Today is partly cloudy and cool.

I fed the birds.  I've seen a few sparrows.

I put out water for the birds.








.
 

(I am still working on #3)

for snowflake_challenge

Challenge #4: Rec Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

This is what I've been looking at today:

Massachusetts "Name a Snowplow" Contest Winners!
School children came up with these wonderful (and punny!) snowplow names, which will be used this winter (2025/2026)
My favorites: Master Snowda and Thaw Patrol

How to Create a Powerful Character Arc by Jerry Jenkins.
I was looking at this as a quick reference for a post I was writing of my own about plotting while pantsing. Hopefully a future post for getyourwordsout. It's a pretty clear guide for getting started with writing character arcs, as it says on the tin.

(by the way, pledging for 2026 ends January 15, so you don't have much more time if you want to join in a wonderful writing community with GYWO!)

Also, right now I have a tab open with my 5soulmates prompt table! I haven't started writing yet, but I've got some ideas percolating.

Another tab I have open is the deterweek themes list. I'm going to be writing one story with whimsicalmeerkat and one solo. At least that's the plan!

It's a zombie apocalypse, only instead of zombies, there's cats.



In a future in which 90% of the population owned a cat, a strange virus spreads. If you cuddle a cat, or a cat nuzzles you, you turn into a cat! It's a catastrophe! A catlamity! A nyandemic!





Not only are cats everywhere, but the cats are either instinctively trying to turn humans into cats, or they just want to be petted. Cue every zombie movie scene ever, but with cats. Cats scratch at the doors! Cats peer through the windows! Groups of cats ambush you in tunnels!

The characters are all very upset by this, because they love cats! And now there's cats everywhere, just begging to be skritched! And they can't skritch them! "We can't even squish their little toe beans!" The horror!

Needless to say, they would never ever harm a cat. In fact they feel bad when they're forced to spray cats with water to shoo them away.

I'm not sure how this can possibly be sustained for seven volumes, but on the other hand I could happily read seven volumes of it. The cat art is really fun and adorable. I would definitely do better in a zombie apocalypse than a cat apocalypse, because I would never be able to resist those cats.

Content notes: None, the cats are fine.

Challenge 4: Rec Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

On many of the fannish websites we use, our history is easily compileable into "pages". When we look back through those pages, sometimes we stumble upon things that we think are rather cool.




( Read more... )

Posted by Victor Mair

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72530&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pariah-dogs-and-pariah-people

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72530

Having just spent a week in close quarters with two large German Shepherds and a big German Shepherd mix, I was primed to learn about the Indian Pariah Dog, which somehow crossed the path of my consciousness yesterday.

Observing the behavior and ability of the German Shepherds, and reading about the history and canine qualities of the Indian Pariah Dog, I became fascinated by how different are the aptitudes and characteristics of various types of dogs, yet all domestic dogs are the same species, Canis familiaris, or more technically, a subspecies of the gray wolf, Canis lupus, hence  Canis lupus familiaris, and have been so for more than ten thousand years of evolution.

The Indian dog, Indie dog, South Asian dog, or Desi Kutta, is a landrace of dog native to the Indian subcontinent. They have erect ears, a wedge-shaped head, and a curved tail. It is easily trainable and often used as a guard dog and police dog. This dog is an example of an ancient group of dog known as pye-dogs. There is archaeological evidence that the dog was present in Indian villages as early as 4,500 years ago.

Though most street dogs in the Indian subcontinent are in fact Indian pye-dogs, the names for this breed are often erroneously used to refer to all urban South Asian stray dogs despite the fact that some free-ranging dogs in the Indian subcontinent do not match the "pariah type" and may not be pure indigenous dogs but mixed breeds, especially around locations where European colonists historically settled in India, due to admixtures with European dog breeds.

(WP)

I was particularly captivated by the Indian pariah dog for a number of reasons, including its name, which I will discuss more below, its overlap with the Pye-dog, and the fact that Indian friends said that it has been well suited to its environment for five millennia or more.

Here's how WP begins its article on the Pye Dog:

The Indian Pariah Dog, also known as the village dog, Pye Dog, Indian Native Dog, or more modernly INDog, is an ecologically adapted dog with stray/wild habits that occupies the ecological niche of a scavenger in human settlements. These dogs are typical of the Indian subcontinent, but can also be found in the Balkan Peninsula and in less developed countries.

The term "Pariah" originates from the Tamil word meaning "outcast", which the British used to refer to stray dogs typically living on the outskirts of villages in India. The first recorded use of the term "yellow pariah dog" was by Rudyard Kipling in The Jungle Book.

Many kennel clubs now prefer the term primitive dog [it] to describe dogs of the pariah type, reflecting their close resemblance to early domesticated dogs. The Primitive and Aboriginal Dogs Society reclassifies Pariah Dogs as INDogs and categorizes them as a subgroup of primitive and aboriginal dogs [it].

^…

India hosts large populations of these village dogs, with significant numbers and a wide variety of indigenous breeds. Archaeological research suggests that Indian Pariah Dogs date back at least 4,500 years.

In India, Pariah Dogs are known by various names such as Nedi Kukur, Deshi Kukur, Deshiya Naayi, Deshi Kutra, Theruvu Naai, Deshi Kutta, Theru Naai, Deshi Kukura, Veedhi Kukka, and Deshi Kutro. In Bangladesh, they are referred to as Nedi Kukur and Deshi Kukur. More recently, they are commonly called INDogs.

The definition of "village" is quite vague, as a village can range from a few hundred homes to tens of thousands. Thus, categorizing village or Pariah Dogs is challenging. Generally, these dogs share the characteristic of not being confined but being closely associated with human dwellings. Another factor to consider is that dogs in larger villages depend entirely on humans for food (both waste and otherwise) and rarely leave the village.  In contrast, in smaller villages, these dogs have opportunities to interact with wildlife, potentially increasing such interactions.

Two categories of dogs are excluded from this definition:

• • dingoes, which are independent of human subsidies or interactions, primarily found in Australia and limited by human persecution;
  • working dogs, which are specifically bred and trained to interact with wildlife, used in hunting wild animals or protecting domestic ungulates (sheep, cattle, etc.) from wildlife.

(WP)

From my studies of the Indian caste system, I was familiar with the Tamil term "pariah" meaning "outcast":

From Tamil பறையர் (paṟaiyar), from பறையன் (paṟaiyaṉ, “drummer”), from பறை (paṟai, “drum”) or from Malayalam പറയർ (paṟayaṟ), from പറയൻ (paṟayaṉ, “drummer”), from പറ (paṟa, “drum”). Parai in Tamil or Para in Malayalam refers to a type of large drum designed to announce the king’s notices to the public. The people who made a living using the parai were called paraiyar; in the caste-based society they were in the lower strata, hence the derisive paraiah and pariah.

Alternatively, derived from Sanskrit पर (para, “distant; outsider”). (Can this⁽⁺⁾ etymology be sourced?)

(Wiktionary)

Pariah comes from Tamil paṟaiyan and its Malayalam equivalent paṟayan, words that refer to a member of a Dalit group of southern India and Sri Lanka that had very low status in the traditional caste system of India. (The plural of the Tamil word paṟaiyan is paṟaiyar. The symbol ṟ in this Tamil word transliterates a letter pronounced as an alveolar trill in some dialects of Tamil, while it transliterates a letter pronounced as an alveolar liquid in Malayalam.) Because of their low status, the paṟaiyar found work performing undesirable tasks considered ritually impure by members of the higher castes, such as disposing of the corpses of dead cattle and performing music and carrying out other functions at funerals. The term paṟaiyar is derived from paṟai (in Malayalam, paṟa), a name of a kind of drum played as part of certain festivals and ceremonies. Players of this drum have traditionally been drawn from the paṟaiyar group. The word pariah begins to appear in English in travelers' accounts of Indian society and at first refers specifically to the low-status paṟaiyar. One such occurrence of the word dates from as early as 1613. As British colonial power began to expand in India, however, the British began to use the word pariah in a general sense for any Indian person considered an outcaste or simply of low caste in the traditional Indian caste system. By the 1800s, pariah had come to be used of any person who is despised, reviled, or shunned.

(AH 5th ed.)

Naturally, I wondered how one gets from "Pariah Dog" to "Pye Dog".  I just assumed that "pye" is a clipped version of "pariah".  Trusty old Hobson-Jobson (1886) to the rescue:=

(Hobson-Jobson)

I'm intrigued by feral dogs, stray dogs, and street dogs, wherever they may occur in the world, inasmuch as they are animals that went through domestication, and subsequently became wild again to one degree or another.  Since there are so many of them running around on the streets of Taiwan, I'm especially captivated by the Formosan Mountain Dog.  China (PRC / CCP) would club them all to death without a moment's hesitation.

 

Afterword:  Kipling and Indian dogs

• Highly Social Hunters: Dholes live and hunt in large clans, using teamwork to take down prey much larger than themselves, including deer and even wild boar.
• Distinctive Communication: Instead of howling or barking, dholes communicate using unique whistle-like calls, which helps them coordinate in thick vegetation.
• Feared Predators: In The Second Jungle Book, they are described as such a terrible force that "Even Hathi [the elephant] moves aside from their line". The story culminates in a major battle where the wolf leader, Akela, dies fighting them.
• Physical Appearance: They are reddish-brown, often described as fox-faced, with a thick muzzle and dark, bushy tails. 

• Scavengers: These dogs occupy an ecological niche as scavengers in human settlements and their lives are often characterized by a constant search for food.
• Appearance: Kipling often described them as the "yelping, yellow crew" or "yellow pariah-dogs".
• Behavior: In stories like "Garm – a Hostage," he portrayed them as half-wild, starving, and cowardly individually, but dangerous when they gathered in a pack. 

Selected writings

• "Canine intonations" (3/21/22)
• "Annoyed dog responding to the Islamic 'Call to Prayer'" (12/29/15) — this is a classic, but presently not available on YouTube.  Does anyone know where else it might be found? [UPDATE 9/22/22:  found it here]
• "Canine backtalk" (10/25/19) — this darling dog could have a conversation of sorts with Izzy, but they speak different lects.
• "Talking seals and singing dogs" (11/28/03)
• "Of dogs and Old Sinitic reconstructions" (3/7/18)

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72530&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=pariah-dogs-and-pariah-people

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=72530

Don't get me wrong, the criticisms are not without merit. There are a lot of weirdo incels on Reddit, and a lot of the advice subs are pretty much, well...

Q: My aunt and I got into an argument over her rosebushes. What should I do?

A: Your aunt is a malignant narcissist. You should immediately cut all contact.

Yet sometimes, you'll get...

Q: AITA? My aunt started chasing me with hedge trimmers.

A: YTA. You're a malignant narcissist.

And of course, half the stories are probably fake. 

AITA for robbing a Build-a-Bear during an orphan's birthday party?

I mean. 

Tumblr has similar flavoring when it comes to people  having very disproportionate responses. There's a lot of "how dare you say we piss on the poor". Then there's weird fandom drama, and my sense is that I've only seen the milder weird fandom drama, so I can only imagine what the rest of it is like.

That said, I've been Very Online for a very long time. Most spaces have things like what I mentioned above. Overreactions, gatekeeping, really bad advice, fandom drama. (fandom_wank existed for a reason.)

Moreover, I've found community for things that I'm interested in. I've seen people actually get a lot of support. Cliche though this advice is, you really do need to curate your experience. I stepped away from a fandom I felt was becoming too toxic. I stopped reading the relationship advice and AITA subreddits, although I do like BestofRedditorUpdates. 

And I like that where tumblr is concerned, it reminds me a lot of old school LJ. Probably because a large portion of the populace are former LJers. I mean sure, that's also why the drama can be beyond, but it's also very quirky and fun and SLIGHTLY CHAOTIC.

So yeah. Reddit and tumblr are definitely imperfect. Lots of pissing on the poor to be had. But curating my experience has helped a lot. 

Introduction Post * Meet The Mods Post * Challenge #1

Remember that there is no official deadline, so feel free to join in at any time, or go back and do challenges you've missed.

On many of the fannish websites we use, our history is easily compileable into "pages". When we look back through those pages, sometimes we stumble upon things that we think are rather cool.

Challenge #4: Rec Your Last Page

Any website that you like, be it fanfiction, art, social media, or something a bit more eccentric!

Include a link to your post if you feel comfortable doing so. Also, feel free to entice engagement by giving us a preview of what your post covers.

And please do check out the comments for all the awesome participants of the challenge and visit their journals/challenge responses to comment on their posts and cheer them on.

And just as a reminder: this is a low pressure, fun challenge. If you aren't comfortable doing a particular challenge, then don't. We aren't keeping track of who does what.

Title: Wishful Thinking
Fandom: FAKE
Author: badly_knitted
Characters: Dee, Ryo.
Rating: PG
Setting: After Like Like Love.
Summary: There’s nothing worse than an outdoor murder scene in the middle of a New York winter.
Word Count: 1215
Content Notes: Nada.
Written For: Challenge 502: Sand.
Disclaimer: I don’t own FAKE, or the characters. They belong to the wonderful Sanami Matoh.

My other group is moving to CoC 3rd edition. That's the one the GM owns. It turns out between the group we own a vast assortment of CoC editions, generally speaking one edition per player, including an original from 1981.

My character, Daniel Soren, has some good stats (Strength, Constitution, Intelligence) and some terrible stats (Dex, Power, and Edu). Unfortunately, in 3E you get Intx5 and Edux15 skill points, so being smart doesn't make up for being a grade school dropout. He does have some decent skills, but very narrowly focused: he's a competent cabbie and a moderately successful pulp writer with ambitions to appear in Weird Tales.

Power governs sanity in CoC so I don't know how long he will last.

astrafoxen on blusky created some visual aids showing Saturnian moon orbits.

They're all great but a detail in this one is worth mentioning.



The odd green squiggle to the right is a visual of Neptune's outer irregular moons, whose orbits around Neptune are large enough to be visible across the solar system. https://www.dreamwidth.org/comments/recent

A powerful but timid sorcerer is sent to guard a prince as he attends school.


Secrets Of The Silent Witch, volume 1 by Matsuri Isora (Translated by Alice Prowse)

Posted by nickpelling

http://ciphermysteries.com/2026/01/07/1930s-1940s-balloon-technology-flow-chart

https://ciphermysteries.com/?p=63401

I put the following diagram together to make it easy to see how I think the various pieces of balloon technology fitted together. The “Project -X-” is, of course, a placeholder for the (still unnamed) project or operation that ended up (thanks to the magic of plausible deniability) at Roswell in 1947. There are numerous … Read More →

The post 1930s-1940s Balloon technology flow chart appeared first on Cipher Mysteries.

http://ciphermysteries.com/2026/01/07/1930s-1940s-balloon-technology-flow-chart

https://ciphermysteries.com/?p=63401

amperslashexchange is an exchange for ambiguous relationships. It has two pinch-hits left, including one for the Guardan novel, Guardian drama and Guardian RPF. The current deadline is January 9, 11:59 PM UTC.

Here are the exchange rules, and you can claim a pinch-hit here if you can help out!

Here! There's even a Creator's Choice of Fandom podfic request!

Nominate tags here, sign up here!

Click here to sign up as a potential pinch hitter for Purimgifts!

It's Wednesday! We're at the halfway point of the week. Day 8 of whatever fucking bug this is. It's still going strong.

I'm so sick of coughing. It passed annoying and has moved into loathing. It doesn't seem to want to let go and I need it to leave now. It's had it's fun, I've coughed until I've gagged, that's it. I'm done with it. Yet here I am coughing. It's like this virus doesn't respect my boundaries at all. I actually went to the urgent care, only to get a pat on the head and a pack of steroids, which I don't want to take. They make me angry, and I don't like that. I always feel snappish and bitchy. I figure I'll give it til day 11 or 12. If it's still hanging around, I'll consider it.

I knew Urgent Care was a useless idea. Honestly, all I wanted from that visit was a codeine cough syrup. I did not get it.

It's a shame gummies aren't anti-tussive. That I can just get.

We'll see if my voice holds out today. Yesterday, it was getting very wispy, but we'll see how it goes.

We tried a new Yemeni restaurant called House of Mandi yesterday and the food was amazing. Very flavorful. I got what was basically a biriyani, called Chicken Zorbian. It was so good. I could actually taste it, which has been a bit of a problem from all the congestion.

Last night, our tea order from Whistling Kettle came. It was too late to try things, but I'm looking forward to trying the butterscotch or cotton candy tea today. Both smell amazing. I'm leaning towards the butterscotch, but we'll see.

I also got our salt order, which is lovely. I ordered from Saltverks, which is a company based out of Iceland. I ordered their flaky sea salt and their Arctic Thyme see salt. They're hand harvested, and taste lovely. I'm looking forward to feeling better so I can use them when I cook.

I also got a jug of the white chocolate mocha sauce from Fontana. It's the sauce that Starbucks uses, but the company is not at all affilliated with them. Thus, I can have my sauce and uphold the boycott. It's very tasty in my coffee this morning.

Lastly, we got an amazon order that had some little travel clocks in it. I've heard that during the Alaska cruise, your phone doesn't always sync with ship time, so it's important to have a clock that is independent of that. We have two clocks, one for the living room and one for the bedroom.

I don't think I have a whole lot else that we need to get for the cruise. I think we've got all our stuff.

I've got other packages coming this week. Nothing exciting, just some little things, though I do have slippers coming. My feet are always cold while I'm working, since my desk is by the window, so I thought I'd grab a pair of supportive slippers. Fed Ex says it's coming today, but I think maybe not, since the last tracking is in New Jersey.

Okay, time for me to relax and sip my coffee and hope it melts some of the gross snot in my throat. Everyone have a stupendous Wednesday!

Posted by Mike Glyer

https://file770.com/53rd-annie-award-nominees/

https://file770.com/?p=127793

ASIFA-Hollywood has revealed the nominees for the 53rd Annie Awards, with categories honoring the best work across animated feature films, shorts and series as well as visual effects and video games. The winners will be announced on February 21. The most-nominated films … Continue reading →

https://file770.com/53rd-annie-award-nominees/

https://file770.com/?p=127793

Joke stolen from the_siobhan, because it was too good not to.

( Read more... )

And there goes Lilith. \o/