When you don’t know anything about linguistics: The plural of “memorandum” is “memoranda”, why can’t people get it right
When you know a little about linguistics: The plural of “memorandum” should just be “memorandums” because that’s how people naturally say it, “memoranda” is just prescriptivism
When you know a lot about linguistics: Oh my god? So certain English words borrowed from Latin and Greek have competing plural forms, with one form using the English plural -s and the other using a borrowed Latin or Greek form? Do you realize how crazy that is – a language borrowing *inflectional morphology* from another language? And here the two competing plural forms have become markers of education, expertise, and social class, isn’t that incredible?
When you have a degree in linguistics and dgaf anymore: memorandibles
All-seeing toothbrush: +2 WIS and INT, +5 to perception checks, -2 DEX Once per day, user gains the ability to gaze into the void (20% chance of the void gazing back.)
Old English just has some wonderful words and kennings. I mean, really:
Their word for sea? It was often swan-rad or “road of the swan.” Spider was gangelwaefre, literally “the walking weaver.” They had the simple and now-obsolete word uht, which describes that time just before sunrise when mist still hangs heavy over all the fields and lakes and the last few stars are still out.
…Also, they didn’t say body. They said ban-cofan, which means “bone-cave,” and if you don’t think that’s some hardcore shit right there then you need to get out of my face before I turn your skull into a mead-cup.
ok psa NOAA is literally livestreaming deep sea exploration footage from one of their submersibles!!! like right now!!! you can watch them discover parts of the ocean that NOBODY HAS EVER SEEN
an eel!!!!!!!!!!!
“he has no right swimming that fast in this cold of water. i don’t know what this guy is up to, but it’s rude” – an actual scientist on the NOAA okeanos exploration
ok they’re not streaming rn but they should be later this afternoon!!
they’re in the water again right now/currently descending (as of 3:30 PM CST/4:30 PM EST)
“oh, mm. those are not the right coordinates. i almost sent us into the cliff :)” i love NOAA scientists
they’re at the bottom!! octocoral
glass sponge with “a crinoid hat, [churlish giggle]” according to the scientists
cusk eel!
bonus: “i like corals better, they don’t run away from us”
they cannot decide which rock to pick for sampling this is absurd
a beautiful blue shrimp!!
“i can’t call it bob, i’ll call it bob and then scott will tell me it’s a female again”
“what is he doing to this poor coral? he’s tipped it over and he’s eating it, the darn guy!!”
Check out A Place at the Tabletop by @BritSaysStuff looking at issues of diversity and inclusion in tabletop gaming.
About Us
We believe there is a place at the tabletop for all people–this
includes people of all genders, all sexual orientations, all
races/nationalities, and all ability levels. We know tabletop gamers are
a broad and diverse bunch, and we think our games and game art should
reflect the full spectrum of human diversity.
A Place at the Tabletop will focus on evaluating the level of diverse
representation in a variety of tabletop games, in hopes of sparking a
broader conversation within the tabletop community.
We are deeply, profoundly uninterested in debating whether or not
representation matters or whether games should even bother to make space
for a variety of people. It does, we should.
This question bores us. It insults us. We’re over it. If you don’t
agree with this basic premise, this is unapologetically not the blog for
you. There are plenty of places on the internet you can go to debate
that. This is not one of them.
But if you want to look more closely at issues of diversity and representation within games, we hope you stick around!
Kimchi and Justice 