#scots american

[scotianostra]

On May 15th 1857 Williamina Fleming was born in Dundee.

Born as Williamina Paton Stevens, Dundee to a reasonably affluent family: her father ran a gilding and picture framing business. Sadly he died when she was just 7 and she was sent away to a good local school until she was 14.

She worked for a while as a student teacher in Dundee, eventually marrying James Fleming, a local accountant. Within a year they emigrated to Boston USA. Things quickly began to go wrong starting with him leaving her without warning. Shortly after she discovered she was pregnant. She was forced to find employment and secured a job as a maid – the choice of employer was to change her life.

Professor Pickering was a demanding employer and as the story goes, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of the work from his male employees- to the extent that he claimed- ‘even my maid could do a better job’. It appears he really did believe this as he initially employed Williamina as an administrative assistant and then, impressed by her work, moved her on to analysing astronomical data- at which she excelled.

By her mid-twenties Williamina was one of a number of women Pickering employed to work at his observatory. They became known as the Harvard Computer – or Human Computers. Pickering taught the women to analyse spectral data and encouraged them to learn and study.

Williamina went on to manage this group and develop, alongside Pickering, a new star classification system, known as the Pickering-Fleming System. She classified over 10,000 stars; their work being published in 1890 when she was 33 years old.

She worked tirelessly, examining over 200,000 photographic plates and in the course of her work discovered many novae (including Pickering’s Triangle- see my article on this beautiful object), she analysed many variable stars, discovered tens of unusual Wolf-Rayet stars and worked on the discovery of double stars. By 1889 she was a curator at the Observatory, the first woman to hold such a post. However, much of her early work was published under Pickering’s name- it was only later that her name appeared as co-author.

Williamina hired many women over her time running the group, with a number going on to become great astronomers themselves.

Despite her position and status, Williamina received the same salary as that of a junior male new-starter. This was a source of great frustration and hardship as she tried to give her son a good education.

Williamina was awarded honorary membership of the Royal Astronomical Society in London and received numerous awards and recognition throughout her career.

[garpen]

YALLER

Yaller...

"Yaller need therapy once he's done with you."

I'm sorry. I have nothing to say for myself 😔

Yaller= yall will = you all will

I'm not even country or anything this is just gen how I speak. I try spelling out what comes through my head but sometimes I forget and just like spell/sound out what words sound like to me lol

A more accurate spelling would have been "Y'all'll" ? (ew the apostrophes make it look ugly) but the way I say it out loud sounds more like "yaller"

You all should be thankful you can't hear the way I speak it's honestly an atrocity

[mekanikaltrifle]

the weird way people talk about Scottish and Welsh and Irish people is a little creepy ngl it's like you think we're all ~magical fae people~ or something

[vagueconfusion]

just found my mom didn't know that people in Britain speak English and it sent me into hysterics

[bantarleton]

Poignant images of the recent re-burial of 14 Revolutionary War bodies discovered at Camden, including one redcoat highlander. Members of the present-day Royal Regiment of Scotland were in attendance along with the reenactors. Research is currently being conducted to find any living relatives of the deceased. Images from the 71st Regiment of Foot Facebook page.

[decepti-thots]

keep getting confused by people saying earthspark megatron is scottish. like yeah the actor is and there's parts where his accent slips, which i noticed bc they were pretty jarring, but. he does not sound scottish 95% of the time? am i missing something. are the non-brits hearing some holdover of it in his regular speech that don't register to me bc it's not Full Scottish. i feel like i'm losing it here

[kemetic-dreams]

By the 1760s the English, both at home and in colonial America, were applying the term to Scots-Irish settlers of the southern backcountry, as in this passage from a letter to the earl of Dartmouth: “I should explain to your Lordship what is meant by Crackers; a name they have got from being great boasters; they are a lawless set of rascalls on the frontiers of Virginia, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia, who often change their places of abode.” The word then came to be associated with the cowboys of Georgia and Florida, many of them descendants of those early frontiersmen.

Among African Americans cracker became a contemptuous term for a white southerner; among some southern whites it has become a label of ethnic and regional pride, boosted by the election of south Georgian Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976. This led to the coining of the word crackertude as a not entirely serious answer to negritude.

[algrenion]

you know youre in love with a cis man when you start showing genuine interest in his favourite sports

[britneyshakespeare]

Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off and me I also feel not so good

[rainingincale]

Nah cause tell me why i saw a random car in my neighbourhood with a tr*mp 2024 bumper sticker 😭😭😭 are you not embarrassed!!!

[canisitsnotlupus]

is MDR1 but it always shocks me when people say BCs weren't bred for sheepdog trials when that's like.. a huge part of the BC's history, that they were the selection of the regional working sheepdogs "collies" that people competed with and literally developed sheepdog trials for the og sporter dogs but also yeah mdr1 isn't really.. in BCs, like it's so quoted as MUST TEST FOR IT! and there's been one case i've heard of with it, and the dog wasn't even confirmed to have it through dna testing, just that's what the owner said it died from.

[scotianostra]

'I only went out for a walk'

The words of John Muir, but also me!

Dunbar today, birthplace of Muir, it's a shame he is more celebrated in the USA, but I suppose that's where he made his name.

[cursemewithyourkiss]

The fact that Ronald Colman is often described and even dismissed as playing "typical English gentlemen" when he actually had quite a varied career and the roles he's most well-known for (disillusioned and alcoholic barrister; man on vacation has to impersonate a king; stuffy bisexual law professor; amnesiac WWI veteran; stage actor who goes mad) are so wildly different from each other to the point where that phrase says practically nothing about the characters he's played is so fucked up to me.

[mekanikaltrifle]

not to be judgy but if you're Scottish and you say y'all, that's fucking cringe. We have our own word for that, and it's just as good. Ditch the americanisms

[yorktaylor]

society if my family hadn't come to america from ireland during the revolution and instead came in the 40s like most irish americans so i could get citizenship

[loki-zen]

trying not to think about how the domination of an increasingly internet-based and therefore undifferentiated anglosphere media surely incentivises presenting whatever view of a certain nation’s politics will play best in America, and if the country is Anglosphere itself this will in turn actually affect the politics there bc of how media Does That