Cydney Seigerman

Interdisciplinary scholar, actor, & runner. Queering water and anthropology @UGAICON @universityofga • member • they/she

[Cydney Seigerman @cydneykate]

@DrDadabhoy My advisor literally just told me that 2 pages should be the goal limit! 😅🙌🏻

[Cydney Seigerman @cydneykate]

@kvinyeta Thanks for sharing!

[Dr. Sandra Steingraber 🏳️‍🌈 @ssteingraber1]

JUST RELEASED: 400 scientists, including top US climate researchers, endorse the demands of Sunday’s march to #EndFossilFuels in a letter to @POTUS. “The climate crisis is spiraling out of control…We call on you to do what is needed to address the crisis.”https://t.co/LlfEjapKRI

[Nathan Allebach @nathanallebach]

We should be building WAY more bioswales. They:

- direct and absorb stormwater runoff
- filter debris and pollutants
- calm traffic and add sidewalk protection
- support native wildlife
- make streets beautiful

(Vancouver, Canada)

[Cathy Kimport @PurpleNinjaGrrl]

Ever think about how 22 years post-9/11 we still can’t bring 4 ounces of sunscreen and a nail clipper onto a plane, and yet 3 years into an ongoing pandemic we’re able to walk around a cancer treatment center maskless? I sure do.

[CASTAC @CASTAC_AAA]

Today on the blog, Ana Carolina de Assis Nunes challenges AI narratives about the primacy of the private sector and techno-solutionist approaches to the world’s problems https://t.co/IZwhneh0tS

[Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com on Bsky @ErinInTheMorn]

Oh my god, this is huge news.

A state level judge just blocked Texas gender affirming care ban!

Trans Texans can continue to get care!

[Cydney Seigerman @cydneykate]

@Prof_FSultana I’m looking for a code, too 👀

[Cydney Seigerman @cydneykate]

@SandraNoDuerme @Momademia Amazing! Good luck with your TT applications!

[Cydney Seigerman @cydneykate]

@Briana_N_Spivey Yes you will! And it’s gonna be awesome ☺️

[CASTAC @CASTAC_AAA]

Today on the blog, @cydneykate presents "Dona Cisterna," a monologue from the perspective of a rainharvesting cistern in Ceará, Northeast Brazil https://t.co/gb4lgl695Z

[Cori Bush @CoriBush]

Good morning ☀️

[Nina Turner @ninaturner]

It could all be so simple.

[Governor Gretchen Whitmer @GovWhitmer]

Coming to a school lunchroom near you: Free breakfast and lunch for every Michigan public school student! 🍎

https://t.co/QeS7hMRIFB

[Cydney Seigerman @cydneykate]

@backtrvck So so good! 😍

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

What the hell is an ampersand and why does it look like that?!

The first thing you need to know is that "&" used to be the 27th letter of the alphabet...

But there are three parts to this story. And the first begins over two thousand years ago in Ancient Rome with a single word: et. It's the Latin for "and". At some point Roman scribes started combining the two letters of et into a single symbol, which was the ancestor of our modern &.

The earliest example of the "et" symbol is actually from graffiti in Pompeii. In any case, it did not disappear with the fall of the Roman Empire.

Latin survived as the language of the Catholic Church and of scholarship in Medieval Europe. Scribes during the Dark Ages continued to use the & symbol. It evolved down the centuries, in places losing any semblance of the letters e and t whatsoever.

The second part of the story is that during the 18th and 19th centuries, as education and the teaching of literacy spread, & was added to the end of the alphabet as a sort of 27th letter.

On a related note, although "et cetera" is now usually just abbreviated as etc., for a long time it was instead abbreviated as "&c". The & was for et and the c for cetera.

The third and final part of the story is about how the alphabet was taught to children — and how it was read out loud.

As this 1822 Glossary of Words and Phrases explains, it had been normal during the Renaissance, when speaking the alphabet, to add "per se" before any letter which could also be a word on its own — "per se" means "by itself" in Latin.

Take the letter A, which can also be a word of its own. When reading out the alphabet people would say "A, per se A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, per se I..." and so on. O was also considered a word of its own.

Which means, when people got to the end of the alphabet, with & being the 27th letter, they would say: "S, T, U, V, W, X, Y, Z, and per se &."

When this old way of reading the alphabet was taught to children in the 18th century and they were reciting it aloud, they would garble "and per se " into what eventually became... ampersand.

A Dic­tion­ary of Slang and Col­lo­quial Eng­lish from 1905 relates some of the many other pronunciations school children apparently came up with:

"Am­persand. The sign &; am­persand. Vari­ants: Ann Passy Ann; an­pasty; an­dpassy; an­parse; aper­sie; per-se; am­passy; am-passy-ana; am­pene-and; am­pus-and; ampsyand; am­pazad; am­siam; am­pus-end; ap­perse-and; em­per­siand; am­perzed; and zumzy-zan."

Well, of all the many pronunciations that might have stuck, it was "ampersand" which came to be accepted and is now the official name for &... rather than zumzy-zan. So, from hurried Roman scribes to unruly school children, that's where "&" came from.