Kraken

On other discussions about American politics I keep finding references to the Kraken. Google only gives me the sea monster or a bit coin, which doesn't help. It might be the idea of a vast liberal media conspiracy, working to steal a Trump victory, but I can't be sure. Can anyone elucidate?
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  • On other discussions about American politics I keep finding references to the Kraken. Google only gives me the sea monster or a bit coin, which doesn't help. It might be the idea of a vast liberal media conspiracy, working to steal a Trump victory, but I can't be sure. Can anyone elucidate?

    I think in some circles it is synonomous to references to the 'deep state' (Krakens famously live in the depths).
  • I just did a quick search on Duck Duck Go.

    It looks like Gen. Michael Flynn's attorney Sidney Flynn said she's going to "release the Kraken" about Democrats stealing the election. I don't know anything about this "Dr. Rich Swier" site; but it's got a summary, and says it's about the US seizing Dominion servers in Germany.

    Dominion makes voting systems, and here's their site.

    Just doing this quickly before I go to bed, so apologies for any flaws.
  • On other discussions about American politics I keep finding references to the Kraken. Google only gives me the sea monster or a bit coin, which doesn't help. It might be the idea of a vast liberal media conspiracy, working to steal a Trump victory, but I can't be sure. Can anyone elucidate?
    A link to one of those references would help to provide context.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    I just did a quick search on Duck Duck Go.

    It looks like Gen. Michael Flynn's attorney Sidney Flynn said she's going to "release the Kraken" about Democrats stealing the election. I don't know anything about this "Dr. Rich Swier" site; but it's got a summary, and says it's about the US seizing Dominion servers in Germany.

    Dominion makes voting systems, and here's their site.

    Just doing this quickly before I go to bed, so apologies for any flaws.
    I wouldn't click on that link because I don't trust anyone posting what is obviously bullshit.

    AP link explaining that what should have been obvious bullshit is, in fact, bullshit.
  • Um, it’s a ride at Seaworld...
  • Gill H wrote: »
    Um, it’s a ride at Seaworld...

    That is how they get you. It starts with a ride and that is a clear path to full communist control of your mind and the WORLD!
    Wake up sheeple!
  • The big issue I have is that it should be said Kraiken, not Cracken. I blame Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • KarlLBKarlLB Shipmate
    edited November 2020
    The big issue I have is that it should be said Kraiken, not Cracken. I blame Pirates of the Caribbean.

    It should be Krah-ken - that's the closest English sound to the Old Norse.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    The big issue I have is that it should be said Kraiken, not Cracken. I blame Pirates of the Caribbean.

    It should be Krah-ken - that's the closest English sound to the Old Norse.

    We know how Old Norse sounded because of amazing 10th century recordings found in a peat bog.
  • FirenzeFirenze Shipmate, Host Emeritus
    Or maybe Old Norse sounds not all that different from New Norse?
  • mousethief wrote: »
    KarlLB wrote: »
    The big issue I have is that it should be said Kraiken, not Cracken. I blame Pirates of the Caribbean.

    It should be Krah-ken - that's the closest English sound to the Old Norse.

    We know how Old Norse sounded because of amazing 10th century recordings found in a peat bog.

    No, but we can home in on the sounds of the phonemes with a reasonable degree of accuracy through comparative linguistics. It definitely isn't the 'a' of 'may'.
  • Firenze wrote: »
    Or maybe Old Norse sounds not all that different from New Norse?

    More accurately, the sounds can be inferred with more or less accuracy from descendant languages and borrowings into other languages.
  • OhherOhher Shipmate
    Drat, double-drat. and drat-be-damned. I clicked on this thread in all reasonable hope of it NOT being about the Current US Political Embarrassment Shenanigans Turmoil Idiocy Criminal Enterprise . . . oh hell, supply your own moniker.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    Firenze wrote: »
    Or maybe Old Norse sounds not all that different from New Norse?

    I understood that Old Norse was actually closest to Icelandic.
  • KarlLB wrote: »
    Firenze wrote: »
    Or maybe Old Norse sounds not all that different from New Norse?

    I understood that Old Norse was actually closest to Icelandic.

    It is in its written form, but the pronunciation, especially of the vowels, has changed. Modern Icelanders can read Old Norse pretty easily (think Shakespeare for modern English readers) but understanding the spoken form would be harder and would take some adjustment (think Chaucer - in original pronunciation)
  • Release the Kraken is a running joke on OZBC's Mad as Hell. I would link a clip but they are all bloody Geo-blocked. So instead, I would like you all to imagine I linked a really funny clip, and laugh heartily, or evilly, depending on your mood.
  • Firenze wrote: »
    Or maybe Old Norse sounds not all that different from New Norse?

    Rather begs the question. How do we know they sound similar if we don't know what it sounds like? Surely Old English needn't sound at all like modern English.
  • I suspect "Release the Kraken" was used because of the 1981 "Clash Of The Titans" movie. Battle between the hero Perseus and various Olympus-related beings. Neptune gets pissed off, and commands "Release the Kraken!", whereupon the sea monster is released from captivity to do battle.

    Hence, appropriate term if you're claiming you'll release info and pull off a major...coup...so to speak.

    BTW: In the movie, it was pronounced "CRACK-en".

    Question: if it's a Norse beastie, what's it doing in the Mediterranean? Thx.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    BTW: In the movie, it was pronounced "CRACK-en".

    Question: if it's a Norse beastie, what's it doing in the Mediterranean? Thx.

    I suspect that these two are related, and are caused by the well-known desire for scrupulous accuracy exhibited by movie makers.
  • LOL.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    Golden Key wrote: »
    Question: if it's a Norse beastie, what's it doing in the Mediterranean? Thx.
    The film makers felt that Kraken sounded better than Cetus, which is the name in Greek mythology, although I think Cetus is a generic name for big sea creatures, and it gave Harryhausen a chance to do tentacle arms.

  • Dafyd--

    Ah. Cetus...Cetacean...whales and dolphins and such. I searched Duck Duck Go on "kraken cetus". If you got your info from an article at Grunge, that's the first hit.

    A Greek mythology wiki says:
    The Kraken is a Scandinavian Mythological Seamonster of tremendous size of strength said to exist off the coasts of Norway and Greenland. Its tentacles are large enough to be able to pull entire Ships under the Water and destroy cities with relative ease. The Creature possessed endurance to match its strength. In addition to its tentacles, it was also armed with gaping maw full of many sharp teeth. Originally, kraken were considered to be similar to giant crustaceans or colossal whales. However, in later versions, the descriptions changed to match those of a cephalopod - Squid or Octopus.

    Isn't Lovecraft's Cthulu octopus-esque? Haven't read any Lovecraft, but maybe the COTT filmmakers had? And/or Lovecraft knew Norse mythology?
  • mousethief wrote: »
    Firenze wrote: »
    Or maybe Old Norse sounds not all that different from New Norse?

    Rather begs the question. How do we know they sound similar if we don't know what it sounds like? Surely Old English needn't sound at all like modern English.

    You can glean something of pronunciation from rhyme - if you know that a portion of verse is written in a rhyme scheme then you get hints as to which words rhyme and hence how they sound. Meter can give similar hints as regards syllables and emphasis. Presumably a linguist has other tricks to help piece together how things sounded (puns, for example: we can be fairly sure Shakespeare pronounced "country" similarly to us as he puns it with a coarse term for female genitalia).
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    Or rather, for him, like us, the two rhyme. There are regional variations in the vowel sound, but in every U.K. region the sound is the same between the two words.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    I suspect "Release the Kraken" was used because of the 1981 "Clash Of The Titans" movie. Battle between the hero Perseus and various Olympus-related beings. Neptune gets pissed off, and commands "Release the Kraken!", whereupon the sea monster is released from captivity to do battle.

    Hence, appropriate term if you're claiming you'll release info and pull off a major...coup...so to speak.

    BTW: In the movie, it was pronounced "CRACK-en".

    Question: if it's a Norse beastie, what's it doing in the Mediterranean? Thx.

    That is certainly the basis of the running joke on Mad As Hell, where the scene always involves an interview with Rear Vice Admiral Sir Bobo Gargle discussing naval, defence and "on water matters". Whenever it gets to the point where Sir Bobo has painted himself into a corner, he raises his Trident and shouts, "Release the Kraken!" whereupon a bloke in a green octopus suit jumps out of a nearby metal stationary cupboard and starts bopping around to his signature music.
  • I always wonder about philology-by-rhyme, especially when I read some of the awful slant rhymes in some Protestant hymns.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    I always wonder about philology-by-rhyme, especially when I read some of the awful slant rhymes in some Protestant hymns.

    It's only one clue in a jigsaw.
  • So...thought experiment for the day: did Jonah encounter a kraken? (Given that, per the wiki quote I posted, they were originally thought of as giant whales.)

    Perhaps it sought warmer climes for a nice vacation and some good Mediterranean food...and then someone threw a prophet at it!

    (Rather like the "Dr. Who" story line about the chloroplast being that was thrown into a pit, to be periodically gifted with individuals the ruler found inconvenient.)
  • BroJames wrote: »
    Or rather, for him, like us, the two rhyme. There are regional variations in the vowel sound, but in every U.K. region the sound is the same between the two words.

    I was mostly thinking that it indicated that it was unlikely that Shakespeare pronounced "country" with the same sound as "count".
  • edited November 2020
    I'm reminded of "glacier" which is normally said glay-see-ur, but some say is glass-see-ur. And then there's glay-shur. The whole thing gives me gnaw-zee-uh, and not nawzj-uh.
  • I'll pull rank, here. I actually studied Old Norse in grad school. We have a fairly good idea how it sounded. Modern Icelandic is lexically and phonemically very conservative, and, like Faroese, has had very little in the way of outside influence, other than Danish. I don't know whether it's still the case, but Icelandic radio used to broadcast sagas and poetry in the original. A professor of mine said that for an Icelandic speaker, it would be like our listening to Shakespeare, but closer.
  • I'll pull rank, here. I actually studied Old Norse in grad school. We have a fairly good idea how it sounded. Modern Icelandic is lexically and phonemically very conservative, and, like Faroese, has had very little in the way of outside influence, other than Danish. I don't know whether it's still the case, but Icelandic radio used to broadcast sagas and poetry in the original. A professor of mine said that for an Icelandic speaker, it would be like our listening to Shakespeare, but closer.

    They tend to use modern Icelandic pronunciation (cf Ancient Greek in modern Greece).
  • I'll pull rank, here. I actually studied Old Norse in grad school. We have a fairly good idea how it sounded.
    Can you share some details about how linguists determine this?
  • So, argument to (anonymous) authority.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    So...thought experiment for the day: did Jonah encounter a kraken? (Given that, per the wiki quote I posted, they were originally thought of as giant whales.)

    Perhaps it sought warmer climes for a nice vacation and some good Mediterranean food...and then someone threw a prophet at it!

    (Rather like the "Dr. Who" story line about the chloroplast being that was thrown into a pit, to be periodically gifted with individuals the ruler found inconvenient.)

    Did St. Brendan encounter a Kraken?
  • Probably ice bergs.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    So, argument to (anonymous) authority.

    Do you really think whole departments of linguists are just making shit up when they postulate what ancient languages sounded like?
  • mousethief wrote: »
    So, argument to (anonymous) authority.

    Not really. We have a document from the period which tells us how the writer's language was pronounced. It's one part of the evidence from which the pronunciation is deduced. No-one is claiming an exact reconstruction (it would vary by location and exact period anyway) but we can deduce a fair amount. The pertinent point here is the vowel of modern English "may" is not in there is not within the possible sounds represented by "a" in Old Norse; the Great Vowel Shift that assigned that sound to that graph is a distinctively English feature not shared by the Scandinavian languages.
  • mousethief wrote: »
    So, argument to (anonymous) authority.

    Maybe I'm misreading tone but there is something almost creationist about some of these comments ('Were you there?'). I know enough linguistics to know I'm not a specialist, but if you want the entire discipline of historical linguistics to be derived from first principles for you in the space of a Ship of Fools post, I think you'll be sorely disappointed.

    I don't know a huge amount about Old Icelandic. I know that the letter 'a' is pronounced pretty much the same across all Romance languages, which is a decent indication that that's how it was pronounced in Latin. When non-Romance languages were Romanised (i.e. spelt in Latin characters), the monks (or whoever it was) didn't just pick random letters out of a hat; they would choose the letter(s) whose pronunciation in Latin most closely approximated to the sound they were trying to represent. If they wanted an 'ay' sound, the most obvious candidate would be 'ei' or 'ej' as in ejus (his/her/its).
  • mousethief wrote: »

    Did St. Brendan encounter a Kraken?

    Well...
    The Örvar-Odds saga actually describes two different sea monsters: both the hafgufa and a lyngbakr (“heather-back,” or, more loosely, “field-back”). The lyngbakr is a whale that is so large that sailors mistake it for an island, but it provides no refuge. As soon as sailors set foot on its back, it sinks down beneath the waves and pulls them under to drown. This story was popular throughout Europe, and versions of the creature also appear in The Voyages of St. Brendan and an Old Norse version of the Physiologus, an early Christian text that taught different moral lessons through descriptions of various animals. The Physiologus tells this story as a moral warning: Sometimes the Christian devil appears safe and inviting, but it’s a trap!

    (Emphasis mine.)

    "UW expert: Kraken are undefeatable; few who see the beast live to tell the tale" (UW News).

    This is an interview with Lauren Poyer, a professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Washington. She was consulted for background info after news of Seattle's new Kraken hockey team. She seems fun. And I like the final paragraph.
  • ECraigR wrote: »
    mousethief wrote: »
    So, argument to (anonymous) authority.

    Do you really think whole departments of linguists are just making shit up when they postulate what ancient languages sounded like?

    This was 1000 years ago. It wasn't a department of linguists.
  • Golden Key wrote: »

    "UW expert: Kraken are undefeatable; few who see the beast live to tell the tale" (UW News).

    This is an interview with Lauren Poyer, a professor of Scandinavian studies at the University of Washington. She was consulted for background info after news of Seattle's new Kraken hockey team. She seems fun. And I like the final paragraph.

    Hmm. Maybe there's a Kraken in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle?
  • I'm reminded of "glacier" which is normally said glay-see-ur, but some say is glass-see-ur. And then there's glay-shur.
    ”Normally said” is a very relative thing. Where I live and in my experience, “glay-shur” is how the word is normally said. “Glay-see-ur” is rarely if ever heard, and if said by anyone from here would come across as quite affected.

  • What Nick said, re glacier.
  • What GK said about what Nick said about glacier.
  • Since we're all cozy...

    "Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah...."
    ;)

    (FYI: "Kum ba yah" is an African (-based?) song Americans sing in youth groups, etc. Generally, when everyone's a little emotional, and maybe towards the end of an evening gathering.)
  • I immediately thought of John Wyndam’s The Kraken Wakes’.

    https://tinyurl.com/y2gxp9qa

    Lots of inept politicians in this story - and a foreseeing if climate change type disaster.
  • Golden Key wrote: »
    Since we're all cozy...

    "Kum ba yah, my Lord, kum ba yah...."
    ;)

    (FYI: "Kum ba yah" is an African (-based?) song Americans sing in youth groups, etc. Generally, when everyone's a little emotional, and maybe towards the end of an evening gathering.)

    It's mostly a feature of comedic sketches about 1970s style trendy vicars with rainbow guitar straps and sandals over here. John Bell (WGWG) reckons it can be used non-ironically but I think most people would struggle.
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