Odds and Sods.

I love mythology and so now that everybody is talking about Goblins because of Hogwarts Legacy, I thought I'd do a small Goblins 101.

European Folklore (and quite possibly, worldwide folklore, but I haven't studied those), is FULL of all kinds of goblins and goblin-inspired creatures. J. K. Rowling took most of her creatures from Celtic folklore (which is still very present in Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, north of Portugal, and north-west Spain, amongst other places). Her elves, her gnomes, her ghouls, her goblins, her giants, her witches, her sirens, her mermaids... ALL of them have origins traced back to European folklore and mythology, and all of them have a very heavy Celtic influence.

So who the hell are the Celts? They were a civilization which expanded mainly in West Europe from 1200 b.C. Irish, Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish... Are all languages with a profound Celtic origin.

So Celts have been amongst us for roughly 3200 years. Their origins are still being disputed, because they arrived to different parts of Europe in different times, and because one thing is their origins in literature, another in the arts, another in the study of European languages and another in DNA studies. But recent studies have found that Celtic-related populations such as in Scotland, Ireland, the Bretons, the Basques and the Galicians, all share a common HLA system (Human Leukocyte Antigen), which is basically cells in the chromosome 6, which would be linked to them all coming from the Celts, as does their culture.

So when did goblins enter the picture? They've kind of always been there, associated to the Celts, although I am sure people in other cultures such as Asian will find their own variants of goblins associated to other civilizations. This is because goblins, like witches, druids and giants, belong to the collective unconscious, which is like an unconscious brain shared amongst all humans, putting into our minds common imaginery and ideas across the world. Let's also not forget that we're talking about 3000 years of history, and until pretty much yesterday, people would always look for explanations of things they didn't understand in God, the heavens, and myths. And this takes me back to the Goblins.

I've been holidaying in Galicia now and then for several years. I've also been to Cornwall and in all those occasions I've always been able to find books, in whatever house I was renting, about their local mythology and there would always be Goblins, Mermaids and pretty much everything you can find in the Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, which peaked my interest. Both Tolkien and Rowling got heavily inspired by these mythological creatures, and is no wonder that territories where mythological stories about them are popular and common are also territories rich in literature and magical legends. It's just very inspiring. Anyway, I'll try not to digress.

The main thing to remember about Goblins is that they exist because back then people had some issue that they explained with this creature. For example in Galicia, they've got mythological explanations for everything. If something naughty happened, that was the biosbardo (like Peeves!), horrible storms were a product of the legromante, if a child died, it was the canouro, and so on. Goblins in Galician-Celtic mythology were for example:

Meniñeiro (or Cuines in Cantabria) were kind and generous goblins who played with children and could only be seen by children.

Sumicio or sumiciu, were goblins that could only be seen if they wanted to, could make people and things vanish and reappear as they liked, and if you pray to St Anthony, he can make this goblin return what's been taken. You'll find loads of mini sumicios for sale anywhere in Galicia, and this is how they're depicted:

Abelurio: these goblins love games and having fun, and live inside the houses. This is also how locals might call children who are like Fred and George.

Trasno: Very similar to the abelurio, and also not uncommon to hear locals tell their children "you're a trasno!" They're Galicia's most popular goblins, can look like many things, because they can change their looks, but mostly, they're tiny, with horns, beard and a red hat (like the little garden goblins people buy). They're not evil at all, but very naughty and shy.

Diaño burleiro: Something like the naughty demon. Again, someone who's just very naughty. They can appear as men, as donkeys... Anything. And they love having fun with humans (or rather, at humans' expense).

Tardo: Trasno's evil cousin. They're green creatures with sunken, black, cruel eyes, they have many sharp and dirty teeth, they have a small back, are very hairy and have long beards. I'd daresay Harry Potter's filmakers based their goblins in these. These tardos live underground and in caves (hello, Gringotts?), and they dig long tunnels into people's houses, where they like to make humans have nightmares. They sit on people's chests as they sleep and make them have the worst dreams.

Anyway, there are many more Celtic goblins! Many! So I thought I'd finish this with the most popular one: the Irish leprechaun!

Yeah?

It's not revolutionary or game changing lol, it's you willingly refraining from spending 70 euros on a shit game, there is, like, zero fucking effort, it's not even "do performative X" it's literally the absence of action.

You know what that is however?

THE BARE FUCKING MINIMUM.

It's one simple fucking request (Don't play the "Protocols of the Elders of Gringott," if you do don't buy it or stream it if you don't want trans people calling you out for it) that can be EASILY accomplished with ZERO effort, the most basic bitch capitalist request ever, and if you aren't even able to do that, then yeah you're Gona get fucking called out for it.

Because at some point you might be needed for something a bit more difficult than "don't blow 70 euros on the wizard game."

1. Elon Musk buys Twitter

2. Elon Musk unbans Andrew Tate

3. Andrew Tate picks a fight with Greta Thunberg

4. Greta Thunberg ratios the shit out him

5. He gets mad and posts a video response

6. There's a Romanian pizza box in the video which twigs Romanian police of his location

7. He is raided and arrested for human trafficking

He finally rose to address this gathering of “weighty Quakers.” Many Friends in Pennsylvania and New Jersey had grown rich on Atlantic commerce, and many bought human property. To them Lay announced in a booming voice that God Almighty respects all peoples equally, rich and poor, men and women, white and black alike. He said that slave keeping was the greatest sin in the world and asked, How can a people who profess the golden rule keep slaves? He then threw off his great coat, revealing the military garb, the book and the blade.

A murmur filled the hall as the prophet thundered his judgment: “Thus shall God shed the blood of those persons who enslave their fellow creatures.” He pulled out the sword, raised the book above his head, and plunged the sword through it. People gasped as the red liquid gushed down his arm; women swooned. To the shock of all, he spattered “blood” on the slave keepers. He prophesied a dark, violent future: Quakers who failed to heed the prophet’s call must expect physical, moral and spiritual death.

The room exploded into chaos, but Lay stood quiet and still, “like a statue,” a witness remarked. Several Quakers quickly surrounded the armed soldier of God and carried him from the building. He did not resist. He had made his point.

The article also describes Lay throwing tobacco pipes at fellow Quakers at a meeting in Philadelphia, while loudly protesting the slave labor upon which tobacco growing relied. At other Quaker meetings, whenever anyone who owned slaves stood up to talk (which is how Quaker meetings work), he’d jump up and yell things like “There’s another n****-master!” to shame them. He regularly said slaveowners bore “the mark of the Beast” and were basically Satan incarnate.

It came as no surprise, to Lay or anyone else, that ministers and elders had him removed from one gathering after another. Indeed they appointed a “constabulary” to keep him out of meetings all around Philadelphia, and even that wasn’t enough. After he was tossed into the street one rainy day, he returned to the main door of the meetinghouse and lay down in the mud, requiring every person leaving the meeting to step over his body.

Lay was disowned by the Quakers’ Society in 1738 because he just wouldn’t stop calling out elders and rich members for their hypocrisy on the issue of slavery.

Also that year, Benjamin Franklin published one of Lay’s anti-slavery pamphlets, “All Slave-Keepers That Keep the Innocent in Bondage, Apostates.” But Franklin owned a slave and later bought two more. Lay called his ass out.

Lay refused to eat or wear anything produced in any way from slavery, and was a vegetarian. After his wife died he lived in a cave, kept goats and bees, farmed vegetables and fruit trees, and grew flax so he could spin it to make his own clothes. He had a library of 200 books in there.

Oh PS and he was barely over four feet tall and was disabled (kyphosis). He called himself “Little Benjamin” and likened himself to David going up against Goliath.

It’s Possible Elon Musk Didn’t Think Any Of This Through

Twitter, the social media platform Elon Musk spent $44 billion of his hard-earned dollars on, is currently laughing at this exchange.

Oh dear God, he’s haggling.

As Wonkette explained yesterday, Elon Musk appears to be extremely confused about what exactly is the product Twitter sells, and who is the customer. Because, as this outstanding “welcome to hell” essay by Nilay Patel at the Verge explains, the asset Twitter holds is not its technology, which isn’t very interesting, but rather its users who can’t stop tweeting. As Patel writes, “You! You, Elon Musk, are addicted to Twitter. You’re the asset. You just bought yourself for $44 billion dollars.”

Gotta pay the bills somehow! Elon whines. Can’t rely “entirely” on advertisers! (Advertisers who, incidentally, won’t allow his wet dreams of throwing content moderation out the window to come true.) Of course, as Wonkette also noted yesterday, this is a company whose cash flow last year was about $630 million, and Elon’s bad deal means it now will owe an interest payment of a billion a year.

Maybe he is not good at math?

A great new article at The New Statesman explains that charging blue-checked people $20 a month, or $8 a month, for the privilege of being blue-checked on an unmoored social media platform wouldn’t put the tiniest dent in Twitter’s revenue problems, even if folks like Stephen King up there did seem more inclined to pay it.

If as many as one in five current blue ticks paid $20 a month that would raise just under $15 million a year for Twitter. That might sound like decent money, but Twitter’s current revenues (mostly from advertising) are $5 billion a year. Musk’s apparent plan would generate about 30 hours’ worth of annual revenue.

One would think Elon Musk of all people would know the difference between billions and millions. But maybe he just didn’t think any of this through and just assumed his brilliance would prevent his plans from crashing and bursting into flames.

Of course, the article notes, as many have, what a Twitter where large entities like banks and governments that say “fuck you” to Elon’s $240/year demands and therefore become unverified might look like. Which one of these accounts is the real US State Department or Bank of America or Ukraine ministry of defense? Golly who knows! We’re sure the advertisers will stick around, though, you betcha.

And then of course there’s this:

[T]he Twitter Elon Musk has inherited is one that is failing to engage its most active users. These are people defined by Twitter as posting a mere three to four times a week and the network is losing them already. This is a terrible time to ask people for money. When it comes to its most active users, generally those who are verified, Twitter is useless for monetisation for creators: it has yet to build a Patreon- or Substack-type product and doesn’t share advertising revenue. Having tens of thousands of followers on YouTube or Instagram makes you an income. Having tens of thousands of followers on Twitter makes you a target.

We’re sure it will be fine for Elon. He did that very funny thing walking through Twitter’s lobby with the sink, after all. Yes, it was like somebody told a rudimentary AI program to tell a joke, but we’re sure it inspired confidence.

He’s got it under control! He’s focused on the big picture!

Oh, did everybody hear Elon has ordered the Twitter engineers to work on bringing back Vine? Neat idea, if it was 2017, and TikTok didn’t exist.

Mustafa,JESUS.

His new bio😂

For people just finding out about Ali,he used to be a cop in Chicago but left after realizing how corrupt the system was.

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