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kottke_org_feedduskpetersonIf you want to see Emor at its best, visit its City Court in session.
Actually, if you are staying with an Emorian acquaintance, it's unlikely you'll be given any choice about this. Emorians assume that everyone in the world is as enthralled with their laws as they are. Thankfully, Emorians are right to be proud of their law system, founded centuries ago by their Chara and council. This law system, known simply as the Chara's law, is one of the bulwarks of civilization in the Three Lands.
The best way to visit a law court is to prepare yourself beforehand by listening to an Emorian explain their law system to you. Any Emorian will do; even Emorian ditch-diggers know a good deal about the law. Indeed, even Emorian women do.
The City Court is not terribly formal, by Emorian standards, and the rules for behavior will be explained to you beforehand by the guards at its door. Wear your best clothes and be on your best behavior; otherwise, you can relax and enjoy the spectacle.
On your way out, be sure to visit the adjoining Law Academy, founded by the City Court in order to give advanced lessons in the law. The Academy does not try to compete with the traditional Emorian methods of learning law: tutoring, apprenticeships, and playing law-based games when one is a boy. Rather, the Academy provides supplemental education for Emorians who plan to apply for high positions in the law, such as at the palace. Most of the Academy students are between the ages of eight and sixteen, though students as young as four are accepted, if they plan to apply for a youth post, such as scribing or paging. On the other end of the scale, a few students are full-grown men who, because of unfortunate circumstances, missed out on the normal training in the law that virtually all Emorian boys receive. In recent years, many of these students have been former slaves. The Academy welcomes them all, even going so far as to pay the fees of any students whose slave service left them penniless.
[Translator's note: Emorians' obsession with the law is on full display in Law Links.]
languagehat_feedTwo trivial but entertaining items:
1) Ian Frazier’s NYRB review (archived) of Common Phantoms: An American History of Psychic Science by Alicia Puglionesi, an account of the American Society for Psychical Research, includes this piquant bit:
The society also set up such Borgesian-sounding entities as the Committee on Phantasms and Presentiments, the Census of Hallucinations, and the Committee on Thought Transference.
Unfortunately, the archives of the ASPR turn out to be incredibly boring: “As the hours went by, Puglionesi found herself confronting a tedium requiring a ‘devotion to something beyond the self, something so vast that it can only be glimpsed through the labor of many human lifetimes.’”
2) Our old friend Conrad sent me this Guardian link with the comment that he “felt this was one for you”; after discussing the phenomenon of the apparently near-universal opinion in the UK that “Keir Starmer’s a wanker” (commonly sung at sporting events to the tune of the riff of the White Stripes’ 2003 “Seven Nation Army,” with which I was completely unfamiliar even though not only did it receive “widespread critical acclaim” but it is “arguably… the world’s most popular sports anthem” — I have to agree that the riff is catchy as hell), Jonathan Liew provides a semantic analysis that makes it Hattic material:
Let’s start with the word choice, which feels subtly telling in this case. If Boris Johnson was, as the darts crowd sang in late 2021 at the height of the Partygate scandal, a “cunt”, then somehow calling Starmer a “wanker” is altogether more piteously dismissive – insinuating not just degeneracy but a kind of bashful cowardice. The first word imputes a straightforward roguishness, perhaps even a grudging regard; the wanker, by contrast, is essentially beneath contempt.
Thanks, Conrad!
kottke_org_feedThere’s a guy named Orion who surfs the St Lawrence River in the winter, sometimes dodging massive chunks of ice and sometimes riding them downstream, looking for waves. If you’ve ever been in Montreal near the river, even in the summer, you know how scary the water looks — churning & choppy with many eddies; I’m gobsmacked that someone goes out in that in freezing temperatures. The footage in this short film is incredible, otherworldly.
cosmolinguistMy counselor always starts with asking me how my week has been, since we last talked.
On every level, it has been A Lot.
But it was actually really good to talk about it all: on the macro level of course Minneapolis, my friends there and seeing fascism happen in places familiar to me, and then on the micro level angelofthenorth moving out, and just seeing her thriving after six months in our goofy lovely home.
I can't fix everything but I'm so glad to have the personal security needed to donate to mutual aid, to drag someone else out of a situation so similar to the one I needed saving from five years ago.
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snowflake_challengethemis1 posting in girlmeetstroublesixbeforelunch
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ysabetwordsmith kottke_org_feedcyphomandracandyheartsex and seasonsofdrabbles, and I've done Yuletide, but here are the others:Genesis and Sephiroth, after the incident in the training room.
“…rate of mako uptake and binding to DNA-linked receptors can be predicted via measurement of specific pharmacokinetic parameters (see table 1). In individuals with poor profiles (predicted uptake <5% of normal), toxicosis is common. Typically high dose oral has been used in this setting, but the failure rate remains unacceptably high. In this article I outline, with detailed case studies, three new methods of achieving effective levels without such shortcomings; rectal adminstration, externalisation of the large gut with mesenteric perfusion, and removal of at least 50% of dermis in conjunction with mako baths. Note is also made of the role of partially pre-metabolised mako sourced from high-mako individuals…”
from Overcoming mako toxicosis: a paradigm shift. Hojo et al. Research and Development, Shinra Electric Power Company.
[in submission]
Rufus wants to send a message.
Regular Maintenance (100 words) by CyphomandraCid gets some assistance with the Bronco - and offers some in return.
kottke_org_feedysabetwordsmith brithistorianToday I finally had sufficient time around lunchtime to try Cincinnati chili. I fixed it according to the article on "How to Eat Cincinnati Chili Like a Local" and then sat down to eat it. I didn't like the first bite. So I ate some more, hoping it would get better with further exposure. By the time I had eaten half of the serving, I gave up and decided I just didn't like it. So I disposed of it, brushed my teeth, then brushed my teeth again because I could still taste it in my mouth. I wish I liked it, because the concept sounded interesting, but I don't.
I think I might try eating "regular" chili on spaghetti, because it wasn't the "on spaghetti" part that I disliked, but in the meantime I'm over here eating peppermints one after another to try to clear the taste in my mouth. (I'm really not trying to be overly dramatic here. It's just very rare that I try something and don't like it, so I'm having trouble coping with it.)
spikedluv posting in smallfandom_nbsmallfandomfest for the prompt: Murder, She Wrote (tv)/Mistletoe Murders (tv), Jessica & Emily, Jessica stumbles upon a mystery while visiting Fletcher's Grove (for reason of creator's choosing).kottke_org_feedThe main point of Adam Bonica’s post The Wall Looks Permanent Until It Falls is about the optimism of this moment: that the US could be ripe for a Berlin Wall-falling moment that opens the door for a better future. I’m not in the mood for that message these days (IMO, our Wall-falling is a ways off in the future), but Bonica’s analysis of how the US compares to 30 other wealthy democracies, our economic peers, is important.
Start with work and economic life. Americans work longer hours, pay more out-of-pocket for college and childcare, lack parental leave, and enjoy less economic mobility. The share of income going to the top 1 percent is nearly double the OECD average. American CEOs earn, on average, 354 times as much as their workers. More workers are trapped in poverty-wage jobs. Collective bargaining covers fewer workers. And social protections are less generous for those who fall on hard times, with the government raising less in taxes and spending more on the military.
The economy is just the beginning.
We spend nearly twice as much on healthcare as other wealthy countries do. Yet life expectancy is well below average, infant and maternal mortality rates are alarmingly high, and more Americans remain uninsured.
We suffer from overlapping public health crises — the highest rates of teenage births, drug overdoses, obesity, and gun deaths among peer nations.
His description of our unique exceptionalism goes on for several more paragraphs. But then he does something quite simple and revealing: he does the math and imagines, in concrete terms, what the US would be like if it were just an average country in its cohort. Bonica calls it “Latent America: the nation that would exist if our democracy functioned to serve the public rather than protect the already powerful”. Here’s part of his analysis:
I don’t think I’ve seen this analysis done in quite this way before. You should click through to see the whole graphic, but some of the other stats are:
And this is just if the US were an average nation. Imagine if the US took its exceptionalism seriously and tried to maximally improve the lives of its citizens & residents instead of generating, as Bonica puts it, “enormous prosperity while deliberately withholding it from those who need it most”.
Tags: Adam Bonica · crime · economics · healthcare · poverty · USA
nineweaving - Jumping the gunkottke_org_feed - How Will the Miracle Happen Today? “Kindness is like a breath. It...duskpeterson - FIC: The City Court and Law Academy (Tempestuous Tours)languagehat_feed - Phantasms and Wankers.kottke_org_feed - Montreal’s Ice Surfercosmolinguist - Taking stocktjs_whatnot in snowflake_challenge - The Challenge is Coming...themis1 in girlmeetstrouble - The Spy Who Loved Me - chapters 12 & 13sixbeforelunch - snowflake day 6: top tenysabetwordsmith - Early Humansysabetwordsmith - Snowflake Challengeysabetwordsmith - Space Explorationkottke_org_feed - Thoughtful lessons from a Google software engineer. “The punchline isn’t ‘never incyphomandra - Writing updatekottke_org_feed - Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about this 2015 observation on Tumblr...ysabetwordsmith - Birdfeedingbrithistorian - Update: Cincinnati chilispikedluv in smallfandom_nb - Fic: Murder, She Wrote/Mistletoe Murders: M is for Murder (Jessica & Emily; PG13)cathrowan - Arghkottke_org_feed - The America That Could Betimeasmymeasure
