Erik McDonald
@erikmcdonald.bsky.social
Russian teacher in Minneapolis xixvek.wordpress.com
I gave my retrospective here sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2025/08/woke..., not to be coy. But I don't think I was ever a True Believer in quite the right way so I'm probs not a good example of the pertinent class of people. Then again from the outside I bet I seem like I am, so maybe I am a good guide?
Wokeness: a Retrospective
In recent times my online sphere has had a fair few people make the claim that, in some sense, the culture has moved on from Woke. The d...
sootyempiric.blogspot.com
A poem by Virginia Hamilton Adair, who published her debut collection at the age of 83
Pavel Tchelitchew, Russian (1898-1957), Woman at the Window, 1937, oil on canvas, 92 x 67.5 cm, private collection
"He then gathered his family and friends about him, filled them with as much Dickensian good fare as he could persuade them to swallow, and, after their Christmas dinner, set them down to play 'Charades' and 'Clumps' and 'Animal, Vegetable and Mineral' in the drawing-room,
This is shockingly hard! Margaret Atwood Javier Cercas (but some are mysteries) Roman Senchin (only 4 1/2 books) Martin McDonough (1 book + 2 plays + 2 movies) I feel like the spirit of the restrictions would leave out children's book authors, or I could complete the list.
Julian Davis Mortenson@jdmortenson.bsky.social · last mo.I'm v curious how many people have answers: 1. that are NOT sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, or romance; and 2. for which you don't even need to count titles--like, it's just obvious without checking I can't immediately think of any! I wondered maybe Irving but had to check--and the answer was no (4)
I was today years old when I realized the linguistic term calque is just French for tracing paper.
The signatory Twain was assigned was Francis Lightfoot Lee of Virginia, who, as Twain was quick to point out, was “so inconspicuous that his name would now be wholly forgotten, but for one thing…” Here we find the quintessential Twainian pause, often deployed as a kind of misdirection.
Saddened to hear of the passing of the Sinologist Victor Mair, a linguistic genius the likes our field will not see again for a long time. I first got to know him via his incredible blog, Language Log, fresh out of college and was beyond-the-moon happy when he reposted my writing there, but
Language Log » Gibberish Uyghur
languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu
Edward w@edwardw2.bsky.social · 2mo agojust heard on twitter that Victor Mair, the sinologist has died. x.com/AndrewSethMe...
Victor Hugo "once, when writing a poem based on the Book of Ruth, invented an entire Biblical city—Jérimadeth—just to land a funny rhyme" (Daniel Hahn, If This Be Magic)
how the hell did they make Russian history this boring? my review of THE WIZARD OF THE KREMLIN. On Jude Law's Putin, the worst rave scene since The Matrix Reloaded, and a story that mistakes the Kremlin's self-image for a dissection of it
My Review of The Wizard of the Kremlin
how the hell did they make Russian history so boring
hegemon.substack.com
СВВ = специальная военная война (special military war) now longer than World War I
Новый рекорд СВВ
Я чуть не забыл про это число, но вчера специальная военная война Путина в Украине побила новый антирекорд: она превысила по продолжительности Первую мировую войну, достигнув 1568 дней. Человек со сре...
eugigufo.net
Finally learned that Canvas lets you grade things in random order or in the order received, and anonymously if you want. Sorry to the people at the end of the alphabet in the years it took me to figure that out!
can’t imagine much more demoralizing to a student than being accused by a machine of using a machine to cheat when you did no such thing
For a second time, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey has vetoed a measure that would temporarily give tenants more time to catch up on rent payments in the wake of Operation Metro Surge:
Frey again vetoes measure giving tenants more time to pay rent after Metro Surge
The mayor of Minneapolis said more time won’t improve outcomes. The council president said residents “deserve solutions, not vetoes.”
startribune.com
Poetry is so silly. Косяк особняка. Ты — на курсах, ты родом из Курска.
Dostoevsky and his second wife had four children, with two living to age 5. Reads as exceptionally tragic now, but was routinely tragic then.
Hank Green@hankgreen.bsky.social · 4mo agoSome people say we don’t build beautiful things anymore and, like, lol. Motherfuckers, we built this:
TIL Belarusian твар is Russian лицо (cf. Polish twarz), not Russian тварь.
Белорусские слова, которые смешат русских 🇧🇾🇷🇺#белорусскийязык #беларусь
YouTube video by Diana Berd
youtube.com
I made a starter pack for specialists in Eastern Christian Studies- check it out, share with others, and let me know who else to add! go.bsky.app/8a9jSuF
We are farther from Office Romance (1977) than Novoseltsev was from Pasternak's poem "Loving some people is a heavy cross" (1931) when he tried to pass it off as his own.
Here's my esoteric hot take on the possible cause of this data anomaly
Spanish media has no trouble quoting "open the fuckin' strait" without sanewashing.
Seti I.bsky.social@seti1.bsky.social · 4mo agoTrump vuelve a amenazar a Irán para que levante el bloqueo en Ormuz: "Abrid el puto estrecho, locos bastardos, o viviréis en el infierno" www.eldiario.es/internaciona... ¿Pero cómo es posible que sea presidente de ningún sitio, esta anormalidad de la raza humana?
Endlessly fun to study a language so long you can watch it change—today I'm hung up on "кварта и квинта похожи друг с другом" and "это правда смешно, как бокс и балет похожи друг с другом" (Ruscorpora and Google Books Ngrams still have exclusively похожи друг на друга).
"If I could completely describe the way he transmuted such dross into gold, I could theoretically assemble a few thousand pages of nineteenth-century materials, program a computer to make the proper selections, transformations, and arrays, and crank out a new Dostoevsky novel."—Robert Belknap, 1990
![Food truck at a sunny brewery with the words "quise ahogar mis penas en licor, pero las condenadas aprendieron a nadar" [I tried to drown my troubles in liquor, but, sentenced to death, they learned to swim]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:vmyy7fdxoslb54g5v3guwpmt/bafkreigpacobhce54h76vftcz6olm37ihcfivb4rjiofafrbz677px22eq)
