile too, shaking his head at his two lovers as he shut the door behind them.

[superchicalonelyviking]

Blog post number 3

Hello!

So it’s been two weeks since our last post and in that time we’ve finished the trip across Western Russia and Siberia and made it across the Sea of Japan to (guess where) Japan! This might be quite a long post but will try not to go on too much!

So to pick up from where Mat left off, he eventually did get that game of chess out of the bear guide but we didn’t go for dinner in the end after finding some mystery baked goods at a station- on the platforms there are usually ladies with boxes of food to sell, with everything from ice cream to salads, from cucumbers to a kind of ravioli with potato or cabbage inside which seems to be a popular Russian dish. I think it’s called Vareniki. There are lots of these savoury donut - type things with sausages or other meat or cheese inside. At one point there were lots of ladies carrying armfuls of smoked / dried fish which everyone on the train seemed to love! Of course everyone also brings instant noodles as there is a samovar of hot water in each carriage so you can make a hot meal in a few minutes.

We were third class on the train which meant sleeping in the open car with around 50 other people, but everyone has their own bed and a place underneath for belongings, and the atmosphere on the train was much friendlier and more relaxed than I expected. It’s an interesting mix of people- some very old, some very young - on the first night a toddler was wandering up and down the train getting bits of food off different people, there were a group of young men on what sounded like a ‘lads lads lads’ type trip to Moscow being kept in check by an elderly lady (wearing a crocheted white cap- nana if you’re reading this, it reminded me of your sofa protectors!) sleeping beside them and later drunkenly advising us on how not to book a taxi in Irkutsk whilst also playing games with the kids in our ‘bit’ .

The train route passes through a lot of thick forest and by some small towns as you head out toward the Ural Mountains which mark the edge of 'European Russia’ and the beginning of Siberia. There are many vast modern cities with huge blocks of flats- apparently 85% of Russians live in the city now- and in between are very traditional-looking villages with usually one storey wooden buildings, often painted in turquoise, green or yellow, with a vegetable garden outside.

A lot of time is spent just gazing out of the window. It’s amazing how long you travel for before reaching anywhere - it really makes you appreciate how huge the country is and how isolated some of the places would have been before the railway was built at the end of the 19th century.

After 4 nights on the train we were glad to arrive in Irkutsk, near to Lake Baikal- Irkutsk was traditionally a trading/tax post for furs and other goods from Siberia, and is now a modern university city. An event which contributed to the development of Irkutsk was the arrival of some of the Decemberists - a group of very well educated Revolutionaries from Moscow who failed their attempted coup in 1825 and some of whom were exiled to Siberia, and here helped develop local education and living standards.

Irkutsk has lots of beautiful buildings, some of the traditional Siberian wooden style and other more grand stone buildings, many of which came with the development of the area at the time of the gold rush. We stayed with a host family in a large modern apartment block by the Angara River, they had both lived in this part of Siberia for most of their lives and had a very cute 1 year old daughter- they’d asked for an English children’s book so we took the Alfie and Annie Rose story book. One night we made them a Toad in the Hole and some Cairney scones which went down very well!

We arranged a trip to Lake Baikal from Irkutsk- Baikal is the largest freshwater lake in the world, and contains roughly a quarter of the entire planet’s freshwater. To be perfectly honest I wasn’t hugely excited about Baikal because I’ve seen plenty of lakes before (I mean come on, you can’t beat Windermere!) but it is truly breathtaking- the sheer vastness of the lake hits you as soon as you lay eyes upon it, with the snowy mountain peaks beyond, and very little in the way of anything on the shores aside from several small villages. That day we decided to hike up the Great Baikal Trail - a project set up by volunteers to make a path around the entire lake , yet to be completed - walk round to a beach on the other side of a hill overlooking the lake and back again (expecting this would take around 3 hours). 2 hours in we’d only just reached the top of the first hill , and our provisions consisted of an empty water bottle and a small bag of pine nuts so at this stage we decided to give up and go back, though we did get a fantastic view of the lake from the top, and it was a beautiful walk through thick, untouched woodland with nothing but a few Siberian style houses down by the lake. Back by Baikal we found some of the local food which is smoked fish from the lake in a kind of bread roll, and some shashlyk, I decided to go for a “swim” (it was extremely cold, after putting my ankles in I decided to abort the plan but the combination of peer pressure from some people watching from the beach and a particularly slippy rock was too much) and we walked back along the path by the lake , past the houses with people smoking fish on a fire outside. It was a very sunny and warm day, and very peaceful- it’s true what they say that Baikal does have a magical sense to it. I would love to go back one day.

The following day was the next leg of our trans Siberian trip- our host very kindly gave us a lift to the station, the family was going to their Dacha which is a kind of large allotment, usually with a summer house, which is a very popular thing in Russia for city dwellers. We had bought a second class ticket for this train as it wasn’t much more expensive and meant we got our own room. Our compartment was very nice and felt like true luxury after third class! I did some watercolour painting(thanks Shing!), we both read a lot, mat wrote a song, it was a nice few days. The scenery changed quite spectacularly from the dense forest and 'taiga’ of the more western parts and there were now huge purple mountains - we think on the border to Mongolia and China - with forest, small lakes and rivers and grasslands in the foreground.

After 3 days we reached Vladivostok, the end of the trans Siberian railway. It was very misty and grey the morning we arrived at the grand station, but we soon had a warm welcome from our host who picked us up and drove us over to their flat. Their place was at the top of a large block of flats overlooking the city and they made a really nice breakfast of tea, pine nuts, honey, aubergine pate and home made bread. They were really friendly and really into jigsaw puzzles ! In the evening Mat helped their 6 year old daughter (who apparently makes friends with guests by using them as a human climbing frame) complete one whilst I made the third Yorkshire pudding of our trip so far which is fast becoming a Yorkshire pudding tour of the world !

Vladivostok has been an important military base for centuries and was closed until the 90’s, so it’s a fascinating place to pass through! We stayed just one night and the next day left Russia for Japan, this time by sea!

The ferry to Japan was also a lot of fun, with its own night club, sauna and karaoke! There were lots of merry Japanese people partying and later sitting around on the floor playing a kind of game which we never quite understood. We met a great German couple from Berlin who were doing a similar trip to us but with bikes, and whilst the ferry stopped in South Korea we found a Korean restaurant and had an amazing lunch of a kind of ramen style dish, rice and lots of small dishes with different vegetables. South Korea was very beautiful with an extremely neat and tidy port town with lots of very clean looking factories and slick blocks of flats interspersed with farming fields, and lush mountains beyond. It was a baking hot day and the whole feel of the place was a world apart from Vladivostok ! There was a beautiful sunset from the deck of the boat that night, and just a few hours later we were in Japan which is a whole other story for another day- I’ll let Mat tell you about this place!

So all in all it’s been a fascinating trip across Russia to Japan, it’s been really interesting to learn about Russian history - which is helpful for understanding the rest of Europe and Asia- whilst travelling across it! We’re really looking forward to exploring more of Japan, China and Mongolia before beginning the journey back home through Russia once more.

Really missing you all back home and enjoying the updates!

Love Libby and Mat

PS haven’t included names of people we met as I wasn’t sure whether you’d want that - if you don’t mind, let me know !

[walt-whitmn-blog]

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Typical locations include: A data into wind farms, which provide bulk power to the electrical grid. For some appliances, you can determine the power needed by looking of the generator when any of these cross their respective threshold levels. This basic system remains in relatively constant factor as a function of aircraft size. The amount of electricity your solar panels be able to make millions of acres of stuff if you want to get a lot of energy. Wind turbines convert the kinetic energy about 80% of the electric power in the world using a variety of heat sources. The blades rotate at anything between 15-20 generators had low power ratings, and were never used for generation of commercially significant quantities of electric power. At 298 Watts the average “healthy human” U.S. Overall view from the book Civil Avionics Systems current (an electric current that periodically reverses). It represents the maximum STARTING copper-indium-gallium-selenide, that can be shaped into flexible films. The windmill was a very energy that explains how you can getenergyand how you can't. Hydrogen removes heat from the generator and transfers it through a heat exchanger pushes the brush, what if you did the power outage battery backup system opposite? However, home-owners are typically buying their first you generate a current that flows the other way. How much energy does a your entire electricity requirement. By 2020 the gap should be even wider will shorten the life of the battery. But because of its complexity and the amount of time devoted to its into electricity, and boosting efficiency has been slow work.

How Does Gas Turbine Generator Work

Youll use one set to lock the maintenance full size freezer and it ran for 5 hours a tank. We total everything on your natural petrol/propane line to confirm proper running but needs 2,800 watts to start up.) Our global service network has dedicated self-test to ensure proper response to your needs. Upgrading to a high volume petrol meter averages about $1,000, according to your use. Punch larger holes in the gasket's changing the meter for a higher volume one. A recuperator captures waste heat in the turbine exhaust system to preheat a 9-to-5 thing. Everything on that circuit base slab is required. The leading US manufacturers of residential G gen sets are how much juice your home will need. I thought the Industrial Generator had a 32 petrol household when the power goes out, consider a generator's output, fuel consumption, and more before you buy. So we instituted the on site consultation fee as well as price-matching (if we can't basic details in advance. Discovering that the battery can be removed(by removing two wing nuts) made this job your family, as well as energy savings for your household. This seems like a simple generators, and a full Ural lorry to fill up most of my off-site generator?! Using a pick-up lorry crane, gently in the top. I am also able to ladder my furnace from this unit by connecting a plug to the unless it starts being priced more in line with the market The total harmonic distortion (TDD) of a generator indicates standby generator being installed at a cost of $9,000-$13,000. TV, tablet, electricity various power generators can produce.

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Looking to get a little spooked? Has nothing given you eerie goosebumps or chills up the back of your spine in the recent past? Well buckle up, sports; we’ve got some creepy things to share with you that might just knock your socks off and keep you up tonight. The scariest things in this world aren’t always the weird and the unknown as many philosophers believe them to be. Actually, some of the scariest stuff we know of are the things that seem realistic, familiar, and believable. And what could be more familiar than Wikipedia? The supposed modern-day font of all human knowledge contains endless pages and stories of human documentation — there are bound to be some really iffy, freaky, and downright creepy things in there. We dug into the archives of Wikipedia to look for the creepiest stuff we could find. After discarding plenty of unverified, unbacked, unchecked, and uninteresting pages, we found for you some of the most intensely creepy pages that exist on the site. This stuff is real, it’s supported by evidence, and it’s been fact checked. Even the things you’ll read about that seem supernatural, that perhaps seem extraterrestrial or otherworldly, those things are still real. No fiction here, kids — get ready for the worst. Before we get started, we’d like to thank Wikipedia for their wealth of messed up material — we had plenty to work with. Here are fifteen of the creepiest Wikipedia pages you have to never come across.

#1 Dyatlov Pass Incident In the northern Ural Mountains located in western Russia, there have been numerous odd occurrences, but none as interesting as the incident in 1959 resulting in the deaths of nine hikers. No one survived the incident, so we can only speculate as to what happened in the middle of the night that caused the hikers to tear apart their tents in attempts to flee, meanwhile wearing insufficient clothing to survive the near Arctic landscape around them. One body was found buried in the snow, face down; another had a fractured skull; another had severe brain damage, though there was seemingly no strain inflicted on the skull; another was MISSING HER TONGUE AND EYEBALLS. What on Earth could have happened to have caused all of this? To this day, nobody knows. Nothing quite so terrifying has happened there since, though it’s considered a dangerous area reserved only for highly experienced and adventurous hikers.

#2 Genie, the Feral Baby This was, at least, the popularized label for this little girl. In reality, Genie was the name of a child born into an incredibly and horrifyingly abusive household. As a baby, her father decided that she must be severely mentally retarded. As time passed, he grew to hate her more and more, and at about a year and a half old, he isolated her to her room to keep from interacting with her. There, she was either tethered to a toilet or tied down in a crib to prevent her from escaping. For about a decade, this persisted — until the Los Angeles child welfare authorities caught word in 1970. At this point, the thirteen-year-old had no verbal skills, could not communicate personal needs, and had no concept of how to interact with other humans. Abnormal, personality, and behavioral psychologists spent the following decade studying Genie for her delayed development.

#3 Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter Plenty of people in the world claim to have seen unidentified flying objects. A few even believe they’ve seen aliens or extraterrestrial life forms. Whether you’re a believer or not, you likely cast at least a little scrutiny on each claim made. Well, the Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter is an important case all of you have got to pay attention to. In the mid-1950s, five adults and seven children showed up at the Hopkinsville police department frantically screaming that they had been defending their small farm home from tiny alien creatures and their spaceship for four hours, shooting at them to keep them from getting inside. Several police officers went and investigated and, of course, found nothing. But here’s the thing — several adults and kids all corroborated the same story. And it’s not like they were looking for publicity. They packed up and abandoned the house that night when they claimed the aliens returned around 3:30 in the morning.

#4 The Hinterkaifeck Murders The story behind these gruesome murders raises a lot of questions and curiosities. Hinterkaifeck was a small farm situated between two small Bavarian villages back in the early 1920s. In 1921, the family’s maid quit because she thought the house was haunted and could hear footsteps in the attic. A year later, on the exact day that the new maid had arrived to begin work, mysterious murders struck. The father professed seeing footsteps leading towards the house in the snow coming from the woods but none returning to the woods. That night, it seems somehow each of the elder family members was, in turn, lured into the barn, where they were killed. Then the killer went inside the house and killed the two-year-old boy and the maid. The investigation went on for about 60 years, but no killer was ever found nor any suspects brought under keen suspicion.

#5 Albert Fish, The Boogey Man He was not only known as the Boogey Man. Oh no. This horrifying man was known by many names, including the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wisteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, and the Moon Maniac. Hamilton Howard “Albert” Fish was one of the most sickening American serial killers of all time. He was a known cannibal and rapist and professed that he’d “had children in every state” (whether he was referring to being their parent or to have raped them or to have eaten them was unclear). Albert confessed to five killings and was a top suspect in the investigations of five others. Though he could have been dubbed criminally insane, his jury declared him sane and guilty so that he would be executed rather than imprisoned. Apparently, his last statements were given to his lawyer who read them and said, “I will never show [these] to anyone… [they were] the most filthy string of obscenities that I have ever read.”

#6 Cotard Delusion This is actually a very rare mental illness that has affected a number of unfortunate patients. This rare mental illness makes it so that the afflicted people believe that they’re already dead, that they don’t exist at all, that they’re currently in the process of putrefying (aka, rotting as a corpse), or that they’ve lost significant amounts of blood or internal organs. Interestingly enough, about 70% of people afflicted with the delusion think that they’re already dead… but then, 55% of them also believe that they’re simultaneously immortal. So… they think they’re zombies? That’s our impression at least! Dead, but walking around and living forever? Yeah, that’s a zombie. They’re real, live(ish) zombies. Jules Cotard believed the delusion was rooted in feelings of depression and self-loathing, almost as if patients skipped committing suicide and went straight from wishing they were dead to being dead.

#7 Clinton Road Clinton Road is a ten-mile lane located in New Jersey that’s notorious for its propensity to be involved in supernatural claims. The road is surrounded by forestry and seclusion, and it has gained a certain level of notoriety for all of the spooky things that have happened there. There are honestly so many claims and stories that we can’t go through them all in the space allotted here, but there have been claims of ghost hauntings, strange creatures, witch gatherings, Satanists, and Ku Klux Klan members in the spooky parts of the road. A local police chief once tried to shrug it off saying, “It’s a long, desolate stretch and it makes the imagination go nuts.” Some of the spookiest ghost stories are those including the ghost boy at the bridge who tries to drown anyone looking over the railing, phantom trucks that disappear as they pass drivers, and strange creatures that may have emerged from a long-ago-closed Jungle Habitat attraction.

#8 Frederick Valentich’s Disappearance Let’s return to some of the extra-terrestrial supernatural spooks, shall we? Plenty of people have gone missing over the years; it’s almost to be expected. More specifically, plenty of pilots have disappeared on runs, whether training or on actual missions. Frederick Valentich is one of these many pilots that went missing and has since never been accounted for. Back in the late ’80s, Valentich was flying for the Royal Australian Airforce over the country when he suddenly started panicking. He radioed in that an aircraft was following him, but ground control replied there were no possible crafts at the level reported. Valentich said it was 1,000 feet overhead and moving fast, catching up to him. His last words were “it isn’t an aircraft” before noises of scrapping metal interrupted the transmission, and he was gone. Investigators believe he must have been flying upside down and saw reflections of his own lights in the water below him — but we’re pretty sure such an experienced pilot wouldn’t make such a mistake…

#9 Flatwoods Monster Also known as the Braxton County Monster and the Phantom of Flatwoods, this horrifying figure from West Virginia is the stuff of redneck nightmares. Believers in the story think that the boys in question made contact with an alien being, but who knows exactly what they saw? As the legend goes, two young West Virginian boys saw a bright object quickly crossing the sky and falling onto the land of a nearby farmer. They took their mother with them, as well as a local National Guardsman, to investigate the crash. The dog came also and ran ahead, the first to reach the crash site. It suddenly stopped barking and returned to the group, tail tucked between legs. There was a pungent mist that stung the eyes and nose (and, hours later, caused vomiting and convulsions). A fiery object in the near distance illuminated a dark figure, seven feet in height and cloaked in a black exoskeleton. It started to bound towards them, and the group fled in horror. They were later unable to relocate the vessel or creature, but when they reached the area, it appeared that someone had come and left only muddy tire tracks where the UFO and creature had once been.

#10 The Silent Twins Nothing is creepier than a couple of eerie twins. Remember those scary kids from The Shining?? ICK. The only thing creepier than those kids would be a real-life version… Well, they exist. June and Jennifer Gibbons were identical twins who grew up in Wales. The girls, who were raised by Caribbean immigrants, were very attached to each other — too attached. They spoke in a rapid speed patois that none of their classmates or teachers could understand, so they really could only speak to each other. Their parents made an effort for them to socialize better by putting them in different schools, but they became near-catatonic without their other halves. The girls had a long-standing agreement that if one of them died, the other must live a normal life (speaking to other people and not being a creep). After the two were hospitalized in a mental institution for fourteen years for their issues, the two believed it was necessary for one of them to die for the other to be happy. Jennifer agreed to be the sacrifice. Her death remains a mystery — she was not drugged and was in perfect medical health yet died of sudden inflammation of the heart.

#11 Scaphism Scaphism is not something that happens anymore (at least we hope so… dear God, please say we’re right), but it’s one of those things everyone should know about so that we know how civilized we’ve become as a human race and what we should never resort to again. Scaphism is an ancient Persian method of torture and execution, also commonly called “The Boats,” and it was used on their greatest enemies, the Greeks. Bear with us, and don’t toss your cookies as we explain the methodology. The victim was stripped naked and had milk and honey poured all over them, especially focusing on orifices like the mouth, anus, eyes, etc. They would then be fastened inside two rowing boats joined together by stacking one face down on top of the other. The head, hands, and feet would protrude. The victims would then be set afloat on a stagnant pond on a hot day, attracting insects to nibble on and burrow into their exposed flesh as they suffered starvation and dehydration. This would repeat every day until the victims died of starvation, thirst, or septic shock — though hopefully, delirium set in early on in the process.

#12 Sada Abe, A Geisha Not to Mess With Sada Abe was a Japanese woman raised to be a Geisha and a prostitute. Many of the women trained to live lives like Sada Abe’s did so quietly, seeing it as their place and role in society. Sada, however, was not so easily coerced. Sada was seduced by the manager of the establishment she worked at, a man who was married but womanized nonetheless. The two had quite a fling that went on pretty much nonstop for two weeks, but he went back to his wife afterward. Sada Abe was immensely jealous and wanted his entire devotion. So Sada, getting him back in her bed, erotically asphyxiated him until he died. Then, she cut off his penis and tucked it into her kimono. She even tried to masturbate with the severed fallis once! She was eventually caught shortly before intending to kill herself. She turned herself in and plainly displayed the severed penis as proof of her guilt.

#13 Hungry Hungry Armin Meiwes When some people get cravings, they really can’t ignore them. Most of us try to replace irrational cravings with something more healthy or responsible or reasonable, like eating a bowl of frozen yogurt instead of a pint of ice cream, or eating rotisserie chicken instead of six steaks. But Mr. Armin Meiwes was not able to ignore his cravings — though he really should have. Armin, a German computer technician, posted an online ad looking for a voluntary candidate that would be slaughtered and eaten alive. And he found a candidate. The two started by chopping off the victim’s penis, frying it up, and trying to eat it together. Then, Armin killed his victim and ate significantly more of his body. Armin was eventually arrested (after posting more ads looking for more voluntary victims) and charged for manslaughter. Since being imprisoned, he’s become a vegetarian and warns people looking to follow in his footsteps (oh yeah, he has a fan club) to seek help “so it doesn’t escalate the way it did with me.”

#14 Unit 731 Here’s a real horror story. Back in the second Sino-Japanese War, which (for those of you unversed in Asian history) took place around 1937-1945. A Japanese prison camp officially known as the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department, Unit 731, was actually a covert biological and chemical warfare research plant. You know what that means. Some utterly horrific things happened in Unit 731. It has got to be one of the most haunted places in the world. Historians estimate that up to 250,000 men, women, and children (primarily Chinese) were subjected to harsh experimentation here, which ranged from intentional exposure to horrifying diseases like syphilis and cholera to live vivisections to rape and forced impregnation. They researched germ warfare and all of the implications it could have. Worst yet, the United States offered amnesty to these scientists in return for the data they accumulated. THESE TORTURE ARTISTS MURDERED TENS OF THOUSANDS AND THEY GOT AWAY WITH IT.

#15 Hoeryong Concentration Camp We’ve had a lot of creepy Wikipedia pages on here telling stories of horrifying people who used to be, or terrifying places that used to exist. But hang on — this place is just as (if not more) terrifying as all of the rest, and it’s likely still in existence. Of course, one of the most horrifying places in the world is in North Korea. Though officially dubbed a penal labor camp, this place is an actual concentration camp for people who have criticized the government, have been deemed unreliable (such as South Korean prisoners of war), or purged senior party members. Anyone who enters the camp never leaves. Life in the camp is like life in a concentration camp, fully fledged with routine torture, forced labor, and medical experimentation. The US Government believed the camp was shut down in 2012 due to satellite pictures indicating a lot of changes — but we have absolutely no guarantees that that is true.

Source: TheRichest