What are you reading, watching and listening to? - All languages

[rotting bones]

Looking at the Wikipedia page -- I didn't know a Guise was Queen of Scotland too. (The House of Guise was the all-powerful scheming aristocrat house of 16th century France, remembered for orchestrating Protestant massacres.)

Scotland and France had been allied against England for a long time.

[Lērisama]

Looking at the Wikipedia page -- I didn't know a Guise was Queen of Scotland too. (The House of Guise was the all-powerful scheming aristocrat house of 16th century France, remembered for orchestrating Protestant massacres.)

Scotland and France had been allied against England for a long time.

If anyone doesn't know and is interested, the useful search term would be the “Auld Alliance”

[Torco]

I recently started (and finished) watching foundation, the apple series. it is at most vaguely inspired in the books: there is a trantor, there is an empire, there is an psychohistory, there is an hari seldon, there is an second foundation. other than that, it's its own thing... but it's not *bad*. I've seen worse scifi tv shows, and adapting foundation to as one was always going to be extremely difficult. I really like the visuals and the music, as well as the... theatrality? of it all. it's almost silly, but i enjoyed it.

also I just fired up TF2 for the first time in a decade. it's still a really fun game.

[rotting bones]

Emergence of Bangladesh by Badruddin Umar. A Marxist history of the East Pakistan independence struggle.

Very Important People by Ashley Mears. A sociology professor's analysis of VIP parties. She attends the parties as one of the "girls".

A Guide to Making Friends in the Fourth Dimension by Toby Hendy. A guide to visualizing 4 dimensional figures with colorful, childlike images. Has some interesting ideas, but it could be more accurate. I agree that a hypersphere would be seen as a sphere that grows from nothing and shrinks back into nothing, but the rate won't be uniform. It should grow very fast at first, and then the rate should taper off, shrink slowly and then disappear rapidly, right? It's like the curve of a circle with the center on the x-axis. I wonder if other properties of hypersphere will be discussed later. IIRC a hypersphere's surface area is much, much larger than its (hyper)volume, but I could be misremembering that.

The World After Gaza by Pankaj Mishra. A reminder of how recently the Holocaust was marketed to promote Israeli nationalism. (Despite all the social pressure to sell out, being branded as antisemites and self-hating Jews, Jewish people continue to fight against injustice around the world: https://youtu.be/kusQyBSoAKA ...)

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. This year's Hugo Award winner. It's a murder mystery in a sci-fi British Empire where the victim was killed by having trees grow out from inside him.

[Raphael]

Very Important People by Ashley Mears. A sociology professor's analysis of VIP parties. She attends the parties as one of the "girls".

That's one of the books I talked about in this brief post: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=97557#p97557

[rotting bones]

That's one of the books I talked about in this brief post: https://www.verduria.org/viewtopic.php?p=97557#p97557

If you want to depict depravity in a novel, it's important to visualize it first. Some Christians say that seeing evil is much more entertaining than living it. That's why the heavenly host will be granted a vision of hell. Authors like Patricia Highsmith even lived some of the depravity they wrote about.

That might be going too far. Personally, an understanding of the social systems at work is fascinating enough for me: what the party promoters hope to achieve, how they find girls and manage them, etc. For example, did you know that your distaste for the scene and characters that populate it is shared by most of the people in the scene?

A VIP party contains customers at many different price ranges. At every level, the customers justify their spending by saying they work hard and play hard, but the people in the price ranges above them are dumb money ruining the scene. The same attitude goes all the way to the top. An infamous whale who spent a million dollars a day partying said he works hard, so he has to play hard. Of course, these kinds of spenders party more rarely than regular customers. Even regular customers in a VIP party can spend thousands of dollars a night buying food and wine for models.

Ashley Mears tries to argue that the modern VIP party resembles the potlach of Northwestern North America more than anything else. The spraying of champagne (cheaper bottles club owners keep for spraying) is conspicuous consumption.

[rotting bones]

Gormenghast fits my mood.

PS. Barthes writes in a very clear way about issues that post-structuralists riff on obscurely.

[Man in Space]

Meshuggah – “Perpetual Black Second”

I am listening to this on a loop with a set of headphones that is equalized to chef’s-kiss perfection. It’s mainly the way the part from 0’26” until about 2’21” (times approximate) has a super-satisfying crosstalk with its rhythmic cycles versus common-time versus really awesome tonal stuff and it’s got a nuanced but badass life in the lower registers and, of course, the vocal style.

Interestingly, I generally prefer the original mix of Nothing, but I do qualitatively agree that I prefer the the remastered version here.

[rotting bones]

Reading Dear Committee Members. Dry wit.

Playing Chants of Sennaar. Decoding puzzle.

[WeepingElf]

Currently reading:

Contact with Alien Civilizations (Michael A. G. Michaud)

Discusses how likely extraterrestrial civilizations are, why, even though there probably are some, we haven't found any yet, and what may happen if we find one (could be dangerous even if the aliens have the best intentions).

The WEIRDest People in the World (Joseph Henrich), in German translation

The (b)ac(k)ronym WEIRD stands for "Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic" - i.e., it is us Westerners who are bizarre, not some indigenous people in the jungle. The book is about how we became that way.

[alice]

Just begun Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, by Ian Morris. Looks like essential reading for conlangers, alongside books like Guns, Germs, and Steel.

[Starbeam]

Just begun Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History, and What They Reveal About the Future, by Ian Morris. Looks like essential reading for conlangers, alongside books like Guns, Germs, and Steel.

More like people in general

[rotting bones]

When I quoted Ian Morris before, people just ignored me.

CPU built in Excel: https://youtu.be/5rg7xvTJ8SU

The Unconsoled. Pure absurdity.

Crossroads by Franzen

Finnegans Wake. The hardest book. I can never predict which parts I will understand. When I do understand it, I'm not always sure how I understand it. Modernism at its finest. It helps to read it in an Irish accent: https://youtu.be/M8kFqiv8Vww

The Hustler

People's History of the World

Galactic City music: https://youtu.be/vQI5Z2x4wAU

[Glenn]

One book series that my wife and I have been reading together is The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, which we have been enjoying quite a bit. Another series that I have been reading is the Singing Hills Cycle by Nghi Vo, with a setting inspired by premodern China and Vietnam and a main character whose job is to collect stories, so a major theme is the stories people tell each other, and how stories (and histories) are passed down over time.

In addition, I wanted to note that I recently received a copy of How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide by Jessie Peterson, which I ordered from the publisher. Unlike works such as The Language Construction Kit, it is written as a college textbook, with exercises (Jessie Peterson is a former professor of linguistics and taught a course on conlanging, before she left academia to join her now-husband, David J. Peterson, as a professional conlanger). I learned about it from an interview with the Petersons on the Conlangery podcast.

[alice]

In addition, I wanted to note that I recently received a copy of How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide by Jessie Peterson, which I ordered from the publisher. Unlike works such as The Language Construction Kit, it is written as a college textbook, with exercises (Jessie Peterson is a former professor of linguistics and taught a course on conlanging, before she left academia to join her now-husband, David J. Peterson, as a professional conlanger). I learned about it from an interview with the Petersons on the Conlangery podcast.

TRIGGER WARNING: extreme cynicism

Does anyone else hear the familiar but dispiriting sound of a once very niche and distinctive art form being subsumed into the mainstream and turning into grey slop?

[bradrn]

In addition, I wanted to note that I recently received a copy of How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide by Jessie Peterson, which I ordered from the publisher. Unlike works such as The Language Construction Kit, it is written as a college textbook, with exercises (Jessie Peterson is a former professor of linguistics and taught a course on conlanging, before she left academia to join her now-husband, David J. Peterson, as a professional conlanger). I learned about it from an interview with the Petersons on the Conlangery podcast.

TRIGGER WARNING: extreme cynicism

Does anyone else hear the familiar but dispiriting sound of a once very niche and distinctive art form being subsumed into the mainstream and turning into grey slop?

Er, no? Conlanging has managed to remain niche for more than 100 years now; I don’t think a college-level(!) textbook could change that.

[Glenn]

[I wrote a post for this thread, and then saved it somewhere where I can't get at it right now; I will try to reconstruct it.]

TRIGGER WARNING: extreme cynicism

Does anyone else hear the familiar but dispiriting sound of a once very niche and distinctive art form being subsumed into the mainstream and turning into grey slop?

Er, no? Conlanging has managed to remain niche for more than 100 years now; I don’t think a college-level(!) textbook could change that.

I should perhaps note that this is not entirely new. Back in 2020, Jessie Peterson posted this piece in Fiat Lingua where she listed some 30 colleges and universities with faculty who were teaching conlang-related courses (either courses like hers, in which students learned about features of languages by creating their own, or courses on the history and/or analysis of existing conlangs), as well as some articles and a book about the use of conlangs in teaching linguistics. The earliest example of a conlang-related university course that I found after a quick search online was in 2007; there may be earlier examples.

Of the instructors mentioned, the ones that I know something about are Jessie Peterson herself and her husband David J. Peterson, Doug Ball, Matt Pearson, Christine Schreyer, and Sheri Wells-Jensen. All of them are or were active conlangers, and I would wager that for them, teaching such courses were a way to combine their passion with their profession. Jessie Peterson comments in the interview linked above that she considers her book to be more of a conlanging book than a linguistics book.

Of the students taking the courses, some are probably familiar with conlanging already, which is why they would choose to take them. There is only so much that they can do in a one-semester course, but some may continue conlanging afterward, and even those who do not may gain some increased awareness and appreciation for the hobby, which I think is not a bad thing. Overall, though, while the increased use of conlangs in TV and movies has drawn some attention, I think that creating conlangs is a specialized enough interest that it is still not likely to go mainstream.

[Raphael]

In addition, I wanted to note that I recently received a copy of How to Create a Language: The Conlang Guide by Jessie Peterson, which I ordered from the publisher. Unlike works such as The Language Construction Kit, it is written as a college textbook, with exercises (Jessie Peterson is a former professor of linguistics and taught a course on conlanging, before she left academia to join her now-husband, David J. Peterson, as a professional conlanger). I learned about it from an interview with the Petersons on the Conlangery podcast.

TRIGGER WARNING: extreme cynicism

Does anyone else hear the familiar but dispiriting sound of a once very niche and distinctive art form being subsumed into the mainstream and turning into grey slop?

Oh no! Other people are enjoying what I enjoy! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

[zompist]

I should perhaps note that this is not entirely new. Back in 2020, Jessie Peterson posted this piece in Fiat Lingua where she listed some 30 colleges and universities with faculty who were teaching conlang-related courses (either courses like hers, in which students learned about features of languages by creating their own, or courses on the history and/or analysis of existing conlangs), as well as some articles and a book about the use of conlangs in teaching linguistics. The earliest example of a conlang-related university course that I found after a quick search online was in 2007; there may be earlier examples.

(Boggle) Wow, Jessie Peterson is the former Jessie Sams. I've e-mailed back and forth with her a few times-- she used the LCK in her first conlanging course.

I note that her list is missing John Scott's course at the University of Indiana, which he invited me to visit and be a resource twice.

[Man in Space]

Andy Chamberlain – “Natalie Has Never Tasted Anything Other Than Mustard”