u/SameUsernameOnReddit

I've been thinking of learning Arabic for various reasons, and looking into it online, what I'm hearing about Iraqi Arabic really speaks to me. (I'm aware there's less resources for learning Iraqi compared to other dialects, but one of the things that has me wanting to learn Arabic is the challenge, so that's no problem.) One thing that keeps popping up is native speakers from other dialects praising Iraqi speakers for having such beautiful, poetic speech outta nowhere, just in regular conversation!

Some examples from this thread:

> for me as a lebanese guy, it sounds khaleeji-ish but for some reason much more sophisticated and cultured. its like as if every khaleeji is a poet. I really like Iraqis they are very classy and its a very historic country

> ... Baghdad’s dialect is beautiful for example if someone asks if you can grab them coffee they would reply “min galbi” meaning from my heart.

> [...] Baghdad one is all romantic and stuff. They say يا عيوني a lot. [...]

Something that came up fairly often is Iraq(/Baghdad?)'s songs... Are you folks known for a special tradition of songs/singing?

From another thread:

> In general though I like Iraqi. It has the strong, assertiveness of gulf Arabic combined with the grace and flow of Levant Arabic. It's my perfect mix.

> ...I guess if I had to arbitrarily pick one I'd choose Iraqi because it's strong yet elegant.

> Iraqi is the best because it's the one that conveys he most meaning. It's also the most sarcastic.

As far as I can tell, however, there's precious little to no literature that isn't written in MSA. So it isn't that there's a literary tradition that only Iraqis have access to, so it must be something cultural - but what?

First of all, I hope this doesn't come across as disrespectful. "Why don't you sound like hicks, hurr durr?" isn't what I'm trying to say.

Anyway, I've been thinking of learning Arabic for various reasons, and looking into it online, what I'm hearing about Iraqi Arabic really speaks to me. (I'm aware there's less resources for learning Iraqi compared to other dialects, but one of the things that has me wanting to learn Arabic is the challenge, so that's no problem.) One thing that keeps popping up is native speakers from other dialects praising Iraqi speakers for having such beautiful, poetic speech outta nowhere, just in regular conversation!

As far as I can tell, however, there's precious little to no literature that isn't written in MSA. So it isn't that there's a literary tradition that only Iraqis have access to, so it must be something cultural - but what?

You can look into OC Transpo yourself, whatever, I'm not gonna preach to you. I'd assume a group like this would be into lending its historical perspective & such on something like this for shits and giggles. Anyway, so far what might be happening:

1. 5-10 of us make a petition, start canvassing at & after work to sign a petition letting the powers that be know that we're not about it. Maybe during that time, we let it be know that we suggest that,
2. Nobody pays the fare on August 5th.
3. Somehow we coordinate rolling ATIPs (not sure what those are exactly, they're something like FOIA requests, I think) in the meantime.

Advice for what else could be done, especially when it comes to getting thousands in the street, ideally monthly until material change starts happening. And ideally, something big as early as next week. If it needs saying, non-violent is a must.

Waiting for the 14 today, I walked from Corso Italia to Elgin. Not at a trot, neither, since it kept saying it'd be there in 5-10 minutes. Stopped to chat with people, mostly about the weather and how long they'd been waiting...

Seriously, can ten thousand of us just show up at management's office and open complaint tickets or something? In the other thread, somebody suggested a day where nobody paid the fare.

Waiting for the 14 today, I walked from Corso Italia to Elgin. Not at a trot, neither, since it kept saying it'd be there in 5-10 minutes. Stopped to chat with people, mostly about the weather and how long they'd been waiting...

Seriously, can ten thousand of us just show up at management's office and open complaint tickets or something?

So I sat in on a city council with ACORN (and a few others) going up against a bunch of landlords on a bylaw against renoviction. Apart from being largely performative - it was a done deal, in keeping with the trend set by other municipalities in the region - learned a couple of things:

1. Love of fuck, just watch or stream this shit. The only people who longer than they need to were the losers, it seems - in this case the landlords & their cronies, who're probably also landlords. None of the pros from the NGOs & such stayed longer than they needed to, plenty just video-called in for their little 5min bit and that was it. It was fun to muse about backroom deals or whatever going on live in the hallway, but eh.
2. If you're a well-funded coalition representing genteel interests, here's what you do: all your people, in their 5min presentations, talk about how they have oh-so-much to get into, but to be a sport, they went ahead and cut plenty of their points out, so as not to oppose on the time limit. How gracious. But make sure you have that one member of the council shilling for you, to ask them softball questions so they can get the rest of their 15min speeches out. Doesn't matter if it's obvious.

So by and large, a waste of time, but a somewhat fun one. It does make me wonder how to get a feel for this kind of shit, historically. When all you had were council minutes, or whatever. But then I got to wondering if that was even important, and if maybe just tracking the actual development of laws & by-laws was the move, sort of a jailhouse legal scholar thing. And how far back do you really need to go to get a feel for things, to get how things are moving intuitively?

Does anyone have experience with this sort of thing, and know what I'm talking about? What's the best bang for buck for getting a feel for the machinations of power?

Bon, d'abord vous me pardonnerez pour "magouilles et manigances," c'est le mieux que j'ai pu trouver comme traduction de "wheeling and dealing..."

Mais j'aimerais voir des séries - ou des films... - francophones un peu comme King of Kensington, ou les séries anglaises Only Fools and Horses et [Minder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minder_(TV_series\)), si vous les connaissez. Ça serait du dernier siècle de préférence, mais l'époque me concerne beaucoup moins que la qualité.

Bon, d'abord vous me pardonnerez pour "magouilles et manigances," c'est le mieux que j'ai pu trouver comme traduction de "wheeling and dealing..."

Mais j'aimerais voir des séries - ou des films... - francophones un peu comme King of Kensington, ou les séries anglaises Only Fools and Horses et [Minder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minder_(TV_series\)), si vous les connaissez. Ça serait du dernier siècle de préférence, mais l'époque me concerne beaucoup moins que la qualité.

Watched Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema, and apparently it's loosely based on real events. Far as I can tell, there wasn't (necessarily) any one figure named Lucky Kunene, but this might have been (and still is?) a phenomenon in Johannesburg, and maybe in South Africa more broadly. Or maybe it was just the one figure, I wouldn't know.

If there's any good reading material, documentaries, and such you'd recommend to help me learn more about that specific form of South African organised crime, I'd appreciate you sharing it.

Watched Gangster's Paradise: Jerusalema, and apparently it's loosely based on real events. Far as I can tell, there wasn't (necessarily) any one figure named Lucky Kunene, but this might have been (and still is?) a phenomenon in Johannesburg, and maybe in South Africa more broadly. Or maybe it was just the one figure, I wouldn't know.

If there's any good reading material, documentaries, and such you'd recommend to help me learn more about that specific form of South African organised crime, I'd appreciate you sharing it.

Before I start - and someone tells me to RTFM! - I went through a fair number of threads on Reddit, the mobileread site, and so on. Even ones from a couple years ago seem to be out of date, or at least didn't work for me. So here we go:

Kindle Gen 12 Paperwhite; never registered, never connected to the WiFi, it's on airplane mode. I convert epub files to azw3 in Calibre, then send it to the Kindle. When going through the Kindle Library, I cannot see the covers as icons. I can see the cover of the book I'm currently reading when the device is idle. From there, I've tried various combinations of resyncing, deleting from the device, from Calibre, manually editing covers, and more. No dice. SOS.

Before I start - and someone tells me to RTFM! - I went through a fair number of threads on Reddit, the mobileread site, and so on. Even ones from a couple years ago seem to be out of date, or at least didn't work for me. So here we go:

Kindle Gen 12 Paperwhite; never registered, never connected to the WiFi, it's on airplane mode. I convert epub files to azw3 in Calibre, then send it to the Kindle. When going through the Kindle Library, I cannot see the covers as icons. I can see the cover of the book I'm currently reading when the device is idle. From there, I've tried various combinations of resyncing, deleting from the device, from Calibre, manually editing covers, and more. No dice. SOS.

My lady and I may be bouncing around for the foreseeable future, and don't love the recommendation of just getting IKEA stuff... But you look at something like French Provincial or so many others, and it's all this massive, solid, bulky, heavy wood. Hoping you fine folks have some recommendations for styles with lightweight pieces to look at!

"Criminal camaraderie (of yesteryear)," basically. Looking more for miniseries and shows than movies.

I was indoors so didn't see it, but anyone know about some airplane was flying low over downtown maybe 5min ago? Had to cover my ears, it was so loud!