Follow Friday 9-13-24: Holidays

Today's theme is Holidays. Many fall and winter fests start around this time, or not long after, so people have time to write their fills before the deadline. This includes a lot of seasonally active communities. Plus some other holiday goodies, of course.

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Birdfeeding

Today is cloudy and mild. It's been raining off and on, not a lot, but enough to wet the ground in most places. :D We need all we can get.

I fed the birds. I've seen a large flock of house finches, two male cardinals, and a female cardinal.

I put out water for the birds and watered a few plants under the trees where it's still dry.

EDIT 9/13/24 -- I watered the seedlings in the savanna and the patch in the prairie garden. Those were the things still dry enough to need it.

I've seen a flock of house finches, a pair of cardinals, and a gray catbird at the fly-through feeder.

The clouds to the west are breaking up, and I saw a very bright sun dog to the left and right of the sun. :D

EDIT 9/13/24 -- I did a bit of work around the patio.

To the west there are patches and streaks of cloud, still pink and blue from sunset. To the south, a line of thunderheads is trying to tower up again.

Cicadas and crickets are singing.

As it is now dark, I am done for the night.

Linguistics

Want to be inclusive? Stop using 'Latinx' and start using 'Latine'

It’s “Latine” — pronounced “lah-teen-eh” — and it’s far more adaptable to the Spanish language. It can be implemented as articles — “les” instead of “los” or “las,” the words for “the.” When it comes to pronouns, “elle” can become a singular form of “they” and used in place of the masculine “él” or feminine “ella,” which translate to “he” and “she.” It can also be readily applied to most nationalities, such as “Mexicane” or “Argentine.”


Someone else finally noticed that there are more elegant ways to mark neuter or nongendered words in Romance family languages.  Seriously, if something is missing from yours, just raid the others.  Someone else almost certainly has what you need, without resorting to clunky nonsense made up by someone who obviously wasn't a linguist.  Or hey, you could ask a linguist friend, "I need a word for Thing X in Language Y, can you tell me what that might look like?"

Monkey Names

Marmosets call one another by name

Enduring vocal labels for individuals may be a window into how humans evolved language.
Miniscule monkeys called marmosets give one another individual “names,” researchers report today in Science. After recording chirpy conversations between pairs of marmosets in a captive colony, researchers observed how the animals responded to one another and to playbacks of the recordings, discovering that they use distinct vocalizations known as “phee-calls” to address and communicate with specific individuals. A given monkey could tell when a call was directed at them, for example, and respond appropriately. The finding adds to recent revelations about marmoset communication, including that they learn to “talk” as infants by mimicking their parents, take turns while communicating, and even eavesdrop on their neighbors’ conversations.


Compare with elephant names.

My suspicion is that, now scientists have figured out some animals use names, they will quickly discover that a lot of other intelligent animals do it too.  I would frankly check all the social animals often featured in cognitive studies such as other primates, cetaceans, wolves, corvids, parrots, etc.

Summer of the 69

... has officially concluded.  See the Closing Ceremonies post for a list of fills and a discussion of ideas for next summer.  

Want to get more involved?  soc_puppet hopes to add a second moderator next year, so if you want to get more involved in the reciprocal smuts, reply to that post.

Today's Smoothie

Today we made a smoothie with:

1 cup Brown Cow vanilla yogurt
1 cup caramel apple cider
1 banana
1/2 cup frozen strawberries
1/2 cup ice

The result is bright pink and on the thin side.  The caramel gives it an odd flavor.  I think this would work better with apple or pear.  My partner Doug wants to dry maple yogurt; that could be interesting.