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[Zju]

I'm mildly annoyed that I think I vaguely recall a non English song by a single lyric [ɡa'mɛɾs], but if I were to ever try to look it up, I'd be flooded by 57894621 results about gamers.

[Travis B.]

I'm mildly annoyed that I think I vaguely recall a non English song by a single lyric [ɡa'mɛɾs], but if I were to ever try to look it up, I'd be flooded by 57894621 results about gamers.

There are more important things to fret about, such as the fact that many a German thinks "handy" is the English word for cell phone.

[Man in Space]

I'm mildly annoyed that I think I vaguely recall a non English song by a single lyric [ɡa'mɛɾs], but if I were to ever try to look it up, I'd be flooded by 57894621 results about gamers.

Or Gamera.

[Man in Space]

I am preparing to undergo a legal change of name. I am planning to add my Babcia’s surname to my own, making a double-barreled surname. That family name will come first without a hyphen, much like my mom’s name is. So I’d be [first name] [middle name] [maternal surname] [paternal surname].

I thought about getting her original surname from before she married (Porwoł), since my grandfather was an utterly horrible man. Ultimately, though, I decided on the name she ended up with for a few reasons:

1. Even after the divorce, she never saw fit to revert to her maiden name. (Kind of poetic; she took everything else from him too.)
2. My other grandfather was also an utterly horrible man, but Gramma, too, kept his name following the dissolution of their marriage instead of becoming a Rapsik again.
3. My mother went with Babcia’s married name when she married (she got a combined surname with my father’s family name; I actually want the same last name she has).
4. Whatever else may be said about the people involved…they are my blood and this is the reality I live with.

[Raphael]

From various things I've heard and read over the years, I've got the impression that

1) people from colder places who visit warmer places or move to warmer places, and also people who were born in warmer places but whose ancestors had moved from colder places to warmer places relatively recently, often like ice-cold drinks on hot days,

while

2) people whose ancestors have lived in hot places for a very long time often prefer hot drinks on hot days.

Is that actually true?

[zompist]

2) people whose ancestors have lived in hot places for a very long time often prefer hot drinks on hot days.

If you're thinking of coffee and tea, I expect this is mostly because historically those places didn't have ice. Or at best ice was a luxury item— e.g. the Romans used to go up into the mountains to get it. In temperate areas you can store ice underground, but that didn't work well in Mesopotamia.

[foxcatdog]

hot drinks do refresh you quicker since they don't have to heat up in the body.

[malloc]

Originally a blockbuster referred to a kind of bomb. Yet in the context of cinema, a blockbuster is the opposite of a bomb.

[Man in Space]

Originally a blockbuster referred to a kind of bomb. Yet in the context of cinema, a blockbuster is the opposite of a bomb.

Which way, Western man?

[WeepingElf]

I think I have seen bomb used with the meaning of 'flop'.

[Man in Space]

I think I have seen bomb used with the meaning of 'flop'.

You have. The phrase “box office bomb” refers to a massively unsuccessful picture, and “to bomb” can mean “to fail (at) something totally”, as in “I bombed the exam”.

[Richard W]

I think I have seen bomb used with the meaning of 'flop'.

You have. The phrase “box office bomb” refers to a massively unsuccessful picture, and “to bomb” can mean “to fail (at) something totally”, as in “I bombed the exam”.

But going like a bomb is the exact opposite of bombing. Bad, eh? I suppose a better parallel is cleaving together, as opposed to being cleaving apart. But English is a long way from Arabic -

Every Arabic word has a basic meaning, a second meaning which is the exact opposite of the first, a third meaning which refers to either a camel or horse, and a fourth meaning that is so obscene that you'll have to look it up for yourself.

[alice]

But English is a long way from Arabic -

Every Arabic word has a basic meaning, a second meaning which is the exact opposite of the first, a third meaning which refers to either a camel or horse, and a fourth meaning that is so obscene that you'll have to look it up for yourself.

This is not too far from Western literary criticism, however.

[malloc]

Does anyone else find the Freemasons rather baffling as a concept? So these rich people in the 1700s got together and decided to LARP as construction workers. Except instead of actually building anything, they hold regular meetings where they invent all kinds of rituals and lore loosely evoking masonry. Then other people become convinced that these stylized LARPers are secretly plotting to rule the world (and possibly lizards in disguise).

[bradrn]

Does anyone else find the Freemasons rather baffling as a concept? So these rich people in the 1700s got together and decided to LARP as construction workers. Except instead of actually building anything, they hold regular meetings where they invent all kinds of rituals and lore loosely evoking masonry. Then other people become convinced that these stylized LARPers are secretly plotting to rule the world (and possibly lizards in disguise).

I got the impression that it did indeed start with actual masons, though I don’t actually know anything about the history.

[Nachtswalbe]

In general, the farther North you go, the less spicy ingredients are available, and the less important the germ-killing properties of spices become. Non-European traditional food from Northerly regions that I have tasted, like Kazakh or Mongolian, is also rather bland (or rather uses a very limite range of spices, mostly salt and pepper, like most Northern European cooking). When more exotic spices became known in Europe, they were expensive and mostly used for prestige cooking, or for special occasions (that is why e.g. German Christmas bakery uses more spices than usual). In Germany, people started to get used to more spicy food mostly only after around the 1950s, when people started to go on Southern holidays in masses and when guest workers arrived, opening ethnic restaurants.

Also it seems that Central Asian food is generally easier to make (meat noodle soups, meat dumplings, plov, carrot salad) than even East Asian food without soy sauce or spices.

[Nachtswalbe]

Does anyone else find the Freemasons rather baffling as a concept? So these rich people in the 1700s got together and decided to LARP as construction workers. Except instead of actually building anything, they hold regular meetings where they invent all kinds of rituals and lore loosely evoking masonry. Then other people become convinced that these stylized LARPers are secretly plotting to rule the world (and possibly lizards in disguise).

I think that was because of the Bavarian Illuminati, a revolutionary group in Germany around 1776 actually

[Nortaneous]

Also it seems that Central Asian food is generally easier to make (meat noodle soups, meat dumplings, plov, carrot salad) than even East Asian food without soy sauce or spices.

That's not been my experience at all but we're probably thinking of different subsets of the various cuisines. The Central Asian food I'm most familiar with revolves around roasted meat spiced with things like saffron, sumac (and/or lemon), and garlic, which is hard to do at home, whereas a lot of Chinese food is in principle identical to Mid-Atlantic American cuisine: bung in pan, add sauces, done.

If the House of Tudor had had potatoes, I don't think red-cooked potatoes would've been unfamiliar to them. But they are to us; we use fewer spices than the medievals did. Most modern-day kitchens would have black pepper, oregano, basil, rosemary, and sage, but who has anise, grains of paradise, long pepper, galangal, cubeb, or alkanet? (I'm not sure what alkanet is, but The Forme of Cury mentions it - it seems to be derived from the flower of some kind of borage? We still use borage flowers, but rarely; you have to grow your own borage for it.) Winter preparations like clove-studded Christmas hams are retentions from an earlier culinary era. Compare that to Japan or Korea, more southerly countries that use some herbs and spices (shiso, gochugaru...) but place much more emphasis on deriving complexity of flavor from fermentation. Some Central Asian cuisines have a lot of pickles, as does Northern Europe, but my impression is that they were rare in at least upper-class England. I haven't looked into it much though, and of course there was beer, wine, cheese, and pickled herring.

[Raphael]

In general, the farther North you go, the less spicy ingredients are available, and the less important the germ-killing properties of spices become. Non-European traditional food from Northerly regions that I have tasted, like Kazakh or Mongolian, is also rather bland (or rather uses a very limite range of spices, mostly salt and pepper, like most Northern European cooking). When more exotic spices became known in Europe, they were expensive and mostly used for prestige cooking, or for special occasions (that is why e.g. German Christmas bakery uses more spices than usual). In Germany, people started to get used to more spicy food mostly only after around the 1950s, when people started to go on Southern holidays in masses and when guest workers arrived, opening ethnic restaurants.

Also it seems that Central Asian food is generally easier to make (meat noodle soups, meat dumplings, plov, carrot salad) than even East Asian food without soy sauce or spices.

A lot of traditional German cooking doesn't have much in the way of recipes: take one type of meat, pan fry it; take one type of vegetables, boil, or, if you're more experimental, pan fry them; take something for the carbs - traditionally always potatoes, but these days noodles or rice work too - cook as you like; prepare those three elements separately, then serve them together on one plate. I'd say anything that involves serious recipes is more complicated than that.

[Man in Space]

A new Sanskrit epic poem, Hiryanyaksha, My Beloved, ascribed to the mythical wordsmith Tarajilhesbhi, has been discovered. The opening lines, translated by Guillermo de Toledo:

The blessings of the Lord Vishnu, and of the sandals of the great Lord Vishnu, having attained his presence and his power, may the same be upon thee, O traveler. Mark thou she who stands before thee, the one from whom these words are issued, this speech performed: I, the Ebony Darkness, the Madwoman, she of the Raven and the Blackbird, of the Way of the Karma and the Dharma; it is I, O traveler, who recount to thee these things. Witness my form, enumerate the blessings I have received for my devotion to the teachings of Manu, and of my regard for the balance of the scales, of that which endures the veneration of the sura and the remembrance of the asura: My locks, the raiment that conceals my skull, are as of the crow-black complexion of the goddess Kali, shocked with wine-dark streaks and terminating in ends consecrated with rakta, the raga of the rakta, the same flowing down from my head to my waist, this giving me the appellation by which thou may address me, the name bestowed upon me by the mighty Rama; my eyes are sapphires, blue as the waters of the Ganges, the color of the tears shed from the eyes of a lover who has lost his beloved; my flesh is of the color of mourning, of the very bones upon which life is stretched and sewn; in demeanor am I as the malevolent preta, fickle, as one for whom no shraddha has been uttered, no propitiation performed. I have many faces, many countenances, and I am possessed of the mastery of the control of mana of all kinds, and of the divers astras, the boons granted to me by the Lord Vishnu, I having attained these things; it is mine to select and determine the manner in which I am become the avatar of the Western Hordes, they who esteem not the cycles of the yuga and the kalpa, who coat their hair in ghee and partake of the meat of their kine; and yet, I, when I regard the Brahma, O traveler, and it is made clear to me the depths of time within which the Lord Mahavishnu blinks his eye or draws his breath—lo, for the sake of the endless lifetimes of the Brahma, in their 3,003 savanas, yea, for their sake do I and will I assume the visage of Amili. For the sake of the turning of the great chakra, the chakra that determines the way of all flesh, and of the empires under the charges of the rajas and the maharajas above them and of the suras and asuras above even them; and for the sake of the counts of years, those salad days of the Brahma and the days of his prime and his decay, his union with the way of all things; for these things, O thou who are made to hear and understand my voice, for these very things am I become the avatar of Amili. O traveler, should the knowledge of Amili be unknown to thee, yea, depart from my sight, move me not to anger with the stink and the stench of thee—thou art as he who sheds the blood of an insect, the repudiation of the moksha, the spit spat into the eye of the Lord Mahavishnu.