ne Soma I write my shorter blathes on mobile, which is most days. The little icon for the browser tab is a yellow square that just says “Ne” inside it. Ostensibly, this is for “Newdream” but it just makes me think of 「ね」which is pronounced like those two little English letters. ね is this little particle that invites someone else to participate in the things you’ve shared with them. To be used, it means there is an assumption that there is a person on the other end listening (or reading), and potentially interacting with what has been said or written. In some ways, I think that’s very much in the spirit of Blather. Wouldn’t you agree? 231203 ... epitome of incomprehensibility (Checks box that says "Strongly Agree"!) Plus this reminded me that my linguistics program is too focused on Indo-European; I saw this and immediately thought of a negating prefix. PIE (Proto-Indo-European, people's reconstructed version of this possible ancestor language) had a nasal prefix for negation that became a beginning a- in Greek and a beginning n- in some other languages, which is where English gets multiple negation patterns like a- as in atypical un- as in unfair non- as in nonsense the word "not" and probably more...anyway, there's no reason that any of these sounds are inherently that meaning. Speaking of n- words/particles in Japanese, I think "no" is something like "of"? (from my scholarly research, aka browsing manga summaries years ago on TV Tropes) 231204 ... e_o_i (putting "n" before "word" makes me recall that the insulting English word associated with this phrase sounds like an innocent word in Korean - a more unfortunate fuck/phoque situation) 231204 ... raze liz harris (better known as grouper) said something once in an interview that stuck with me, about "a room of people feeling together while paradoxically still having a separate experience". she was talking about live performance, but it made me think of this place. how it can be something different to everyone who has words, and it can exist as all of those things at the same time. how we can be here for different reasons but still feel connected in a way that isn't so easily explained. i remember reading something here years ago, though i'm not sure who said it (maybe j_blue?): "there's a whole network of us that just sit and stare." sometimes i wonder if there are any silent 'skites who still lurk without letting us know they're around. i guess there's no way to know. but even when things get quiet, it always feels like blather is listening. 231204 ... e_o_i Also a negation in Old Egyptian. 240126 what's it to you? who go blather from