Ash on a Star✨️
@ashonastar.bsky.social
280 followers 730 following 690 posts
阿修是星辰的灰烬✨️just ashes from stars✨️ i write and study and sometimes even draw i like linguistics, ancient history, and writing about little crabs & birbs🦀🦢🌈✨️ lets yap at 3am about medieval astronomy & medicine (eng/рус/日本語/汉语)
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Reposted by Ash on a Star✨️
This is almost literally what the English Civil War was fought over.
President Trump on Wednesday signed a memorandum expanding his administration’s authority to repurpose unspent federal funds to pay members of the military during the government shutdown, escalating his challenge to the authority of Congress on spending matters.
Trump Signs Memo Expanding His Authority to Spend Federal Money
The president gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wide authority to repurpose funds to pay members of the military without approval from Congress, which has the sole constitutional authority to decide federal spending.
nyti.ms
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🎺📯🥁🎺📯TUSK🎺📯🥁🎺📯
That might be too deep a cut but it made me laugh
Prime Minister Lord North, 1774:
Bessent: "No kings equals no paychecks"
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Spread design for a new book project on the natural history of the U.S. Atlantic Coast.
🧪🌿🌎🐡 #design #BookDesign #illustration #scientificillustration #natureart #visualscicomm #sciviz #scicomm #ChesapeakeBay #BlueCrabs
Book spread design on the Blue Crab fishery in Chesapeake Bay, USA.
Reposted by Ash on a Star✨️
> Would you say to a friend who, with you, was standing near that table, "Come, let us collate?"
> Or, if an ovation were about to be offered to a great military captain, would you say, "We intend to ovate General Grant to-morrow?"

Very strong points against "donate" 😹
Mr. Richard Grant White, who is well known as an accurate philologist, not long ago published in the New York Evening Post an indignant protest against "donate"; to which somebody, with per- haps equal indignation, but by no means with equal ability, responded, by elaborately defending dona- tion, and adding, that "no objection could be urged against the proscribed word which would not apply with equal force against donation." The writer of these pages thereupon "volunteered his services " to the following effect:

Certain "eatables," spread on a table on certain occasions, constitute what is termed a collation. Would you say to a friend who, with you, was standing near that table, "Come, let us collate?" Or, if an ovation were about to be offered to a great military captain, would you say, "We intend to ovate General Grant to-morrow?" Or, again, if Mr. Everett were about to deliver his oration on Washington, at the Academy of Music, would you say, "Let us go to hear Everett orate?"

"Donate,' then, may be dismissed with this re- mark: so long as its place is occupied by give, be- stow, grant, present, etc., it is not needed; and it should be unceremoniously bowed out, or thrust out, of the seat into which it has, temporarily, in- truded.
(My standpoint on language is absolutely firmly in the "descriptivist" camp ofc, but that doesn't mean I don't fully enjoy reading about all the things prescriptivists hate. More importantly, I love reading old rants and following ancient beef...I love Mess.)

I was correct, there was SO much😹
Screenshot of a scanned book:
There are, however, many persons who dispute that proposition: persons who lack sensibility to the evils of corruption in philology; who think the purposes of language are fulfilled, when a speaker or writer has made himself understood; who re- gard conservative views in philology as obstinate adherence to the past; and whose principles, if they can be called such, would go to the extreme of justifying error itself by erroneous precedents. Such reasoning can lead to nothing but literary anarchy.
A while back, I stumbled upon an absolutely hilarious prescriptivist, Edward Gould, from a quote on a @merriam-webster.com article about the backformation "donate".

The absolute IRE in the short quote mentioning Noah Webster set off my "old timey bitching" radar; I just *knew* there was more...
Screenshot of article reading: One of the first writers to comment on it was Edward Gould, in 1870, when he sneeringly observed that Noah Webster had entered the word in his dictionary.

Webster, of course, records the word; and he gravely gives its etymology, "from donare, donatum," etc., -as if the prig who fabricated that bit of literature ever saw a Latin Dictionary, or ever heard of the Latin language! 
-Edward S. Gould, Good English; or,
Popular Errors in Language, 1870

By the end of the 1870s donate was included in the Index Expurgatorius, the list of words complied by William Cullen Bryant, the editor in chief of the New York Evening Post, which were banned from his publication Screenshot of a scanned book page reading: 
DONATE.
Here is another intruder into the family circle, which "has not on a wedding garment."
Webster, of course, records the word; and he gravely gives its etymology, "from donare, dona- tum," etc. - as if the prig who fabricated that bit of literature ever saw a Latin dictionary, or ever heard of the Latin language!
There is something intensely farcical in that solemn etymology. It must have been intended for a sly joke. All the world knows that Johnson introduced a sly joke into his dictionary, when he defined the word "lexicographer"; and it seems that Webster, in imitation of his illustrious prede- cessor, has introduced his sly joke in the etymology of donate.
At least stay fucking consistent, but then again even the nazis couldn't do that because their positions were ahistorical and ascientific so I guess I can't blame neonazis for being even dumber
For one thing, if you're gonna get all "sig heil" with one hand & then "speak english this is america" with your other, you're already failing your "Aryan" hero because English is an abomination of Germanic,they hated it for being romanticized (which is again hilarious considering the Rome worship)
But augh people like that guy will post with their whole heart about Hitler holding up the "great western civilization" (which is a WHOLE other conversation) while simultaneously being exactly the bloodlines that Hitler considers the ruin of the Roman Empire like man cmon ppl use ur brains PLEASE
I should probably delete this post and repost without the quote because I don't like disgusting crap on my feed (am i talking about the words or the photo, who knows!)
Bro is *barely* white by recent historical American standards... his hero Hitler had a much different opinion of Southern Italians (Giunta=historically extremely Southern Italy/Sicily)
I've genuinely wondered this often, but have never been able to phrase it in a way that couldn't be misinterpreted as purposely devaluing human lives
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This is Boksil. She is reaching levels of cozy previously unheard of. 12/10 a trailblazer (IG: with_bokdanji)
a  small cream colored dog stares up at us. this is Boksil, swaddled in a grey robe, and tucked underneath a thick blanket on a bed. her little paws poke out of the robe's sleeves, and her toe beans are in full view. her tiny pink tongue mlems from her grinning mouth. a higher angle of Boksil. a small yellow pillow rests beside her for scale, and her eyes are closed peacefully as she rests swaddled under a white blanket, looking very cozy.
Reposted by Ash on a Star✨️
Here's a recording of the pilot of C-GZPT, a Cirrus SR22, tracing the Jays logo over Nova Scotia
Reposted by Ash on a Star✨️
Werte Politikerinnen, werte Politiker, warum sind Sie noch auf X?

Diese Frage stelle ich in meiner aktuellen Kolumne in @derstandard.at - und erkläre, wie radikal Elon Musk derzeit auftritt und welch problematische Kampagnen auf der Plattform ablaufen (zB zu @dunjahayali.de)
Werte Politikerinnen, werte Politiker: Warum sind Sie noch auf X?
Jetzt wäre ein guter Zeitpunkt für die Politik, die grässliche Plattform X von Milliardär Elon Musk zu verlassen
www.derstandard.at
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Take a few minutes to appreciate Drew Struzan creating the original artwork for THE PHANTOM MENACE. Truly a master at work.
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Over a records request?!?!?!?!?!??
Reposted by Ash on a Star✨️
NEW:

A dramatic voiceover video the White House and Donald Trump shared last week claiming to show "chaos" in Chicago is littered with outdated footage from Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Nebraska, California and Arizona, an AFP investigation found.

factcheck.afp.com/doc.afp.com....
I have been out of the loop on tw pride for a few years for many reasons (mostly just...*hand gestures at everything else*) and WOW this feels like 180° from the climate not too long ago, and not in a good way. although the immediate backlash & fact that it's controversy is heartening but still...😣