Moments of Permanence - Network

Hot take but I think echo chambers are fine, actually. Like, have you ever actually been in one? They’re super fun; yelling into the void and having it yell back. Endless wonder and joy. At least mine is. If yours sucks sounds like a you problem. Maybe you should stop screaming obnoxious hateful things into it idk just a thought I had, hey.

Leave a comment.⁺

Anyway TIL the guy who wrote the short story the film They Live is based on also invented that stupid propeller hat all the Nooglers wear.

Leave a comment.⁺

Posted by languagehat

https://languagehat.com/a-big-garden-from-a-little-root/

https://languagehat.com/?p=19050

I was rereading one of my favorite Pasternak poems, Зеркало (Mirror) (that webpage has the original Russian alongside an abridged translation by Peter France and Jon Stallworthy), when I stuck on an unusual word I had hurried over before in my attempt to make sense of the whole thing: саднят [sádnyat]. I had scribbled ‘smart, burn’ above it in my copy, which was all I really needed in context, but what kind of verb was it, and where was it from? Before proceeding with those issues, though, I’ll quote the relevant section from Jean Marie Schultz, “Pasternak’s ‘Zerkalo’” (Russian Literature XIII [1983]: 81-100), as a sample of how much work it is to figure out what’s going on in his early poetry:

Here the verb “sadnit'” compacts two distinct sensations, one tactile and one olfactory. First, with its meaning of “to smart” or “to burn”, “sadnit'” indicates the feeling that an abrasion might produce; thus, the verb conveys the sensation the trees (if personified) might be expected to have as their sap flows out over the broken limbs. Second, that the trees burn the air with their sap relates possibly to the very pungent odor that pine resin from newly broken limbs has as it fills the air, particularly after a rain (VIII:iii) when all smells are intensified.⁴

fn 4: Sap is a tree’s natural antiseptic, and the burning sensation produced by the application of an antiseptic to a wound is well known. However, it must be remembered that this is a humanly perceived feeling so that we have here, as throughout the poem, the human experience imposed upon a seemingly impersonal description. Furthermore, the allusion to the “medicinal” function of sap prefigures the medicine, “lekarstvo”, introduced in the next stanza. Likewise, the underlying evocation of the sap’s odor here also works toward the development of a sub-motif revolving around scent (V:iii).

OK, so what’s the story with the verb? Well, Wiktionary provides help with its usage;
it occurs in collocations like но́гу са́днит [nógu sádnit] ‘my leg is sore’ and на се́рдце са́днит [na sérdce sádnit] ‘my heart hurts.’ But what’s really interesting is the etymology, given in Russian Wiktionary: it’s derived from Old Russian садьно ‘wound,’ which in turn goes back to Proto-Slavic *saditi, from Proto-Indo-European *sodéyeti, causative of *sed- ‘to sit.’ The English verb sit is from that root, but cast your eyes down that page and see how much else is! The thematic root present *séd-e-ti gives Proto-Celtic *sedeti, which with a couple of prefixes gives us Welsh eistedd and hence eisteddfod; the -ye- present *sédyeti gives Greek ἕζομαι (as well as sit); *séd-os ~ *séd-es gives Welsh hedd ‘peace’; *sod-ó- gives Proto-Slavic *xodъ and Greek ὁδός; *sōd-o- gives Proto-Germanic *sōtą ‘soot’ (“reflecting the nature of soot as accumulated particles that sit on surfaces”); *sōd-u-s gives Proto-Slavic *sadъ ‘grove; garden’ (hence Russian сад, which also features in the poem); *sod-yo-m ‘seat’ gives Old Irish suide and Latin solium; *sed-lo- ‘seat’ gives Proto-Germanic *setlaz; *ni-sd-ós ‘nest’ (with zero grade) gives Proto-Balto-Slavic *nísda (leading to Russian гнездо) and Proto-Germanic *nestą (leading to nest)… well, I could spend all day lost in the web of connections. In Russian alone, the root is the ultimate source of посадить/сажать ‘to seat, plant,’ сиделка ‘(sick-)nurse,’ седло ‘saddle,’ село ‘village,’ сажа ‘soot,’ досадный ‘annoying,’ наседка ‘brood-hen,’ население ‘population,’ осадки ‘precipitation,’ осада ‘siege,’ председатель ‘chairman, president,’ расселина ‘crevice, fissure,’ сосед ‘neighbor,’ ссадина ‘scratch,’ усадьба ‘farmstead, country estate,’ and всадник ‘rider, horseman’ (as well as many others). This is the kind of thing that made me want to be a historical linguist.

https://languagehat.com/a-big-garden-from-a-little-root/

https://languagehat.com/?p=19050

Send me a slow news day,
a quiet, subdued day,
in which nothing much happens of note,
save for the passing of time,
the consumption of wine,
and a re-run of Murder, She Wrote.

Grant me a no news day,
a spare-me-your-views day,
in which nothing much happens at all,
except a few hours together
some regional weather,
a day we can barely recall.

(source)

Heated Rivalry, the Canadian show about queer hockey romance, is popping up all over Dreamwidth (as well as every other platform). The Squeaky Wheel, which bills itself as "the first-ever satire publication that focuses on the experience of having a disability" channels The Onion as it mocks our disabled lives. Here’s their first take on the series:

Audio Description Ruins Family TV Night During Unexpected Sex Scene - The Squeaky Wheel

[hero photo not reproduced here; its alt text is "a family watching Heated Rivalry"]

A recent family TV night at the household of 14-year-old Sarah Mason ended abruptly when the audio description began to vividly relay the details of an unexpected and lengthy sex scene.

“It went on and on about the positions, and how much pleasure was on their faces, and so much ‘thrusting,’” said Sarah’s mother, Beverly Mason. “It was excruciating. I shut it off and told everyone to go to bed.”

( 270 more snarky words )

I'd love to learn whether Heated Rivalry's audio description is as sexy as the Squeaky Wheel would have it.

Confession: I have never watched The Office, any version, but oof, this dissection of it in the context of a three-tiered understanding of organisations focused on “Sociopaths” (executives), “Clueless” (middle-managers) and “Losers” (everyone else) was wa-aa-aa-ay too close to home.

I spent my career bouncing between being one of the Clueless and one of the Losers, depending on my level of burn-out at any one time, and come from a family of very successful Clueless.¹ The handful of years I spent being forced up to the Sociopath level, mostly by proximity and circumstance, burned me out so hard I retired at age 41 and vowed never to go back to 9-to-5 corporate life.

And, yes. This genre of just-so pop psychology should be taken with a grain of salt, et cetera, but given most real, MBA-taught management books aren’t much more rigorously scientific than this blog post . . .

1. Mum and Dad were both public servants, where I feel this mindset can get you much further than in the private sector, given that the actual top of the Sociopath triangle is reserved for elected Ministers. ↩

Leave a comment.⁺