“I’m afraid of getting cancer from the cadmium in my painting supplies” I’m not 😌 I love you cadmium yellow. I love you vermillion red. I love you uranium orange, haven’t worked with you but I love you nevertheless. Most of all I love you arsenic green.
I am literally fucking BEGGING people to stop saying "ax oh lot uhl." That is absolutely the WRONG way to pronounce that word.
I know the song about the axolotl on the stairs is very cute, but it is teaching kids how to pronounce a Nahuatl word VERY VERY WRONG. Can we all please spend like 30 seconds watching this very nice person show y'all how to say it right? Please?
(Yeah, I used to say it wrong too, and then a friend was kind enough to correct me on the way the word is pronounced in their ancestral language and so now every time I hear it wrong it's like nails on a chalkboard & makes me embarrassed.)
Okay as a linguist, the Nahuatl multigraph <tl> represents the phoneme [t͡ɬ]. This is a voiceless alveolar lateral affricate, and if that string of words sounds like gibberish to you, I'll break it down below the cut.
TLDR: You want to position your tongue like you are pronouncing the English <l> sound, but don't vibrate your vocal chords and just let the air hiss around your tongue like it does with the English <s>. Then, practice cutting off that sound before letting it go, like the English <ch> and <j> or the Italian <z> (as in "pizza").
If you can't figure it out, you can just pronounce it as a soft <t> sound (aka "ash-oh-lot") or even a <t> followed by an <s> sound ("ash-oh-lots"). It's not perfect, but in the same way that you can pronounce the Spanish rolled <rr> as an unrolled <r> if you can't roll your Rs, it sounds foreign but perfectly understandable.
In fact, that's how several words anglicized from Nahuatl are pronounced today! "Chocolate" comes from the "chocolatl", "coyote" comes from "coyotl", and "ocelot" comes from "ocelotl", all of which originated as Nahuatl words that had their <tl> sounds turned into the <t> sounds that English and Spanish speakers were more familiar with. I guess "axolotl" appeared more in writing than in casual conversation, so the pronunciation based on English graphemes got popularized over one based on the actual phonemes of the word as spoken in the language of origin.
Alright, now for the more in-depth pronunciation tutorial below the cut:
Okay, let's really break this down:
Voiceless means that your throat doesn't vibrate when you make the sound. Put your hand on your throat and say an English <p> and <b> back to back. Notice how your mouth and tongue are making the same shape both times, but your throat vibrates when making the <b> sound? That's bc both of them are bilabial plosives, but /p/ is voiceless and /b/ is voiced.
Alveolar means that your tongue is up against or very close to the alveolar ridge, aka the part of your mouth where your tooth sockets are. In English, the alveolar consonants are <n>, <t>, <d>, <s>, <z>, <r>, and <l>. Make those sounds and notice where your tongue goes: that's what makes a sound alveolar. Of those examples above, <t> and <s> are also voiceless, while <l> is also lateral, which means...
Lateral consonants are formed when the airflow of the sound specifically moves around your tongue, not over it. English only has one lateral consonant, the aforementioned <l>. All other sounds in the English language force air through the center of the mouth, rather than around the sides like <l> does.
So far, this means you want your tongue in the same spot where you'd make an English <l> sound, but instead of vibrating your vocal chords like you would to pronounce <l>, you are instead keeping them voiceless, like you do for <t>, <s>, <p>, etc. It will sound sorta like a soft hissing almost.
Congrats, you've made something that sounds like the voiceless lateral alveolar fricative [ɬ]! Now all you need to do is add in the affricate part.
In my opinion, this is the trickiest part. Slowly make the English <ch> and <j> sound, as well as the Italian <z> sound in the word "pizza". Specifically, stop yourself before making the actual sound, like you're holding it back or just cut yourself off. Notice how it feels like there's pressure built up behind your tongue? It's the same mechanics behind the sharp sounds of a <t> or <d>. However, with those letters, you let the airflow go immediately afterwards. This sort of sound is called a "stop" (since you stop airflow) or a "plosive" (since the sound explodes out after releasing the pressure).
In an affricate like <ch>, you start with the mechanics of a stop, but instead of letting the sound explode out afterwards, you instead force the air to hiss through a space you've shaped with your tongue. This is where that voiceless <l> noise comes back into play.
I practiced this sound by pronouncing the first two and a half syllables of the word axolotl (the correct way, Ash-oh-lo), cutting myself off (think the vocal cutoff you make between the two words in "uh oh"), and then making the voiceless alveolar lateral sound. I'd then do it faster and faster until the final syllable wasn't broken in half anymore, but still kept that initial plosive element, going from "ash-oh-lo'-tshs" to just "ash-oh-lotshs", as the reblog above spelled it.
It takes practice, but it's a fun phoneme to learn to pronounce properly. Like I said in the TLDR, if you can't figure it out, pronouncing it as "ash-oh-lot" or "ash-oh-lots" with a very soft and brief /t/ sound gets close enough while still using phonemes familiar to English speakers.
This unlocks a bunch of other words we pronounce incorrectly in English! "Quetzalcoatl" is pronounced "kehts-ehl-koh-watshs" (yes, there's a /w/ sound in there between the <o> and <a>) and the word "Nahuatl" itself is pronounced "nah-watshs".
The downside of all this is that, if you are like me, you will now be forever annoyed by this, and in turn, annoy all your friends and peers by bringing it up anytime you see the words "axolotl" or "quetzalcoatl", especially if they are being pronounced incorrectly. I fully admit I'm a bit pretentious about this, but only because I'm that much of an autistic linguist.
signs at stores? émail? menu ?? instruction ? post online ? caption with andswer to question ? group hand outs ??? street sign ??? no. The Written Word Is The Enemy
#The number of compliments i have gotten for reading a thing
The ability to occasionally Read A Thing will make you a hero in your workplace, especially if it is for example an error message that tells you what you need to do differently, or instructions on unjamming a printer.
I work in tech, and much of what I do is support sales reps within the company by resolving errors with the software they use.
There is one sales rep who, every single time I send her a message or email with extremely specific instructions that will resolve her issue, does something completely different from what I tell her. Every time. Without fail. It is so glaringly obvious that she has never read even a single word that I have written to her.
So one day, she sends me a message that says little more than "(software) is broken, help"
So I do my standard song and dance of asking her what she's trying to accomplish, and what specifically is stopping her from doing that. And eventually, after much unnecessary back and forth, she tells me there's an error message. I ask her to send me a screenshot of the error message. She does.
The error message basically says, "these two required fields are blank. To resolve this, please fill in these two specific fields, and then click save."
So I take a few deep breaths.
Then I lie to her.
I message her back, saying "hey yeah, for some reason it's not loading that screenshot on my end. Could you type out the full text of the error message for me?"
Okay okay okay so I’m changing like every recognizable detail of this for privacy purposes but yall need to appreciate this
So I know how to retain CCTV footage, right? It doesn’t come up everywhere but I know my way around- and if someone gets jumped in a parking lot or whatever I can go backwards and see whodunnit
So I’m at this one place, right? And I get a call that an older woman in a wheelchair got hurt somehow and we need to see what happened.
Nobody remembers the exact time, because of course not, but they tell me she was wearing like a massive hot pink jacket and she’s in a wheelchair and she left with a medic round 09:45ish, so I figure I’ll start there.
So I find the incident itself no problem, but they need ALL footage for liability and insurance and stuff, so I have to keep going
And about ten minutes backwards, I lose her. She comes into view past a single shelf on one of the worse cameras and vanishes.
like. VANISHES. Hot pink jacket, big bulky black chair, gonzo. No idea where she came from.
So, I pull up entry cams. Zoom backwards till I see her come in… at like 06:15.
THREE AND A HALF HOURS EARLIER.
So first off, this is gonna take me like two hours minimum to write down, forget retention. And I’m kind of dying in my soul a bit but I start over there, watching her come in and meander and whatever.
At about 08:30ish she disappears.
Doesn’t leave. Doesn’t head to a bathroom. Doesn’t take her coat off. Her trail just stops.
Now, I’ve done this before. Typically, a location only has the mandatory minimum amount of room for a chair or walker to get around, so a person using one can only go forwards and it’s hard to 180. That limits options and makes it easier to follow, whereas a little unattended and fully mobile kid will zoom around in circles and shit and go who the hell knows where.
Then I see her again on the other ass end of the building, and I have to go back again to see how she GOT there.
My guys.
Her two and three-point turns are INCREDIBLE.
She’s popping on the wheels, flip, zoom, she’s out somewhere I didn’t think she could even GET to. I’ve been planning my search for places that fit a wheelchair or least-resistance fast-paths from A to B and she’s like… doing some Tokyo Drift shit.
I don’t know WHY. The whole place is basically completely accessible so long as you put up with having to reverse, but no. No, she goes where she wants.
I’ve been at this for half the day, and I still have no idea where she went for like an hour and a half.
hey kids did you know that computers didn't used to automatically connect to the internet. it used to make this screaming noise. we should have listened.
#my wife is on the SOR for being gay #no joke #she hit on a girl in a straight bar once #in 1997 #and while the girl was into it #the off duty cop sitting nearby was not #and so he arrested her for ‘soliciting homosexual activity’ #which in our state was still a felony #in 1997 (and would remain so until Lawrence v Texas in 2003) #and since ‘soliciting homosexual activity’ was a felony and a sex crime #she got put on The List #she is still on there to this day #because it costs MONEY to ask a judge to take you off #and she has tried four times#since 2003 #to get taken off the SOR #but every time the judge has said something like ‘no you pled guilty to the crime i can’t possibly take you off the sex offender registry’ #with no acknowledgement of what the actual crime was #(the crime of being a butch lesbian hitting on a cute girl who was into it) #(in 1997)
Reposting these tags with consent from the person that wrote them. The post about the Sex Offenders Registry is locked, but these tags are too important to go unnoticed.
Younger queer people need to realize that the SOR being used against queer people simply for being queer isn’t some ancient history thing. It still impacts queer people today. And it can quite easily be used that way again.
When you hear people throwing around the talking point of “well there’s a high rate of sex offenders in the trans/queer community”, this has to do with why.
Being on the sex offender registry isn’t inherently equivalent to whatever horrific sex crime you’re meant to think of when it’s mentioned. It evokes imagery of pedophilia and rape, but there is a lot that can get you put on it and not a lot you can do to be taken off of it.
Public crossdressing used to be able to get you put on the sex offender registry (and by used to I mean as recently as 2011).
Public urination (you know, the literal only option for someone who’s homeless and doesn’t have access to public bathrooms, a venn diagram where trans people are more likely to rest in the meeting zone) can get you put on the sex offender registry.
Sex work is pretty much an automatic way to end up on the sex offender registry if you’re caught. (This is especially weaponized against black trans women who do sex work)
“Deviant Sexual Intercourse” (aka literally any sexual activity aside from penis-in-vagina penetration) could get you on the sex offender registry as recently as the early 2000s. That effectively impacts the entire queer community in one way or another.
The sex offender registry is, first and foremost, useless. It tells you nothing about what someone did. It’s mentioned to quickly associate a person or a group of people with the worst possible crimes imaginable.
It has been used against us time after time and it will continue to be used for that.
i walk a fine line between “i’m asexual and i hate how much the world revolves around sex” and “sex is way too stigmatized and people should be able to be more open about it if they want to”
So for members of bdsm Dungeons, it's a rule that you don't approach other members if you see them on public for privacy reasons. They might not want people knowing they're a freak.
That said, it's normal to make friends in that space who you hang out with, outside of kink stuff. When that happens and people asked where I met my friend, my go-to line was "Spin-class," which is a very funny joke if you know me even a little. Very not my scene.
Well, funnily enough, while I was working at a homeless shelter, we had a very similar rule because of the homeless stigma. If a guest from the Shelter sees you outside of work, you don't acknowledge or approach them. They can approach you, but you don't tell whoever you're with where you know them. The guest gets to decide if they want to share that info.
Smash cut to me being out with a friend I met at the dungeon a very long time ago. I bump into a guest from the shelter who approaches me to chat. My friend asks how I know the guest, and without thinking, I blurt out "spin class" before remembering that's my go to lie for how I ment dungeon friends. These two proceed to have a conversation, neither fully understood.
Friend: ooohhhh okay i get it. Spin class! Me too. Stopped taking that class a while ago tho.
Guest. Oh for real? That's sick man, good for you! You got a good set up now?
Friend: The best!! I've taken up wood working so my furniture is all custom. Got plenty of space to do "spin" at home. It's coming together.
Guest: Hell yeah brother!!!
Friend: was really good to have my own space during the rona, but man it's lonely! I kinda miss the group dynamics.
Guest: Yeah, i heard that from my homie when he got out of "Spin class!" But it's for the best.
Friend: it can be, but its not for everybody. Can be safer to Spin in a group.
Guest: i know that. Lost a few homie to "spinning" alone. At least at the "class" you got other eyes on you.
Friend: I'm sorry to hear that! You know some elements of "Spinning" are risky but you never think anyone would get hurt. So, my buddy here still a real hard ass for safety?
Guest: oh man you dont even know. They revamped our whole fire escape plan.
Friend: Oh shit! They did that back when i was in Spin class too!
Guest: still improving the system i guess.
Friend: they still keep a bunch of robes outside in a shed so people who get out can cover up?
Guest: Yes!!!
Friend: Did you know it's their fault we have a 30 second rule!
Guest: Damn really!?! Makes sense tho, if there's a fire you gotta get out fast!
Friend: Yeah, I Never gave it much thought before they brought it up, but yeah the last thing you want is a fire when you're all tired up!
Guest: Yeah, that's true. I didn't know they came up with the rule, tho. I do like having the space between the beds clear...
Friend: Yeah it's so annoying when people block the path with their shit.
Guest: Yeah there's not enough space between beds for people to be hording shit.
Friend: Yeah! I loved that they always got people to keep their area clear.
Guest: not gonna lie i hate being told to clean up but it is better that way.
Friend: Yeah... haha.
Guest: well it was nice chatting with you brother.
i love to learn about my cat i love to google “should you trim cat last claw? trim all cat claws? cat last claw called? cat fifth claw? cat claws labelled. trim cat dew claw?” and then say hi graham i learned something about you! your weird claw is called a dew claw and it will not be worn down by regular walking so it is extra important to be diligent about trimming to prevent it growing into your paw pad! and he bites me and bites me
i wish graham could google. maybe he’d google “human skin thickness? humans skin cut bite? humans red line arm leg? how hard bite humans? human pain tolerance? human vs kittens safe play” and then he would say mads im so sorry i didnt realize that humans are prone to injury from skin punctures. we should engage in remote play through means of toys as you were suggesting
extremely underrated subgenre of tumblr post: when someone makes a general statement about something, and another person offers a counter-statement that's just completely nonsensical, and the OP just agrees instantly even if it makes no sense at all
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
kianamaiart
stormborns
dededos
tangentwithtanner
dailybridgerton
