Nonviolent Resistance

Here's a post about the effectiveness about nonviolent resistance. 

The thing to remember is this: nonviolent resistance is like the oldschool magic-user.  It is flimsy at low levels but utterly devastating at high levels.  And violence is the exact opposite, taking very little learning to become effective but not gaining near as much over time.  A novice warrior can easily beat a novice pacifist, or even a modestly experienced pacifist.  But an expert pacifist can turn the world upside down.

There are always expert pacifists around.  Most of the time they are quiet.  They are hidden.  They do their good in little quiet ways.  You do not want to fuck with these people.  You do not want them to decide that quiet no longer serves their purpose.  Leave them alone and they will leave you alone. 

The catch is, they're hard to spot unless you actually know a fair bit about pacifism, which almost no warriors do.  So if you run around killing or torturing a lot of people, you keep rolling those dice, sooner or later you are going to botch and you are going to regret it.  They will absolutely clean your clock.

What Is Heroism?

This article talks about different ways to be heroic.

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Poetry Fishbowl Open!

The Poetry Fishbowl is now CLOSED. Thank you for your time and attention. Please keep an eye on this page as I am still writing.

Starting now, the Poetry Fishbowl is open! Today's theme is "Untranslatable Words." I will be checking this page periodically throughout the day. When people make suggestions, I'll pick some and weave them together into a poem ... and then another ... and so on. I'm hoping to get a lot of ideas and a lot of poems.

I'll be soliciting ideas for linguists, translators, interpreters, historians, diplomats, refugees, explorers, partners, teachers, clergy, leaders, superheroes, supervillains, alien or fantasy species, failure analysts, ethicists, activists, rebels, other people who get into interesting linguistic situations, translating, interpreting, reading, researching, revising theories, conversing, traveling, inventing languages, parenting, teaching, adventuring, leaving your comfort zone, discovering things, conducting experiments, observation changing experiments, troubleshooting, improvising, adapting, cleaning up messes, cooperating, bartering, taking over in an emergency, saving the day, discovering yourself, studying others, asking for help and getting it, testing boundaries, coming of age, learning what you can (and can't) do, sharing, preparing for the worst, expecting the unexpected, fixing what's broke, upsetting the status quo, changing the world, accomplishing the impossible, recovering from setbacks, returning home, libraries, laboratories, meeting rooms, ruins, liminal zones, trading posts, port cities, schools, churches, supervillain lairs, nonhuman accommodations and adaptations, farmer's markets, starships, alien planets, magical lands, foreign dimensions, other places where languages mix, alphabets, pictograms and other symbols, lost languages, ancient tomes, mysterious texts, misnomers and mistranslations, recordings, the record that breaks the record player, puzzling discoveries, sudden surprises, the buck stops here, trial and error, intercultural entanglements, enemies to friends/lovers, interdimensional travel, lab conditions are not field conditions, superpower manifestation, the end of where your framework actually applies, ethics, innovation, problems that can't be solved by hitting, teamwork, found family, complementary strengths and weaknesses, personal growth, and poetic forms in particular.

If you speak a language other than English and know untranslatable words from it, by all means share. Some other resources you might find helpful:

20 Awesomely Untranslatable Words From Around the World

45 Beautiful Untranslatable Words That Describe Exactly How You’re Feeling

203 Most Beautiful Untranslatable Words [The Ultimate List: A-Z]

Beautiful Untranslatable Words From Around The World

Eunoia website


Currently eligible bingo card(s) for donors wishing to sponsor a square:

Valentines Bingo Card 2-1-23

Among my more relevant series for the main theme:

The Bear Tunnels features numerous tribal languages.

Clay of Life is Jewish fantasy with occasional bits of Hebrew or Yiddish.

The Daughters of the Apocalypse spans a variety of languages, including a split before Before and After English.

Eloquent Souls presents a setting where soulmarks are common, but they don't always appear in the same language.

Fiorenza the Wisewoman is Italian fantasy with bits of Italian.

Frankenstein's Family features two scientists running a valley in historic Romania, with languages including Dacian, English, French, Hungarian, Romanian, and Latin.

Hart's Farm is a free love community with a few really exotic characters, set in Sweden with occasional tidbits from other languages.

Not Quite Kansas includes demonic and angelic writing.

Polychrome Heroics has ordinary humans, supernaries, blue-plate specials, superheroes, supervillains, primal and animal soups all trying to get along and figure out how to make a functional society. It spans a wide range of languages including Arabic, Dhivehi, English, Esperanto, French, and several tribal ones.

Or you can ask for something new.

I have a linkback poem, "Changing Your Nature" (4 verses, standalone).

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New verses in "A Better Place for Everyone"

Thanks to a donation from fuzzyred, there are 37 new verses in "A Better Place for Everyone."   Shiv helps La'Tavia look up useful accommodations.

Birdfeeding

Today is partly cloudy and mild.

I fed the birds and put out water.  I've seen a flock of sparrows, a male downy woodpecker, and a fox squirrel. 

Poem: "Chrysalism"

This is today's freebie. It was inspired by the "Celestite - Peace & Serenity" square in my 2-1-23 card for the Valentines Bingo fest.


"Chrysalism"
the amniotic tranquility of being
indoors during a thunderstorm


Time is liquid today,
running like rain
down the roof.

Outside the storm
breathes and blows,
sluices water down
the drainpipes.

Thunder rumbles
overhead and
lightning flickers.

Inside all is warm
and calm, lights on,
a book by the couch
waiting to be read,
with a fuzzy blanket
to wrap up in too.

Time is fleeting, fluid,
but the chunk of celestite
high on the mantlepiece
holds the day in place
so it cannot slip away or
flap around and make noise.

This is chrysalism, the tranquility
of enjoying a storm from indoors.

* * *

Notes:

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig, p. 5. Simon & Schuster, 2021.