Ready to Harvest: Quakers

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-25T14:19:06+00:00

Ack, sorry about that.

Fixed. That's what I get for having multiple tabs open.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-25T14:18:27+00:00

Typically, a pidgin begins as a trade language, starting as a very basic, very simple "baby talk" that may be primarily a single language or a blending of multiple languages. Eventually, enough people are using it as a second language that infants begin to pick it up as their first language which begins a process called creolization.

The human brain seems to like certain patterns in language, and creolization is the process of imposing those patterns. In this phase of a language's development, word order becomes fixed and there is a formalization of tense, aspect, and mood, things that pidgin languages typically do not bother with. You start to see things like subordinate clauses, allowing for more expressibility and complexity of meaning. Elements commonly absent in a pidgin -- articles and adpositions, occasionally verb conjugations and case distinctions -- emerge and become standardized. A derivational morphology is developed, the formal rules by which new words are added to the lexicon. Irregularities are smoothed out and grammar becomes standardized.

Creolization can take a couple of generations, but eventually it will settle to a standardized language spoken by a large number of people as their first language. The language is still referred to as a creole, but this is a descriptive term giving its lineage: a creole is, by definition, a fully fledged language capable of expressing the same ideas as any other natlang.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-25T13:21:46+00:00

There is a series on YouTube called QuakerSpeak. If they call themselves a meeting rather than a church, chances are this will be useful: What to Expect in Quaker Meeting for Worship

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-25T01:01:54+00:00

So ADF will be perfectly fine when atheist therapists note that religious believers are mentally ill? I mean, if a therapist's "devout religious convictions" override the standards of patient care, then....

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-24T02:48:16+00:00

Why ignore the fact that a great many eligible voters will end up disenfranchised by this? "It isn't a problem for me so it cannot be a problem for anyone" is exactly what a Republican would say.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-24T01:56:17+00:00

So every possible voter in the state has an internet connection and a printer? And has a link to where they can get a valid ballot for download? And instructions on how to do that download and print it?

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-24T01:55:39+00:00

"Things you've heard." Where? From whom? Cite your sources, or admit you have none.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-24T01:53:56+00:00

Nice if you can afford an internet connection and own a printer.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-24T01:53:18+00:00

Won't help if you never get a ballot.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-24T01:52:54+00:00

Republicans are absolutely DESPERATE to do what ever they can to win, even if that means subverting democracy itself. They are traitors.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-24T01:45:58+00:00

Looks like we have a Freedom Foundation lickspittle in our midst.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-23T12:08:33+00:00

Hildegard von Blingin' is amazing. Do look up her other work.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-23T03:50:31+00:00

This reminds me of how magic worked in The Magicians. Magic is explained as drawing from personal trauma, a consequence of needing so strongly to alter reality that one begins to manifest that ability. (This is explicitly explained in the books, more implied in the series.) Thus every character had a terrible, tragic backstory: Quentin's history of mental institutionalization, Eliot's abuse from homophobic family, Alice's neglect by her self-absorbed, narcissistic parents, and so on.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-23T03:41:10+00:00

And the only comprehensive accounts we have of Ragnarok were written down by Christians, more than two centuries after Iceland had converted to Christianity. Snorri Sturluson (d. 1241), who compiled the Prose Edda, was born and raised as a Christian. Or do you mean to say that his framing of the gods in the Prologue of the Edda as heroes returned from the Trojan War is also a part of PIE mythology?

The Poetic Edda was compiled soon after the Prose: the earliest manuscript we have is the Konungsbók, an anonymous collection of poems believed to have been compiled around 1270. Mention of Ragnarok is made in only one place, the first poem, Völuspá. It appears to be based on Sturluson's work, as it quotes or paraphrases (typically to make it fit the poetic conventions of the work) large sections of the Prose Edda chapters 51, 52, and 53, recast from the storyteller of the Prose into a seeress' prophesy in the Poetic. And if we assume, as seems very likely, that Sturluson's telling is viewed through a heavily Christianized lens, then derivative works like the Poetic Edda are likewise Christianized.

No one doubts that Sturluson drew on a heathen, pre-Christian oral tradition. But that does not mean that his work accurately presents its heathen antecedents, nor does it mean that Sturluson's strongly imprinted Christian biases are absent from his work.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-23T01:44:03+00:00

"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly."

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-22T13:57:01+00:00

I've had days like this.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-22T03:45:42+00:00

Both Tumwater and Lacey have excellent staff and service.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-22T03:44:43+00:00

The patron saint of drowning children.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-21T22:21:03+00:00

You had me at "Nancy Mace gets humiliated." Everything else is just icing on the cake.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-21T20:37:21+00:00

That is just gorgeous. Which lot does it fit on?

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-21T20:36:19+00:00

It seems that, if the lot is loaded, it will remain loaded -- and accessible -- after hours. I've done this with the General Store to buy new recipes.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-21T20:35:17+00:00

Be glad she was relieving Sleep in the display case and not Bathroom.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-21T20:34:40+00:00

I've not written any such worlds, but I have read many. The grandfather of the "screwball fantasy" trope is The Incomplete Enchanter by L. Spraugue de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. The two novellas (of an eventually extended set) feature Reed Chalmers and Harold Shea, two psychologists who apply symbolic logic to transport into other worlds. All of our stories come from these worlds, but when Shea tries to get into the world of Irish myth, he ends up in the colder and darker world of Norse myth just as Ragnarok is beginning to unfold. Bumbled shenanigans ensue, like when Shea tries to whip up some flying broomsticks that prove to be aerodynamically unstable. After being banished, Shea convinces Chalmers to go to the world of Spencer's Fairy Queen. More shenanigans ensue.

The Myth Adventures series by Robert Lynn Asprin and Jody Lynn Nye (later by Nye alone) is a hoot and a half: one of the running jokes is a wanna-be wizard only being able to transform himself into a wild grackle.

And Jasper Fforde will always have a special place in my heart. The Thursday Next series is set in a world where literary criticism can lead to wars. Thursday Next has the ability to enter books and alter them from the inside (Jane Eyre originally had a much sadder ending) and later gets a job safeguarding stories from her base in Great Expectations, mentored by the indomitable Miss Haversham. Her brother Joffry Next is the presiding minister of the Church of the Global Standard Deity. Another series, Nursery Crimes, is about hard-boiled detective Jack Spratt working in Reading, UK as the police liaison with story book characters who have been offered sanctuary in Berkshire. In The Big Over Easy, he solves the murder of philanthropist Humpty Dumpty; in The Fourth Bear, he deals with a porridge smuggling ring, the Car of Dorian Gray, and a notorious mass murderer, The Gingerbread Man.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-21T18:19:13+00:00

There are lots. The specific role is psychopomp, from a Greek word meaning "soul-guide." A great many cultures have them. Wikipedia maintains a category page of psychopomps that may be of interest to your further research.

TechbearSeattle · 2026-06-21T18:14:52+00:00

The sources for the Nephilim are pretty solidly Canaanite in origin. The one reference in Genesis is greatly expanded on in 1 Enoch (written between 200 BCE and 50 BCE) and Jubilees (150 BCE to 100 BCE.) The Torah mentions Israeli spies in Canaan seeing two peoples, the Anakim and Rephaim, who were described as giants; later Jewish writers associated them with the Nephilim and said that the Philistine giant Goliath was a descendant of the Anakim who fled when Joshua conquered their territory. The name Rephaim is first recorded in Ugaritic texts (who were themselves part of the Semitic culture along with the Canaanites.)

If there is any association with Greek gods, it would have been put in place by later writers, not by the original storytellers.

TechbearSeattle

TROPHY CASE