@dobearsshalalala on Tumblr

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cosmic-un1verse-deactivated2023

Apollo 1 crew practicing a water landing in 1966.

It doesn’t look like a “water landing” so much as “best pool party ever”

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madmaudlingoes

rupertgrnt

Interviewer: Do you find that [film and go to school] exhausting? It sounds terrible exhausting to me.

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1e3no

vixyish

Donc, voici une histoire tout au sujet D’la façon dont ma vie s’est basculé-renversée Écoutez une minute Je raconte comment faire Moi-même le prince de la ville de Bel Air

razadeluna

pewslight & dobearsshalalala

dobearsshalalala

😮😮😮

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utterlybemused

danielradcliffedaily

Daniel Radcliffe fills in for NYLON’s receptionist [x]

dobearsshalalala

Literally me on reception

#Thank god I don't have to do that any more

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silverrabbit

Source: silverrabbit

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allthingslinguistic

It is a well-documented fact that by the age of 5 monolingual White children will have heard 30 million fewer words in languages other than English than bilingual children of color. In addition, they will have had a complete lack of exposure to the richness of non-standardized varieties of English that characterize the homes of many children of color. This language gap increases the longer these children are in school. The question is what causes this language gap and what can be done to address it? The major cause of this language gap is the failure of monolingual White communities to successfully assimilate into the multilingual and multidialectal mainstream. The continued existence of White ethnic enclaves persists despite concerted efforts to integrate White communities into the multiracial mainstream since the 1960s. In these linguistically isolated enclaves it is possible to go for days without interacting with anybody who does not speak Standardized American English providing little incentive for their inhabitants to adapt to the multilingual and multidialectal nature of US society. This linguistic isolation has a detrimental effect on the cognitive development of monolingual White children. This is because linguistically isolated households lack the rich translanguaging practices that are found in bilingual households and the elaborate style-shifting that occurs in bidialectal households. This leaves monolingual White children without a strong metalinguistic basis for language learning. As a result, many of these monolingual White children lack the school-readiness skills needed for foreign language learning and graduate from school having mastered nothing but Standardized American English leaving them ill-equipped to engage in intercultural communication.

What if we talked about monolingual White children the way we talk about low-income children of color?

Excerpt from a satirical blog post from The Educational Linguist that makes a good point about which language skills we value as a society and the problems with talking about a “language gap”.

(via allthingslinguistic)

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utterlybemused

bravoart

Just one tit Leave thine other one crazy and out of control That thine party tit

SHIT

It got better

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madmaudlingoes

youknowyourebritishwhen

im-sorry-i-say-im-sorry asked:

You could say the worst debate is jaffa cake: cake or biscuit? (Defiantly cake!!!)

youknowyourebritishwhen answered:

CAAAAAAKE

guyslikedarren

Biscuit who the hell thinks it’s a cake??

It is in fact a cake. There was a legal case about this in the UK in which Jaffa Cale baked an over-sized Jaffa Cake and let it go off to prove what it was. It has been classified as a cake. A cake goes hard when it goes off. A biscuit goes soggy. The Jaffa Cake hardened and therefore is now marketed as a cake

Just to elaborate on this a little:

It was legally decided to be a cake for tax reasons: due to the UK’s unfathomable tax laws, cakes are VAT-free, as they are apparently necessities. Biscuits are apparently luxury items and therefore subject to the full VAT rate. This means that McVities gets to take home the full sale price rather than having to shave off their profit margin in order to pay the VAT. Either that or they’re cheaper to consumers, but I’ll believe that when I see it. The stuff about their properties when they go off is absolutely true as well, that’s what the case was decided on.

Britain has legal precedent for the difference between a cake and a biscuit. This is possibly the most stereotypically British thing of all time.

seasquared

Being a Legal Nerd I tried to chase down the opinion in United Biscuits (UK) Ltd v HMRC (VATD 6344), the Jaffa cake case. Unfortunately the 1991 VAT opinions do not appear to be online but I did find these interesting tidbits:

The actual issue is that a cake is zero-rated (exempt from VAT) even if it is covered in chocolate, whereas a biscuit is standard-rated even if it is wholly or partly covered in chocolate or some product similar in taste and appearance. Try as I might, I was unable to find the rationale for this, but it is hilarious to me that a biscuit may be a necessity, but the minute it’s covered in chocolate – watch out, we got a decadent luxury here. Incidentally, there is a case that holds that gingerbread men decorated with chocolate are subject to VAT, unless the chocolate amounts to no more than a couple of dots for eyes.
One of the factors considered by the VAT Tribunal was “snap,” as we all know biscuits are expected to be crisp and able to be snapped.
The product’s name was only a “minor consideration.”
I can’t improve upon the hilariousness of this paragraph, so I will just reproduce it from the Revenue and Customs page: “An earlier case, that of Adams Foods Ltd (MAN/83/0062) which concerned Chocolate Dundees, a traditional type of shortcake with a chocolate base and individually wrapped for sale, came to the opposite conclusion. The decision contains a useful, if technical, table of comparative differences between cakes and biscuits, provided by an expert witness, and the tribunal was unable to see any factors supporting a view of the product as cake. It was ruled to be a biscuit partly covered in chocolate and accordingly standard-rated.”
In 2014, a similar question was decided for snowballs: are they confectionaries or cakes? Happily for us, the opinion is available online. If you think the Jaffa cake thing is funny, you should read the opinion here, which has zingers such as:
“The Tribunal and our experience of snowballs “
“We would consider ourselves to fall into the category of “ordinary persons” who have been informed, in the sense of having some knowledge, but not specialist knowledge of both cakes and confectionary.”
The judges were presented with a whole plate of cakes, including snowballs, and concluded, “We found that the plate looked like a plate of cakes.”
“We, and the witness were left with very sticky fingers, which, as we explained to parties was not dissimilar to eating a cake such as a vanilla slice (or mille feuille or croquembouche); we required to clean our fingers”
“Most people would prefer to be sitting when eating a snowball and possibly, or preferably, depending on background, age, sex etc with a plate, a napkin or a piece of paper or even just a bare table so that the pieces of coconut which fly off do not create a great deal of mess.”

Best half an hour of legal research I’ve done in a while.