#the way i have been dipping back into language theory rn

[juuridesu]

babel by rf kuang 🤝 genshin's al haitham

single handedly reigniting my dormant linguistics knowledge lmao

[fatechica]

100 Questions

Whee, I was tagged by @janes-mike and @dancingskygreen! This is a good distraction for while I’m sick, lmao.

1. What is your nickname? Jules or JP

2. How old are you? 34

3. What is your birth month? November

4. What is your zodiac sign? Sagittarius

5. What is your favorite color? Burgundy

6. What’s your lucky number? 1123, if pressed (it’s my birthday, lol)

7. Do you have any pets? I do! I have one cat who’s 15 years old and a curmudgeonly princess.

8. Where are you from? California (the SF area, to be precise, tho I live up in Sacramento, now)

9. How tall are you? 5′3

10. What shoe size are you? 7

11. How many pairs of shoes do you own? Ok, so I’m the person who buys shoes but never wears more than, like, 3 pairs ever? So, I have, like, 20 pairs of shoes and my husband gets so mad that I mostly never wear them.

12. Are you random? What does this even mean? No? I feel like I’m too logical to be random.

13. Last person you texted? My friend about how awful my voice sounds rn.

14. Are you psychic in any way? Nope, not in any way, shape, or form.

15. Last TV show watched? Requiem

16. Favorite movie? Empire Records and Pacific Rim

17. Favorite show from your childhood? Out of this World (god, aging myself. does anyone here even know that show?)

18. Do you want children? Maybe? I still don’t know the answer to this question (and, as my mother likes to remind me, the end of my fertile years is coming up, so time may answer that question for me)

19. Do you want a church wedding? Haha, already married and we did not have a church wedding

20. What is your religion? I’m agnostic, but my husband is Buddhist, so...also Buddhist?

21. Have you ever been to the hospital? yes. the last time was when I sprained my elbow so bad I lost feeling in my fingers

22. Have you ever got in trouble with the law? Haha, NO

23. How is life? Eh? It’s ok rn. I’m sick and I have work tomorrow, but otherwise pretty good

24. Baths or showers? Showers

25. What color socks are you wearing? Haha, socks? LOL, no. It was 100 degrees today and I don’t like having my feet covered even when it’s cold.

26. Have you ever been famous? Nope

27. Would you like to be a big celebrity? Yeah, no, no thank you. I like the anonymity

28. What type of music do you like? I’m a musician, so the answer is “everything”. Like, you hit shuffle on my iphone and you’re just as likely to hit Beethoven’s Sonatas as you are Notorious B.I.G. and everything in between. I’m the least partial to country, if I had to pick something I didn’t like (or, at least, don’t often listen to).

29. Have you ever been skinny dipping? Yep!

30. How many pillows do you sleep with? Two

31. What position do you usually sleep in? I can’t fall asleep any other way but on my stomach, but I often wake up on my back, which is hilarious since I can’t fall asleep like that at all.

32. How big is your house? idk, normal size-ish? Like, 2000 square feet? We have a large lot, so it feels bigger than it really is.

33. What do you typically have for breakfast? Cereal (I’m a whore for cereal)

34. Have you ever left the country? Yes! Last time was a couple of years ago when the husband and I went to Puerto Vallarta

35. Have you ever tried archery? I have, back in summer camp ages ago (and, also, I could try it again any time I want since my husband does archery and there’s an archery target set up in our backyard. imagine my complete lack of surprise when he came home with 4 hay bales and was like “babe, i’m gonna build a target!”)

36. Do you like anyone? Lol, I’m married, so I sure hope so!

37. Favorite swear word? Hands down, it’s “fuck”. I use it all the time.

38. When do you fall asleep? Around midnight if I’m being good.

39. Do you have any scars? Yeah, I was a really active kid and got in a lot of scrapes and whatnot. My most notable one is the scar on my chin from where I split it open and had to get stitches.

40. Sexual orientation? Pretty straight.

41. Are you a good liar? Fortunately or unfortunately, yes.

42. What languages would you like to learn? I want to learn German and Mandarin, and I seriously need to re-learn Japanese and Spanish (I used to be mostly fluent in both).

43. Top 10 songs? Oh shit, uh...crap. Pass on answering this question unless you want me here all night figuring this shit out.

44. Do you like your country? I’m in America and...in theory, yes. At the moment? NO.

45. Do you have friends from the web? Oh yeah, absolutely!

46. What is your personality type? I’m super extroverted and assertive and headstrong (my MBTI is ESTJ and I have never related to a personality type SO STRONGLY).

47. Hogwarts House? Ravenclaw

48. Can you curl your tongue? Nope

49. Pick one fictional character you can relate to? Um, since most of my friends here are in the ST fandom, let’s go with that and, in that universe, I’d have to say Mike Wheeler. His sense of responsibility and knack of putting everyone else ahead of him is something I relate to so very much.

50. Left or right handed? Left

51. Are you scared of spiders? I have legit arachnophobia.

52. Favorite food? Macaroni and cheese (I’m such white fucking trash)

53. Favorite foreign food? Pho or (and I’m cursing my inability to add accent marks here)  Bun Thit Nuong Cha Gio, which is vermicelli noodles with bbq pork, eggrolls, veggies, and fish sauce and it’s so good (ok, i’m craving it now) (also, lol, can you tell my husband’s Vietnamese, or what?)

54. Are you a clean or messy person? Dude, I’m messy as fuck.

55. If you could switch your gender for a day, what would you do? Figure out what it’s like to pee standing up.

56. What color underwear? Like, right now, or in general? Because the answer to right now is “nothing” (because i’m in my pjs and i don’t wear underwear to sleep), but in general, black because i don’t like having to match anything.

57. How long does it take for you to get ready? 15-20 minutes

58. Do you have much of an ego? Situationally, yes. Like, when it comes to things I’m good at, oh hell yes. 

59. Do you suck or bite lollipops? Suck. I have an oral fixation.

60. Do you talk to yourself? All the damn time.

61. Do you sing to yourself? Yep!

62. Are you a good singer? I like to think that I am.

63. Biggest Fears? Spiders and the depth of the ocean (what’s down there?!?!?!)

64. Are you a gossip? Haha, yes.

65. Are you a grammar nazi? Oh yeah.

66. Do you have long or short hair? Medium-ish? It goes right past my shoulders, so I guess on the shorter end.

67. Can you name all 50 states of America? I can.

68. Favorite school subject? Math

69. Extrovert or Introvert? Extrovert!

70. Have you ever been scuba diving? No, but I want to so bad.

71. What makes you nervous? Not being able to live up to expectations.

72. Are you scared of the dark? No, I love the dark. I have really good night vision.

73. Do you correct people when they make mistakes? All the time. I’m annoying that way.

74. Are you ticklish? Yes, yes I am (unfortunately)

75. Have you ever started a rumor? Nope...at least, not on purpose.

76. Have you ever been out of your home country? Yes!

77. Have you ever drank underage? God, all the time.

78. Have you ever done drugs? Yes, but only pot.

79. What do you fantasize about? Having the freedom to travel and do what I want without having to worry about money.

80. How many piercings do you have? Three on each ear (though I’m planning on getting a cartilage piercing soon).

81. Can you roll your R’s? Lol, I only took 10 years of Spanish, so I certainly hope so.

82. How fast can you type? Pretty fast

83. How fast can you run? Um, I average about a 13 minute mile, so not super fast.

84. What color is your hair? Auburn-red

85. What color are your eyes? Hazel

86. What are you allergic to? Mold and mildew

87. Do you keep a journal? Haha, I gave up that ghost years ago. The closest I get to that is this blog.

88. Are you depressed about anything? Not particularly at the moment (though I suffer from anxiety and that can quickly turn into depression if I don’t watch it)

89. Do you like your age? I do, I think. I can’t say I didn’t wish I was in my late 20s again, mostly because there’s the pressure to have done certain things by the time you’re in your mid-30s (like, have kids and whatnot), but I certainly don’t feel my age most of the time, so *shrugs*

90. What makes you angry? When people aren’t given a fair shot, or unfairly treated. I’m real big on equity of respect and it makes me so angry when I see people getting treated like shit or disrespected (bigots and racists and misogynists really piss me off). In that same vein, people not doing their fair share of the work also really piss me off.

91. Do you like your own name? Yeah, I do. I mean, I’ve had it for 34 years.

92. Did you ever get a foreign object up your nose? thankfully, no.

93. Do you want a boy or a girl for a child? I think, if I have kids, I want a girl.

94. What talents do you have? I’m a fast and adaptive learner and I have a near photographic memory.

95. Sun or moon? Sun.

96. How did you get your name? Ok, I’ve asked this question and the only answer I can get from my mom is “I don’t know, your dad and I just liked the name.”

97. Are you religious? I like to consider myself a spiritual person, but I’m not particularly religious. I’m fascinated by religiosity and tradition and I like participating in religious ceremonies, but I don’t know if I believe in a religion enough to be religious.

98. Have you ever been to a therapist? Yes, I have. I developed anxiety a few years ago and I saw a therapist for a few months to help with my issues.

99. Color of your bedspread? White with blue and turquoise dots.

100. Color of your room? Grey

Alright, then, I tag.... @mikeywheelerr, @formerlyjannafaye, @el-and-hop, and @linachupi

[jonnyopinion]

Marx, Money and Me

A few years back I fancied myself as an investor.  Very briefly and naively and not really that sincerely, I hasten to add.  I had a little excess money and nothing good to do with it, so I started to explore the mysterious world of stock exchanges.  It was, and still basically is, like a foreign language to me: as packed with acronyms and esoteric terminology as the unrelated field I had worked in for years, and not nearly as welcoming.  I tried to get my head around market capitalisation, share volumes, director dealings, sectors and portfolios; the AIM, the FTSE, the RNS, EPS...all to little avail.  I tried to wade through the obvious scams of latter-day snake oil salesman promising to make me thousands a day in the hope that perhaps I might stumble upon some nugget of useful advice I could use to my actual advantage.

Nope.  While in theory the markets are something "anybody" can invest in, they hardly seem to be set up to guide the curious gently into the echelons of obscene wealth.  Like a Las Vegas casino with no windows or clocks on the walls, designed that way to throw your sense of time and self off kilter, the stock market felt like the proverbial snake pit.  Coincidentally enough, the trading floors of many international stock exchanges seem often to be windowless as well.

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Going back a few years more and I fancied myself a communist.  Not a proper a communist, not really, just the kind of communist you call yourself when you're a teeanger and you read The Communist Manifesto one evening and wonder why they haven't taught you much about this captivating little polemic more in school, and wonder some more whether that vague sense you have there's something very, very wrong with the world might not entirely be by accident.

You grow up in a middle-middle-class Methodist household, attend a private school your parents would be no means be able to afford were it not for a scholarship paid for by the church, and encounter contemporaries considerably more "well off" than you.  Here are kids who don't seem to know what it is to have parents who sometimes tell you that they "can't afford" something.  None of this matters in any overt way, but there's something about the way the more affluent ones conduct themselves that sticks with you.  A certain...confidence, what today might be called a sense of "entitlement" or "[insert adjective here] privilege" viz. their place in the world.  It's never explicitly arrogant - it's too polite, too English for that - it's just...there.  Everywhere.  You start to feel a little of it yourself.  To feel that there really is a kind of order to society, that's real, yes, but not natural.  An order that is what it is, and maybe always has been, but could be so many other ways, too. There's a phrase you start to hear a lot: "just put it on the bill."  There's something you need for school: paper and pens, folders, stationery, books, chocolate, uniform, computer game magazines (it's the 90s), more chocolate, but you don't have the cash for it yourself. Your parents, quite rightly in retrospect, have rationed your cash for the term, but still, there's stuff you need.  Or "need" (which is the same thing).  Just put it on the bill, someone says.  Your parents will pay for it at the end of term.  So you do, and that's that.  Money becomes someone else's problem. Of course, this isn't substantially different to the ordinary experience of being a child of ordinary enough middle class parents.  You can't just have anything you want, no questions asked (though it seems like some kids can, and you find yourself hating them, secretly) but anything you need, or "need"?  Not a problem.  Just put it on the bill. You start to feel like all of life might be like this.  That "the real world", whenever you eventually land there, might be nothing to fear.  Just a place where there's a normal life waiting for you to live, and die, and happily forever after.

And that's all there really is to say about that. Back to the present, and you find yourself dipping into Marx again:

"The extent of the power of money is the extent of my power. Money’s properties are my – the possessor’s – properties and essential powers. Thus, what I am and am capable of is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy for myself the most beautiful of women. Therefore I am not ugly, for the effect of ugliness – its deterrent power – is nullified by money. I, according to my individual characteristics, am lame, but money furnishes me with twenty-four feet. Therefore I am not lame. I am bad, dishonest, unscrupulous, stupid; but money is honoured, and hence its possessor. Money is the supreme good, therefore its possessor is good. Money, besides, saves me the trouble of being dishonest: I am therefore presumed honest. I am brainless, but money is the real brain of all things and how then should its possessor be brainless? Besides, he can buy clever people for himself, and is he who has power over the clever not more clever than the clever? Do not I, who thanks to money am capable of all that the human heart longs for, possess all human capacities? Does not my money, therefore, transform all my incapacities into their contrary? 

"If money is the bond binding me to human life, binding society to me, connecting me with nature and man, is not money the bond of all bonds? Can it not dissolve and bind all ties? Is it not, therefore, also the universal agent of separation?

- Karl Marx - The Power of Money, Economic Manuscripts of 1844.

This week, the share price for Oxford Biomedica, which had been languishing around 4 - 6 pence per share for as long as I'd held a modest 8,687 shares in it (total value £680) suddenly leaped up to 9 pence, and even almost touched 11 pence early yesterday, before starting to settle down at around 10 pence per share this morning.  I sold my shares at around 9 pence each on Tuesday morning, netting myself £737, or £57 profit.  This, of course, in the world of the stock market, is virtually nothing.  Still, there they were: the strangely vivid fantasies of obscene, unearned wealth and what I might do with it.  What better versions of me might do with it, and what much, much worse versions of me might do too.  I imagined how I might turn £737 into ten or a hundred times that through clever investments and well timed day trades through the Shareprice app on the bus.  The secret millionaire.  Ridiculous, vulgar, unrealistic and totally contrary to the spirit of all I really know would really fulfil me in life.  But there such thoughts were, brought back to the surface of my mind as naturally as bubbles to the surface of the fishbowl.  Money, I know, is neither good nor bad in itself: it is, as Marx indicates, the crystallisation of power.  And what is power but opportunity, possibility? There are so many more questions that need to be asked.

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