Dance Dance Dance by RATT

China by ReallyGraceful

Subverse by StudioFOW

Both men and women become more manly as they age. - Ms. Bacon Bandit

Notre Dame Fire

Tulsi Gabbard on Saudi Arabia

Trump’s criticism of Rep #IlhanOmar is complete hypocrisy. Trump says “WE WILL NEVER FORGET (9/11)!” Yet it is Trump who’s been acting as al-Qaeda’s big brother and protector in Syria, and turned America into the prostitute of AQ's biggest supporter—the Saudis #WeWillNeverForget pic.twitter.com/TLsCPxXaAd

— Tulsi Gabbard (@TulsiGabbard) April 14, 2019

Julian Assange by Jimmy Dore

AltonRocht says: Judeocapitalism has been a much more destructive force in the United States than socialism has, this isn’t even a debate. The way forward isn’t nonstop right-wing whining about communism, despite what the people at Fox and Trump himself seem to think. It’s based on combining common-sense economic policies (high taxes on the rich, labor protection, and NO immigration), with social conservatism.

Walter Jeffrey says: The US needs a balance between both Socialism and Capitalism. Collectivism and individualism. Lower classes must be supported because they support the upper classes, also people need incentive and ability to reach upper classes.

The Bunny Hop from 1953

Mongolian and Cyrillic Script

Genghis Khan? Or Chinggis Khaan? Maybe Khagan? History's most famous conqueror kept many secrets. Yet with some clever linguistic investigation, we can reanimate the sounds of his language.

Our journey starts with a Mongolian grammar and a trip to modern Mongolia, a language with some standout features. You'll see the Khan's name written everywhere... but in the Cyrillic script. Cross the border to Inner Mongolia in China to see everyday use of a much older script, a script with extra "hidden" syllables.

We'll trace those syllables back to when the soon-to-be-Khan, Temüjin, conquered the Naiman and encouraged his dignitaries to use the newfound Uyghur script. That Written Mongol has some archaic features, and comes from the time of the Khan, but another piece of evidence suggests it's too archaic.

In the 1800s, a scholarly Russian monk found a history book in China. It was written in Hànzì (Chinese characters), but the text didn't read well... unless you pronounced it in Mongolian. This turned out to be the Secret History of the Mongols. The language of the text was similar to Written Mongol, but it had notable differences, including modern-looking features. Still, it also seemed to come from the Khan's time. Was this Middle Mongol more authentic?

That's when we'll run into a third line of evidence: linguists comparing Mongolic languages and reconstructing Proto-Mongolic. There's not just one modern Mongolian; there's an entire Mongolic family. The features of this reconstructed proto-language matched the slightly modern-looking Middle Mongol.

In the end, these three ways of looking back to the early Mongols situate the Khan in linguistic history. Before him, there were Turkic loans (including the Khahan, the state "ulus", and the hero "baatur" in Ulaanbaatar), maybe dialects, and perhaps sibling Para-Mongolic languages. After him, a diversification into the modern languages. Between those, he unified his people and, in a "linguistic bottleneck", created a common Mongol language that turned into a language family in a relatively short time.

America is a Business