Leah
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dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Leah
@dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
220 followers 290 following 580 posts
Linguist in LA. Vitam faciunt balnea vina Venus.
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dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
There are kinds of guys out there we've never even dreamed of
"Personal life" section of the Wikipedia page for Vincent Kosuga, one of the perpetrators of the onion fraud that led to the Onion Futures Act: "The son of a Russian Jew who converted to Catholicism, Kosuga was a devout Catholic. He donated a significant amount of his fortune to the church, and was rewarded with private audiences with three popes. Kosuga carried a .38 caliber pistol and a billy club with him at all times. He drove stock cars in his spare time and was a licensed pilot. He once survived a plane crash near Oswego, New York when the plane he was flying ran out of fuel mid-flight. He was left in a body cast after the crash, but made a quick recovery."
December 11, 2025 at 12:11 AM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Learned about a really funny law
Text from the first paragraphs of the Wikipedia article titled "Onion Futures Act": "The Onion Futures Act is a United States law banning the trading of futures contracts on onions as well as 'motion picture box office receipts'. In 1955, two onion traders, Sam Siegel and Vincent Kosuga, cornered the onion futures market on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The resulting regulatory actions led to the passing of the act on August 28, 1958. As of May 2025, it remains in effect. The law was amended in 2010 to add motion picture box office futures to the list of banned futures contracts, in response to lobbying efforts by the Motion Picture Association of America."
December 11, 2025 at 12:07 AM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Maybe you missed this part of the article
Screenshot from the article linked in the previous comment: "Maintain meds. Exercise can give you a huge leg up on your ADHD symptoms, but it doesn't replace your medication. Don't stop your other treatments unless your doctor says it's OK."
December 2, 2025 at 11:16 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Do we have any records of what kind of accent Bonnie Prince Charlie had when speaking English or Scots? It must have been phenomenally strange.
Screenshot from the Wikipedia page for George Murray. It describes Charles Stuart as "a young man brought up in Italy whose first language was French, and whose mother was Polish."
November 13, 2025 at 6:37 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
wait this is cool
Screenshot showing text from one paragraph in the "Bees in Mythology" Wikipedia page: "Bees have a special status for Albanians. The bee is considered a sacred animal, associated with human life. When an animal ceases to live, Albanians use the verb ngordh or cof; when a bee ceases to live, they use the verb vdes (which is used to refer to human death). Meaning that for Albanians bees are beings of a higher caste, like humans. The bee also has a special status in the Albanian customary law – the Kanun – which dedicates specific laws that deal with beehive possession, damage and theft, the value of the bee, and the ownership of swarms of bees."
October 27, 2025 at 9:46 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
The big protest downtown is during kiddo's naptime so we went to an early one in Alhambra
Me standing in a protest crowd in a park, with my daughter in a stroller. She has a sign she made with crayon scribbles, and I have one that says "If Not Fascism Then Why Fascism Shape?"
October 18, 2025 at 7:08 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
I've never been totally satisfied with the explanation for the singular / plural forms of Os. Wiktionary says this (but no cite) - I would like to read this argued more fully
Screenshot of part of the Wiktionary page for the Old English section of the word "os": "The genitive plural ēsa (attested in ēsa gescot 'the shot of the ēse') and names such as Esegar display i-mutation, despite being a u-stem. This is likely a fossilization from an earlier stage between Proto-West Germanic *ansu and early Old English *ons, in which i-mutation was applied to the attested declined forms due to the word’s archaic meaning, rather than its active usage."
October 10, 2025 at 6:20 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Photo of a sling stone used in the siege of Perusia during a civil war (41-40 BCE). It is carved with the letters OCTAVI FELAS: "Hey Octavian, you suck dick!"
September 19, 2025 at 2:38 AM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Learned tonight that Mayan glyphs use the same symbol for heart, masa and tamal. These people knew what's up.
Photo of a sheet showing three variants of a glyph. Pronounced ohl (heart) or waj (tamal/masa).
August 30, 2025 at 4:38 AM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
I must also recommend to measure word enjoyers (or haters) to learn about Navajo classificatory verbs. You think it's hard to keep classifiers straight? Try having completely different verbs based on the properties of the direct object.
Screenshot from the Wikipedia article on Navajo grammar: "To compare with English, Navajo has no single verb that corresponds to the English word to give. To say the equivalent of Give me some hay!, the Navajo verb níłjool (non-compact matter (NCM)) must be used, while for Give me a cigarette! the verb nítįįh (slender stiff object (SSO)) must be used. The English verb to give is expressed by eleven different verbs in Navajo, depending on the characteristics of the given object."
August 30, 2025 at 4:29 AM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Victorian moment
Photo showing some text from a recent piece in the London Review of Books: "The celebrated cavalry officer Colonel Burnaby, who had volunteered for the campaign [against the Mahdi], was heard shouting 'Isn't this fine sport, my boy,' just before being fatally stabbed in the neck."
August 26, 2025 at 7:49 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Objectively this is a very funny way to begin a love spell
Translated first lines from SM I 42, a spell to make Gorgonia daughter of Nilogenia fall in love with Sophia, daughter of Isara. The text reads: "Fundament of the gloomy darkness, jagged-toothed dog, covered with coiling snakes, turning three heads, traveler in the recesses of the underworld, come, spirit-driver, with the Erinyes, savage with their stinging whips; holy serpents, maenads, frightful maidens, come to my wroth incantations, before I persuade by force this one and you, render him immediately a fire-breathing daemon. Listen and do everything quickly, in no way opposing me in the performance of this action; for you are the governors of the earth."
August 14, 2025 at 10:23 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
IMO it's important to know that some ancient Greco-Egyptians went in to some life or death court cases wearing this little guy under their tunics
Illustration from PGM 36. It's a line drawing that I think is a curly-haired guy holding an ankh and restraining a snake. He has a big grinning face drawn on his chest. The style looks like something a cool teenager in the 80s would have drawn and inexplicably the guy also looks like he's leaping off a skateboard.
August 14, 2025 at 2:18 AM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
And he kept doing outrageous radical stuff like uh this, so much that the ruling class deported him to Tasmania for life. WTF. (William Cuffay, in case I'm not the only one just learning about this.)
A screenshot from the Wikipedia article about Cuffay. It says: "He was a significant player in having the Master and Servant Act amended, so employers could no longer have their employees imprisoned if they left their jobs without permission."
August 13, 2025 at 1:03 AM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
I found genAI uninteresting at first, but I've reluctantly come to see linguistics questions about it that really have to be wrestled with. When I ask it to write a Petrarchan sonnet about a peach tree, in medieval Tuscan, and translate it into English in the same form: why can it do that???
A screenshot showing text output from Gemini: "Sonetto del pesco: Gentil arbore, cui vista non ha pare, Quando Aprile ti veste d'un bel fiore, E mostri al mondo il tuo vivo colore, Che l'alma fa sognar fuor di suo stare. Ogni tuo ramo par che voglia amare La dolce luce e 'l suo primo calore; Poi cade il fior, con subito dolore, E nudo torni a l'aria e al suo soffiare. Ma non è morte il tuo gentil perire, Anzi è principio d'una dolce attesa, E 'l frutto nasce ch'a noi fai gradire. Matura il sole, con beltà palesa, La polpa ch'offri senza nulla dire, La grazia tua, ch'in dono s'è distesa. Sonnet of the Peach Tree: O noble tree, whose sight has no compare, When April dresses you in lovely flower, And you display your life-bestowing power, That lifts the soul beyond its earthly care. Your every branch, embracing sun and air, Adores the warmth of that first sunlit hour; Then petals fall in one swift, painful shower, And to the wind you turn, exposed and bare. Yet in this fading no true death we find, But rather, of a sweeter hope, the start, That ripens for the joy of humankind. The sun brings forth, a treasure for the heart, The flesh you offer, generous and kind, And all the grace your silent boughs impart."
August 12, 2025 at 10:13 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
I took this one yesterday. The sign and screen have the exact same phrase, except one uses the informal pronoun and the other one is formal. I liked the appearance that the store was hedging its best about how to address its customers :)
A ticket dispenser machine in a pharmacy in Mexico. The sign says "toma tu turno" ("take your turn" -- informal) and the screen directly beneath says "tome su turno" (formal version of the same please).
August 8, 2025 at 12:18 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Photo of me at the Trotsky museum making an exaggerated shrug.
August 7, 2025 at 5:25 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Interesting little difference there in the English and German versions of the Wikipedia entry for this mid-20th century professor of Germanic languages.
Screenshot of the English-language Wikipedia page for Ernst Schwarz (philologist). The sentence I highlighted reads: "From 1939 to 1941, Schwarz was Dean of the Philological Faculty at Charles University." Screenshot of the German-language Wikipedia page for Ernst Schwarz, as translated by Google. The sentence I highlighted reads: "After joining the NSDAP he was Dean of the Philosophical Faculty of the German Charles University, which continued to exist under the German Protectorate in Prague, from 1939 to 1941."
July 24, 2025 at 6:01 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Hey ancient Greco-Egyptian magicians, you ok?
Part of a text from the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM XI. 376-96): Charm to induce insomnia: Take a living bat and on the right wing paint with myrrh the following figure, and on the left write the 7 names of the god as well as: "Let her, NN whom NN bore, lie awake until she consents." And so release the bat again. Perform this spell at the waning of the moon when the goddess is in her third night, and the woman will die for lack of sleep, without lasting 7 days. This charm cannot at any time have an antidote. But if you at some time wish one, do not release the bat, but keep it in custody, and do this as well: when you want to release it, wash off with spring water [what] has been written on the wings and release the bird. But do not do this, save for a great intrigue.
July 10, 2025 at 6:54 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Most gastronomically open-minded Englishman of the 17th century
Screenshot with some text from a Smithsonian article about early European reactions to the tomato. It reads: "In the 1600s, doctor Richard Surflet translated into English the Maison Rustique, or The Country Farm, a husbandry guide by Charles Estienne and Jean Liebault. The translation says of the tomato, 'This plant is more pleasant to the sight than either to the taste or smell, because the fruit being eaten provoketh loathing and vomiting.'"
July 7, 2025 at 7:49 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Almost word for word the inverse of how Millay ends "Justice Denied in Masachusetts"
"Let us sit here, sit still, Here in the sitting-room until we die; At the step of Death on the walk, rise and go; Leaving to our children's children the beautiful doorway, And this elm, And a blighted earth to till With a broken hoe."
June 16, 2025 at 6:22 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
My favorite sign today
A man standing in front of Glendale City Hall with a sign that says "No Kings" and a very detailed hand-drawn kind of creepy picture that is King John from the Robin Hood animated movie, sucking his thumb, but also has his face kind of merged with Trump's.
June 14, 2025 at 10:21 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
This appeared right next to an ad for "Empire style kimonos"
Header block from a 1913 Los Angeles Herald opinion piece. There is a photo of the author and the text says: "Ella Wheeler Wilcox Writes On Duties of Mothers: We Must Better the Mothers to Better the Race"
June 5, 2025 at 4:11 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Looking through some early 20th century local newspapers and no matter how much you try to prepare, you are never ready for how much they loved eugenics
Part of an article from a 1917 edition of the Los Angeles Herald. Most of the image is a photograph of the 18-month-old baby and the text says that she recently won the "Pure Food Show baby contest for eugenics and beauty." It also mentions that she has already appeared in some movies (because after all this is LA.)
June 5, 2025 at 4:07 PM
dreamsofvenus.bsky.social
Unfortunately I must report that I looked up Humboldt's original text (translated), and immediately after the parrot anecdote, he talks about how he violated local custom to open up graves (and lie to people about it) so that he could do phrenology for the purposes of race science on the skeletons.
Excerpt from Alexander von Humboldt's "Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of America, During the Year 1799-1804 — Volume 2". He tells the parrot story discussed in this thread and then the next paragraph is as follows: "We opened, to the great concern of our guides, several mapires, for the purpose of examining attentively the form of the skulls. They were all marked by the characteristics of the American race, with the exception of two or three, which approached indubitably to the Caucasian.... May we suppose that the skulls of European race, which we saw mingled with the skeletons of the natives, and preserved with the same care, were the remains of some Portuguese travellers who had died of sickness, or had been killed in battle? The aversion evinced by the natives for whatever is not of their own race renders this hypothesis little probable. Perhaps fugitive mestizos of the missions of the Meta and Apure may have come and settled near the Cataracts, marrying women of the tribe of the Atures. Such mixed marriages sometimes take place in this zone, though they are more rare than in Canada, and in the whole of North America, where hunters of European origin unite themselves with savages, assume their habits, and sometimes acquire great political influence." After that he describes how they took some skulls, including those of children, and when native folks were distressed about it, tried to convince them that they were animal remains. It cannot be said enough: Fuck this man.
June 2, 2025 at 11:16 PM