Interesting Links for 05-07-2021

[andrewducker]

When "Ma'am" and "Sir" Just Don't Work (Gender Neutral and Nonbinary-Exclusive Language; A Small Guide)

(tags:language gender )

This thread is a delightful little spooky short story

(tags:short_story horror Twitter )

In Thailand, blood sacrifice is out. Strawberry Fanta is in.

(tags:religion Thailand food colour )

How can Christian fundamentalists be anti-Semitic and Pro-Israel at the same time?

(tags:christianity Jews OhForFucksSake Israel )

St James Quarter floods as heavy rainfall batters Edinburgh during storm

(tags:Edinburgh weather rain shopping )

World's largest ever four day week trial in Iceland 'overwhelming success'

(tags:work working_hours Iceland )

Brian Blessed's Tarzan story is delightful

(tags:movies Disney voice )

Ships! Cats! In! Tiny! Hammocks!

(tags:cats navy history photos viaSwampers )

City streets need trees

(tags:trees cities temperature )

Transmission of Covid between 2 people who used the same bathroom 40 minutes apart

(tags:toilet pandemic Doom Epidemiology )

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

Ywah, I really like Mx as an alternative to Ma'am and Sir.

[andrewducker]

I find the Southern Politness thing (ending sentences with Sir/Ma'am) deeply uncomfortable, but I can totally understand that people for whom it is inbuilt want an alternative!

[cosmolinguist]

It's very common (probably sometimes required *eyeroll*) in retail/service settings in other parts of the U.S. too, and I'm in favor of them having something else to say in addressing people.

But even in the UK, it's useful to have words for, like, getting a stranger's attention when they've dropped something, or when you want to ask them for directions or something. Here people tend to use stuff like "love" and "mate" for that; it's still gendered. (It made me laugh once when I was waiting for someone in a public place and some old white guy came up behind me and said "scuse me love!" and, when I ignored him, switched to "scuse me boss!" in case it was the genderedness of the greeting that I had been ignoring.)

[nancylebov]

How do you pronounce Mx.?

[cosmolinguist]

"mix," or sometimes with a kind of schwa sound so it's maybe more like "mux." It's like Ms. in that way.

[nancylebov]

Thank you!

[cmcmck]

I can't recall when it shifted from 'miss' to 'ma'am' in my case.

The kids I taught that I'm still in contact with that still think of me as 'miss x' rather than 'Mrs y' which I find faintly amusing. :o)

[andrewducker]

I think we find it hard to shift our model of a person, even if they are a few decades older now!

[calimac]

It can be kind of alarming when one becomes an adult and one's parents' friends ask you to stop calling them by formal titles (Mr. X, Mrs. Y) and use first names. However, in my generation my friends always taught their children to call the parents' friends by their first names, so I never got to experience it from the other side. In fact I've been unable to get my actual niblings to call me "Uncle [first name]."

Things were more formal in the past. Even use of first names among friends of different social status used to be rare. When they started becoming fashionable in the 1950s, Tolkien tried to get some of his closer ex-pupils to call him Ronald instead of Professor Tolkien, but most of them just couldn't bring themselves to do it.

[cmcmck]

I know what you mean.

My own postgrad history prof was the late Patrick Collinson, but I always thought of him as Professor Collinson.

Noting the Fanta in Thailand Report

[dewline]

I didn't know there was/is such a thing as Strawberry Fanta. Let alone its' popularity in Thailand.

*checks Wikipedia's Fanta entry*

A hundred or so flavours available across the planet?

argh

[agoodwinsmith]

Okay. COVID-19 has freaked me out from the beginning, but time-durable viable virus in an unventilated/poorly ventilated place makes my hair absolutely stand on end.

Re: argh

[andrewducker]

I hope you're getting Vaccinated soon!

Re: argh

[agoodwinsmith]

I had my first nine weeks ago, and I get my second this coming Thursday. I just read about the nightclub in the Netherlands. As I said before: argh.

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/covid-free-dance-party-infects-130638194.html

Re: argh

[andrewducker]

Cheating and partying inside. People really do think they're immortal don't they?

Re: argh

[agoodwinsmith]

Yes. And because they are privileged like gods, they are going to go to the grocery store where people are walking peacefully with their kids. Ours under 12 do not yet have an approved vaccine. Do yours?

Re: argh

[andrewducker]

We aren't vaccinating anyone under 18 at the moment.

[anna_wing]

In both Myanmar and Thailand, the mainstream view is that outside very specific and limited times and places, and if you're not a qualified officiant, you would definitely get quite the wrong class of spirit if you tried to offer it something that had been killed. Your neighbours would also look at you askance, and start avoiding you, because you would be quite the wrong class of person, too.

You can't separate the polytheist and the Buddhist elements, because virtuous spirits are mostly Buddhist, or at least Buddha-respecting as well (in Myanmar, at least two of the 37 Great Lords were Muslim in life, so pork is never offered to them, and is forbidden on and around Mount Popa, the centre of polytheist worship in Myanmar).

[andrewducker]

Thank you for the extra information, it's fascinating!

[mountainkiss]

I read your last two tags as "doom epistemology", which gave me a moment's pause for thought.

[andrewducker]

It is very important that we find out exactly how we know about Doom.