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

[Travis B.]

A day or so ago I watched Micro Men, about the early 1980's British computer industry, particularly the rivalry between Acorn and Sinclair. (For those here not familiar with Acorn and Sinclair, they were competing for the right to make the BBC Micro, which was specifically for the BBC's Computer Literacy Project, which Acorn won, while Sinclair was the company behind the ZX (read: /zɛd ɛks/) Spectrum which competed with it. Notably, Acorn's legacy is the ARM, which it created to succeed the 6502 used in the BBC Micro, which now powers the vast majority of cell phones along with Apple Silicon Macs, Raspberry Pi's and like.)

[Raphael]

Interesting, Travis, I remember watching that one a while ago!


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Another interesting Nathan Goldwag post, Where in the World is Enver Pasha? https://nathangoldwag.wordpress.com/202 ... ver-pasha/

[rotting bones]

100 pages into Mallory and Adams.

Apparently, PIE is basically Sanskrit consonants with Greek vowels.

[WeepingElf]

100 pages into Mallory and Adams.

Apparently, PIE is basically Sanskrit consonants with Greek vowels.

Yes, that's the usual criticism of the conventional reconstruction, levelled at it especially by glottalists and the like, and it is an overstatement. It was close to the truth with Brugmann's late-19th-century reconstruction; it is less so with what currently is the mainstream opinion on PIE reconstruction.

[rotting bones]

Yes, that's the usual criticism of the conventional reconstruction, levelled at it especially by glottalists and the like, and it is an overstatement. It was close to the truth with Brugmann's late-19th-century reconstruction; it is less so with what currently is the mainstream opinion on PIE reconstruction.

The biggest modifications are the laryngeals from Anatolian, right?

[rotting bones]

If you are not a fan of organized religion, you should watch Midnight Mass. The run time is basically 7 hours total. The depiction of the atheist moral compass is the most perfect I've ever seen in fiction.

My brother's attempt at a spoiler-free description: "It's a psychological/emotional horror show about a small island slice of America that's failing to adapt to modernity. Their health/infrastructure/culture is starting to fracture, until a new priest moves in with a possible fix for everything. Terrors ensue."

This doesn't mention what the show is really about, all of which is a spoiler. I would add that this is a show where both holiness and atheism are made to seem existentially compelling, and both turn out to be wrong for different reasons.

The characters are brilliant. The atheist, the priest, the conservative churchgoer, the individually religious people of various stripes... However, you might be offended if you support organized religion. This is the show I wish Evil had been.

[WeepingElf]

Yes, that's the usual criticism of the conventional reconstruction, levelled at it especially by glottalists and the like, and it is an overstatement. It was close to the truth with Brugmann's late-19th-century reconstruction; it is less so with what currently is the mainstream opinion on PIE reconstruction.

The biggest modifications are the laryngeals from Anatolian, right?

Yes - what else happened, such as the removal of the voiceless aspirated stops, were mostly consequences of the laryngeal theory (the voiceless aspirated stops, which were distinct from the voiceless unaspirated stops only in Indo-Aryan and Greek, and uncommon enough in both branches, turned out to be voiceless unaspirated stops followed by laryngeal). Currently, scholars are debating about morphology, especially verb morphology - whether Anatolian is archaic or innovative.

[rotting bones]

IIRC the best shows I've seen on the Bengali streaming service Hoichoi were Paranoia, Ha Ja Ba Ra La and Taranath Tantrik. The horror show Oddbhuturey also had its moments.

PS. I also enjoyed watching the thriller Tiktiki and the movie Hemlock Society.

PPS. Maybe I should take the time to watch famous films like Aynabaji.

[rotting bones]

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5Vf ... ax1dMbf1yI

[alice]

- The Silk Roads, by Peter Frankopan. Very interesting antidote to the Eurocentric view of history.
- Your Life Will Continue To Suck More: How others are profiting at your expense and why you can do nothing about it, by various authors. The complete collection takes up many shelves in decent-sized bookshops.

[rotting bones]

Bhuter Bhobishshoth is the funniest movie I've seen in a while. The humor relies heavily on references to Bengali language, culture and history. It's both learned and silly at the same time. "Bulbulite dhan kheyechhe, khajna debo kishe?" Roflmao

[Ares Land]

Twin Peaks, which turns out just as great as people say it is. Often funny, at times horrifying; Cooper is one of the best, if not the best character in television. I don't really know why the soap opera angle works, but it works. Same with the music, which stays with you but in a good way.

The price to pay is that I've reached the bad part of season two, where David Lynch lost interest. Ugh, those are absolutely awful, their only redeeming quality being David Duchovny. (Fan sites opine that you can't just skip them, so I guess I'll have to endure.)

EDIT: oh for Germans or French people, you can watch them for free on arte.tv

[Emily]

Twin Peaks, which turns out just as great as people say it is. Often funny, at times horrifying; Cooper is one of the best, if not the best character in television. I don't really know why the soap opera angle works, but it works. Same with the music, which stays with you but in a good way.

The price to pay is that I've reached the bad part of season two, where David Lynch lost interest. Ugh, those are absolutely awful, their only redeeming quality being David Duchovny. (Fan sites opine that you can't just skip them, so I guess I'll have to endure.)

EDIT: oh for Germans or French people, you can watch them for free on arte.tv

• watch season one
• watch as much of season two as you can get through
• when you can't get through any more, skip to the finale and watch that
• watch the movie
• watch season theee

in that order

[Emily]

recently read a book called the language of thieves, a family memoir based around a centuries-old thieves' cant based on german. it wasn't bad but i was hoping it would be much more about the language and less about the family stuff (like i'm sorry but i feel like "found out grandpa was a nazi" is pretty par for the course in memoirs about german families). one interesting thing is the author talking about being shown (when he was a child in the 60s or whenever) actual in-use examples of symbols carved into fenceposts for passing transients to tell each other "tell a sob story here" or "beware of vicious dog" or w/e. in the US these are known as the hobo code (and indeed even a lot of the individual symbols are the same as they are in the book) and are most strongly associated with transient workers in the early 20th century through the 1930s, although from what i understand the general scholarly consensus is that they're a myth with no direct supporting evidence for their ever existing. so it was surprising to read the author describing the same thing under a different name in a different country decades later. was the US myth based on european fact? did the US myth become reality in germany? was the author's uncle lying to him? who knows!

read a book that was basically a report from an IAL society from rhe late 1940s evaluating esperanto and a couple other big IAL projects of the period against various criteria. kind of frustrating tbh, the book didn't have any real conclusions so it sort of felt like a waste of time, plus a lot of the things they said were just built on some glaringly unexamined assumptions, although that's probably to be expected with any earnest IAL advocacy

lastly i'm reading a collection of shirley jackson novels. she has a well-deserved reputation for writing horror and suspense, but she's also a really sharp observer of human behavior and spcial anxieties and can weave wonders with them. read The Road Through the Wall, and then tonight i just finished Hangsaman, which i think i'm going to need a couple days to sit with. god i love shirley jackson

[rotting bones]

Metal from Heaven by August Clarke

Revolutionary Suicide by Huey P. Newton was really good.

Timenergy by McKerracher. McKerracher says he's not a Marxist, but this is the only recent attempt to update Marx's philosophical framing (as opposed to the math) that I find interesting. Instead of "labor power", McKerracher tries to critique society in terms of the amount of free time and energy (timenergy) individuals are left with to pursue passion projects. He describes himself as post-Left.

Nazrul's novel Mrittukhudha (Death-Hunger) is amazingly revolutionary.

YouTube videos:

$100k: https://youtu.be/YreJ-7TAKU8
https://youtu.be/5t4mbfcRUsM
https://youtu.be/zRLYeuNlB94
https://youtu.be/dBVdUU-dVmc
https://youtu.be/zAsWuFcOF7s

[rotting bones]

A YouTube channel of whatever Communists remain in Bengal: https://youtube.com/@ganashakti_digital

[rotting bones]

Minima Moralia, the aphorisms of Adorno, a kind of dialectical scripture. If you're going to read only one book on Critical Theory, this should be the one. The writing is short and punchy. The good, the bad and the ugly of Critical Theory are on full display here.

[rotting bones]

Classical (as opposed to Neoclassical) economist Michael Hudson:

Financial Empire 1: https://youtu.be/4THv2qQjLhc
Financial Empire 2: https://youtu.be/QAmZXtJfkQU
Financial Empire 3: https://youtu.be/5xR02tPQBTM

[alice]

The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution – A Groundbreaking Narrative of Galileo, Newton, and the Birth of Modernity by by David Wootton. Dense, but interesting from a conworlding point of view.

[Travis B.]

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