Author: Brin

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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toocooltobehipster:

map of British accents!!

 

haus-of-ill-repute:

How can a country smaller than montana have so many fucking accents?

 

youblowuponesun:

this is why we say please do not talk about a “british accent” thank

 

doctadonner:

but me and my sister both live in yorkshire (I live in North and she lives in South)  and she has to talk slowly when she comes to the north because no-one can understand a word she says, so there’s deviations of accents within accents.

 

darael:

Oh, and then there’s:

Spread out all over the fucking place but more prevalent in the South: RP (which is what Murricans think of as a “British Accent” even though it’s a minority of the English that have it let alone the British)

 

thedreadvampy:

plus like…there’s a LOT of variation in the Lothian area? Edinburgh’s super posh.

 

dropkicks:

if you think there’s only one accent in london i’ve got news for you son

 

silly-cleo:

I’ve lived in the UK for more than half my life, certainly my entire adult life, and I still can’t successfully ID all the accents there are here. I’m sometimes mortifyingly wrong, but less so now.

 

jescissa:

There’s way more than two Welsh accents. How can you categorize it as ‘Welsh’ or ‘Cardiff’? The accent in Caernarfon is completely different to the accent in Wrexham, so that’s at least four. Then the accent of Ceredigion is different again. Five. The Welsh hill farming accent is different to the Welsh mining accent (North/South divide.) People in Penmaenmawr sound different to people in Llanfairfechan and there’s a 7 minute drive between them.

 

cosmic-llin:

This! Even if you’re grouping similar Welsh accents together, there’s at LEAST one in the North and one in the South. Cool map though!

 

brin-bellway:

Are there actually people who honestly believe there is only one British accent, or is that a myth? Whenever I see people claim Americans think there’s only one, they always use the existence of the phrase “British accent” as their evidence.

Yes, I say “British accent”. Thing is, it’s not that I don’t know there are a zillion different accents in Britain. It’s that I don’t know what they’re called, and so am forced to use “British accent” as an umbrella term because I don’t have the words to describe them more specifically except perhaps by comparison (“it was a Dave-Lister-y sort of voice*”).

*And even having heard that this is a Liverpool accent, I would still describe it by comparison if I could possibly get away with it. I don’t entirely trust my source on where Lister’s accent is from, nor do I trust Liverpool to have only one accent.

 

cosmic-llin:

I think it’s less that people really don’t know that there’s more than one British accent, and more that very often “British Accent” is used to mean Received Pronunciation (in my TV and real-life experience that’s what a majority of people will do when required to fake a British accent), which is kind of a sore point anyway because in some British circles RP is still considered “better” than other accents and people with regional accents already feel marginalised?

And yup, Lister definitely has a Scouse (Liverpool) accent, although you’re right that Liverpool accents can vary a bit!

Tags:

#(February 2014) #conversational aglets #language #accents #Britain #Red Dwarf #long post

~ Brin ~ 2 Comments

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alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

this egg fucking froze because our fridge is too cold

 

o-bellaciao:

Why would you keep the eggs on the fridge?

 

alwaysfaithfulterriblelizard:

we keep our eggs in the fridge…so they don’t denature? do you not refrigerate your eggs?

 

nanner:

Because of the way our eggs are processed and the prevalence of salmonella in american chickens, americans have to fridge their eggs.

http://io9.com/americans-why-do-you-keep-refrigerating-your-eggs-1465309529

 

colorschanging:

Wait, they don’t refrigerate eggs in other countries?

 

ladyoflate:

wait what people in other countries dont refrigerate eggs???

 

wewishyouamurphychristmas:

wait a second eggs in other countries aren’t refrigerated?????????

 

agathaheterodyne:

Waht.

 

slepaulica:

yeah, we don’t refrigerate them here. they keep like a month or two, even in summer, just crack it into a cup in case it’s accidentally taken you too long to use those eggs, give it a whiff, if it smells okay you’re good to go even if it’s really old.  don’t use the float test — that turns up a lot of false positives and sometimes you end up throwing away perfectly good eggs, which is not cheap. just turn your eggs upside down every now and then to help keep them fresh and yeah.

also chicken eggs do not look anything like those things you see on american tv shows. they have brown shells and the yolks are orange.

 

triplash:

Americans refrigerate their eggs.. 

America..

 

slepaulica:

if you read the link though, there’s actually a reason for why they have to do it, a reason that doesn’t apply anywhere else in the world.

 

slepaulica:

we should organise a charity drive to mail european eggs to americans. we can send them uht milk too, i read on the internet that they only have the kind of milk that has to be refrigerated

 

brin-bellway:

Canadians refrigerate eggs too. And re: colour, every Canadian grocery store I have ever been in carried multiple brands of eggs, some of which were white and some which were brown. (We usually buy the brown: the last time I bought white it was because we realised at the last moment we were out of eggs and Mom sent me to the white-egg-only convenience store to get a dozen to tide us over.)

Who told you Americans don’t have UHT milk? I don’t know about big ones, but there are definitely single-serving ones that I think are intended for kids’ lunches. I used to go through multiple single-serving boxes* of Parmelat chocolate milk a day when I was a kid.

(Come to think of it, did they say “no room-temperature milk” or “no UHT milk”? Because while I’ve drunk well over a thousand cartons* of milk (all bought in America) that appear to fit with the definition of “UHT milk” I just looked up, I had never heard the term before.)

*The Canadian term for this is the genericised trademark “tetra pak”, but since I’m talking about my experiences as an American in America I figured I ought to use the terminology I would’ve used at the time, despite its relative lack of precision.

P.S. Maybe I should look into the possibility of larger tetras of milk, considering I just had refrigerated milk go lumpy nine days before its sell-by date (beating the previous record of six days). Bagged milk sounds like a neat idea, but it’s terrible for preservation, and the manufacturers won’t even admit it.

 

slepaulica:

i don’t remember where i saw it. but it was an article on the internet and someone was saying that for a limited time they had uht milk available in the cardboard box things but it didnt catch on with americans because it was too weird that it could be stored unrefrigerated or something and they didnt sell well so it was taken off the market and it was a shame because they were really useful for people like university students who didnt have a fridge.

actually, i remember reading that they do have uht milk in the us, but they don’t sell it in the cardboard boxes but they sell it in the transparent gallon containers, and part of what gives the milk the shelf life of like a year and the need to not be refrigerated is keeping it from exposure to light, and so even though the milk is treated with an ultra high temperature to pasteurise it, it doesn’t have the 9 months-1 year shelf life because of exposure to light, so they have to keep it refrigerated anyway.

it is possible that the author of the article lived in a specific region of the us and was overgeneralising to the availability in the rest of their country.

do any other americans want to weigh in? can you go to the supermarket and buy a cardboard box of milk that is not in the refrigerated section of the store and it does not need to be refrigerated until opened? maybe i am wrong?

 

winterwhitewitch:

No we cannot, at least not where I live. (near San Francisco, CA) I didn’t even know what uht milk was until I googled it. All the milk I have ever encountered needs to be refrigerated, and I am actually shocked this isn’t a rule. 
Our milk choices range from non fat, low fat, regular, half and half (ughhhh), and there’s the vegan milk stuff. My dad drinks almond milk, which is an abomination. 
And I thought bagged milk was weird…

 

slepaulica:

Thank you for weighing in! UHT milk doesn’t have any preservatives in it. The shelf life is due to the combination of: sterile packaging, opaque packaging, and the high temperature at which it is pasteurised. once you open your box of milk, you have to drink it within a few days, and it does have to be refrigerated once opened because the packaging is no longer sealed and germs can get in, but the packages are 1 litre or a half litre, which isn’t all that much milk, so even without refrigeration, you can plan around using the entire thing before it goes bad.

a friend of mine without refrigeration would just reboil it every time she wanted to drink some, but in the summer months i just try to use it all up as soon as i open it, and in winter months it’s easier because i can just leave it outside and use it slowly over the course of a few days.

but the advantages are: not needing to refrigerate the trucks it is shipped in, not needing to refrigerate it at the store, and you can use it as an emergency food. you can stock up on it effectively without worrying about it going bad (within reason, 6-9 month shelf life) because it only starts going bad once opened.

Tags:

#(December 2013) #conversational aglets #food #home of the brave #our home and cherished land #in which Brin has a food poisoning phobia

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~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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trekgate:

 

nenya-kanadka:

weareallmedie:

nenya-kanadka:

brin-bellway:

nenya-kanadka:

Agh, did I miss this episode? I need this scene in my life.

Maybe “Human Error”?

Hmm, possibly! *reads recap* I definitely remember the red dress from that one. In general I just grave all the Seven in uniform instead of catsuit scenes. <3

Nope, not Human Error. That’s a scene from Relativity I believe. AWESOME Seven (and Seven & Janeway) episode

Ah, thank you! 

Tags:

#(November 2013) #conversational aglets #Star Trek #Voyager

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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slepaulica:

brin-bellway:

slepaulica:

brin-bellway:

slepaulica:

Synaesthesia conversation!

To me this song is predominantly Slate blue, Dark Slate blue, with highlights of periwinkle. There are some midnight blue and indigo parts. Your synaesthesia might be showing you different colours. that’s okay! reply by showing me a song that has similar colours to this one (so if you see this as yellow, show me another yellow song). Your song can be any genre of music as long as the colours look similar to you. and then i will reply with a different song that has similar colours to what you showed me. and we can talk to each other with music.

if you see movement instead of colour then give me a song with similar movement. (i see movement too, but colour is easier for me to describe in words) if you smell something, then give me a song with a similar scent. so equal opportunity, any kind of music related synaesthesia welcome.

colour chart here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors

This was a tough one. It’s not very strongly coloured, and it’s hard to find the right mix of grey and brown.

This isn’t quite right, but I had to settle.

:)

Phil Collins voice has a lot of bronze in it, yeah. I had to listen to it a few times, the one you picked isn’t very strongly coloured for me, but i can hear the grey like raindrops in parts of it. and in some ways the movement is similar to my song in parts.

I reply with Cowboy Mouth – Jenny Says because of those grey polka dots and because there’s some browns in the chorus, not quite the same as your song, but i think it matches it or complements it, and they both have some bits of yellow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEfpoUuKFOY

Black with grey stripes. (Somewhat less stripe-shaped in that one.)

oh wow that’s gorgeous. never met that band before. yay new music. dark blue mostly but it has uterus red in it, which is a very addictive colour. i’ve been listening to this practically non stop with breaks to listen to my other favourite songs to find the perfect one. i think this is the closest, different shade of blue + uterus red http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzOnZ4rj6b0

Tags:

#(November 2013) #conversational aglets #I never did respond to this #a while later slepaulica had a brain injury that worsened their pre-existing verbality issues #I think the reason they stopped using Tumblr was because they didn’t have enough language spoons anymore to do that much blogging #for a while there‚ they would scrape together enough spare words every few weeks to post a life update on Dreamwidth #but it’s been a long time since they even did that #I hope they’re doing okay #a few months ago I stumbled across a forum post they made in the spring of 2017 #(it was a different username but it was the kind of username they might have chosen) #(and I recognised the childhood story they were telling as one they’d told before) #so I know they were still around as of then at least #music #synesthesia #tag rambles

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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ophiuchusdenied:

brin-bellway:

ophiuchusdenied:

oh, and you can get detention if you refuse to say the pledge at some schools.  or at least get scolded by your teacher, get your parents called, or be socially ostracised.  all because you refuse to swear fealty to a piece of fabric as a daily ritual.

How do they know if you refuse to say the pledge?

Being homeschooled, my first exposure to routine Pledging was when I tagged along at my little brother’s Cub Scout meetings. By which time I was nearly eleven, had read Guardians of Ga’Hoole, and therefore knew how to look like I was taking part in a group chant without actually doing so.

(Yes, that does mean not Taking a Stand, but I personally think one should not Take a Stand against brainwashing cults until after one has escaped them. And I was still slightly too young, by my parents’ standards, to stay home by myself on a regular basis. (Mom was helping out with them, so I couldn’t stay home with her.))

in smaller classrooms, it’s hard to get away with pretending, especially if you’re with a teacher who knows you/your voice or if you’re in the front row.  at assemblies, it’s obvs easier, but we had to say it in our first period class or homeroom (depending on grade), and being a C, alphabetically, and something of a teacher’s pet, i was usually on the first row anyway.  besides which, to me, standing up and mouthing along is basically the same thing as actually saying it–ymmv, of course, and if that’s not how you view it, that’s totally cool.

usually, though, in my schools at least, you get caught because you just plain don’t stand up.  it’s continue-reading-your-book-for-the-duration-of-announcements-time.  luckily, in high school, my first period class for all three years was choir, and i was not the only person who refused to say it, and our choir director was live-and-let-live enough that he wasn’t about to send a handful of his best students to detention over it.

(this thread was truncated; here is the first part)

Tags:

#(this is from later in October 2013) #conversational aglets #home of the brave #homeschool #cult cw

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

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justice-turtle:

brin-bellway:

justice-turtle:

yuletidetreasure:

pentapoda:

Self, I thought, you should check on Yuletide and see if the ball has started rolling yet. ANSWER: YES, DEAR GOD. 

PSA for all those like me: 

Yuletide signups close Monday, October 14, 2013.

We were just going to post a plain countdown to the end of sign-ups, but this was too awesome not to share. :)

48 hours till sign-ups close! (Mon 14th, 6pm EDT)

And just in case anyone on my Tumblr hadn’t noticed already: Yuletide sign-ups close at 6pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time on Monday, October 14 (about 36.75 hours after I’m reblogging this).

(The reblogged YuletideTreasure post says EDT or Eastern Daylight Time, our equivalent to British Summer Time. This is a typo. We are not currently on Daylight Time in the US.)

If you want to request fanfic for at least four different small fandoms (of which you are guaranteed to receive a 1000+ word fic for one fandom) and offer to write a 1000+ word fic in a randomly selected one of at least five small fandoms, all fandoms to be chosen from the tag set here… go for it! You have 36-ish hours to sign up, and must have your fic written and uploaded to AO3 by December 22.

(If you don’t have an AO3 account and want to sign up in order to participate in Yuletide, tell the mods. They will expedite your account request.)

If you just want to write fic of any length to a Christmas deadline in these small fandoms, but would rather pick out individual prompts that inspire you — go here! You can browse the comments directly or look through the spreadsheet linked at the bottom of the post which shows requests sorted by fandom. There’s no strict deadline to this part of writing for Yuletide. :D

And if you just want to read fic in any of these small fandoms — well, wait till gifts are revealed sometime on December 25, and revel in the awesome! ;-)

»This is a typo. We are not currently on Daylight Time in the US.«

But…it’s October. North American Daylight Savings doesn’t end until 2 AM the first Sunday of November. (And even Europe isn’t until the last Sunday of October.)

…I’m wrong? Okay, ONE of them is a typo, because another official Yuletide place said “EST” and I saw that one first… bleh. It’s too dark out to still be Daylight Savings TIme.

*wants the world to stop being confusing now plskthx*

Tags:

#(as you would expect from the post body this is from October 2013) #conversational aglets #Daylight Savings Time #Yuletide #(btw I hear the Yuletide 2018 fics were released recently)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

evolution-is-just-a-theorem:

fermatas-theorem:

gasmaskaesthetic:

evolution-is-just-a-theorem:

gasmaskaesthetic:

There’s a party tonight, help me summon a happy mood.

I will teach you the spell of phenibut in return for your first born

I have learned the spell of phenibut and intend to cast it later.

*chooses to interpret this chain as ‘Mack has given Evo her firstborn’*

I am not ready for this. I should have thought this through.

Anyone want a baby? Undamaged! Original packaging!

Tags:

#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #drugs cw

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

blue-corvid:

dressesandalchemy:

hippity-hoppity-brigade:

ginathethundergoddess:

darlinghogwarts:

My favorite thing ever is how Ron just sent Charlie a random letter like “hey yo there’s an illegal dragon at hogwarts, could you come and smuggle it out of here, please?” and Charlie was just like “yeah sure, I’ll trespass into the castle and steal a dangerous magical creature, of course, lemme just hit up my friends”

It’s better if you imagine Charlie and co as a group of Grad Students trying to avoid their other responsibilities.

Charlie is drunkenly revising the third draft of his thesis on proper care and feeding of greenhorns when his family owl slams into the window. 

Three of his friends jump and look around. Glinda doesn’t raise her head from her folded arms; only groans, “Is that Baines coming to do me in?” 

Charlie totters to the window and fetches Errol from the window pane. “No such luck,” he says. “You’re still going to have to take the exam.” After some consideration, Charlie lays him on a clear patch of floor to recover. “Do owls take firewhiskey?” he asks the room at large. 

“It’s not fair,” Glinda wails into the tabletop. “I swear he didn’t say anything about Bridgewort’s handling practices when we did the review in class.” 

“Oh, Merlin,” says Ali, freezing over their notes like a Medusa wyvern had bitten them. “Oh, Merlin’s sweet saggy socks. Is he covering Bridgewort?” 

“That’s what he said when I went to his office hours.” Glinda sits up. “You know his lapdragon singed my new sweater?!” 

Charlie decides not to give Errol a nip of whiskey. Flying under the influence is really not done. He unties the letter from Errol’s leg. Ron’s childish spiky handwriting spells out Charlie’s name on the front. Inside is a hastily scrawled message. 

“Yes, we know it ruined your sweater,” snaps Ysabelle. “You told us twenty times. Why didn’t you tell us Baines told you we’re going to be tested on Bridgewort?” 

“I meant to,” says Glinda. “Sorry.” She flicks her pile of notes. “I was lost in the miasma of gloom and desperation.” 

Ali puts their head back and groans. “I’m gonna die. I’m gonna say ‘fuck it’ and just fucking walk into a dragon’s mouth so I don’t have to do this.” 

“Hey,” says Charlie. They don’t hear him. 

“How much is this worth again?” Glinda asks her bottle of butterbeer. 

“Twenty-five percent,” Ali and Ysabelle chorus. Ysabelle adds, “and the thesis is fifty percent of our total grade.” 

“Hey!” Charlie repeats. They look at him. He waves Ron’s letter. “My littlest brother at Hogwarts has an illegal dragon he needs to get off campus. Anybody up for a midnight flight?” 

Ali slams their hands down on the table and stands up. “Fuck yes,” they say decisively. “Maybe I’ll fly into the Whomping Willow and die a quick death.” 

Welcome to grad school

Charlie’s friends: I want to die

Charlie:

Tags:

#Harry Potter #fanfic #anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #death mention #suicide mention #dragon