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Midjourney AI. imagined Harry Potter 's characters if written by Dostoevsky. Wow.

Word for “you” (plural) in different Caribbean creoles and its etymology.

While Socialism with Chinese Characteristics was definitely an improvement over the mass murder and the dismantling of social institutions during the Cultural Revolution, it also brought with it more corruption and nepotism. All the old problems came back, and workers and students couldn’t help but notice that the West seemed to have fewer of these problems and also had this interesting social technology called democracy which was maybe related.

So started the 1989 Democracy Movement, a series of protests that sprang up across all of China, asking the government for democracy. The biggest and longest-lasting protest was in Tiananmen Square, which if you don’t know where that is, you can think of it like protesting in front of the White House.

And at Tiananmen, they built the Goddess of Democracy out of papier-mâché and a metal frame.

The students who created it said:

At this grim moment, what we need most is to remain calm and united in a single purpose. We need a powerful cementing force to strengthen our resolve: That is the Goddess of Democracy. Democracy…You are the symbol of every student in the Square, of the hearts of millions of people. …Today, here in the People’s Square, the people’s Goddess stands tall and announces to the whole world: A consciousness of democracy has awakened among the Chinese people! The new era has begun! …The statue of the Goddess of Democracy is made of plaster, and of course cannot stand here forever. But as the symbol of the people’s hearts, she is divine and inviolate. Let those who would sully her beware: the people will not permit this! …On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent. We have strong faith that that day will come at last. We have still another hope: Chinese people, arise! Erect the statue of the Goddess of Democracy in your millions of hearts! Long live the people! Long live freedom! Long live democracy!“

Less than a week later, the protests and the sculpture were destroyed by the People’s Liberation Army.

These words speak to me a lot, and I hope they are never forgotten. Especially this line:

On the day when real democracy and freedom come to China, we must erect another Goddess of Democracy here in the Square, monumental, towering, and permanent.

I have faith that one day, this really will happen. It’s such a powerful symbol. Until then, I think the best thing we can do is help keep this hope alive and known.

There’s a replica in San Francisco Chinatown:

And another in Washington, DC, twoish blocks north of the Capitol.

And a few others around the world.

When I was in college, about ten or so years ago, I was a history major. I wanted to learn to dance, so I joined a swing dance club on campus. To my surprise, this club had about twice as many men as women (in high school, the last time I’d tried dancing, the ratio had gone the other way–lots of girls, and boys only that you could drag by their ears).

But apparently, there had been some kind of word spread specifically to the STEM guys that dance was a way that they could meet girls.

So anyway. I joined the swing dance club, and met a few guys. And at one point, when socializing with the guys outside of dance class, one of them asked me what my research was on. (I had already established that I was an honors history student doing a thesis, just as he had established that he was an honors… I’m not sure if he was CS or Math, but it was one of those.)

So I gave him the thumbnail sketch of my research. Now, to be clear, an honors senior thesis, while nothing like what a graduate student would do, was still fairly in-depth. I had to translate primary sources from the original late-Classical Latin. (My professor said, basically, that while there were plenty of translations of my source material, that I’d only be able to comfortably trust them if I had at least made a stab at a translation of my own. And he was right.) And there was so much secondary material, often contradictory, that I had been carefully sorting through.

But I was able to sift it into a three-sentence summary of my senior thesis work, you know, as one does.

So I gave him that summary, and then asked–since he was also an undergraduate senior doing an honors thesis–what his research was on.

“Oh,” he said, “you wouldn’t understand it.”

Reader, I went home in a frothing rage. Because I had thought we were playing one game–a game of ‘let’s talk about what we’re passionate about!’– and he had been playing another game, which was, one-upsmanship. I had done my best to give a basically understandable brief of my research–and he had used that against me. As if my research, my painstaking translation, my digging through archives and ILLs of esoteric works, my reading of ten thousand articles in Speculum (yes, the pre-eminent medievalist journal in North America is called Speculum, I’m sorry, it’s hilarious/sad but also true), and then my effort to sum it up for him, was nothing. Because his research into some kind of algorithm or other was just too complex for my tiny brain to conceive of. Because I just couldn’t possibly understand his work.

Now, the important note here is that the person I went home to was my senior year roommate. She was a graduate student–normally undergrads and graduate students couldn’t be roommates, but we’d been friends for years, and the tenured faculty-in-residence used his powers for good and permitted us to be roommates that year. Anyway. My senior year roommate was basically… in retrospect I think possibly an avatar of Athena. She was six feet tall, blonde, attractive in a muscular athletic way, a rock climber and racquetball player, sweet but sharp, extremely socially awkward, exceptionally kind even when it cost her to be kind, and an incredibly brilliant computer science major who spent most of her time working on extremely complicated mathematical algorithms. (Yes, I was a little in love with her, why do you ask? But she was as straight as a length of rope, and is now happily married, and so am I, so it worked out.)

(Still, yes, she is my mental image of Athena, to this day.)

Anyway, I came home in a frothing rage to my roommate, the Athena avatar. And I said, “He made me feel like such an idiot, that I could sum up my research to him but his research was just too smart for stupid little me.”

And she shut her book, and smiled at me, with her dark eyes and her high cheekbones and her bright hair, and said, “If he can’t explain his research to you, then he’s not nearly as smart as he thinks he is.”

Now I hesitated, because I’d be in college long enough to have sort of bought into the ridiculous idea that if you couldn’t dazzle them with your brilliance, you should baffle them with your bullshit. But she said, “Look, I’ve been doing work on computer science algorithms that have significantly complicated mathematical underpinnings. What do I do?”

And I said, “Genetic algorithms–that is, self-optimizing algorithms–for prioritization, specifically for scheduling.”

“Right,” she said. “You couldn’t code them because you’re not a computer scientist or a mathematician. But you can understand what I do. If someone can’t explain it like that, it isn’t a problem with you as a person. It’s a problem with them. They either don’t understand it as well as they think they do–or they want to make you feel inferior. And neither is a positive thing.”

So. There.

How can one go through life reading this far into innocuous things without having to take stress medication? “I went home in a frothing rage” Yeah no shit! Because you took a meaningless little phrase and decided to interpret it the worst way possible (i.e. this guy was belittling your intelligence), when there are at least ten other more generous interpretations. Maybe he was stressed out about his research and that was the last thing he wanted to talk about.. maybe he thinks his research is too nerdy (he’s from STEM after all) to impress girls with.. maybe he’s had the experience before of explaining it to other people and the responses weren’t encouraging so he prefers not to delve into it.. or maybe, yeah maybe he really just haven’t gotten that far into his research yet so he doesn’t feel like he can dumb it down enough to outsiders. 

You know what this post sounds like? 

“This guy once said I wouldn’t understand something and instead of saying ‘Try me’, I decided to doubt my entire academic career, my intelligence and my achievements. I know! I’m gonna write a lengthy ass post that goes on a bunch of unrelated tangents to definitely prove that HE is the dumb one and I am the brilliant one!  Yeah, I’m not insecure and thin-skinned at all, why do you ask?”

I swear if this post doesn’t represent the “thinking of a great rebuttal to an argument, three days after the argument happened while you’re in the shower” phenomenon I don’t know what does.

This is an advanced concept I learnt in my C1 classes that I thought I’d share with you guys :)

Modalverben in subjektiver Bedeutung have three different uses:

1. The speaker is not 100% certain of what they are saying, and they want to indicate the degree to which they are sure (or not sure).

Modal verbs that take this usage:

mögen - when you are very unsure - “Das mag stimmen.”

können/könnten - when you are unsure - “Er kann/könnte noch im Büro sein.”

dürfen/dürften - when you are around 50% sure - “Das Ereignis dürfte 10 Jahre zurückliegen”

müssten - when you are very sure - “Das Ergebnis müsste stimmen.”

müssen/nicht können - when you are 99.99% sure - “Er muss an der Prüfung teilgenommen haben.”

2. The speaker is relaying an opinion or rumoured information.

The modal verb for this usage is sollen:

“Manuel Neuer soll der beste Fußballspieler der Welt sein.” (Someone is stating their opinion that Manuel Neuer is the best footballer in the world)

“Frau Müller soll krank sein.” (Someone is stating that they heard Frau Müller is sick)

3. The speaker is relaying a claim that another person has made about themselves.

The modal verb for this usage is wollen:

“Der Angeklagte will am Tod seines Opfers unschuldig sein” (Someone is relaying that the defendant claims not to be responsible for the death of their victim).