Sapphire Bullets

what kind of english is that? let's look at some famous examples of each.

Hwæt. We Gardena in geardagum, / þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon, / hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. <- this is old english. note that it is unintelligible to a modern english speaker. (excerpt from beowulf)

Whan zephirus eek with his sweete breeth / Inspired hath in every holt and heeth / Tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne / Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne … <- this is middle english. it is more intelligible, but it’s still very different from what we speak now. (excerpt from the canterbury tales)

Is this a dagger which I see before me, / The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. / I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. / Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight? <- this is early modern english. this is so intelligible that we trust teenagers to read it in school. (excerpt from macbeth)

the english you are using to give a post a medieval or renaissance/shakespearean vibe is early modern english, not old english. (it's fine that you're using early modern english for a medieval vibe; no one expects you to learn middle english for a silly post about knights.)

how do you use pronouns?

'thou' is the informal second-person singular pronoun.

thou/thee/thy/thine

thou is the nominative form. you can use it for the subject of a sentence -> thou knowest me.

thee is the oblique form. you can use it for the object of a sentence -> i know thee.

thy and thine are the genitive forms. you can use them as possessive adjectives for nouns starting with consonants and vowels respectively. -> thy leg is broken. thine arm is broken too.

thine is also the possessive form. think about it like the word 'mine'*. -> my heart was once thine.

*'mine' is also used like thine as a possessive adjective in early modern english; you would say 'mine art' instead of 'my art'

ye and you

originally, 'ye' was the formal or plural nominitive second-person pronoun, and 'you' was the oblique form. so, it would be 'ye know me' and 'i know you'. 'ye' fell out of use and was replaced by 'you'. at that point it was already used as singular. but it was still much more formal than 'thou'.

the 'ye' you see in 'ye olde shoppe' stuff is not this pronoun. it is the way that printers who no longer had a thorn (þ) wrote the word 'the' (previously 'þe'). the 'y' in certain typefaces looked like a thorn, so we got 'ye' for 'the'.

how do you conjugate a verb?

you can't just slap a -th or -st onto the end of any verb. those are for specific conjugations. phrases like "i hath noticed" or "he thinkest that" are not grammatically sound. it's like saying "i has noticed" or "he think that".

the -st or -est ending is for (most) present and past tense verbs conjugated with 'thou'

some examples: thou canst, thou couldst, thou sayest, thou goest, thou wentest, thou hast, thou hadst, thou dost (or doest).

'thou' also has a few irregulars. some examples: thou wilt, thou art and thou wast (for 'to be'), thou shalt.

the -th or -eth ending is for (most) present and past tense conjugated with 'he', 'she', or 'it'

some examples: he hath, she sayeth, it doth, he goeth, she thinketh, it moveth

there are, of course, irregulars. the most important one is 'to be', which conjugates the same for this set as it does in modern english.

note: not every verb conjugates this way. for example, past tense verbs might use auxiliary verbs. so, not 'she cookedeth', but 'she did cook'.

by and large, the 'i', 'we', 'you' (or 'ye'), and 'they' conjugations were the same as they are today.

there were also some verbs that were used differently than we use them today, though (some of these fell out of use over the early modern period):

to be -> sometimes this verb is used instead of 'to have' as the auxiliary verb. 'i am arrived' means 'i have arrived', and 'she is come to see thee' means 'she has come to see you'.

to do -> sometimes this is used for the present progressive (i think that's the right name for it). 'he does speak' means 'he is speaking', and 'i do write' means 'i am writing'.

would -> this can be used to express a desire. 'i would i were a bird' means 'i wish i were a bird'

must -> this can be used without 'go' to mean 'must go'. 'i must to england' means 'i must go to england'

will -> this can be used without 'have' to mean 'will have'. 'you'll none of that' means 'you will have none of that'

there are a million other things i'm not covering, like different sentence structures for questions ('thinkest thou...?' as a valid alternative to 'dost thou think...?'), and different contractions ('she'll not' rather than 'she won't') but this post is long as fuck and i have things to do! enjoy! linguists, feel free to correct me on what name of tenses or declensions or whatever i have mixed up.

'wherefore' = 'why', not 'where'. think about it pairing with 'therefore'. an example of the two in use:

'my love, wherefore didst thou pretend to see me not?' [babe, why did you pretend not to see me?]

'thy father, from whom we do keep our love hidden, did at that moment walk nearby. therefore i turned from thee that he might not espy us together' [we're keeping our relationship secret from your dad and he was walking by. i did it so he wouldn't see us together.]

'hither' = 'to here', not 'here'. there's a whole set of these, actually. 'whither' = 'to where' and 'thither' = 'to there'. these pair with 'hence' ('from here'), 'whence' ('from where'), and 'thence' ('from there'). an example of some of these in use:

'whence came you?' [where did you come from?]

(pointing to the left) 'thence came i hither.' [i came here from there.]

'and whither go you now?' [and where are you going now?]

(pointing to the right) 'my lord calls me thither.' [my boss is calling me over there]

'very well. get you hence.' [alright, get away from here.]

'whom' ≠ fancy 'who' and this one is just also true today.

'whom' works for the object of a sentence. 'who' is for the subject. in other words, 'whom' receives the action and 'who' does the action.

'whom wrote that letter to you?' -> incorrect! this should be 'who wrote that letter to you?' because 'who' is doing the action.

'whom did you write that letter to?' (or even better, 'to whom did you write that letter?') -> correct! 'whom' here is receiving the action.

Alberta senator Kristopher Wells is putting on a different hat on Aug. 6, when he makes his personal collection of over 300 queer picture books available to the public for the first time. Wells is partnering with the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) Canada to release the collection, and it is believed to be the largest collection of its kind in the world.  The collection includes books dating back nearly 50 years, which document LGBTQ2S+ life for young readers. IBBY Canada is the Canadian chapter of IBBY International, a non-profit organization that, since 1953, has worked to bring together children and books. Wells will participate in the opening ceremonies for IBBY’s 40th World Congress in Ottawa this week, the first held in Canada. The four-day conference will explore the theme “Listening to Each Other’s Voices,” and Wells’s collection fits in perfectly with this theme, which includes a focus on gender, sex and sexuality. 

Any film featuring the US military is paid for by the US military. They have the final word on what comes out. These films are recruitment tools. Same applies to TV shows, and doubtless many will soon be showing up.

Do not be fooled by these films and shows. They are designed to bring in new recruits. When these are released, there is a surge in new people enlisting in the military. These recruits swiftly discover they were fed bullshit, but now they're stuck due to a contract. Going AWOL, away without leave, is desertion. You will be caught and put on trial for desertion, and they are not light with the sentencing.

Please, for the love of fuck, do not enlist with the military. You are cannon fodder. They do not care about you.

Recruiters are told to lie. To do whatever it fucking takes to enlist new people. Do not fucking fall for it.

if you want to quit, no matter how long you've been in, these folks may be able to help you https://girightshotline.org/

It's never done that before so I looked it up and turns out Roku TVs have added all sorts of creepy things in the privacy section since I last checked.

One of which being they take screenshots from what you're watching and send them to third parties to identify it.

Fucking hell! Remember when every fucking device in your life wasn't a spy implanted in your home and working against your interests to try and sell your data? Remember how nice that was??

Remember when the TV was just a tool that would play the things you plugged into it?

at what age does a child cross from innocent pre-exposed object to sullied brain adult? what is the normal age to experience or witness violence? where does that leave those who experience and witness violence at younger ages? who may never have lived a 'violence-free' existence?

do we actually think that children are ontologically incapable of being interested in violence, or are we merely so threatened by the idea they could be that we refuse to even speak the possibility?

is it the worst thing in the world to pick up a book and then decide its subject matter is unappealing, frightening, or overwhelming? is that such a foreign fucking concept? did anything scary ever happen to you as an 8 year old? did it have an instant off-switch as effective as 'close the cover and pick up something else'?

You want to study abroad? Show us proof that there is a quadrillion dollars in your bank account. Oh, an average monthly salary in your country is $400 and you plan to work when you arrive? You can't do that, silly, a student visa only allows you to work 2 hours every third Wednesday, and if we find out that you're working a second more we will deport you.

You want to work abroad? Better be a programmer, then of course you are welcome. Doctor, scientist, white-collar or, god forbid, blue-collar worker? You can fuck right off, your visa application goes straght into trash.

The largest dam removal in U.S. history. So successful that the salmon that haven’t run freely in the river for literally over a century came back the next year. Not steady progress over a decade as expected, the very next salmon run they came home. No one alive saw salmon in that river outside the hatcheries kept by native’s tribes and the Department of Fish And Wildlife scientists desperately trying to save them. One of the activists who helped bring the suit spoke of their dying grandmother making them promise to bring the fish home, and they didn’t know how that was possible, but they spent decades doing it.

The legal basis for successfully suing the power company who owned the dams was Indigenous treaty rights to eat the fish. Eating the fish was the one thing in a century that succeeded in being a clear and legally binding right that superseded the desires of white capital and industry. I have been going to the public interest environmental law conference off and on for 20 years where a lot of organizing for Undam The Klamath happened. I’ve heard updates about every legal tact they tried as they happened, and they tried everything.

There are healthy, thriving salmon, trout, and lamprey in a rewilding and recovering Klamath River right now as a direct result of Indigenous people eating them. Of their legally binding right to eat them. They sure as fuck care more about those fish than any white vegan ever could. They are salmon people that the Creator sent Salmon to feed, while charging the People with protecting and stewarding them. It’s not possible to learn about salmon and trout in the Pacific Northwest without learning this, and it’s unambiguously racist to dismiss this symbiotic relationship.

The white vegans are trying to get all hunting and fishing banned in Oregon, and that’s quite possibly the single most catastrophic thing that could be done to the animals here because we killed off all the major predators of creatures like deer and without anything hunting them their numbers will explode, eat all the vegetation, destroy the ecosystem, and then die along with everything else in that failing ecosystem. Controlled hunting of deer is vitally necessary for the deer to survive. This is something Native people know, but patronizing racist savior-complex white people refuse to listen to.

I have a whole collection of Oregon’s Public Broadcasting’s documentaries about Klamath River or the larger story of fish and people in the region. If you watch nothing else, watch Klamath Dams Are Coming Out, First Salmon Ceremony, After The Dams, and First Decent (Native made). It could not be clearer that the salmon are being protected and nourished by the people who eat them, and that stewardship is a massive part of their creation myths. But it contradicts political vegan dogma so they don’t listen.

Cut fabric, sew it together. You just made clothing.

Put some beads on some twine. You just made jewelry.

You can see your productivity.

Chores are the opposite. Yes, your kitchen is clean now. But you'll cook again that evening or the next day and you'll have to start over. Yes, you vacuumed. But two days later it's dusty again. Laundry done, until next week.

Chores never end.