libroraptor

libroraptor, 8 days ago

@skinnylatte If you go searching for a while you can find a celebrated New Zealand case of a racist woman who insisted on shopping at the more expensive white greengrocer to avoid the garbage at the Chinese shop. She eventually found out that the produce was identical because the white greengrocer was merely an end-of-chain retailer who bought from the Chinese greengrocer for resale.

libroraptor, 9 days ago

@msquebanh @bastianallgeier https://isps.yale.edu/news/blog/2024/05/rediscovering-rousseau-yale-political-scientist-shares-lessons-for-democracy%E2%80%99s

libroraptor, 9 days ago

@msquebanh @bastianallgeier They're new where I am – not yet clear whether they'll achieve anything.

Something that is clear to me, though, is that the existing consultation system never worked to begin with; it's rigged by design. Something that I get so tired of hearing is "It would be great if [minority] would come along" from the same people who shut them out. [Minority] here can be so many things – gender, age bracket, ethnicity, disability, wealth ... all systematically excluded.

libroraptor, 9 days ago

@msquebanh @bastianallgeier I get tired of being tokenised, too. So many majority-group people are convinced that they've done the "diversity" thing by bringing along a few token people who then aren't allowed to engage.

Of course they've been given equal speaking rights.

But not an equitable dynamic in which their voices, ideas, experiences, values, norms are equally legitimate.

I saw too much of this when I was in academia, and now I see it all the time in local government.

libroraptor, 16 days ago

@bananabob A Nelson community facebook group was busy this morning with "Grape vines over our laneways will attract wasps and bird droppings and drop leaves on the street" paired with the usual "If you like Europe so much go live there".

My preferred response now is to trawl up photos from the 19th century and demand a return to unpaved streets for the bullock carts. Because look how much space there was! And how clean it was! And how none of the shops are vacant!

libroraptor, 20 days ago

@inquiline I can't trawl up sources for you, but I'm pretty sure that this usage has existed at least since early modernity – which means all of modern English. But when it was dominant, and among which groups talking about which others, is a much harder, and better, question – though probably not at all a straightforwards answer to the usage that you're seeing now.

libroraptor, 21 days ago

@kissane Not that it does much for people who've made up their minds already, but here's a little recent progress in case you ever come across a naysayer who thinks critically: https://journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/cmr.00124-23

libroraptor, 23 days ago

@jonoabroad @elronxenu

People appreciate blunt, pointed corrections from a copyeditor when they're worried about looking minutiae.

People also appreciate it from a mentor or developmental editor, without mentioning the specific instances, in broader advice about the techniques of crafting an impression about abstract attitudes and habits like "attention to detail", "critical thinking", "creative problem-solving".

Typos and English might be among the hardest things to advise on.

libroraptor, 23 days ago

@iangriffin Maybe you could get one of those little lapel badge things that turns black for drama.

We all used to feel that we got less exposure wearing those in our safety-conscious workplaces day-in, day-out than we did when flying. I used to have a neutron source set about two metres below the basement floor, past two locked doors and a padlocked cover. I lowered samples down on a string to expose them. My lapel badge was something of a let-down.

Same at the linac next-door.

libroraptor, 24 days ago

@skinnylatte I had a conversation about this related cases with an elder colleague back in my historian days at Rochester. He observed that the stories that the press tells – even the ones that purport to be disturbing – tend to be the affirming stories that make the system comfortable.

We were talking, in that case, about liberal education in China being sometimes markedly more liberal than in the US liberal arts colleges where our deans and presidents and newsletters claimed the opposite.

libroraptor, 24 days ago

@mythologymonday

One of my favourite myths told in museums is that all ancient cultures had a wide range of food and drink vessels that they never ate or drank from, but which were understood purely in terms of their forms – for ancients nourished only their souls.

That's why the krater and amphora are separated from the wine cups, and why there are no chopsticks in the "Asian ceramics" case.

libroraptor, 25 days ago

@inquiline I picked rhubarb yesterday afternoon. I was going to simmer it a little before putting setting it into a tart but I left it too long and the threads separated. Thus we have apple tart rather than rhubarb.

libroraptor, 25 days ago

@inquiline A sweet brioche case in a long tart tin, filled with vanilla crème patissière, then slices of rhubarb-become-apple, a dusting of cinnamon and brown sugar on top before baking.

There is still a LOT of rhubarb in the garden!

libroraptor, 27 days ago

@bananabob As much as I like reading this sort of stuff, it perturbs me that it garners so much more attention than even immediately pressing threats like Covid and climate change and dangerous pedestrian crossings and kennel cough.

And petty celebrity gossip, even more so.

libroraptor, 21 days ago

@iangriffin Do you have any measurements that'd say what the particles are? (Much harder to get, I know – but maybe new-tech counters can do much more than the old-tech ones that I'm thinking of.)

libroraptor, 30 days ago

@compost if you let the hips ripen, you can eat those, too. The most common uses now are to cook them into jams, jellies and syrups, and to dry them for tisanes. If you go searching for older recipes, you'll find them also in soups and stews.