scottishlinguist.bsky.social
Doing my best to keep spirits high and blood pressure low. I don't mind animals but 0 pets & 0 plans to get any.
I think I'll be working forever, so just as well I like my work, even if I sometimes hate my job.
Enjoying the silence but also enjoy a chat.
216 posts
35 followers
63 following
Getting Started
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That's my favourite too. Joan Baez also did a good version. It's like listening to an episode of one of the Western series' my late father loved to watch on TV - The Virginian; Bonanza; The Big Valley, etc. - but with more women in it.
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It's immensely depressing, and I don't even live in the US, but exactly the same is happening in the UK & our government seems in competition with yours to see who can make the greater number of fuckwit decisions that hurt the most vulnerable the fastest.
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More automation of services will mean the wealthy have even less reason to care about the less privileged because they won't have to rely on those people so much any more for the stuff they don't want to be bothered doing, so there's less & less benefit to them from improving life for the poorer.
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I didn't mind that one but my favourites are Complicity and The Crow Road. I was really disappointed in The Wasp Factory, though I know it's beloved by many, because I guessed the "twist" quite early on, and I remember Espedair Street made me really cross. I wonder if it still would?
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Have you read any of his "mainstream" novels - the ones by Iain Banks without the M?
And yes, a loss that came much too early. He left quite a body of work behind him, though.
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There was such a selection of good chocolate bars in the 70s. Old Jamaica (chocolate ginger and maybe rum I think); Ice Breaker; Country Style; something coffee flavoured; something whisky flavoured; Cadbury's Brazil' Cadbury's Almond; 3 or 4 different flavours of walnut whip - all very expensive.
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I'm unable to be surprised any more when people whose work I admire, even love, turn out to be/have been vile.
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My botheredness is entirely at the linguistic and logical level.
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His Wikipedia page says that "in the mid-1920s he grew a neatly trimmed moustache".
That sentence REALLY bothers me, though of course there's plenty else.
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😐
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The Fisher King, with Jeff Bridges and Robin Williams. It's pretty mainstream but I know few who have seen it & nobody else who rates it, which both surprises and distresses me.
Maybe I just need to know better people.
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I guessed you didn't know, but thought you might need to :-)
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It just reeks of Thatcher's 1980 claim not to have been aware of the Westland Helicopters thing.
There was no way out for Heseltine, shouldn't have been any for Thatcher, & isn't one for Starmer: if he was aware of the Powell echo, he was negligent at best; if he wasn't aware, he was incompetent.
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That bracketed bit of your post has a very unfortunate (at best) negative resonance in the UK...just pointing that out for future posts.
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Jenkins' description of immigration as "a cross we have to bear" isn't actually any better, with its implicit evaluation of immigrants as a cost with nothing to offer, so if he really intended to echo Jenkins, Starmer still falls short & should know (& do) better.
That speech has no excuse.
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The wealthy seem entirely focused on getting everything for nothing, which is I suppose how many of them amass their wealth.
They are totally blind to the fact that they rely entirely on other people's labour and effort & resistant to the idea that they should appreciate what others do for them.
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I cope with it all by simply refusing to believe that the thing I'm being shown is actually my eye.
The only words I hear are "Your eyes are healthy" and "You need/don't need new glasses".
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Can you make the images they showed you of various bits of your eyes make sense?
I can't.
There are 2 whole horizons there. HOW can it all fit inside a head, unless the skull is a tardis?
Eyes make me shudder, though not to the extent I'd rather be a proctologist than an ophthalmologist.
I think.
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A number of language experts point out the glaring similarities but a politician still feels confident enough to say loudly and publicly "Nah: you're all wrong".
Looks like they've all swallowed that Gove line on experts, then...
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Fleetwood Map
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The Why
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Slice Cooper
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The Beagles
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"an island of strangers"? Most of us don't know anything like everyone else in the population, wherever we live so, like anywhere else, we've always all been "strangers" to each other.
Stupid, meaningless phrase describing the status quo as if it's something new & dangerous. Calculated othering.
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Yep. Quizmaster wasn't keen on clever girls, esp those from rough state schools, though, & clearly none of the other adults knew (or cared) enough to challenge him so the boys-only private school won that day, which was the natural order of things in the mid-70s.
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Haha! In 1975 I was denied a mark in a school quiz for (correctly) defining <serendipity>, even giving the word origin (because I think that's part of the definition). My team lost by that mark & everyone blamed me even though none of them had even heard the word before.
Am I over it? Definitely not
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Starmer is keeping Theresa May's Hostile Environment alive. Shameful.
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The Windy City is mighty pretty...not that I've ever seen it, but Doris Day's word is good enough for me.
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Boz Scaggs
Leo Shuffle
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I think they possibly thought it was a reality show. They kept talking about "a winner" in the daily news updates.
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and not at all suspicious...
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I like to think of myself as a <creatively assertive linguist>. I was about to say I don't know whether I've ever transformed anything, but I might have changed a few minds in my time. I hope so.
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He said the staff were really good but there didn't seem to be a clear system & he waited over an hour for a taxi to arrive. Lots of people were going to London so their fares would have cost EMT even more.
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Hope you made it home safely. My son was stranded at Leicester -28 mins away by train - 2 weeks ago when his train & the next one were cancelled. It was 10pm. East Midlands Trains organised taxis for all the stranded passengers. His journey cost EMT £80 + the ticket refund. He was home by midnight.
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Human beings have an infinite capacity to be awful, don't we?
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Carb coma.
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Starters are probably good. I prefer to use fresh yeast because I know that I lack the commitment to maintain a starter, but fresh yeast can be hard to get these days. You can still make great bread with dried yeast.
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New appointment is 2 June. They kept referring to Monday's one as "the cancelled appointment" 😡 I pointed out that NOBODY CANCELLED: in fact, my mum got a text message at 11.30am to say they'd arrive between 12 and 12.30. Then nobody did 😡
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So far, they are offering my mum £40 and a new appointment in the middle of May to replacecthe "cancelled" one, which nobody cancelled; they just didn't turn up 😡
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It's white chocolate that is the real abomination here: the name even seems to be crying out to be in inverted commas; italics would lend it an undeserved sophistication. It's ruined many a biscuit, cake and pudding for me.
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I'm furious because I travelled 360 miles to make sure my mother could keep this appointment because she's deaf & might easily have missed anyone knocking/ringing at the door. I am furious at being furious. It's not my default state & I hate how it feels. I also hate that I'll have to do this again.
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It has something of Roger Dean about it.
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Pique housekeeping.
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I'm now considering the phonetic similarity between detective names & belch sounds: Poirot, Rebus, Marple, Frost & Morse could all work. Marlowe & Holmes, maybe. Not so confident about Columbo, Dalgleish or Wexford.
I think I need a bit more focus for the day ahead.
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Nick is my go-to example of an unreliable narrator. I'm interested in why "other kids" were assigned it but you weren't because I'm interested in the gatekeeping of people's reading. Did somebody decide it would be "too difficult" for you?