En af de ting jeg har en særlig interesse for (og viden om og erfaring med) er Jehovas Vidner.

Der er ekstremt mange fordomme om JV i omløb i Danmark og meget lidt egentlig viden.

De fleste kender dem mest fra jokes, fra deres dør til dør forkyndelse,og fra gadbilledet. Om deres tro ved de fleste at de missionerer på en ret aggressiv måde (ifht Dansk religionsforskrækket kultur), at de ikke tillader blodtransfusioner og at man kan blive udstødt på en meget ubehagelig og ekstrem måde hvis man vælger at forlade religionen. Det er altsammen sandt.

A historical figure who is endlessly fascinating to me is Bartolomé de las Casas.
Here a thread about his contradictory legacy, fighting for freedom and peaceful conversion of indigenous peoples AND having a partial responsibility for the start of the transatlantic slavetrade... He was a slaveowner and encomendero and secular priest in Sto. Domingo. But in 1510 a group of dominican friars arrived and began to denounce the colonists' treatment of the indigenous Taíno. Las Casas, argued against them that the subjugation of non-christians was just.

If you travel by metro in Mexico city you will notice how each station has a pictogram, but you may not see any relation between the sign and the name of the place. It requires specialized knowledge, sometimes of Nahuatl. Here the pictogram for Mixiuhca. What does it mean? In Nahuatl a mixiuhqui /miʃiwki/ is a woman who has recently given birth (traditionally confined to bed for 40 days). Clearly whoever made the pictogram made it refer to this nahuatl meaning. Whether this helps the average cdmx metrorider memorize the station, I don't know.

Jeg møder så mange mennesker der tror at min kone selvfølgelig har fast opholdstilladelse, vi er jo gift, hun har jo været her i snart fem år, (plus to år tidligere), og vi er gift og har børn. De bliver meget overraskede når jeg fortæller dem at hun tidligst kan søge om 7 år. Gennesmnitsdanskeren er slet ikke klar over hvor stramt systemet for opholdstilladelser faktisk er blevet, og hvor meget det besværliggør hverdagen at man ikke har fast opholdstilladelse.

Thread for non-linguists: The community of academic #linguists are currently pretty angry at #Ethnologue the world's major registry for languages varieties and information because they are monetizing their data and making access subscription based instead of open.

/1 #Ethnologue is the registration authority for ISO 693-3, the official system of language codes. ISO codes are used as labels, so that for a book to be registered in a given language it is tagged by the code for that language. Now linguists have to pay to see the data /2.