24 August 2015. Animal Funnies… What are We Waiting For, Mommy?

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24 August 2015. A Changing Hut with an “Interesting” Machine Translation

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Let’s start with the inscriptions on the hut before we get to the machine translation howler…

In the top image, on the right-hand side, we see:

• Лада (Slavic Rodnovery Goddess of Spring season and Love)
• Ладить (get along)
• Ладан (incense)
• Ладья (Rook)
• Сладость (sweetness)
• Ладонь (palm of the hand)
• Услада (delight)
• Владеть (to rule)
• Владимир (Vladimir, a name, “Ruler of the World”… also, “Peaceful Ruler”)

The middle image is an expanded view of the centre:

• Русь просыпается: (Rus awakens)
• Радуга (rainbow)
• Ура (hooray)
• Разум (mind)
• Гора (mountain)
• Урал (Ural Mountains)
• Жара (heat)
• Рассвет (dawn)
• Радость (joy)

The last image is an expanded view of the left-hand side of the hut:

• Род (Slavic Rodnovery Ancestor God)
• родители (parents)
• Родина (Motherland)
• Народ (People, Tribe, Nation)
• Родник (Spring (water, aquifer)
• Огород (vegetable garden)
• Город (city)
• Смородина (Currant)

The original caption for this was:

В деревне, на общественном пляже умелец разрисовал кабинку для переодевания.

Literally, that comes out to:

In a village, on a public beach, a craftsman painted this on a changing hut.

That’s jangly and moves in fits and starts, I modified it to:

A craftsman painted this on a changing hut on a public beach in a village.

After I was done, for utter shits n’ giggles, I ran a “machine translation”… this came up:

In the village, on a public beach, artificer painted by the booth for the cross-dressing.

Gee… is that the “Stonewall Inn Memorial Beach” or what? That’s why you can’t use machine translation for serious work unless you have a handle on the language. “Booth for the cross-dressing”… y’know, that’s jangly enough to pass as “Russlish”… all you Russian-Americans know what I’m talking about.

Language… if you don’t know what you’re doing… ooh-la-la… but ya gotta admit, “Booth for the cross-dressing”… that’s a classic blooper.

BMD

24 August 2015. Sing a New Song, Unto God Who is Worthy to be Praised

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24 August 2015. The Black Swan… A Musing on Current Events

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In the Middle Ages, the very existence of black swans in the nature seemed so absurd that it became a metaphor for something completely impossible. Until 1697, people thought that only white swans existed; however, a Dutch expedition led by Willem de Vlaminck discovered black swans in Western Australia. The term “black swan” refers to certain critical events that one can’t predict, but which, nevertheless, radically change history. Black swans can have both positive effects (e.g., the coming of the internet) and negative (the coming to power of Adolf Hitler). That is, they’re singular unexpected events (or people) with significant consequence. The “black swans” aren’t only negative events, but also can be unpredictable “good fortune”. “A Black Swan” is also a Latin expression… the oldest famous quote is by the Roman poet and satirist Juvenal… “A rare bird on earth, very much like the black swan” (Latin Rara avis in terris nigroque simillima cygno). I’ll give you some “Black Swans”:

• V V Putin… a POSITIVE Black Swan… he reversed the downward slide of post-Soviet Russia… he exposed the fact that the USA is NOT a “hyperpower”… the Anglo Establishment hates him for that
• The 2014 Ukrainian Pro-American Fascist Putsch… a NEGATIVE Black Swan… it ripped apart the fabric of the post-1991 “settlement” on the former Soviet space… now, everything is up for grabs, up to and including territorial “readjustments”
• Bernie Sanders… a POSITIVE Black Swan… he’s taken the lead in momentum in the upcoming 2016 US Presidential election… not only are Establishment Democrats in shambles, so are the Republicans
• The 2015 Oil Price Collapse… a NEGATIVE Black Swan for the Anglo Establishment… Russia can make money even if oil goes down to 30 USD/Barrel… the American energy multinationals can’t make money on unconventional wells if the price falls below 65 USD/Barrel… the energy moguls are some of the biggest contributors to American pols… they won’t have any money… fancy that
• Black Monday 24 August 2015… a NEGATIVE Black Swan… no one foresaw any of the stock market collapses that occurred today… South Sea Bubble Redux!… it means that Thomas Friedman and Serge Schmemann are overpaid bullshitters… it throws a VERY weighty spanner into the works in re Republican and Establishment Dem funding… simply put, their sugar daddies have less Mazola to spread around… look for “squeaky gears”… this is very much “a work in progress”… America takes a financial body blow just as its flexing its (non-existent) muscles

In short, the world is being its unpredictable self again… all the pundits, both “conservative” and “liberal” are wrong yet again. It doesn’t matter if it’s Tom Friedman on the “Liberal” side, or, whether it’s Rod Dreher on the “Conservative” side, one can see that their deterministic world-views are crank to the core and utterly false and misleading… however… it pays their bills, it gives them a SUBSTANTIAL pay packet. Attend to NOTHING from any of the pundits… they know no more than I do, but they have rather expensive megaphones, don’t they? Bite the coin… there be counterfeits abroad.

We’re all in the rollercoaster… I don’t know what tomorrow may bring… neither do the pundits. Why do you attend to them? Yes… why?

BMD