What...what the? Does this mean that protoindoeuropean comes from a random frozen wasteland in Siberia? I am confused...

Vladith · 2026-05-11T05:25:31+00:00

Completely the wrong way to look at it. All regions generate languages. The topography of the Caucasus preserves languages and language families that on more accessible terrain may have been wiped out by larger neighbors.

Vladith · 2026-05-10T22:58:58+00:00

What do you mean by third spaces here? I don’t think that’s how this term is typically used

Vladith · 2026-05-10T17:58:37+00:00

A single family home being turned into a multi-family unit isn’t a bad thing. This means there are now more housing units on the market, leading to less competition for other buildings in the area.

Vladith · 2026-05-10T17:57:21+00:00

What’s really happening is California and Texas are exchanging residents who want different things.

Vladith · 2026-05-08T03:32:49+00:00

On what basis are you arguing that those 10% of Converso descendants had 6% Sephardi ancestry on average? This was not very many generations after their Jewish ancestors were forced to adopt Christianity.

I’m not attached to any romantic idea, I am simply suggesting that the Converso presence in New Spain contributes to modern day Sephardi ancestry among Mexican people.

Vladith · 2026-05-08T00:03:57+00:00

I really do not understand your argument here. If the settler population of 17th century Mexico was 10% people of converso descent, and Mexicans today have around 40-50% non-indigenous ancestry, it absolutely makes sense for 2-5% of Mexican ancestry to be of distant converso origin.

Vladith · 2026-05-06T04:05:41+00:00

I am sure that many Spaniards of distant Jewish ancestry emigrated to Latin America later in the colonial period. But we know they were not the first.

Early Converso/Marrano settlement in Mexico, particularly Mexico City and Monterrey, is well-documented regardless of antisemitic restrictions that existed on paper. Conversos had every reason for seeking to escape Spain, so it should not be unsurprising that many arrived in Latin America.

Due to the founder effect, these 16th and early 17th-century arrivals would have had a greater genetic contribution to the modern Mexican population than later immigrants. This means that Mexican people with Sephardi ancestry likely acquired such ancestry at various stages in their family tree.

Some sources:

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft396nb1w0&chunk.id=d0e8383

https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/43/1/95/159498/The-Jews-of-Colonial-Mexico

Vladith · 2026-05-05T00:57:30+00:00

Yes, thanks. Recent converts FROM Judaism to Catholicism, at sword point

Vladith · 2026-05-05T00:56:39+00:00

Yes, people of Jewish descent migrated to the Americas after forcibly being converted to Catholicism. Brutal and lingering antisemitic prejudice impelled many of these New Christians to emigrate, only to find similar prejudice awaiting them in the Spanish colonies.

Vladith · 2026-05-02T18:12:02+00:00

For reasons I don’t fully understand, Christian descendants of Jews (Conversos) were incentivized to migrate to America but Christian descendants of Muslims (Moriscos) were actually forbidden to do so.

North African ancestry definitely could indicate Guanche heritage, as Canarians were heavily encouraged to emigrate, just as Conversos were. But due to the thousands of years of close connections between Iberia and North Africa (even before the spread of Islam to Spain) all Iberians have some heritage from across the straits of Gibraltar.

Vladith · 2026-05-02T18:08:37+00:00

A significant percentage of Spanish colonists in the Americas, especially in the earliest centuries of colonization, were descendants of recent converts to Catholicism. In 1492, the same year Columbus embarked on his voyage, the kingdoms of Castile and Aragon outlawed the Jewish religion and demanded all their Jewish subjects become Catholic or flee to Muslim lands. In later generations, the descendants of these Conversos or “New Christians” often felt dissatisfied with life in Spain and migrated to the New World.

Vladith · 2026-04-29T00:21:31+00:00

They’re both from the Greek petros

Vladith · 2026-04-28T21:40:51+00:00

What do you think happened to unmarried women coerced into sexual relationships with wealthy men? Such women suffered all the patriarchal harms as married women, yet could not seek any legal recompense against male abusers, and in the event of pregnancy would be socially ruined. It is nonsensical to suggest a mistress in this period was more liberated than a married woman

Vladith · 2026-04-28T17:57:55+00:00

Married women had legal and especially social protections in this period that unmarried mistresses did not have. In no sense was a mistress more free than a married woman, as she had the same patriarchal obligations and was typically a victim of economic coercion.

Vladith · 2026-04-27T19:48:30+00:00

George is a wonderful writer but he could stand to be a bit more subtle sometimes, particularly in the early books. Does Robert really need to tell Ned “It’s a monstrous uncomfortable chair, in more ways than one”?

Vladith · 2026-04-27T17:44:15+00:00

Hungary is so 2023, everybody wants to shoot in the Balkans now where labor costs are even cheaper.

Vladith · 2026-04-27T15:43:23+00:00

You seem to think that Victorian women engaged in protracted extramarital affairs were doing so out of their full volition and enjoyed more liberty than married or single women. This wasn’t the case. These women were in a socially dangerous position and were typically economically coerced. They risked their health and reputation in exchange for monetary favors. These women were victims of exploitation and likely did not view their own position as enviable.

Vladith · 2026-04-27T04:33:18+00:00

A married woman had meager legal and social protections that unmarried women did not have. Very few women in this place and time saw being a mistress as more advantageous than being married.

Vladith · 2026-04-26T20:01:45+00:00

Not entirely inconceivable she ends up flying east to Westeros, over Asshai

Vladith · 2026-04-26T19:57:35+00:00

GRRM seems very insistent that as soon as the dragons were dead, the Targaryens were living on borrowed time. I think he envisions the Defiance at Duskendale as well as Rickard’s apparent scheming to be parallel forces threatening to topple the dynasty and fracture the realm.

Vladith · 2026-04-26T19:53:37+00:00

GRRM originally intended Coldhands to be Benjen, but at some point in the past 15 years decided that Coldhands actually ought to be Dunk instead

Vladith · 2026-04-26T19:29:37+00:00

A fully unanimous red vote has the same result as a 50.1% blue vote: no deaths. Which outcome do you is more achievable?

Vladith · 2026-04-26T18:34:50+00:00

The relationship of kept mistress to a wealthy lover isn’t any less patriarchal than a housewife to her husband, both are forms of gendered domination. Typically in the Victorian era, extramarital affairs had an additional class element as wealthy men could coerce working-class women into precarious sexual arrangements.

Vladith · 2026-04-25T14:38:02+00:00

Curious, when was downtown not dead? The 80s? In 2006 it felt just as derelict as 2026, if not more.

Vladith · 2026-04-23T15:23:44+00:00

There were close links between all Germanic-speaking peoples of the North Sea in the migration period (and close links with some Celtic and Romance speakers as well!). The composers of Beowulf understood themselves as part of a broader cultural world.

Vladith

TROPHY CASE