What are you reading rn, why are you reading it, and what format are you reading it in (physical book, ereader, on your phone etc)

Oh, this actually explains something I'd just attributed to a quirk of sequence constraints or something; why Alexander is realized as Iskander/Iskandar in Arabic! It makes sense to analyze it as al-Iskander in Arabic!

Same thing happened with the word alchemy! Started out as the Arab term "al-kimiya", and when it was transported to Europe, it became "alchemy". This is actually really interesting, because as the term evolved more, it became "chemistry", effectively un-reanalyzing the word!

Oh actually there's another layer of fun there: the Arabic "al-kimiya" is actually a loan of the Ancient Greek χῠμείᾱ (khumeíā), which was used to refer to the art of alloying metals. Arabic borrowed a lot of Greek terminology owing to Arabic translations of Greek classics (many of which were actually lost in Europe until they were retranslated from Arabic). So, yeah, the Greek khumeíā made a round trip through Arabic, then into medieval Latin as "alchemia," and from there we eventually do get chemistry!

In the X-rayed lab, straight röntgin it

official linguistics post

literally nothing is funnier than sphynx airplane ears

I love the death grip after the toy was fixed up. Lessons were learned. Try to steal it this time you fucking bird. I dare you.

you are fifteen thousand generations removed from stone tools

to be clear you are fifteen thousand generations removed from the invention of stone tools. not from the end of stone tools. modern humans are still using stone tools.

I thought you meant we were descendents -of- stone tools

your father was a handaxe and your mother smelt of microliths

do yall know about this?? the girlfriend?? They literally invented a girl who's hot and feels the same way about you that you feel about her. and you can like kiss her and stuff. That's wild

i say yay and yippee a lot but i mean it. i always mean it. *looks into the distance pensively*

you might be smooth but you’ll never be as smooth as Joe from The Princess Diaries sweeping the queen into a tango saying “you’ve been wearing black too long” in his most alluring voice

The core conceit of Lord of the Rings is pretty funny. You are a twenty three year old in a suburb of Maine. The little bracelet in your grandpa’s attic has an inscription on it that is the password to the world’s entire nuclear arsenal. It is up to you to walk to the only hydraulic press in the world, located in Arizona, before the FBI finds the bracelet, kills you, and enslaves the suburb of Maine you currently live in

Also the 90-year old hobo that your grandpa beat in a rap battle for possession of the bracelet while hiding from the Romanian secret police really loved the bracelet because it was coated in small amounts of LSD and tried to hunt and kill your grandpa to get it back. He was then apprehended by the FBI and instantly gave them your grandpa’s address. Seal Team Six is about to break down your door and shoot you, says your local congressman who can also do cool magic tricks

There's a guy in NY who MIGHT be capable of destroying the codes but won't coz he simply wants to spend time with his wife. So it's up to your grandpa's old friend in rural Ohio to get you the friends capable of finishing the task.

And we must not, at any point, remember the existence of aircraft and ask aloud why we can't just fly to Arizona

We can't use aircraft because the fbi has access to all the flight data how many times do we need to go over this