Packrat's Lair

An outlet for my random thoughts and occasional creative impulses. He/him. Friend of Jon the Atheist. Ask a wizard question, get a wizard answer

[puckgoodfaggot]

one day i'm going to make a post explaining how to use early modern english to y'all because i have seen too many people 1) calling it old english, and 2) wildly missing the mark with a Lot of confidence (to the point that someone took a pen and changed "shall" to "shalt" on a sign in a bookstore, which made it the incorrect conjugation of the verb for given subject!)

[puckgoodfaggot]

actually that day is today, with the caveat that i am not a linguist. i'm just an early modernist (specialized in english drama). and this is not an exhaustive course in early modern english! it is a bare bones intro to the basics. if you want to know more, read early modern works or do some googling.

what kind of english is that? let's look at some famous examples of each.

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, / þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, / hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. <- this is old english. note that it is unintelligible to a modern english speaker. (excerpt from beowulf)

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every holt and heeth / Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne / Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne … <- this is middle english. it is more intelligible, but it’s still very different from what we speak now. (excerpt from the canterbury tales)

Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. / Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? <- this is early modern english. this is so intelligible that we trust teenagers to read it in school. (excerpt from macbeth)

the english you are using to give a post a medieval or renaissance/shakespearean vibe is early modern english, not old english. (it's fine that you're using early modern english for a medieval vibe; no one expects you to learn middle english for a silly post about knights.)

how do you use pronouns?

'thou' is the informal second-person singular pronoun.

thou/thee/thy/thine

thou is the nominative form. you can use it for the subject of a sentence -> thou knowest me.

thee is the oblique form. you can use it for the object of a sentence -> i know thee.

thy and thine are the genitive forms. you can use them as possessive adjectives for nouns starting with consonants and vowels respectively. -> thy leg is broken. thine arm is broken too.

thine is also the possessive form. think about it like the word 'mine'*. -> my heart was once thine.

*'mine' is also used like thine as a possessive adjective in early modern english; you would say 'mine art' instead of 'my art'

ye and you

originally, 'ye' was the formal or plural nominitive second-person pronoun, and 'you' was the oblique form. so, it would be 'ye know me' and 'i know you'. 'ye' fell out of use and was replaced by 'you'. at that point it was already used as singular. but it was still much more formal than 'thou'.

the 'ye' you see in 'ye olde shoppe' stuff is not this pronoun. it is the way that printers who no longer had a thorn (þ) wrote the word 'the' (previously 'þe'). the 'y' in certain typefaces looked like a thorn, so we got 'ye' for 'the'.

how do you conjugate a verb?

you can't just slap a -th or -st onto the end of any verb. those are for specific conjugations. phrases like "i hath noticed" or "he thinkest that" are not grammatically sound. it's like saying "i has noticed" or "he think that".

the -st or -est ending is for (most) present and past tense verbs conjugated with 'thou'

some examples: thou canst, thou couldst, thou sayest, thou goest, thou wentest, thou hast, thou hadst, thou dost (or doest).

'thou' also has a few irregulars. some examples: thou wilt, thou art and thou wast (for 'to be'), thou shalt.

the -th or -eth ending is for (most) present and past tense conjugated with 'he', 'she', or 'it'

some examples: he hath, she sayeth, it doth, he goeth, she thinketh, it moveth

there are, of course, irregulars. the most important one is 'to be', which conjugates the same for this set as it does in modern english.

note: not every verb conjugates this way. for example, past tense verbs might use auxiliary verbs. so, not 'she cookedeth', but 'she did cook'.

by and large, the 'i', 'we', 'you' (or 'ye'), and 'they' conjugations were the same as they are today.

there were also some verbs that were used differently than we use them today, though (some of these fell out of use over the early modern period):

to be -> sometimes this verb is used instead of 'to have' as the auxiliary verb. 'i am arrived' means 'i have arrived', and 'she is come to see thee' means 'she has come to see you'.

to do -> sometimes this is used for the present progressive (i think that's the right name for it). 'he does speak' means 'he is speaking', and 'i do write' means 'i am writing'.

would -> this can be used to express a desire. 'i would i were a bird' means 'i wish i were a bird'

must -> this can be used without 'go' to mean 'must go'. 'i must to england' means 'i must go to england'

will -> this can be used without 'have' to mean 'will have'. 'you'll none of that' means 'you will have none of that'

there are a million other things i'm not covering, like different sentence structures for questions ('thinkest thou...?' as a valid alternative to 'dost thou think...?'), and different contractions ('she'll not' rather than 'she won't') but this post is long as fuck and i have things to do! enjoy! linguists, feel free to correct me on what name of tenses or declensions or whatever i have mixed up.

(psa: the point of this is not to be a kill-joy about other people's posts that have these errors. it's just a little knowledge sharing.)

[puckgoodfaggot]

wait, important additions:

'wherefore' = 'why', not 'where'. think about it pairing with 'therefore'. an example of the two in use:

'my love, wherefore didst thou pretend to see me not?' [babe, why did you pretend not to see me?]

'thy father, from whom we do keep our love hidden, did at that moment walk nearby. therefore i turned from thee that he might not espy us together' [we're keeping our relationship secret from your dad and he was walking by. i did it so he wouldn't see us together.]

'hither' = 'to here', not 'here'. there's a whole set of these, actually. 'whither' = 'to where' and 'thither' = 'to there'. these pair with 'hence' ('from here'), 'whence' ('from where'), and 'thence' ('from there'). an example of some of these in use:

'whence came you?' [where did you come from?]

(pointing to the left) 'thence came i hither.' [i came here from there.]

'and whither go you now?' [and where are you going now?]

(pointing to the right) 'my lord calls me thither.' [my boss is calling me over there]

'very well. get you hence.' [alright, get away from here.]

'whom' ≠ fancy 'who' and this one is just also true today.

'whom' works for the object of a sentence. 'who' is for the subject. in other words, 'whom' receives the action and 'who' does the action.

'whom wrote that letter to you?' -> incorrect! this should be 'who wrote that letter to you?' because 'who' is doing the action.

'whom did you write that letter to?' (or even better, 'to whom did you write that letter?') -> correct! 'whom' here is receiving the action.

okay bye again

[boccs]

I feel like tumblr should be bigger fans of The Blues Brothers. It's a movie that has everything we value as a community. Attention and respect to pioneering black musicians, open hostility to nazis, open defiance to police, Carrie Fisher with a rocket launcher and flamethrower, a soundtrack that goes hard as hell, John Belushi so blasted on cocaine that he continues to do somersaults despite having a broken ankle. It's got it all!

[radwolf76]

Frank Oz is the jail's discharge clerk when Belushi gets out of jail at the beginning.

Not getting into ending spoilers but Steven Spielberg plays a character who is pivotal to the climax of the film.

Ray Charles fires a warning shot from a pistol at a shoplifter.

They did location filming in a mall that had closed the previous year in 1978. The production fucked that mall up so bad that it remained abandoned until it was finally demolished in 2012.

A total of 60 cop cars are fucking destroyed in the movie.

[skull-bearer]

[once-a-polecat]

It’s got Aretha Franklin as a sarcastic diner owner with her own back-up dancers. Chaka Khan is a soloist in the choir. And the whole scene set to Cab Calloway’s Minnie the Moocher is so spectacular I won’t ruin it for you.

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[mrpackrat42]

Found this on Mastodon, had to steal it

[mrpackrat42]

RIP Bonnie Tyler. One of the greatest voices of the 80s, if not all time.

[horror-aesthete]

The Lost Boys, 1987, dir. Joel Schumacher

[mrpackrat42]

It's giving Istar before the Cataclysm

Weather emergencies disrupt Trump’s Fourth of July plans

Officials evacuated attendees from the Salute 250 program, where President Donald Trump was expected to speak ahead of a record-breaking fir

[tomoleary]

Alphonse Mucha (1860–1939) Preliminary for Poetry, from The Arts (1898)

The complete set of The Arts

[dogpuppy]

[mandywondering]

I mean, in some very interesting Technically Correct ways, they didn't actually die? Now, they're very much no longer alive. But the forces involved are such that they didn't get any of the usual cellular processes of death, they simply went from biology to physics in less time than it takes a signal to travel down your optic nerve.

[mrpackrat42]

If ghosts were a thing, this would be how they happen.

[lovely-v]

Every time Sean Astin makes a statement on whether or not Sam and Frodo were indeed gay for each other in lord of the rings he’s always like “well we have to acknowledge that attitudes around sexuality have changed dramatically over the past several decades and since authorial intent is only up to speculation, the story is open to multiple readings, some of which might have different significances for different groups of people also they kiss on the lips because I said so”

[busket]

at the rose city comic con panel this month a fan asked them (sean and elijah) if sam and frodo were in love and they said

Sean: .....yes. absolutely

Elijah: 100 percent.

Sean: dont tell rosie

[explorerrowan]

Rosie: "This is my husband Sam, and that's his husband, Frodo. Frodo is my husband-in-law. I'm not into him, he's he's a bit too 'elfy' for my taste, but Sam likes him, and that's fine with me. As far as I know, Frodo can't give Sam children, but Frodo looks after ours all the same, so I don't mind sharing Sam if it means another pair of eyes on the wee ones. In all honesty, our family tree is right simple compared to some hobbits. Yes, I'm referrin' to you Lobelia, over there pretendin' you ain't eavesdroppin'. Still bitter you ain't got either of my boys or their house, eh?"

[arcaniumagi2]

[ms-katonic-of-tamriel]

Tbh it's canon that Frodo invited Sam and Rosie to move in to Bag End after their wedding and they all lived there for a couple of years until Frodo went to Valinor, so yeah. Running with it.

And once Rosie dies, Sam says his goodbyes and disappears after him.

[roach-works]

what’s funny is people assuming that rosie would somehow be too dim or naive to KNOW that sam loved frodo, instead of looking at a guy who would loyally follow a beloved friend to hell and then help carry him home again, and not be like ‘oh i can’t not fuck that.’

[elodieunderglass]

Polyamory, specifically polyandry, would be an interesting solution to the oddball population of the Shire.

The Shire is excellent farming country, with consistently good weather, and only one tough winter in living memory; hobbits like to produce large families; they’re resistant to disease, rarely violent, and encounter few dangers. It is usual for hobbits to produce many children, so that (for example) Bilbo and Frodo are unusual in both being only children, with no siblings, and not having children of their own. All of this should point to a population that increases every generation if not doubling outright. Young people (and their ideologies!) should rapidly outnumber the old with an ever-increasing effect and impact on society. However, the Shire has a surprisingly stable history; it never seems to increase or decrease greatly in population, and the bell curve of age seems… demographically balanced? There certainly isn’t a conflict from rising young bloods challenging the middle-aged reactionaries; there’s no unemployment; there are no housing crises or waves of emigration, or even a tendency for young people leaving home to marry. Meanwhile, not only does the Shire not suffer from internal pressures, but it remains obscure and hardly noticed in global politics.

What makes sense here is that adult hobbits form a loose group. Four parents in a polycule, between them all, may produce four children. All four parents claim to have four children. An outsider would assume this meant the adults had eight children.

Hobbits therefore are not especially fertile or fecund. They simply have large families. Much of their interest in genealogy is due to the complex relationships of blood-kin, hearth-kin, love-kin and pledge-kin, who must all be carefully tracked and measured - not just because you need to make sure that you don’t climb into bed with an un-permitted degree of blood-kin, but to track family alliances and carefully quantify the precise level of thoughtfulness to put into the proper present to gift your father’s lover’s lover (too much implies a degree of intimacy that might upset the polycule.)

Thus, while a hobbit matron may tell a startled dwarf that she has seven sons, she might only have borne five of them herself, and have one hearth-son by her wife, and a pledge-son of her first husband’s. There are between three and four fathers involved at various stages of production, from conception to pledge-duty, but there is debate about the precise number of fathers, as one child was festival-conceived and therefore provisionally pledged to the Brandybucks until more distinctive paternal traits should materialise. It’s expected that four of the sons will be uninterested in women, and their contribution to family life will be in raising hearth-children and pledge-duty. However, this level of detail is normally negotiated later in conversation, as a mutual overture of friendship. So she’s just clear and simple: yes, certainly, she has seven sons. Yes, they’re all hers. Yes, that’s fairly normal - yes, hobbits like big families. How big? That’s really hard to say! Well, about thirteen hobbits live in her house… er, she has forty-three nieces and nephews. Yes! She has nine siblings, that’s correct, but some of them are still babies themselves..

In this way, a bewildered dwarf might assume that hobbits are absurdly fertile, producing an average of seven children per couple, at an absurd pace.

When in fact, with about half of hobbits never bearing biological children, the population of hobbits is pretty much always the same.

Tl:dr, hobbit population works perfectly well, both internally and in the perceptions of outsiders, if the majority of the Shire is gay, they’re all polyamorous, and they all firmly claim to be parents of high numbers of children. Of course Frodo fathered Sam’s kids - he named them! They were pledge-kin but not hearth-kin, as Frodo needed a lot of quiet and stability in the home.

No outsider ever parses hobbit genealogy well enough to understand this except for Gandalf, who never explains anything either.

[dancingspirals]

are you kidding? Gandalf would WEAPONIZE his knowledge of Hobbit genealogy against outsiders

[elodieunderglass]

Since “pledge” kinships are multidimensional and can occur in different directions, hobbits can form - and formalise - family bonds simply because they choose to. Gandalf doesn’t tell anyone that the formation of Thorin’s Company, the Fellowship of the Ring, and Belladonna Took’s Accidental Troop of Mercenaries* are legal formations of pledge-siblings, a hobbit family structure usually claimed to increase social class and prestige (as high numbers of pledge-kin confer distinction on a hobbit, being a sort of popularity vote/endorsement that adds greatly to their social power. Incidentally, this is partly why Bilbo was both controversial and successful in his pledge-claim of Frodo; outsiders mistook his “bachelor” status as someone living outside of heteronormativity, while the Shire was bewildered and increasingly annoyed by his rejection of pledge and hearth commitments. By rights Bilbo had too few pledge-kin, and too little parenting experience, to claim rights to an orphan, especially one from Brandybuck hearth; but conversely, his social status was high enough that his belated bid for his very first pledge-son couldn’t reasonably be denied by anybody.)

In short, all of the hobbits enjoyed achieving even larger families on their adventures, legally and without argument or debate. It’s free real estate. If nobody else is going to sibling these losers, we will. (The condensation of so many entanglements at once also legally made Pippin his own father-in-law.)

Gandalf never explained.

* see the post about the Old Took’s “enchanted diamond cufflinks” that obeyed the wearer’s commands; which were probably, given the general state of things, two lost silmarils recovered by his Remarkable Daughters and gifted to him because things stay small and safe in the shire

[chaosaccountant]

@elodieunderglass wouldn't that make pippin both denethor's pledge-son-in-law, and (as pledge-brother to the king) probably outrank him?

[elodieunderglass]

Only through Boromir while Boromir was alive! Pippin’s familial claim through Boromir technically dissolved on Boromir’s death, as Denethor hadn’t been privy to it, and those bonds rarely stretch to a stranger when the person in the middle has died before introducing them; although Pippin, who was well-brought-up, perfectly and politely rectified the problem at once by simply swearing himself as Denethor’s pledge-son. but through his blood-cousinship to Frodo, who was older than Boromir, his status as the Took double-primarc (don’t ask) and the proximity-enhanced status-doubling effects of having a five-way cousin in Merry, Pippin was demonstrably higher status as a pledge-sibling and was also his own father-in-law and approved of himself. As such, he would have significantly raised Boromir’s social status and marital prospects in the Shire.

Inheritance follows parent-child pledge as the primary consideration, with matrilineal descent as the secondary. Pippin would have been bewildered to gradually understand that Denethor held his two sons in such odd and different standing :-/ hobbits don’t recognise kingship so it would’ve been very upsetting and disappointing to Pippin to understand how Denethor stood in position of sworn-father to a whole city of people without even being slightly fair to his younger hearth-son. Aragorn is demonstrably much better dad-material and therefore had Pippin’s vote. Pippin, by virtue of being an excellent father-in-law to a spectacularly promising young son-in-law, also considered himself a better candidate for king of Gondor than Denethor, by outranking him in Dad Competence - but was too busy by the time he realized this to point this out .

Ironically, the events in which Pippin realized this made Faramir his own hearth-son - so Pippin won in the end and took a great interest in ceremonially approving of Eowyn. Gandalf never explained

[elodieunderglass]

[tkingfisher]

I will buy that for a dollar, yup.

[deafmangoes]

It crossed my dash again! The Hobbit Polyamory Post!

[smbc-comics]

Kelly told me this one was too weird, so please make it popular so she has to roll her eyes.

Check out the bonus panel on the site.

Upcoming book signings this summer.

───── ◆ ───── ◆ ───── ◆ ─────

SMBC ◆ PATREON ◆ INSTAGRAM ◆ BLUESKY ◆ STORE

Buy this comic as a print.

[mrpackrat42]

It's time to un-billion the billionaires.

[mrpackrat42]

Addendum: It's time to un-trillion the trillionaire.

[dungeonlust]

Art by • Simon Heller

[picsthatmakeyougohmm]

[elodieunderglass]

Thank you @aranov 😭

[memories-of-ancients]

Anthropeum

A daily game that challenges our understanding of human cultures. Ten objects. 5,000 years of human history. Guess where and when each artif

An interesting game where you are presented with 10 artifacts from the MET. You have to place where the artifact is from and what time period it is from. Each artifact scores up to 10,000 points, and you lose points the further away your guess is and how far off in time you are. You can only play once a day. Thanks to @baebeylik for showing this to me.

Today I scored really well. Yesterday ... not so much.

Anthropeum.com · Jun 8 2026 🟩🟦🟦🟩🟩🟩🟥🟦🟦🟩 79,001 · top 3% of players today!

[motherfuckingnazgul]

oh this is extremely fun. i did NOT do all that well but i can see myself getting good. i will be doing this regularly.

Anthropeum.com · Jun 8 2026 🟩🟦🟦🟨🟨🟦🟥🟩🟩🟦 68,088 · top 12% of players today!

[aurpiment]

Anthropeum.com · Jun 9 2026

🟦🟩🟩🟦🟦🟨🟩🟩🟦🟨

77,134 · top 9% of players, baby!

[yuhengwanye]

Anthropeum.com · Jun 10 2026 🟦🟦🟨🟩🟨🟨🟦🟩🟩🟦 77,633 · top 8% of players today!

[elodieunderglass]

Anthropeum.com · Jun 10 2026

🟦🟩🟩🟨🟨🟩🟦🟩🟥🟦

71,899 · top 21% of players today!

In my defense that red one is where I accidentally flicked the map marker to the wrong side of the planet

[dungeonlust]

Art by • Nobuteru Yūki

[halorvic]

The Close, Prolonged Contact Myth

Knowing how a virus spreads is essential to public health, but people keep getting it wrong.

A man goes to a birthday party, sits next to someone with hantavirus, catches it, gives it to his wife, and dies. His wife then infects 10 more people at his wake. Another guest at that same birthday party has no interaction with the index patient except to say “hello” as they cross paths, but that person gets sick too. One index patient, 33 subsequent infections, 11 deaths, four waves of transmission. This is from a meticulously documented hantavirus outbreak in Argentina in late 2018 and early 2019, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM). Nearly the exact same Andes strain of hantavirus caused the recent outbreak on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius. Yet from the moment this latest outbreak hit the news last month, public-health officials have been claiming that this virus is spread through “prolonged close contact.” The evidence is not nearly so reassuring.

[...]

As an expert in what we call “exposure science,” I have spent a career conducting forensic investigations to understand how diseases spread and what we should do about it. As a member of the Lancet COVID-19 Commission, I chaired the Safe Work, Safe School, and Safe Travel task force, and was an early proponent of the theory that COVID spreads through the air. There was evidence early on of airborne transmission, which my colleagues and I tried to draw attention to. We modeled the early-2020 outbreak of the disease on the Diamond Princess cruise ship and found that 90 percent of the spread was through aerosols, not contaminated surfaces, but the CDC didn’t update its guidance until late 2020. I am alarmed to see the same pattern playing out now. Hantaviruses usually originate in rodent feces. Someone cleans a dusty area that has rodent droppings, inhales the particles, and gets sick. Only the Andes strain of hantavirus is known to be transmitted from human to human. In the outbreak documented in NEJM, the virus spreads without physical contact or prolonged exposure. One patient gets sick after simply crossing paths with someone who was ill. Two others are infected while seated at tables meters away. One person infected five others within 90 minutes at one party. The NEJM authors suggested that the virus spreads through the air. Although the NEJM evidence is clear, officials have kept repeating “prolonged, close contact,” so I wanted to be sure I wasn’t missing anything. Last week I spoke with a physician who was on the MV Hondiusas a passenger but who jumped in to help treat infected passengers after the ship’s official doctor got sick and was evacuated. He told me that the original treating doctor and staff were definitely in close contact with the first patient. But the others who got sick? They had merely shared space in the dining room and the lecture hall, and had not had close contact. We’re now at 10 confirmed cases from the ship, which aligns with the prior outbreak dynamics: one person infecting many, no close contact required.

[...]

This matters because medical teams treating patients need to know how they might be exposed. When infected passengers go home to quarantine, their households need to understand the risk. As passengers fly back to their home countries, contact tracers need to know which exposures matter. The doctor who treated patients on the cruise said on CNN that he relied on goggles, a gown, and hand-washing to protect himself. But given that this virus spreads through the air, an N95 mask and a strong ventilation and filtration system would have served him better.

[...]

This outbreak is not likely to spark a pandemic, mostly because the hantavirus is less contagious than influenza, measles, and SARS-CoV-2. But given just how little experience we have with this virus, any certainty is hubris.

May 12, 2026