Fishin' in the stream of consciousness (all-purpose, no topic chat thread)

Magical ⭐ o⭐

 

I'm driving myself insane with something incredibly stupid.

Though there's no point in describing the particulars of the story here, I have a story of mine particularly close to my heart called Demon Dear. The protagonist is a young person who was given a mysterious blessing from the star Vega on her birth by a personification of the star called Tir-anna.

I gave the personification of Vega the name Tir-anna because, as I've always been bonkers about astrological lore, I read the Wikipedia pages for many stars years ago hunting for inspiration and ideas and cool names for my Flight Rising dragons. The page for Vega, among many other cool details, notes that

Something about that half a sentence of words--'in Akkadian it was Tir-anna, "Life of Heaven--"' really captured my imagination. I already knew why the ancients would theoretically call it not just a cool star but LIFE OF HEAVEN--first off, it is the fifth brightest star that can be seen from Earth (not counting the sun), and second off, it is sometimes the Pole Star. Long explanation short, how tilted the axis of the earth is in relation to the rest of the solar system wobbles over a course of like 26,000 years. Because of that, our 'pole,' the direct north as seen in the sky from Earth, changes apparent position in the night sky, and whatever star is closest to the 'pole' is the 'pole' star for as long as it is closest to celestial north. Have a picture that details the circle the apparent pole moves in over the course of thousands of years.



The source isn't as useful as the image but here it is anyway.

Right now our north pole star is Polaris, alpha Ursa Minor, circles in red. Sometimes the pole star is Thuban in Draco or various stars in Cepheus, and half a precessional cycle ago, it was Vega, as it will be half a precessional cycle from now. It is the brightest of all potential pole stars and there is evidence that a lot of ancient human societies remembered it once was one before it fell from grace. Like, Polaris as cool, but I'm jealous of the ancient nomadic societies that got absurdly bright, sapphire-blue Vega as their fixed north pole star.

Tldr, Vega is an incredibly important star to human history and imagination, and it's cool, and I have no doubt that we once had names for it as bitching as TIR-ANNA, LIFE OF HEAVEN. Except. Right now what I want to know is if we have any proof it was ever called that particular name, and I can't find that.

It took me some time to figure out what Wikipedia was even sourcing in the quote I inserted above because their notes are messy and they should feel bad. The source is Richard Hinckley Allen's Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, which was published in 1899 and is as such public domain, meaning anyone has the right to read it without paying for it. Neato! I hoped to find it online and found the best thing ever: an entire webpage with the book neatly printed out in chaptesr, containing color-coded words and phrases, notes from the uploader, and links to other useful things, all apparently on an absolutely SPRAWLING website the maintainer has made about ancient Rome. I nerded out on this webpage for a half hour before remembering why I was there.

Finally I remembered to open the chapter for Lyra (Vega's home constellation) and try to settle my 'did anyone actually call her Tir-anna ever' problem. I got this. Quote Allen:

OH, COOL, ALMOST NO NEW INFORMATION, AND ALLEN WAS JUST QUOTING SOMEONE ELSE. WHO THE HELL IS BROWN?

After poking around in earlier chapters of the same book, I've decided with maybe 50% certainty that Brown is Robert Brown Jr., since that's the name Allen writes in earlier chapters and he's the most likely scientist names Robert Brown Jr. to be writing star lore before Allen's time. But I can't figure out what publication Allen could possibly be quoting--I saw a reference to an "Archaeologia" once but can't find any writing called that or maybe it's just a genre or AUGH. Moreover, I keep seeing comments from the uploader of the book and others that Allen, while trustworthy in his Greek and Roman sources, is the more out of his playing field the farther he gets from Europe, and stops checking his sources or being particularly trustworthy after a certain degree of separation. The situation wasn't looking good, and then I looked at the time and it was 2 a.m. I don't remember anything after midnight clearly. I know I looked up the names and general contents of most if not all Babylonian star catalogues and came up lacking. I'm infuriated that he uses 'Akkadian' as the description here because that's the language of several ancient Sumerian cultures and empires and as such I can't narrow down what source this 'Brown' could possibly be pulling from yet.

That's when I decided to write this post. I'm going to hunt down where this freaking name came from, if anywhere. It's looking pretty wild goose chase-like; I'm starting to smell someone way down the line making this name up. I'm also getting out of suspicious and into almost certain that my eventual source will not have ever been translated into English, once, by anyone, and I'm just hoping beyond hope for Latin, German, or French, all of which I can at least discern parts of speech in.

If any of you happen to know a lot about early astronomy that would be great but mostly I'm marveling at my life, my choices.

 

i finally cracked the code of fruit spread translation! i think
"mermelada", is equivalent to "preserves", "confitura" is "jam", and american "jelly" is "gelée" or "jalea", which i've only ever seen in weird flavors like "white wine", "gin tonic", and "gold bubbles with rose petals"
#this has been a pointless post

 

Putting this here as well

 

imagine your otp

 

Does Kintsugi count as social media, do you think? I don't actually know any of you and we aren't really conversing so much as commenting opinions and occasionally facts about the same topics. Also it doesn't make me depressed, so that's a point in the not-social-media camp's favor

 

I think of social media as Facebook and Twitter and such. Networking content where sometimes you need to friend/follow to interact. Not sure if that's a relevant distinction though.

 

Id take it as social media if you take the words at face value, its a piece of media i use to be social in some capacity *shrugs*

 

I see forums as being their own category, but that's just me *shrug*

Also... does anyone else ever get the thing where your thoughts are going a zillion miles an hour but also creeping by like molasses at the same time? Or like... you're thinking at normal volume but also screaming? I was talking to my roommate about that today. It doesn't happen to me often, but it's so weird when it does... The normal volume but also screaming is like the earliest dream I can remember, where there were two people talking but there was no sound but they were yelling at each other but it was also calm? It's weird. Uh... I'll be over here, playing PokeMon >.>;

 

T̴̜h͎͉̗e̫͓͔̦̰͔ ̺D͍̘̬̣̱ḁ̻̤r͢k̩͖̯n̤̙͙̣͈e̫͇͘s͓̖̜̗̯͝s̼̙͎̟̗̯ ͕̲͙̜̣ͅH͎o̮͍̰͔̠̦͔l̴͔̟͔͉̝̞̫ḏ̜̙̼͡s̥̱̮͙̦̜ͅ

 

...yes. or something similar, anyway.

 

I totally get the zillion miles an hour but also molasses. It's like racing thoughts but it's the same thought a million times before it moves on to something new, but then as soon as it's gone it's gone forever. God help you if you need to remember anything, because you're at the railroad crossing and there's a new thought train zooming by, and you're never going to see the last one again.

 

With me it's more like... Having your regular train of thought but it feels like it's going two speeds at once even though it's just one train of thought? Or sometimes you're thinking something but then you feel like there's also something else going on but you just can't catch whatever that other thought is because it's in stealth mode or going too fast or something.

 

holy shit same
i wasn't aware other people even did that

 

Oooh my god i am so tired of these blue charmin bears.

Spoiler: Nsfw

Why are they all so obsessed with each others bathroom habits, why is the grandma just in the bathroom with her grandaughter showing her how to wad up toilet paper! Why are they the only bears without clothes in the airport one, and the scanner guy is obsessively scanning the dad bears ass??? Why is the boy trading underwear secrets with his friends because he "doesnt have to wipe as much because charmin is so good"!?!

Why. This has been going on for years. Its worse than the traumatized bathroom decoration commercials. Stop toilet paper companies 2k17

 

CURSED FOOTAGE

 

#Stop kinkshaming corporations 2k17

 

I'm watching Peaceful Cuisine with an intensity better suited towards a thriller or something
it helps that I'm really clueless about cooking, so it's like "what's going to happen next?! what's that device? onions in this recipe??"
this is supposed to be pre-bed calm video time, shouldn't be getting so excitable

 

BINGO!

(I'm all five posters)

 

I just had a dream that underneath one of the touristy bits of Florida, probably either Orlando or Miami, there was a large underground maze, and I got invited to be a part of a yearly alcohol-fueled race through it, ending at what one of the announcers called 'one of the most exclusive clubs in Florida' which was on the outskirts of the maze and hard to find when drunk. I was with my stepmother for some reason, but I had enough alcoholic slushy before I started to be comfortable absolutely telling her off and then immediately running the event. (I was also wearing my favorite outfit and my body looked exactly like I wanted it to. It was a good dream.)