Wololo

I like cephalopods and I vote.

[galileosballs]

"You should, to the best of your ability, attempt to pronounce person and place names like the people or locals tell you they should"

(nodding)

"Including the University of Notre Dame"

(slight eye twitch, pause, nodding)

[andmaybegayer]

see also: San Luis Obispo

[eightyonekilograms]

Featherstonhaugh

[kiragecko]

It's Spiders Georg! I've translated it into Angkorian Khmer, the language of Cambodia from 802-1351 AD. Because I like doing stuff like that ;)

You read the black consonants first, then the blue consonants, than the purple vowels. If there's no written vowel, use an 'a'. Magenta is punctuation - a dingbat marking the start, periods, and then a stronger period that tells you the paragraph/section is finished.

Here's what it says!

The original:

reallyreallytrying Jan 8, 2013 “average person eats 3 spiders a year” factoid actualy just statistical error. average person eats 0 spiders per year. Spiders Georg, who lives in cave & eats over 10,000 each day, is an outlier adn should not have been counted

Transliterated into Latin characters:

1935¹ śaka, ekādaśi roc mārggaśira, 'aṅgāravāra, nu rilirilitroyiṅ kathā: Neḥh ’ālakṣaṇa kathā: ’nak cya pīṅ pi pratisaṃvatsara, toy vyat vakra saṃkhyā. ’Nak cya pīṅ śūnya pratisaṃvatsara. Nau ru Jaṃrau Pīṅ, ’nau guhā cya daśasahasra pratidina, ga te krau daṃnuk ta caṅvāt ti mān ban dāṃ ta kāñ.

More detail under the cut!

How it’s spelled:

1-9-20-10-5 ś-k e-kā-d-śi ro-c|mā-ʳgg-śi-r ʔ-ṅgā-r-vā-r nu ri-li-ri-li-tro-yi-ṅ|k-tʰā neḥ- h|ʔā-l-kṣ-ṇ k-tʰā ʔn-kˣ cy pi-ṅ|pi pr-ti-sṃ- v-ts-r to-yˣ vy-t|v-kr sṃ-kʰyā . ʔn-kˣ cy pi-ṅ|śū-ny pr-ti-sṃ-v-ts-r . nau ru jṃ-rau pi- ṅˣ ʔnau gu-hā cy d-ś-s-h-sr pr-ti-di- n g te krau dṃ-nu-k|t c-ṅvā-t|ti mā-n|b-n|dāṃ t kā-ñ .

How it’a pronounced (rough guess):

ɓɲcə-tɾi.niː-nɔ.βə-ʔɛ.kaː sɔk ʔɛ.kaː.dɔ.siː ɾoːc maːɾ.gə.sir, ʔŋgaː.ɾa.βaːɾ, nʊ riː.liː.riː.liː.tɾoː.jiŋ kə.thaː, neːh ʔaː.lɑk kə.thaː, ʔnɑk ciə pɪŋ piː pɾtɪ.smuət, tɔj βiːət βɑk sŋkʰia. ʔnɑk ciə pɪŋ suːn pɾtɪ.smuət. nɤʋ ɾɯːʋ ɟmɾaʋ pɪŋ, ʔnɤʋ gu.haː ciə dɔh.sɔ.hɑh pɾɗɪ.dɪn - gɔː ɗeː kɾɤʋ dmnʊk ɗɔː cŋuat ɗiː maːn βɔn daːm ɗɔː kaːɲ

Translated:

1-9-20-10-5 °śaka.year², °1-10 waning.moon °deer.head.month, °Mars.day, on.this.day Reallyreallytrying °say: this °instruction °say: person eat spider³ 3 °yearly, because.of really °mistake/falsehood °calculation. person eat spider °0/empty⁴ °yearly. [topic]⁵ [topic] gorge⁶ spider, reside °cave eat °10-1,000 °daily, they⁷ [particle]⁷ outside collection/set [particle] boundaries [passive] not [perfective] suffer [particle] count

Meaning:

1935th Śaka year, 11 day of the waning moon of the month Mārggaśira, Tuesday. On this day, Reallyreallytrying said: This, the instruction which says “People eat 3 spiders yearly” is really because of a calculation mistake. People eat zero spiders every year. Of Spiders Georg - who lives in a cave and eats 10,000 daily - he is outside the boundaries of the set and should not have been counted.

¹ The Angkorian Khmer used a different calendar than we do, called the Śaka Saṃvat, or Shaka Era. It starts in year 78 of the Christian Era, so 2013 AD lines up with 1935 Śaka.

² The Khmer has a large number of Sanskrit/Pali words, similar to how English has a lot of Latin/French. These loans are marked with a degree symbol ( ° ). I decided to use very formal language here, so there's a lot of loans.

³ ‘pīṅ’ is a Modern Khmer word (or at least a component of several modern names) for spiders. My Angkorian dictionaries didn’t have a term, and this one has cognates in several related languages, so I decided it was my best bet.

⁴ I'm not certain that zero could be used in this way at the time. They were definitely using 0 in large numbers, but actually treating it LIKE a number is usually a later development.

⁵ Translations in brackets mean that the word has no direct translation. The best I can do is say the function they serve in the sentence.

⁶ I think I'm funny.

⁷ Angkorian Khmer doesn't have a word for 'and' - you can just put things side by side. I've chosen to move the 'e' in 'ge ta' so that it reads 'ga te' to replicated the original misspelling.

And here are some (undescribed) old guides to reading Angkorian Khmer. They're written in a slightly different style - especially visible in the 'ñ' - but might still help if you're interested!

[kiragecko]

kastrakomnenes this may be one of the most interesting posts I've ever seen. What got you into Angkorian Khmer specifically?

Thank you!

I'm interested in cultural history and I love the First Millenium AD/Early Medieval period. I got really into Heian Japanese fashion, and then was looking at other cultures that existed around the world during the same period. Sometimes it was the fashion that grabbed me. Sometimes the architecture. And sometimes it was the script or language. Angkor has all three!

I find the script (characters used to write) to be gorgeous, and the grammar is similar enough to English that I can wrap my head around it. (Very little inflection!) I am endlessly fascinated by how people take scripts that do NOT work for their language, and smash them with hammers until they do - the way the Irish use Latin to communicate consonantal sounds, how English uses it to communicate vowel sounds, how Angkorian Khmer uses Braḥmi to communicate consonant clusters, etc.

There's a large enough surviving corpus (enough things with writing on them), and enough of it's online (even if the scan quality can be unbelievably bad) that I can really sink my teeth into it. There are enough grammars from India during the same period that we've got a good understanding of how Sanskrit/Pali works, and studying the differences between Indian and Khmer Sanskrit/Pali is really, really neat! Plus, Angkorian Khmer works COMPLETELY differently, so seeing how they incorporated all the Sanskrit loanwords into non-Sanskrit texts is even MORE interesting!

But mostly, I love the curves. I love how the characters stack. I love how the 'e' diacritic comes before the main letter and I always forget to leave space for it and then want to have a tantrum. I love that the last black character on that text I wrote becomes a spiral later on in history. Becomes half as wide, loses all those weird bits that look like diacritics but aren't, and just becomes a spiral.

It's a REALLY satisfying script and language!

[tranthony]

grout white shark

[dogpuppy]

[taykoutmccleod]

I don't fucking want it then?

[the-prophesied-disco-gay]

A friend stopped by

[reptiliannastyboy]

psychopomp

[femmenietzsche]

[no-sharks-on-the-sun]

[inatherps]

Nile Monitor (Varanus niloticus)

Observed by saskia_thomas, CC BY-NC

[fyrenwater]

@ominous-signs

[ominous-signs]

Official ominous sign

[riseofthecommonwoodpile]

a lot of people don’t tell you this when you’re starting to remodel your own home but occasionally under the floorboards you’ll find the entrance to an unimaginably sprawling and vast complex of underground lakes connected to each other through intricate networks of tunnels where suburbanite mermaids have set up mermaid strip malls with mermaid verizon, mermaid driving school, the mermaid liquor store, and so on. and many people will think this is a plumbing issue, but it’s actually a zoning problem

[captain-price-returns]

[quasi-normalcy]

I don't understand how this is even a defence in the age of drone warfare.

[graham-folger]

Or even like... Cannon warfare.

[quasi-normalcy]

Yeah, the Ottomans could have taken this in the fourteenth century.

[viralfrog]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

Parking garage sign.

[nihilpersona]

Bionicle Anomalocaris V.2

[tubapun]

Everybody was Sun Tzu Fighting (Riff Designed to Piss Off Your Enemies of Choleric Temperament)

[tubapun]

Visit Original Link

[tattahitotsunosaetayarikata-dea]

my upward spiral

[a-book-of-creatures]

tornado 🌪

[apolladay]

cake

have the cake

eat the cake

(no nuance)

cake

have the cake

eat the cake

Voting ended onJul 12

(no nuance)

[mountainchickadeej]

[mapsontheweb]

Maximum PDF document size supported by Adobe Acrobat.

15 million inches by 15 million inches, to be precise.

by Udzu                                        

[galaxywarp]

Can’t stop thinking about this 236 mile long theoretical PDF. Talked about it on the phone with my friend earlier. PDF longer than the country of Belgium. Forbidden yet technically fully supported 236 mile long PDF. I’m obsessed.