#this is fascinating stuff

[softzosan]

I have realised, sadly, that thermomix is mostly a german/european thing and therefore won't have any effect if I were to include it in my fanfic :(

[alisterix]

@zitronenmilchmaedchen great tag! What have you done. Now I'll never shut up. This is for you and for everybody else who cares a lot about Cacofonix/Assurancetourix.

Justforkix/Goudurix (from Asterix and the Vikings) did! Though not in the movie (because it didn't have as much focus on Cacofonix) but in the comic book that the movie was based on, Asterix and the Normans. This volume has a special place in my heart for how much spotlight and appreciation Cacofonix received in it, so let's talk about it!

After Cacofonix attempted to sing and received the usual response from his fellows, Justforkix proceeded to compliment him, he even went as far as to tell him that he's wasting his talent in the village and that he'd make a great career in Lutetia!

The thought excited Cacofonix so much he kept bringing it up multiple times to Justforkix, who at that point was too scared by the Normans coming to Gaul to really pay any attention to the bard and his career. Eventually Cacofonix decided to take matters into his own hands and leave...

...at the worst possible time! He left unaware of the fact that the Normans had kidnapped Justforkix and refused to let him go unless there was another way to teach them the meaning of fear. The best way to strike fear into the Normans' souls was, of course, Cacofonix, though fetching the bard turned out to be more difficult than expected since he had to be chased down and persuaded to abandon his plans of prestige and fame.

He didn't hesitate one bit though once he learned that Justforkix was the one who needed his help. How could he not rush to his aid, the teen has been so kind to him and appreciative of him after all, unlike all those barbarians he's constantly surrounded with, with no appreciation for music! He happily returned, put one hell of a performance and reveled in well deserved praise for it. The goal was accomplished: the Normans learned to feel fear, Justforkix was safe, Cacofonix got to give his first real concert in front of a willing audience. He gets to be the hero that saves the day!

The satisfaction from it appeared to be enough for Cacofonix to not give any more thought to his previous career plans. He stayed and even got to participate in the banquet, instead of being tied up like usual, which I honestly love so much. His singing, though almost universally frowned upon, has proven helpful and worthy of respect. What a sweet and validating moment for my boy <3

The way Justforkix appreciated Cacofonix's singing is really endearing to me! Also gets me thinking. Is Cacofonix's music really, objectively terrible or has he just not found the right audience for himself? The way his fellow folks dismiss his singing as "not actual music, just horrible noise" vs Justforkix saying "whoa this is actually really good omg you're so underrated" reminds me of how you'd have fans of, let's say, death metal, music with lots of screaming ect, and then there are people who can't stand it and it's awful to them. Lmao I am delighted by the idea of Lutetian teenagers vibing really well with Cacofonix and his "edgy" music... and then their parents being like, ugh, kids these days, what even is this nonsense they are listening to. This awful bard has a terrible influence on our children xD

[awed-frog]

Here is my basic question: how do I get a thought from my mind into yours? We begin by asking how language fits into the broader architecture of the mind. It’s a late invention, evolutionarily, and a lot of the brain’s machinery was already in place.

Linguist Evelina Fedorenko (quote from The Mystery of People Who Speak Dozens of Languages. What can hyperpolyglots teach the rest of us? by Judith Thurman)

Does language share a mechanism with other cognitive functions? Or is it autonomous? To seek an answer, Fedorenko developed a set of “localizer tasks,” administered in an fMRI machine. Her first goal was to identify the “language-responsive cortex,” and the tasks involved reading or listening to a sequence of sentences, some of them garbled or composed of nonsense words.

The responsive cortex proved to be separate from regions involved in other forms of complex thought. We don’t, for example, use the same parts of our brains for music and for speech, which seems counterintuitive, especially in the case of a tonal language. But pitch, Fedorenko explained, has its own neural turf. And life experience alters the picture. “Literate people use one region of their cortex in recognizing letters,” she said. “Illiterate people don’t have that region, though it develops if they learn to read.”

In order to draw general conclusions, Fedorenko needed to study the way that language skills vary among individuals. They turned out to vary greatly. The intensity of activity in response to the localizer tests was idiosyncratic; some brains worked harder than others. But that raised another question: Did heightened activity correspond to a greater aptitude for language? Or was the opposite true—that the cortex of a language prodigy would show less activity, because it was more efficient?

(keep reading)

[triviareads]

Why Do Rich People Love Quiet? - The Atlantic

[temaporal]

The Foreign Language of ‘Mad Men’ | The Atlantic

The language of the past is fundamentally a foreign one. Scriptwriters and novelists can try to mimic it, but can never speak it like a true native. In the end, the show's departures from the past may let us see just how much everything has changed even more than its successes.

[disciple-of-the-cycle]

But seriously this dress thing is fucking incredible. I've been on Tumblr literally all day. I leave for maybe half an hour to eat dinner, and when i get back, there's a goddamned civil war going on about some silly dress. And not just on Tumblr, but literally every social media website I belong to. Just... suddenly dresses! It's amazing.

[acepalindrome]

Damn, this book is great. I loooove pre-20th century queer history.

[lilysdoe-blog]

Discrimination does begin fairly early [...] Some baby girls are still dressed in pink rather than blue, are put into frilly, fragile dresses and punished for tearing and soiling them. Some have their hair curled up and bows put in it, and are told they are pretty and Daddy's girl and so on. Even for the little girls who have rompers and no fuss with hair and Curly-pet and other infantile cosmetics, a system of rewards and encouragements begins to operate fairly early on. No one wants to bring up a child who doesn't know what sex he is, and in default of any other notion of sexuality the styles of femininity are inculcated almost imperceptively from the beginning. The baby soon discovers how to be coy and winsome, how to twist Daddy round her little finger. When little boys discover the advantages of coyness they are shocked out of them when their baby curls are shorn, but the little girl is praised and encouraged to exploit her cuteness. She is not directly taught how to do it, she simply learns from experience. It is an odd reflection that while we hear voices raised in protest against the destruction of innocence occasioned by showing sex films in junior school, no voice is heard exclaiming at the awfulness of being flirted with by a three year old.

The Female Eunuch