Andi's Sideblog

released on april 1st of this year, usa hockey has released a policy stating that all leagues and teams under it's governance must restrict players to their assigned sex based team (excluding coed leagues and teams). this is not only incredibly disruptive to just trans athletes, but moreso female athletes

as you probably know, hockey is a predominantly male sport, so most local and smaller teams are more likely to be all-male teams. in the past, girls have been able to get around this by joining male teams as a female, playing the same game.

this is no longer possible, and female athletes, even beer league or low level leagues, are restricted to teams, leagues and games that are either female only, or coed. both of which are hard to find and usually are only low level--meaning it restricts a lot of girls and women from playing at a higher level.

most olympic level or professional hockey players in the PWHL were able to reach their level via playing in boys leagues and teams, because girls teams weren't available. with this new policy, it could be harder than ever before for girls to play and access hockey.

despite girls hockey growing exponentially in the past couple of years, this may prove to be a bigger challenge for girls than any actual trans athletes. this ban not arguably harms more athletes

abby roque (olympian and pwhl player): played in boys teams for her childhood, and was on her highschool's men's hockey team as the only girl. she also was the only freshman to make varsity hockey, and was alternate captain her senior year.

manon rheaume: played in boys hockey for her youth, also was the first and only woman to play in the NHL

megan keller (golden goal in milano-cortina 26, gold medal olympian, pwhl player): played in boys leagues in her youth as there weren't enough girls teams in her area

caroline harvey (the overall first draft in the 2026 pwhl draft): played boys hockey in her youth, also the first woman to ever practice with an NHL team

marie-philip poulin ("captain clutch", three-time gold winning olympian and regarded as the best hockey player in the world, captain of team canada and the victoire, pwhl player): grew up playing hockey in boys teams.

(I find it disturbing that the english language has a word for afternoon but not for the opposite, this is clearly a GAPING linguistic hole. English should follow the example of other languages and use beforenoon)

“Afternoon” and “evening” are only normalized as separate times because we have separate words for them.

There’s no reason to not have a separate word for the time between sunrise and noon except that we don’t have one. I never thought about it before.

Either we should have both “afternoon” and “forenoon” or we should have neither. Why do we only have one?

I'm not sure whether this is primarily a rant or a warning or a PSA, but one thing I've been seeing a lot of in the summer courses I'm teaching is conspiratorial thinking that flies, bafflingly, in the face of the facts.

My students (presuming this isn't an LLM thing that I haven't figured out yet) will often write, in the style of a YouTube clickbait headline, about how sad it is that so many voices are LOST TO HISTORY because NO ONE THOUGHT THEM WORTHY OF RECORDING.

Okay so. The Romans think that sex doesn't count as real sex unless Someone Is Getting Penetrated By A Dick Or Dick-Adjacent Object. Very sort of dick-centric system.

So Latin has six words for "to fuck", divided into three pairs: one pair for each of the possible Holes (ass, mouth, pussy). In each pair there is a word for topping and a word for bottoming.

Most people who know a little about Latin fuck verbs know 'pedicare' and 'irrumare' from the first line of Catullus 16 (Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō), which is a poem about saying "absolutely shut the fuck up and piss all the way off" to fandom antis and purity police who are making repulsive accusations about you personally, based on things they're reading into your work from a bad-faith perspective. Catullus was so real for that and it's incredibly endearing to me that he was dealing with the same thing we are still dealing with. I got a hater in my askbox doing this about The Wisdom of Emperors just the other day, but I took the high road and, unlike Catullus, did not tell them "I will assfuck you and I will facefuck you" So here sort of a chart about the verbs: Topping | Bottoming Mouth: irrumare | fellare Ass: pedicare | cevere Cunt: futuere | crisare

Another fun fact related to the fuck verbs was that the Romans didn't think about sexual orientation in terms of who you're attracted to, they thought about it in terms of "which is your favorite hole and what do you like to do with it." So you'll get graffiti (ancient roman subtweeting) about things like "Marcus is a fututor [cunt-fucker] and a pedico [ass-fucker] but omg girlies I also heard he's a fellator [cock-sucker] 👀👀👀👀" In the modern day we'd just call him bisexual, but in Ancient Rome it is not enough to know if someone is bisexual (they think it's kind of perverted if a man only fucks women, like do you have some kind of freaky pussy fetish???? you've never once even fucked a twink??? dat's gay, bro. gay to not be bi), you also have to know if he's being bisexual in a respectable sort of way

You will notice that pussy-eating is not on this list, because those words do not mean "to fuck", they translate more directly to just "pussy-licking" (cunnilingus), and because the Romans are sexist as all hell and think that's gross and filthy anyway. This is not ONLY because of pussy terror, it's also that the mouth is the most sacred part of the body -- so eating pussy or sucking a dick is actually considered slightly more "shameful" than getting fucked in the ass. (Please note as well that the fuck verbs are gender neutral -- if you're a roman man and your girlfriend owns a strap-on, she can [pedicare] you. but be careful because your sworn enemy in the forum will have a fucking FIELD DAY if he hears about that and will write a Mean Poem about you or subtweet you on a public wall)

Golp: a roundel purpure.

Roundels are circles in heraldry. They are named according to their color, which also has its own lingo. Let’s meet them!

Bezant: roundel or (gold) 🟡

Plate: roundel argent (silver) ⚪️

Torteau: roundel gules (red) 🔴

Pomme: roundel vert (green) 🟢

Hurt: roundel azure (blue) 🔵

Golp: roundel purpure (purple) 🟣

Pellet: roundel sable (black) ⚫️