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

[Nachtswalbe]

io sta leie une libre sobre une xudade platonike en skotlandia i su sistema de gobierne basa de ::la republika:: de n::platon::n. por ehemple hente de gardia no usa nombre i tode garda solo usa numere en lugar de nombre aktual

le xudade nesisita tode hente de xudade partisipa en sexon seksual par tode semane i remplasa relihion kon su pilosopie.
tode potographie es proibi komo une simbole de kulta de indibidual.

ai es la linke:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006C ... =1&depth=1

sta rebiste es en nuebe espaniol
tode nombre es enkasa en n:: ::n

[xxx]

an other word is possible....


(NSFW inside...)

[Travis B.]

an other word is possible....

You should have noted that that's a tad NSFW...

[xxx]

the criteria being very national, I let YT manage this kind of thing ....

[Travis B.]

the criteria being very national, I let YT manage this kind of thing ....

It's called I, and likely many others here, use the ZBB at work. You could have the common courtesy to mark stuff like that as NSFW rather than relying on some other site (YT) to (not) moderate it for you (as YouTube has no way of knowing whether you are viewing it from work or not).

[xxx]

in my country it is generally not allowed to use the internet during working hours for non-professional purposes... and here youtube although very watchful did not classify this video hence my lack of indication...
(and I don't see anything special about it either)
sorry to have embarrassed you...

[Travis B.]

in my country it is generally not allowed to use the internet during working hours for non-professional purposes... and here youtube although very watchful did not classify this video hence my lack of indication...
(and I don't see anything special about it either)
sorry to have embarrassed you...

I am not embarrassed - I did not view that at work, BTW - but I wish you would have been a little more conscientious about marking NSFW content as NSFW as, after all, at least here in the US, people do use the Internet for personal purposes at work, and the text of the post provided little clue as to the link's actual content.

[Nachtswalbe]

"The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Lojban"
More LOJBAN
TABGAPCI

[Travis B.]

"The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Lojban"
More LOJBAN
TABGAPCI

The music in Lojban is definitely impressive. I should note, though, that with the first song it was hard to not be distracted by the cute...

[rotting bones]

https://youtu.be/WCAF3PNEc_c
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPH7 ... Km9u8g5yic

[rotting bones]

Sorry, yet another classic Bengali song: https://youtu.be/bfOAihK7heg

Edit: A classic video game opening sequence: https://youtu.be/7H5pYCw4ET4

[Travis B.]

Glory by KMFDM
Lust by KMFDM

[xxx]

real mujer inside...

[xxx]

all our moments are snowflakes that we try to catch one by one, by words...
not to lose them in the flow of time...
until the numbness that slowly takes us...
then, finally, it is time to die...

[Raphael]

I think I've now read most of those parts of zompist's Middle East Construction Kit that I'm interested in reading for now - I'm not that much into languages, and I've skipped a lot of the history.

All in all, a great book! It's an interesting choice to put the section on literature before the section on history, but, IMO, a good one - a quick way to grab the attention of those readers who might not be that much interested in history.

It is a bit baffling that there's such a long part on Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic Judaism - not only is that outside the scope of the rest of the book, it also means that the lion's share of the religion section is given to a religion that was, after all, fairly minor at the time.

In that context, I don't really see why the Four Sources theory of how the Torah was written is treated as - pardon the anachronistic pun - Gospel truth; after all, it's just one, highly speculative, idea about the origins of those books.

And I'm a bit disappointed that Scott's Against the Grain is treated as so authoritative, since IMO its main idea doesn't really pass the smell test. As Ares Land wrote earlier in this thread:

There are no states in mountains area? You can't support a state with tubers? Tax is necessarily in grain? Dude, have you ever heard about that little-known, tiny polity called the Inca Empire?

But I shouldn't be so negative. It's a lively, engaging treatment of a lot of stuff that's all too often told in very dry ways!

[Ares Land]

I am still a little unconvinced by James C. Scott. But fair is fair, and I have to say I was wrong about the potatoes

The preferred form of taxation in the Andes was corvée labor (and not, say, tax in grains.) But I learned recently that the Incas in fact, did encourage maize farming. There were religious undertones, but the underlying reason might very well be that grain farmers are easier to tax and control.

I believe Judaism is relevant because it's our best window into the times; Judaism was minor but not, I think, atypical in the area. (You get a real sense of how people in the ancient Middle East thought from the Bible. I'm told parts of the Old Testament read just like contemporary Assyrian treaties, for instance.)

[do_shahbaz]

Currently reading Akunin's Azazel (alas, in English translation -- one christened by its publishers The Winter Queen -- for my Russian is nowhere fluent enough to read a book). Hoping to read the Fandorin series all the way through!

[zompist]

All in all, a great book! It's an interesting choice to put the section on literature before the section on history, but, IMO, a good one - a quick way to grab the attention of those readers who might not be that much interested in history.

Glad you liked it!

It is a bit baffling that there's such a long part on Hellenistic and post-Hellenistic Judaism - not only is that outside the scope of the rest of the book, it also means that the lion's share of the religion section is given to a religion that was, after all, fairly minor at the time.

I know it's a little weird, but it's weird because the world is. As I said in the intro, half the world now follows religions derived from that "fairly minor" religion. And to stop the story with the writing of the Tanakh would be to continue the long and troublesome tradition of treating Judaism as nothing but a precursor to Christianity.

Plus, historians still focus a lot on the Bible because it's a heaping pile of evidence. If only the Persians or Assyrians had been that eager to record their history and beliefs!

[Rounin Ryuuji]

People seem most keen to preserve their culture when they perceive it as threatened, so I can see why the people of ancient Israel would be more keen to than those of Persia (though if the Persians had been fonder of writing, and at earlier stages, it would certainly have been an interesting window into the development of that branch of Indo-European, too).

[Travis B.]

People seem most keen to preserve their culture when they perceive it as threatened, so I can see why the people of ancient Israel would be more keen to than those of Persia (though if the Persians had been fonder of writing, and at earlier stages, it would certainly have been an interesting window into the development of that branch of Indo-European, too).

IIRC that was the whole motivation behind the writing of the Mishnah, that it was feared that the Oral Torah would be forgotten so it was deemed necessary to write it down.