Markˣ

You know less than nothing about life in the GCC, like all these British journalists and YouTubers scoring points off of the war.

I'm gonna mute you now, I'm tired of this remedial course in what the GCC is like.

I've changed country of residence three times since then because I could not stay permanently.

I was also unable to work in Qatar, and actually LOST income by staying in the Gulf. I came in debt and am not getting rich staying here. And I pay taxes.

Does that clear things up?

Half my neighbors are from Palestine and Syria.

I'm sure the humanist handbook says somewhere not to deride people getting bombed.

Go fuck yourself.

i do not have the right to reside on a permanent basis. What makes you think that I do???

I took zero interest for the first 30+ years of my life.

Agreed that it is a privilege to be able to ignore it (or try to)! If I have the opportunity to protest, without my kids present, I would do so. But the "discourse" feels an absolute waste.

You're joking about death abroad while publishing about medicine in the UK. I don't see what's supercomplicated about that.

I'm not an immigrant because I do not have any path to naturalization. The migration literature uses the term "expat" because we will have to return to our passport countries.

And I pay taxes every year. So you're flat out wrong about that.

You: Schadenfreude for bombing victims is justified
Also you: How did I show disregard for human life?

Seriously, someone gave you a license to practice medicine?

Seriously, this is horribly racist take and you should take it down.

Do ... you need me to explain to you what you meant?

The seething hatred for expats is misplaced. Most of us are middle class and lower class. Most are not tax dodgers.

Your feed is full of scorn for a city under threat of missiles, due to the choices of rogue authoritarians.

😮‍💨 Things are somewhat less than honkey-dorey on God's green Internet

"Okay, bye! We'll get in touch the next time our college mentors commit a felony, or one of us is threatened by terrorism—or both!"

People on Bluesky have been perfectly normal, and maybe 10 friends have checked in on me.

But somehow I'm feeling very bitter that it takes four days of airstrikes (caused by my country) for old friends to ask how I'm doing.

I've been informed that my opinions about murder and corruption in south Texas do not count because I have not lived there long enough.

I've also heard this week that I and other expats "don't deserve to die, but did you look at a map?"

And family has gotten mad at me for updating about the war.

screenshot from Rhodokanakis, referencing Reinhardt on Omani Arabic. The full passage is: Andererseits wird im Dfari y hie und da intervokalisch zu di ... wie in syrischen Dialekten. Daß hingegen [q] im Dfari schon seinen "emphatischen Charakter" einzubüßen beginnt, d. h. g1 statt g2 eintritt, bringt uns wieder dem Omani näher, wo nach Reinhardt einige Stämme an der Küste statt eines "tief aus der Kohle geholten g1 das q wie g, sprechen (d. h. g1 statt g2).

"der Kehle geholten g"?

Listening to the Mosul dialect, which many claim is “identical” to Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic.

Among many differences I notice, one that might be missed by casual observers is a in unstressed syllables:

‘good’ مليح
Maslawi: malīḥ
BJA: mlīḥ

‘flour’ طحين
Maslawi: ṭaḥīn
BJA: ṭḥīn

foreground is an alternating-red-and-yellow playground tunnel. It is mostly lattice fabric, but with alternating panels that shift when you crawl through. At the other end of the tunnel are my two kids, 4 and ~1. The baby is smiling at the camera (he has seven teeth) and his big brother is hugging him, not looking at the camera.

mi vida

in my circle it seems to be growing 🤷‍♂️

I know the feeling!
I have exactly one YouTube channel in Ruus Al Jibal Arabic, and practically nothing else. I do have a couple of friends that want to teach me but we don't get to really do conversation practice.

Gulf Arabic is a little better but if I try to find local TV or radio, it's oftenMSA

this one is for Sri Lanka

Metadata from Wikipedia: Author Frans Hogenberg (before 1540–1590) wikidata:Q959748 Description Portrait of Gerardo Mercator Date 1574 Medium engraving Inscriptions Caption top: AETATIS SVA LXII aged 62

original image

image of a painting of Gerardus Mercator that I stretched using a crappy free app because my brain is oozing out my ears His head is stretched horizontally and his elbow looks weirdly big I am sorry I am so bad at writing these descriptions

got revenge on Gerard Mercator today

That makes sense. It takes like six hours to cross Sri Lanka, so something didn't seem quite right

I tagged "Terrible Maps" when I saw this one on Facebook

I think I'm going to go back to pretending that politics does not exist. 😶‍🌫
I've acted interested in it for a few years and tried to have good faith discussions, and it has won me nothing. Just a big waste of energy.
Sitting here hoping we don't get another ballistic missile alert on the phone.

(Hmm, this could actually work as a dialect name if the distinction between hollow-root imperatives was that distinctive—gɨm (IPA [gɨm] or [gʊm]) vs. gūm 'get up!'. But the word gɨll/gūl 'say!' is probably more common.)

is it that obvious

Lol. Big kid cried at 5am, baby cried at 6am, big kid 6:30am, baby 7am ... We call it Ping-Pong because their mom goes from room to room.
Eventually I think we will just set up a floor pallet.

Gum Arabic is understudied and much stigmatized by society, but it's actually one of the oldest Arabic dialects.
In this grant proposal,

Weird map of part of the eastern hemisphere, which I found on Facebook, that has an awkward oblong inset with Sri Lanka blown up to like 500 times its size for some weird reason.

Most people don't know this, but the Mercator Projection makes Sri Lanka look way bigger than it actually is!

#ThingsMostPeopleDontKnowBecauseTheyreNotTrue