Literary and media historian focusing on the long 19th century. Not my employer’s account. She/they/punk rock tomboy. Settler on xʷməθkʷəy̓əm and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh land. Setter of types, maker of typos. A person whose first object in life is a joke.
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npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Profile Code
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2026-08-23T09:41:05Z Event JSON
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Last Notes npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…52nc @nprofile…kyza @nprofile…wzey one of Wordsworth’s best, by Wordsworth at his best. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…eqsh in what world is a $660 cancellation fee acceptable even outside a crisis situation? Canada’s infotech oligopoly is likely the most exploitive in the world. (Groaning under $300/month for fibre internet and two mobile phones with data here. No home phone and no streaming services.) npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic Who are we? In 2018, the attached jpeg appeared in my iPhoto account online. It's labelled IMG_8337.jpg. Dated Nov 3, 2018. No location or camera data. I didn't take it. No one I know took it. I have no idea who the people are, though the nametag on the female-presenting person seems to say something like "A. G. Wilson" and the lanyards appear to bear a 2018 date. I don't know how it got into my iCloud account. Can anyone help it find its way home? Please boost/identify these folks/the setting. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic University car park #flosstodon in a large cola stain this morning. I’ve never seen this design before; does it double as a paper clip? npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic Shake a paw/ gimme five #dogsofmastodon npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic The Twa Dugs: npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…p6ac a comment not aimed at Kim Perales, but at the OP Kim Perales quotes, and for everyone’s info: “Democrat” used instead of “Democratic,” a usage becoming normalized in this age of a captive press, has a long history as a Republican slur. The deets: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/sep/05/democrat-party-republicans npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…w47d she is lovely! Can you please tell us more about this bridge named after Olaudah Equiano? Thank you! npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…afhh @nprofile…7t0d https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdaITz2IRZUTHJNvsdaOZqKIMSgduTw7znanDwF8jB0LpQP0g/viewform npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…afhh @nprofile…7t0d I wrote to the Cttee chair, Liberal MP Salma Zahid. Her office replied that her role is only as a convenor and she has no say in decisions. Her office suggested writing to the committee—as thousands of Canadian academics have already done, via open letter. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…y70r I just sent this to my dad. His dad was on the radio design team for the moon landing project in 1969. He was seconded from RCA to NASA for years. He was legally blind without glasses and 4F from the war, so this was his way of giving to his country. My dad will love these. Thank you for posting. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…s67t you may know that the U of British Columbia is being sued over same, among other reconciliation and anti-racism initiatives. I won’t link that, either. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…kjrn it is racist (if we assume that the point of the saying is that both pot and kettle, having been on the fire, are darkened by soot - and that blackness is a negative value.) I’m another Gen X teacher, who encourages students to find alternatives to language associating negative value with blackness. Also recommending that “explore” and “discover” be rethought as leading academic values; why not “investigate,” “contribute,” “extend”? npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic #literature folk, esp colleagues in #C18 and #C19: does anyone have easy access to the Oxford World’s Classics Persuasion—preferably the Kinsley and Lynch edition, but Kinsley alone is fine—and could tell me the page number of the final page of Vol 1, Ch 10? I am tidying footnotes at home on a deadline, tomorrow is a stat and I live an hour from my office, and my respectable Persuasion edition is at work. Thank you so so so much if you can help. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic the regime south of the border will now, absent a body of studies, order MDs to prescribe #acetaminophen to pregnant people only in cases of fever with risk of febrile damage to fetuses. I will only point out that withholding pain relief in #pregnancy and childbirth has long been practiced in some quarters as a disciplinary value in line with Genesis 3:17: “Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow [pain] and thy conception; in sorrow [pain] thou shalt bring forth children.” npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic In the dark times, there are always owls. This little barred owl (well, they are very big but still a baby) is in the tree out on the sidewalk in front of my flat. The crows have been mobbing them all day and my dog is beside herself. #birds #owls npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…tmdj snow geese because of the numbers and dynamism of their migration. Bluebirds because they are like a piece of the sky. (We don’t have them here, so this off-course mountain bluebird had birders flocking to see him a couple of years ago.) Hermit and Swainson’s thrushes because they herald summer, and the latter’s song. This hermit was in my garden. Owls, especially great horned; this family was near my parents’ house. Any hummingbirds because their flight is so effortful. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…9e80 I have never belonged to or been to SHARP. Joining procedures have always seemed recondite in the extreme. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…jmrh first one, then the other? (I’ve always wanted to do that marathon in Médoc where there are wine as well as water stations.) npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…gk57 this is a really good question. The most helpful thing for me was being believed. Not portable to all situations, but really crucial in some. Conversely, minimizing, correction, and other forms of disbelief compounded, and compound, the damage. We are not a court of law. When someone we love tells us a thing is happening, believe them. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic lit folk, please consider responding to my #CFP for a "just-in-time session" to be proposed for the Modern Lang Assn convention, Toronto, Jan 2026. DM me. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic my beloved six-year-old dog has a new cancer diagnosis and is very sick. No “No Kings” protest for us today. Solidarity to everyone in the streets, especially those at 1075 West Pender, Vancouver, at 11. No pasarán. #NoKings #NoTyrants npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic grateful for the 30,000 Canadian soldiers, sailors, and airmen who participated in the D-Day landings 80 years ago today, providing fully 1/5 of the Allied force. Grateful for my cousin Howard “Cowboy” Blatchford, airborne Nazi puncher, who enlisted in the RAF (because the RCAF required a university degree), won the Distinguished Flying Cross for ramming a Nazi aircraft and flying head-on at two others when his ammunition was expended, and didn’t live to see the invasion or Allied victory. #DDay npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic if you can look past the cone and the fur, Sky looks exactly like the Prime Minister of #Canada. #dogsofmastodon npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…ygvp indeed. The happier possibility compared with this one: npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…ygvp thank you; I may now finally know whose lost feet these were at a little-visited rocky cove in West Vancouver in 2022. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic soaking rain east end walk with a dear friend wouldn’t be complete without multiple #Flosstodon encounters npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic someone snapped the windshield wiper off my new-to-me Prius on Wednesday. They also threw garbage all over it. It was the only car on my road affected. The repair cost me almost $400. I didn’t understand until my partner read that people are snapping the wipers off Teslas. Please, people, don’t attack Toyotas that are peacefully parked at the curb. Toyota is Japanese-owned and Priuses are built in Aichi. My Prius may be white and (part) electric, but it has nothing to do with the USA or Mvsk. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic For tomorrow. #TeslaTakedown East Van, Prior and Campbell, 1-3 PM https://actionnetwork.org/events/teslatakedown-vancouver-strathcona-park-2 https://teslatakedownvancouver.neocities.org/ npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic Vancouver this Sunday. Please boost. https://teslatakedownvancouver.neocities.org/ npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…92y4 they should apply to the U of British Columbia or the U of Toronto. Check the rankings. Check the available funding. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic excellent question from excellent student: why was the first published edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) bound in red cloth? I knew why (and how) it was bound in cloth, and pointed the student to resources on gold stamping versus later more elaborate multicolour stamping/embossing, and between stamping and printed paper over cardstock. And on the absence of dust jacket. We found early reviews with info on pricing, buyers, and implied readers. But: why red? #bookhistory npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic my media history class made iron gall ink yesterday, from a 1483 recipe in the UK National Archives that may have originated in (and certainly bears the stamp of) the Tower of London. #mediahistory #mediaecologies #trees #labour npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…wuyc as part of an organizing initiative I am involved in, I’m trying to work out ways to make clear the stakes to youth, who often don’t feel much about nation states in my experience. And I spent a decade of my scholarship on the history and critique of nationalism. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…wuyc thank you for posting. I was too stressed to continue listening live. The word we need to be using, especially those of us who have been critics of nationalism: sovereignty. Sovereignty, sovereignty, sovereignty. Way more than “Canada,” a concern shared between settlers and Indigenous nations. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…9e80 I believe my great grandfather, a Lithuanian immigrant and WWI medic, came home from war on that ship and that voyage. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic I have a lot of books, but this one is my favourite #dogsofmastodon (as usual, alt text taking a long time to show up. Photo is of a 15-month-old border collie asleep at the door of a Story bookcase with his head resting between the two bottom shelves.) npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic the only person in a mask on this full flight to YVR from a major US city, but the flight attendants were handing out alcohol hand wipes at the foot of the jetway #covid #birdflu npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic it is not a joke. Ukraine also was not a joke. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic food coma. (Happened yesterday late afternoon, and I’m still blushing/laughing about it.) #dogsofmastodon #bordercollie npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…fynq @nprofile…xsym https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/chanjun02.pdf provincial governments agreed to cut med school enrolments by 10% from class of 97 forward, after a bunch of cutting in the 80s. Reason: “too many doctors.” Who are now in their 40s and 50s—a generation is missing. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic Bluesky is trolling Jamelle Bouie for making hummus (which looks transcendently delicious on a blue plate, by the way.) I have no idea what is wrong with people and am myself an enthusiastic hummus eater. In any case, here’s last night’s dinner: #vegan braised fennel and chickpeas made in my 25-year-old yellow Le Creuset from Winners, with heart-shaped biscuits rolled thin. It was very good and came from the excellent Rainbow Plant Life blog (https://rainbowplantlife.com/tomato-fennel-braised-chickpeas/) Show me your vegan food! npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @nprofile…qwx8 I have heard similar accents (“countreh”; the slightly trilled “r”; the Katharine Hepburnesque clipped “yoh” for “you”) from v posh Canadians now over age 75 east of the Eastern Townships, within the past 20 years, fwiw. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @npub19v5…gr2x when I read this sobering stat I also think of the white nurse near here, an IPV survivor divorced from her husband, was required to bring her 2-year-old to her ex for shared parenting hand-off and was killed on his front lawn this week. He is charged with her murder. I would like to add Catharine MacKinnon to the lenses we bring to this scene—along with Stephanie Jones-Rogers and Hannah Arendt. When are consent and free choice possible? How to separate fear from fealty? npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic Donald Sutherland has died. All I can say is that the success of Nicolas Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” (1973)—the most terrifying film I’ve ever seen, and one of the most moving, in ways that are inextricable—depended as much on Sutherland’s towering performance of grief, terror, and love as on Roeg’s tour-de-force visual vocabulary. Julie Christie was good. Sutherland was transcendent. I know what I’ll be watching this weekend—again—in his memory. #DonaldSutherland npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic Well, I see you there with a rose in your teeth #dogsofmastodon npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic #silentSunday npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @npub1xsy…cevg my iPhone autocorrect has decided that “The,” capitalized, should always be extended into the name “Theresa.” My next door neighbour’s name is Theresa. I have texted her 4 times. npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic @npub1uw8…88kr dunno where student is from, but my dad learned, while teaching in then-Zaire in the 80s, that “Papa” and “Mama” were friendly honorifics while “Monsieur” and “Madame” were for strangers or aristocrats. He used to tell the story of thanking a cabbie: “Merci, Monsieur.” “Rien, Papa.” npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic I teach in an English dept. This year’s enrolments are way up. There are only 7 open seats across more than 300 offered classes with a typical size at 2-level to 4-level of 45 students. Notwithstanding recent claims (looking at you, NYT) that students are “fleeing the humanities” (what are those exactly? Do they mean text-based historically-oriented analytically-focused disciplines?), it appears that the classes of 2022 and 2023 are eagerly seeking out poetics, lit history, media history. 1/2 npub1v6m040gsajr0u2tp9usqqvtk76wyzwh690x6d6lgdrwzvhv4ml7slv96c9 Real Syntactic for the clothesline nerds (I know you’re out there; I met several on my former Masto account): I finally found wooden clothespins at a reasonable price https://www.lakeland.co.uk/53230/36-wooden-clothes-pegs and made a peg bag from oilcloth using this lovely pattern https://www.lovecrafts.com/en-gb/c/article/vintage-peg-bag-sewing-pattern. Clotheslines retire your dryer (assuming ur neighbourhood allows; I live in Vancouver’s clothesline central!), look gorgeous and smell even better. No drying yard? Make like Shanghai—use a window dryer. #clotheslines #climate #sustainable
