a scooby doo series set in community college where the gang is in a criminology class and end up in a huge debate on the first day of class that leads to them starting a podcast talking about local urban legends, only to realize things aren’t quite adding up and they go to investigate for ~journalistic authenticity~ and end up solving a real-life crime disguised as supernatural occurrences. this happens every week and they’re frequently featured on the school newspaper. they only have twenty listeners
AU: International pop sensation Hannah Montana and critically acclaimed actor Keanu Reeves are Hollywood’s hottest couple. The two have recently become engaged and on the night of Keanu’s first Oscar win, Hannah suffers a terrible accident whilst performing at her sold out show at Madison Square Garden. Hannah is rushed to hospital but there is nothing the doctors can do to save her life. Keanu is devastated and left with no option other than to terminate her life support.
Sitting amid the bric-a-brac of generations of seafarers before him,
fisherman and museum curator John Bhaba Jeaic Ó Confhaola of Galway,
Ireland, tried to describe a word to interviewer Manchán Magan. The
word, in the Irish language, was for a three-bladed knife on a long
pole, used by generations of Galway fishermen to harvest kelp. Ó
Confhaola dredged it from his memory: a scian coirlí. “I don’t think I’ve said that word out loud for 50 years,” he told Magan. It was a sentiment that Magan would hear again and again along Ireland’s west coast.
This is a place shaped by proximity to the ocean: nothing stands between
the sea and the country’s craggy, cliff-lined shores for roughly 3,000
kilometers, leaving it open to the raw breath of the North Atlantic.
[…] Early last year [2020], Magan […] began collecting coastal words from towns along
the west coast, in an effort to preserve them.
[…]
The recordings make up the Foclóir Farraige, or Sea Dictionary: an online database
of recordings and definitions sorted by their regional origin. Magan
also recently published a selection of words in an illustrated book. […]
Yet the words are often much more than utilitarian. They carry a sense
of poetry, and a perspective on nature. There is the town of Donegal’s mada doininne,
a particular type of dark cloud lining the horizon that foretells bad
weather. The word, literally translated, means “hounds of the storm.”
Or
bláth bán ar gharraí an iascaire, a description of choppy sea from the county of Galway that means “white flowers on the fisherman’s garden.”
[…]
A coastal Irish speaker, walking the beach at night, might have equally expected to hear stranach (the murmuring of water rushing from shore), or the whisper of caibleadh (distant spirit voices drifting in over the waves).
They knew the ceist an taibhse
(the question for the ghost) – a riddle used to determine if someone they
met along the way was human or supernatural.
Many words describe ways
of predicting the weather, or fishing fortunes, by paying attention to
birds or wind direction; to the sea’s sounds; or to the colors in a
fire. […]
Ó Baoill and Magan both point out that preserving Ireland’s traditional
coastal vocabulary is especially important in the face of climate change
and biodiversity loss.
Take a word like borráite, from Carraroe village, which
describes a rocky offshore reef found in the area. Kelp once grew on
these reefs in abundance, tangling with other seaweed species and
providing refuge for fish. Due to climate change and overfishing,
however, Magan says that a borráite today would host neither kelp nor
many fish.
“Contained within that word is the entire ecosystem that was
in that area,” Magan says. Words like this, he hopes, can both remind us of what we have lost and reconnect us to what we might still preserve.
——-
Headline, captions, and text published by: Claudia Geib. “To Speak of the Sea in Irish.” Hakai Magazine. 17 March 2021. Published alongside illustrations and animations by Aurelie Beatley.
The duality of “If you even imply that being aro or ace condemns someone to a sad and lonely life I will fucking fight you”
and
“being aro and ace is the most isolating thing I will ever experience”
[image description: tags by @arowitharrows:
“The thing is that when other people imply that being aro and ace must condemn someone to a sad and lonely life, they are seeing aromanticism and asexuality as the root of the problem.
They think that not having that ‘special someone’ in your life means it’s not worth living.
they’re showing pity for something they think you’re missing out on
When I talk about feelings of isolation caused by being aroace‚ I’m talking about the way our (western) society is structured, about how people drift off into their bubble, about how the older you get the less and less time everyone has in their day, and how your role as a friend automatically becomes lesser compared to other relationships.
I’m thinking about how certain emotional and physical connections are suddenly reserved for romantic relationships.
About the conversations I can’t really participate in and I sit there awkwardly knowing they find it weird that I’m not opening up.
I’m thinking about all the times I get hit out of nowhere with a throwaway line, reminding me that people think there’s something wrong with your soul if you don’t love like they do.
That they think a life like yours isn’t worth living. That’s the kind of isolation I’m thinking about.
