Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
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Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
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Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
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If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evoloving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
Anybody have any great recipes they'd like to share? Particularly healthy entrees and side or veggie dishes. I'd love to see what our fellow GAWers are eating to keep fit. Thanks.
Thanks, PepeSee. I love Bush's backed beans the best and I also love a really good Andouille sausage. Appreciate the recipe.
FYI: I don't know if you still have your crock pot, but the lid on my old crock pot was wrecked. I tried to find a replacement to buy and couldn't. Called the company and what do you know -- they sent me a whole new crock pot!! I couldn't believe it. Mine was at least 9-10 years old at the time. Brand is Rival. Oh, and I didn't have to send them my old one.
This should absolutely be the thread for that - these guys are always talking food. 😅 Try posting "earlier" in the day if you don't get a lot of suggestions.
Alright, thanks! I'm just going through my messages and am already surprised to find two recipes!
Tzatziki: 2 cups Greek yogurt, full fat (10%), 1/2 cup grated and drained cucumber (squeeze all the water out that you can, sprinkling with salt and letting sit 5-10 min helps), 1-2 tsp minced garlic, salt to taste. Great dip for anything crunchy, blend out with mayo or oil for salad dressing, top strong-flavored mutton or pork. Optional, as dill or other herbs to taste.
Thank you. I've never heard of Tzatziki. I've been avoiding Greek yougurt because I saw that obnoxious guy from Chobani on 60 minutes several years ago. He was horrible!! Made me so angry. But there are other brands, so I'll give it a try because I do love yougurt. Thanks again.
We get Cabot from wally world or Specially Selected from Aldi... Chobani is all about importing slave migrants for invasion. Greek yogurt just means different culture and, if you're lucky, goat milk. I'm working on convincing the spouse that a milk goat or two would be really handy... Enjoy!
I would dearly love to have some goats! As well as other farm animals.
i've never posted in here in the general chat, so i hope this question falls within "a place for people to talk about things that are off topic".
my 4 yr old cat has been diagnosed with feline leukemia. he weighs just over 8 lbs right now & has barely made it off the bed the last few days. we've been using syringes to help get water down him & some broth.
im just wondering if there are any specific medications or "wonder drugs" any of you are aware of to try & reverse this illness?
the vet said that some cats make full recoveries, while others suffer on & off. my little buddy is usually full of energy & attitude lol, but just all the sudden, has lost his energy & is bed ridden.
thank you very much for any info, help or prayers you all may have.
I'm sorry, he is young. Feed him real food, chicken, beef, I know they sell kitty broths and stuff, but its better to make your own, see if he will lick bone broth, eat raw hambuger, vitamin c helps, but they dont like it. He is young, so, he may go in and out of remission. At least with Fellk , they do not really suffer, just get tired, so tired.
I'd try ivermectin.
Ditto.
why on earth can we not get OTC cold meds in a bottle instead of the stupid foil plastic that you have to fight with and make you want to do harm to someone?
I know some of you are against pills (I limit them) of any kind so no need to scold me for taking them..
100 pct agree
I keep scissors all over the place for this reason. A push pin works, they cannot be opened by mere hands, and I'm too old to use my teeth. It's all packaging, easier to transport flat boxes instead of boxes of bottles.
Diarrhea meds too. Buy the time you have wrestled the meds out of the blister pack it's getting ugly.
I wish I could upvote this more! haha When you need that you need it now!
Hah. I finally found something suitable to post in General Chat.
This is from yesterday's GC, from discussions that BB and I were having under the "ramen" theme, but reposting here in case current gen chat folks might be interested...
On the Korean writing system....
Hanguel was created, actually designed, by a 'think tank" of scholars in the 1400s in Korea, under the rule of King Se-jeong. Se-jeong is credited as the originator and creator, although I'm unsure if he had any direct input.
Until that time, Korean language did not have its own writing form. Due to its vassal relationship being in the orbit of Ancient China, like Japan and other satellite peoples, the Koreans adopted hancha - Chinese characters - for writing and recording things.
So up until the 1400's, all official stuff was written in "han-mun", Han meaning Chinese and mun 文 meaning letters or text. Similar to but different from Japan, Korean aristocracy were the only literate people in the nation.
In Japan, the Samurai formed the nexus of the aristocracy, with samurai being first and foremost warriors and secondly - in some cases - scholars. In Korea, the aristocracy were first and foremost scholars, with some - professional military - being the warriors.
The similarities and contrasts play to some extent. In Korea, it was academic brilliance that led the way, in Japan, martial brilliance. In Korea, ethical virtue being the aspired to highest values, in Japan, martial virtue.
Anyway, until the 1400s, writing involved using either a pure Chinese system or or another modified version tha fused Chinese letters with Korean language, by adopting the sound of the Chinese characters to represent the sounds used in the Korean language.
(In kanji, you'll notice that there are two types of pronunciation: on-yomi and kun-yomi. On yomi, literally 'sound reading', are derived from the original Chinese pronunciation, somewhat Japanified. Kun-yomi, literally "meaning reading" are native Japanese pronunciations.
This is why the on-yomi for 水 in Japanese is sui, in Korean "soo" and in Chinese (Mandarin) 'shui'.
Which came first, the Chinese or the Japanese? Japanese existed as a language prior to the importation of Chinese, and when they adopted kanji into Japanese systems of writing, they kept the character but assigned the native Japanese pronunciation, or rather, they adopted the Chinese character to represent the original Japanese. Thus, みず. [mizu] is native Japanese. [sui] is derived from the Chinese word with the Chinese pronunciation.)
Anyway, when King Se-jeong came to the throne, he thought it wasn't great that the general population had no writing system they could use. Chinese characters were used by the aristocracy in either original Chinese form (aka Chinese grammar, lexicons, syntax, etc) or in a hybrid where Chinese was used to represent the Korean sounds.
This would be like finding two Chinese characters for the sound 'mi' and 'zu' (eg 美 + 頭) to write 'mizu' in Japanese.
Se-jeong put his scholars to work, and they developed hangeul based on the principles I mentioned.Here, han' means Korean (same sound but completely different Chinese character than the Chinese 'han'), and geul means 'writing'.
It was promulgated to the nation via a book he published in 1446 called "hun min cheong eum" roughly "Correct sounds for educating the people". Se-Jeong wanted the alphabet to be something the regular folks could all learn and use, instead of the extremely complicated Chinese writing system with its tens of thousands of characters.
Consonants
The consonant shapes were derived from and formulated as graphic representations of the locus of articulation: ㄴ, ㄹ, ㅁ, ㅂ, ㅅ, ㄱ represent sounds close to the English n, l, m, p, s, k.
ㄴ is like the shape of the tongue as it presses against the alveolar ridge when one pronounces 'n', ㄹ is like the more rolled up shape when we pronounce an ' l ', ㅁ is like the shape of the mouth (aka a box or hole enclosed on all sides) when we say "m", ㅂ is like the mouth as in m, but with two little pips coming up representing the air being released in the explosive labial "p", ㅅ represents the shape the tongue when pressed up allowing air through to form the sibilant "s", ㄱ represents the back of the throat where K (or g) are pronounced.
Korean Linguistics in the 15th century was light-years ahead of anything that Europe had at the same time, and I think was probably the pinnacle of linguistic thought / science at the time (although I'm pretty much ignorant of those Indians, who I think were pretty darn advanced too)
Vowels
Korean vowels were constructed along neo-confucianist principles, the basis of which is the trinity of: Heaven (天) - Human (人) - Earth (地). In Neo-Confucianism, the cosmos consists of essentially three elements: Heaven (the world of spirit), Earth (the material world) and humans, who dwell between both of these and who are formed of elements from both.
The Korean scholars used a vertical line to represent heaven (which is yang), a horizontal line to represent earth (which is yin), and a dot to represent humanity. The dot changed later on (was written later on) as a short 'dash'. Thus, the Korean letter ㅏ("ah") is a combination of the vertical line for heaven plus the dot or dash representing humanity. A diphthong version "yah" is represented by the extra dashㅑ. ㅜ "oo" is the horizontal line for Earth plus the dot (dash) underneath for humanity. The diphthong version has two dashes namely ㅠ.
In Korean linguistics all vowels are either yang 陽 (masculine) or yin 陰 (feminine). Eg "ah" is a masculine or yang sound, while eo (short 'o' with lips unrounded) is a feminine or yin sound.
Consonant / vowel clusters
Korean is written then by combining consonants and vowels into a syllabic cluster. 한 is a combination of ㅎ 'h' sound + ㅏ "ah' sound + ㄴ "n" sound, to form the word or syllable "han".
Thus, Korean is both individualized phonetic sound script like English AND a syllabic representation system like Japanese. The clusters bring together Heaven, Earth and Humanity, plus consonants and vowels.
(If a word or syllable only has a vowel, a silent consonant place hold is inserted. ㅇ is usually pronounced "ng" but if the word/syllable is "ah" for example, it is written 아 and the ㅇ is silent.)
https://somahan.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Hangul-1447.jpg
It can be written vertically or horizontally, although generally horizontal is preferred these days.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e5/Korean_text_test.svg/1280px-Korean_text_test.svg.png
So while hangul was not designed by mathematics, it is highly, highly systematic (unlike, for example, hiragana which are basically simply highly stylized versions of a chinese character that once represented the sound. eg. 安 'an' became あ. Not to put down hiragana, rather, only to highlight the amazingly systematic way that the Korean writing system was developed.
The above only scratches the absolute awesomeness that is the Korean writing system, imo. But I'm biased. :P
Thus, whereas many writing systems were developed haphazardly using random or somewhat unrelated symbols to represent sounds, Hangul was developed based on very clear linguistic correlations plus philosophical conceptualization of the nature of universe.
Cool, right?
That is interesting. I've heard that hangul is a better writing system than what Japan has. I'm a Japanfag myself and the katakana pronunciation is rather phonetically limited. It's all syllables, with either a lone vowel sound or a consonant paired with a vowel. The only consonant that stands on its own is "N" (ん). So credit card becomes "kurejitto kaado" and inexplicably, Japanese raise their voice in the middle as if they are reciting poetry when saying it. Bizarre.
For a while, my daughter was interested in Korea. She liked Twice, but has since realized that K-Pop is a bunch of phony crap, as well as J-Pop. (She calls BTS "LGBTS" because she can't stand the girly men.) But back when she was interested, I bought her a book on reading hangul at Book Off. She picked it up rather quickly and can maybe still read it a bit, but she doesn't understand the language at all.
That's very cool. The characters in the graphics above have a new 'energy' to me than previously with the perspective/info you shared. Good read. Ko maps mne da for the post.
Done.
Steve, a little confused here. Whose daughter is the one we're talking about? The daughter of the sister of your Japanese penpal? Whose older sister encouraged you to propose to the person who became your wife? Who has disengaged from connecting with Christ? your wife? her sister? The girl from Ireland?
Just asking. Thanks for sharing with us about this lonely homeschooled girl. Let's pray she is protected and comforted.
I got to the point in your story when you proposed to your Japanese pen pal...it was like reading an autobiography and was very interesting...just did not have time to finish...may do that this weekend. Thank you for sharing your life story...many good take aways...your love and obedience to the Lord, your respect, love and caring for the women you dated and especially the fact of how God worked in your life...for a "nerd" you are a very good writer/poet. I am glad you are able to affect the life of your daughter's pen pal...I will certainly pray for her...and the whole Irish family that was so dear to your heart...may God richly bless you and yours...
Thank you so much! I actually had some lurker threaten me via a direct message earlier today for posting here, being honest about my life. Some people are just sad...
I'm a bit of a word nerd. Not nerdy enough I suppose, since I had abandoned my ambitions to major in computer science and instead chose business (along with everyone else who can't figure out what to do with his/her life). Anyhow, it sounds like you got up to the sad part of the story when that girl's family was wanting me to marry her instead of the girl I did marry. It gets a bit sadder after that, yet still has a happy ending. I had reached out to the girl I was close to last December. While she has yet to contact me (I sent her another postcard today), she at least thought enough of me to mention about me to her family, and her dad asked to get my contact info. We've been in fellowship since then. I tell him that I pray for his wayward children every day. He said that I had a big impact on his son's life, the one I had mentored, because he grew up to marry an Asian girl like I did (albeit his wife is Chinese). For over a half year already, God is witness to the prayers and tears I have given for that girl I was once close to. She was a kindred spirit, and I pray for God to take her back into His loving arms. Her family needs her to lead them to God.
Bonjour bonjour!🤓
Have a morning smile on me!
Good morning Penisse...I am coming and you are very possibly going...hope you have a wonderful day...my husband is about ready to leave for a fishing trip for over a week so I will know what it is like to be on my own for a bit...it just always feels like something is missing...but there are many things to keep me busy...God bless you and yours....
Hello Mrs Tweety51A! 🤗💐
What kind of fish should he bring back? How do you accomodate it?
I am a huge fan of « papillotes »: wrap the seasoned fish in baking paper, then aluminium film, then put it in the oven. As for the seasoning, you may blend some garlic with rosmarin and some organic lemon peel and oil, for instance. Why not adding a little bacon as well…
He is fishing in the Florida Keys so it is Atlantic Ocean Mahi Mahi predominantly. We usually lightly season and grill...garlic is always a favorite...and who doesn't like bacon...and lemon and fish go great together...I will try wrapping and baking...yum yum...
Bonjour, fren, Merci et cela m'a bien fait sourire. J'espère que vous passez une belle journée.
🤗
What he said
Updoogle for Eno.
Favorite Eno albums? This could be a question of the day.
Mine is Another Green World.
I listened to that album non-stop while reading Lord Foul's Bane, book one of the Thomas Covenant series, for the first time, in my teenage years. The two became unforgettably entwined in my mind.
For the purposes similar to what PepeSee is talking about, I like to sleep to Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. But for listening while awake, Another Green World is great. I’ll Come Running is a nice song.
Here Come The Warm Jets is a fantastic album. The title track and Needles In The Camel’s Eye are classics, but my favorites are Baby’s On Fire and Cindy Tells Me.
Wow Covenant series, that flashed me back. The last big set I finished was Wheel of Time, maybe I should go back to Covenant before something new...
Did you know that Donaldson put out a 3rd set, after about 20 years, in the mid-2000s? (2004 - 2013)
Unlike the first two sets, there are four books in the final set. I managed to read through it all. It did not disappoint. Seriously.
Worth a read.
Thank you, pede, no I had no idea! This is exciting. I've been immersed in nonfiction and research; it's high time for an epic. As soon as I finish A World Without Cancer, I'll do Thomas Covenant plus the new set.
me too!!!!!!!!!
Dude, Brian Eno is great! Music for Airports! Plus he was instrumental in Slowdive's Souvlaki album, one of my all-time favorite albums. Beautiful.
Elevator music itself was like a genre. In the early days if youtube, I remember looking up elevator music and play them when I needed to focus. There is a term for it - I believe it was called Muzak or something like that.
Muzak was the company that distributed elevator music. Muzak became a term used to describe any piped in music, like kleenex, xerox and bandaid are used generically. An interesting factoid I found about Muzak:
Westinghouse owns Muzak! That’s so funny… and typical
I remember there was a Westinghouse building in the big city near where I grew up. Their big lit up logo always reminded me of an unfinished or upside down crown. Knowing the cabal, it's probably the latter with that inversion thing they love.
Something I found that I didn't know:
I don’t know too much about Old Man Westinghouse but I know that by the era of the military-industrial complex of which Eisenhower warned us, the company was cabal af.
I looked at George Westinghouse's wikipedia (yeah, I know), his early years don't say much.
I find it interesting that in the wiki it says:
Funny that GW who employed NT was using AC, while Edison was using DC. AC won, yet, Edison is the one you hear about.
Even funnier is that GW won an 'Edison Award'. 🙄
It's all so incestuous and intertwined. Easy to win when you play both sides, isn't it!
Today I learnt something.
Muzak is soulless. No expression. The opposite of real music, which is a song of the soul.
I bet that was something to hear. I recall the first time I heard Pink Floyd on Muzak, laughed my ass off!
I never heard of or saw that movie, it came out a few years after I lost most of my interest in mainstream entertainment, so I looked it up. It's a Lorne Michaels film, so it's probably ala SNL.
I found the clip you were referring to, and it's pretty funny! It cuts off, but it looked like she entered the elevator and was starting to do it too!
BTW, aren't you the one that that mentioned the trick of having the text written and highlighted so it goes in the [enter text] brackets on links? I love this shortcut, use it all the time now! 👍