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Saturday, September 20, 2025

Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

 

Exophony: Voyages Outside the Mother Tongue

Grandmother Tongue
I studied my mother tongue till 5th grade and repeated a lower level till 8th grade due to change in syllabus. I wonder how my writerly senses would have developed differently in both languages or any other languages.
'differences between spoken Swiss German and standard German and what those differences mean for Swiss Literature" - I was able to understand this where my language is more of spoken and casual while written is more formal.



Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

 

Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future

by products of growth - environmental destruction, excessive highway construction, corporate interests above public interests.
social engineering
emperor restructuring a person's relationship to the land - ordering mass migration into newly opened territories, conscripting people to build great walls or grand canals.
hydraulic engineer's view of economy and society as liquid flows
Eisenhower Interstate system



All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1)

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1)


 https://x.com/NikoMcCarty/status/1969057172098351108/photo/1

Cormac Mccarthy's tips for writing


Wednesday, September 17, 2025

The Bamboo Grove: An Introduction to Sijo

 

The Bamboo Grove: An Introduction to Sijo

I learned of sijo this morning.
It is shown as an in between haiku and ghazal in terms of volume.
The brush and the sword Recto verso en face



Saturday, September 13, 2025

Honey in the Wound: A Novel

Honey in the Wound: A Novel

Jangseung totempole
Jige carrier
Gamasot cauldron
Jangdokdae storage



 

いじわるなトラとおしゃべりなタンポポ イ・ジウン

 

いじわるなトラとおしゃべりなタンポポ イ・ジウン
The mean tiger and the talkative dandelion Lee Ji-eun


A Guardian and a Thief: A Novel

 

A Guardian and a Thief: A Novel

climate visa
"grids holding not numbers but words written in the Bengali script that folded and straightened like caterpillars upon a stem"
buses failing pollution tests, heatstroke (recently read an article headline that day laborers who cant work because of heat by law would still want to for the wages)
"But the room's envious eyes could not see his apprehension. Those eyes saw only their triumph." (fiction writing lets you see the inside that an observer/narrator of a non-fiction would only see the surface. Is this the empathy with roots in the German concept of Einfühlung, or "feeling into" that fiction reading is supposed to develop in a reader, an inner eye)



Time travel


 slow-is-the-new-fast-performance-productivity

What is the boundary of time travel? 

A friend was talking about opening a park gate which requires turning the knob on the unintuitive side. The next time it worked, we said that slow works not to fumble.

This led me to the slow activity in Jin on a market street in Edo period. 

time-travel-and-the-law-exploring-legal-implications-and-potential-regulations/ When pencillin is made 

Time travel in a different culture, teaches you about the history that you are not familiar with. When Jin realises that he met Sakomoto, we are to know that he is a popular figure. It would be funny if the time traveler did not know the history and its import.


Tuesday, September 9, 2025

These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means

These Strange New Minds: How AI Learned to Talk and What It Means


How to get a thought from your head into others?
 
news-clip new-yorker-19 - The Mystery of people who speak dozens of languages

Language is purely generated signal.

Saturday, September 6, 2025

Japanese - English Bilingual Visual Dictionary (DK Bilingual Visual Dictionaries)

 

Japanese - English Bilingual Visual Dictionary (DK Bilingual Visual Dictionaries) 

I love this book. My plan was to go through the book once and then on second read, from the index try to sort out the ones with Kanji and write them down and along with it, use my cjkv dict to learn or note the commonalities between the Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese dictionaries.
One of the words I came across today is abura enugo
あぶら えのぐ - oil paint



Japanese paints

Kuretake GANSAI TAMBI Watercolor Paint Set 

Recognised this in 

umi to mori no kyoshitsu

うみ と もり の きょしつ

Sea and Forest Museum in Learning to Love Japanese show on Netflix.

Monday, September 1, 2025

Japanese on tshirt

saw a racing tshirt with hachiroku on it. hachiroku is 86.

Another tshirt with daijobu on it.

saw this naruto tshirt today

kid noticed characters on the sriracha sauce bottle

无加色素之是拉差


香甜辣椒酱乃采用


特种大红新鲜辣椒


和香蒜精致而成,


用于调和各种鱼肉


面饺食料都美味可


口且久藏气味不变


品质担保。

Wú jiā sèsù zhī shì lā chà xiāngtián làjiāo jiàng nǎi cǎiyòng tèzhǒng dàhóng xīn xiǎn làjiāo héxiāng suàn jīngzhì ér chéng, yòng yú tiáohé gè zhǒng yúròu miàn jiǎo shíliào dōu měiwèi kě kǒu qiě jiǔ cáng qìwèi bù biàn pǐnzhí dānbǎo.

着色料不使用のシラチャソース


特製の鮮やかな赤唐辛子とニンニクで作ったスイートチリソース。


様々な魚や肉の味付けにお使いいただけます。


餃子などの料理にも最適です。


美味しく長持ちする風味です。


品質保証付き。

Kan'i-ban: Chakushoku-ryō fu shiyō no shirachasōsu tokusei no azayakana akatōkarashi to nin'niku de tsukutta suītochirisōsu. Samazamana sakana ya niku no ajitsuke ni otsukai itadakemasu. Gyōza nado no ryōri ni mo saitekidesu. Oishiku nagamochi suru fūmidesu. Hinshitsu hoshōdzuki.