The reality of English becoming the world's lingua franca will mean that people who are not native English speakers will also have a say on how the language is spoken.

From Wikipedia in "World Englishes"

When the number of bilingual English speakers, as it will likely be the case in this century, equals or outnumbers the ones in the "homelands" of English like the UK and the USA, they will soon start adapting the English language to their own worldviews and uses, and in fact they are already doing so, but they will do it with full confidence. For sure, speakers of "proper English" will complain, but what are they gonna do about it?

We will see some interesting developments in our lifetime.

It already has? India has the world's second largest number of English speakers already, far exceeding the UK and a little behind the US in first. Nigeria and Pakistan also have very large English speaking populations. This is only likely to increase as English offers social and economic mobility and becomes the defacto lingua franca for people with different mother tongues to speak to each other. Indian englishisms I really need the rest of the world to start with is prepone as the opposite of postpone.

Some tweets about Tyre (Sur), Lebanon because you should know this and not because a city needs to be thousands of years old and a UNESCO heritage site to not be targeted by a settler colony of numbered days that's trying to expand

Ink stone in the form of a turtle, China, 6th-7th century

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art

socks used to cheat on civil service exams, Qing Dynasty China

Video by curiosaire.vlc (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter) about the Valencian tradition of mocadorada or mocadorà on October 9th, day of love 🍈🥕🍉🍅🍆🫑🥔🥒

In the last years, the tradition of Saint Valentine's Day (a tradition from the USA to celebrate love giving chocolates) has arrived to our country too, pushed by the shops trying to sell more things. But here it's a root-less Americanizing tradition that is only celebrated by the shop chains and whose only purpose is making us feel like we need to buy things from shop chains, even though there are increasingly more young people who celebrate it. That's why there's that little joke about it in the video.

English transcription under the cut.

Qulla dancer, from Argentina, by Eric Lafforgue

Mia Tarney Libretto Tulip II, oil on linen . 2008

YOOOOOOO

Almost 200 killed and over 700 injured today after Israel’s attacks in Lebanon. Nearly 400 air strikes in only a few hours with more expected to come.

It has risen to almost 300 killed now, 60 of which are women and children

The air strikes now number 800. The Lebanese University has been targetted as well. Students have been killed.

Hello, quick question. What the fuck

"Santorini: The local department of the National Conservatory has shut down - It will be converted to an Airbnb"

If you ever ever travel to Greece, one plea: DON'T stay to an Airbnb. They are destroying the country. Trust me. If you want the good of the country and its people, go to a hotel, maybe ideally a small business boutique hotel but any hotel is more ethical than an Airbnb at this point.

More on this, Santorini's National Conservatory was used to teach 100 students in music and musical instruments. It aided students with motor skills and employed many music teachers. The owner decided to convert the building into an Airbnb for profit, since they weren't making as much when it was used for education. This threw out the education of 100 students, which may not sound like a lot, but on a small island like Santorini, that is detrimental. Hyper-tourism is a serious problem in Greece, and if you can avoid it by not using Airbnbs, please do.

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Sources (general news articles):

Santorini - National Conservatory will become an Airbnb

Santorini - Everything for tourists - National Conservatory closed; will become an Airbnb

Santorini - They evicted 100 students of the National Conservatory to make it an Airbnb

This is so important.

Not only in Greece Airbnb is a big problem, it's everywhere. I live in a very touristic country and it's incredibly sad seeing the news all the time about people losing their homes because other people buy them and turn them into tourists apartments.

The "tourists go home" movement in Spain is not because we hate the tourism, but because people who come here use these touristic apartments and make people's lives impossible (alcohol, flights, constant screaming, etc).

I encourage you to travel, but do so ethically like this post states. Remember the country you're visiting is not for your amusement. People live there and they have the right to do so, and they're not gonna stop their whole routine just because you wanna spend a week there.

They fucking bombed Lebanon again. People were at a funeral for people killed yesterday. Uniquely evil.

I was confused thinking I must be reading reports over yesterdays act of terror. No they just bombed Lebanon again. Everyone injured and killed labeled Hezbollah by western media. Even if that were true, members of Hezbollah hold seats in places of Lebanon government.

People in the United States really don’t view people they see as Muslim and Arab as humans. So many people cheer for this senseless violence

14 killed, 450 injured in latest attack in Lebanon https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2024/9/18/israels-war-on-gaza-live-thousands-injured-in-lebanon-pager-explosions in addition to the attack that injured arouhd 4,000 yesterday alone

Brasília por René Burri

thinking about edvard munch's "The Sun" (1911)

like yeah thats how it feels. thats what it feels like to exist sometimes. he gets it

Also very big! Takes up two stories!

Pío Collivadino (Argentine, 1869–1945) - Una esquina de La Boca

Basquiat

Van Gogh

“Men in westeros have bastards too!”

This is such a no nuance take so allow me to just explain why it is:

Yeah, men did have bastards. However, they weren’t parading them at court, gaslighting people (and using the threat of mutilation) into believing they’re legitimate and putting them in the line of succession. In fact they wouldn’t even acknowledge them or just didn’t know they even existed. The one man who did acknowledge and legitimize every single one of his bastards, leading to 5 failed rebellions, is not remembered fondly in history (aegon the unworthy).

There’s also a common misconception that it’s ok for men to have bastards in Westeros but that isn’t true either. Cheating on your spouse was considered oathe breaking and having a bastard was considered shameful on both sides.

In westeros, women bare the heirs. Their virtue was important because if they had premarital relations or an extramarital affair, it would lead to their childs legitimacy being called into question and cause a succession crisis. Some of the major wars in asoiaf universe were due to bastards being passed off as legitimate.

There are so many practical reasons for why this was a big deal in medieval society in general, since they didn’t have dna testing to go off of. They had to go off their own eyes and what they heard. But lack of world building (writers fault) and lack of media literacy draws some to the shallow conclusion that it’s just because of misogyny.

This is why inserting modern ideals in a world based around medieval society and social practices (with a touch of fantasy) doesn’t work…

THIS.

I promise there were more people mad at Rhaenyra than just Alicent & the greens.

The precedent that would have been set (law or not) if Jace & Luke took their respective thrones would have done monumental damage to Westeros.

There’s no way in hell the other bastards weren’t doing to come forward & try to stake their claims. The Blackfyre rebellions literally tell us this!!! Rather it was Rhaenyra herself fighting or her sons, the dance still would’ve happened, in one way or another sooner or later.

In medieval England Royal bastards were often recognized and given titles if male. They could just not inherit the throne but often for the opportunity to start their own noble dynasty by being given a noble title. This is, interesting ly, something that GRRM on its altogether.

Well, not entirely in his own while got is mostly England inspired GRRM read other laws and in other parts of Europe it was absolutely like he describes. In Castille bastards have to be legitimized by the king or the count in charge to be considered into the main line just like in Westeros (if Ramsay for example is legitimate he can take the Bolton heritage same with the Great Bastards of Aegon the Unworthy). During the Castille Trastamara Civil War Juana, the heir designed by the king being illegitimate (Juana being daughter of Juan de Beltrán daughter and not the King Alphonse V, they claimed) was the basis for Isabel the Catholic Queen to take her niece throne (turn out Juana was legitimate btw). We have cases in Paris and Pays d'Oc of people taking their family to court and using time of conception, colouring among other proofs as arguments to claim bastardy and if they were convincing enough to the judges suceeding on getting the inheritance.

Also its more Renaissance than medieval but thwre was absolutely the same stigma against bastards in some regions of Italy (called hot blooded, prone to treason etc)

as newspapers today dont tend to hire children, a modern day Tintin would run a clickbait YouTube channel, except the clickbait is 100% real every single time

he starts off as an irritating conservative pundit at 14, meets Chang then leaves the think tank paying him and launches his own independent channel and blows up shortly after. Chang helps with video editing and managing his socials and they often chat on video calls between adventures. Haddock, his foster dad, has absolutely no knowledge of his earlier videos.