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I get the impression that the way Classical literature is taught in China is just absolutely miserable and makes everyone hate it, even the people who are otherwise passionate about language, culture and history. Which is, of course, exactly how I feel about American literature

@bnuyaminim.bsky.social an American in a hallowed hall is never hard to find

Chinese student introducing me to a gaggle of other Asian linguistics students: She’s American. But not one of those Americans who doesn’t speak any languages. A better American

I’m at the opening get-together for this year’s Leiden Linguistics Summer School and even *linguists* from China, who are here to study Proto-Germanic or whatever, are baffled that I’d willingly study Classical Chinese

You could get a doctorate out of studying the Wall of Post-Its in this bubble tea shop. Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, Slovakian, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Arabic…

@whitequark shops open? bikes walk (but it rhymes)

The City of Leiden has supplemented the legal notices that have a list of completely different biking hours for the market street on every day of the week in tiny writing with huge signs that say “WINKELS OPEN? FIETSEN LOPEN!” which is a hundred times more helpful

The changes are disorienting, but Amsterdam Zuid Station does feel like a major train station now and not like a dorp platform that’s perpetually having its busiest day of the century

I wanted to draw attention to some specific gamedev art assets that I like and are on sale.

VectoRaith makes what is instantly recognizable as the 16x16 pixel top-down rpg look typified by Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald, but with tilesets for many different biomes and several different cultural architecture styles, including China, the Middle East and Java. Sale ends tomorrow

https://vectoraith.itch.io/

Vexed makes a lot of pixel art assets in a few different styles, but I particularly like the "Chroma Noir" collection which is side-scrolling 1-bit abstract minimalism. Sale doesn't end until the end of the month

https://v3x3d.itch.io/

#gamedev #rpg #itchio #pixelart

I heard fireworks in the distance at sunset. American immigrants, I wondered? Or Dutch kids perfectly happy to seize on the pretense of another country's sadsack holiday to dip into their illegal stash?

My husband glanced at his phone. "The Moroccans won their game."

Oh. That would do it 😅

@haagseletters the apostrophe is to disambiguate that it’s not Xia-n. Not strictly necessary, as there are no hanzi transcribed simply “n”, but few hanzi begin with a vowel so the vowel-to-vowel transition point is confusing

@tinsuke my Southern accent is not normally this strong, but thinking about America, and reading something that was written by a Southerner, I could not turn it off

I have never been so frustrated with my voice as I have been today, trying to record something of great personal importance to me and hearing how short my voice falls of the power and presence this speech deserves.

But my voice is, and always will be, no matter how many years I spend away, painfully American.

When I was a little girl, my mother told me about how amazing the 200th anniversary Fourth of July had been, and I was sad that I wasn't born yet. I realized that the next big anniversary would be the 250th, and I would be 38. How incredibly far off it seemed.

And how that joy and anticipation has crumbled to bitter ashes.

I am crying on the other side of the world, in the country where I was born, for the country that raised me and then rejected me.