They're persistent, too: six minutes (!) after
I posted that verse on social media, somebody on Bluesky, no less, followed me.
Her name was Julie and I could find her 'link in bio' (but didn't).
PPS: There has been an epidemic of Juliebots on Bluesky. People are laughing: Julie, it seems, is protean. Sometimes, she is a beautiful girl. Other times, a wise-looking older woman. Or even a bald, middle-aged man. I responded by posting the most irritating song I know from my college days.
Answer
to Quiz
The
picture above is a painting.OakGrove by Ivan Shishkin, 1887. Kiev
National Gallery. Courtesy of Wikipedia.
Quotes of the Day
We are
just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But
we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.
Stephen Hawking
Yes: it
makes us the kind of monkeys who think they can understand the Universe when
they've just figured out how to use velcro.
The
world is full of old buildings. Take notice, please. They like the attention.
Door of
the Week
by DG
Historic Brookville is so…well, historic.
Way Up
in the Steeple
by Paigetheoracle
In Inverness the workmen have a bird's-eye view.
and old boats...
Shipping
News
by Bluebottle
The PS Waverley is the world's last ocean-going
paddle steamer. Based in Scotland, the Waverley often visits the south coast of
England every summer. Here are some photos of her visiting Sandown Bay on 19th
September this year. Bluebottle
but nature still tends to outdo us all.
Sunday
Meditation
by DG
Lenticular
cloud over Cleethorpes, by Angel LiaDan
I think I know how a cloud feels
every morning I arrive here from somewhere else
gather my thoughts from the four winds
get my bearings
feel around for where I am
wonder at my lack of weight
ask myself what is happening
view the busy earth from
far away
Your
Sunday Beauty Spot
by Tavaron da Quirm
From a
couple of years ago: the peaceful Piesting River (Austria).
Jokes
explained here. Because as we keep saying, not everyone laughs at
the same things. Or needs to. Also, we find stories in history and nature because we're like that.
Monty Python Joke?
Loriot Bathtub Reference?
Elephant Joke?
Submit your caption below.
12th century, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 10, f. 127
All we can say for sure is that the 'artist' had probably never seen an elephant in his life.
Why We Bother
by DG
It's what we leave behind.
Fat Bear News
Every year in autumn, the non-profit website explore.org sponsors Fat Bear Week, featuring the brown bears of Katmai National Park, Alaska. The bears are stocking up with salmon for the winter. They don't refrigerate: they masticate. The bears get really chunky.
This year's winner, with more than 104,000 votes, is Backpack. Backpack's mama, Holly, used to carry him around a lot when he was a cub, because he had an injured paw. Holly was Fat Bear of the Year in 2019.
The bears don't get a tiara, or anything. One imagines that a full belly before a long winter nap is reward enough. But if people learn more about conservation, then Fat Bear Week has accomplished its purpose.
Why the Editor is Glad
There Are No Brown Bears
Here
I don't think the bird feeder could stand up to them.
This is from summer four years ago.
Meme of
the Week
Explainer
by DG
Our newsfeed is full of confusing memes. Let us
help one another out.
(Disclaimer:
I don't know what model that car is. And I'm too lazy to find out. If you know,
enlighten us in the comment section.)
I
frequently have to consult other Hoovervillians about the meanings of things I
see online. What is that pun about? What does that sign mean? Non-Americans may
have been surprised by sports references in their political news this week.
Meme: Somebody
on Twitter wrote, 'Senator Amy Klobuchar at Jack Smith hearing: Could it then
be the University of Iowa Hawkeyes and not a Buick Skylark?' followed by a .gif
of Marisa Tomei as Lisa in the film My Cousin Vinny.
Explanation: During
recent Senate hearings, there was a dispute about where an official had been at
a given time. A senator claimed he was in Atlanta. He insisted he wasn't. Senator
Klobuchar solved the problem by pointing out that the other senator's office had
confused the names of two different basketball teams.
This
reminded the Twitter poster of the film My Cousin Vinny, where testimony
famously hinges on the lawyer's girlfriend's encyclopedic knowledge of
automobiles.
People
in the US are now saying that all candidates for public office should brush up
on their sports teams.
Do you
have a question/answer about a meme from your country? Help your international
friends out. Remember to be respectful.
We
complain about things. You can, too. Our first complaint comes from the Isle of
Wight and involves hazards to shipping.
Liberty
of the Seas
by Bluebottle
Bluebottle tells Royal Caribbean where to get
off – and it's not on his commute route.
This
gurt big monstrosity is the Liberty of the Seas. Owned by Royal
Caribbean, a cruise ship company that loves making each of their ships slightly
larger than the one before so they can get the publicity for being the largest
cruise ship in the world. Liberty of the Seas was the largest cruise
ship in the world 2007-2009, overtaking sister ship Freedom of the Seas (2006)
before losing that title to Oasis of the Seas (2009), with that title
subsequently held by Harmony of the Seas, Symphony of the Seas, Wonder of
the Seas. This week it is held by Icon of the Seas.
Tourists
like seeing cruise ships for some reason, but anyone who has regularly commuted
across the Solent knows that seeing a gurt big thing like this in front has
only one meaning; your crossing has instantly got half an hour longer as you’re
stuck behind the thing.
And now
the Editor drones on about endonyms….er, what?
On Top
of Yr Wyrddfa
I don’t know about you, but it makes my toes
curl when I hear TV and radio presenters use endonyms for places that have
perfectly good exonyms.
Somebody on Twitter
I won't
attribute that quote because I don't just disagree with it. I believe that its
utterance in this form is a classic - and unfortunate - way to out yourself as
someone who longs for the return of an empire.
Endonyms:
what local people call their place. Exonym: what somebody else calls it.
The
examples he and his enthusiastic friends proceed to list are telling: Kyiv and
Türkiye. They're especially worried about the trauma caused to English children who
eat something their mums take out of the freezer called 'Chicken Kiev'. I'm not
sure what that is, but its name appears to be terribly important.
Apparently
it doesn't bother the posters if Turkish children are tired of people using the world's
most common internet language keep making 'gobble, gobble' jokes at them. It's
the fault of old Europeans, anyway: turkeys don't come from Turkey. They run
around the woods in Pennsylvania. Or are raised on farms in North Carolina.
Oh, and
Mount Snowden. (No, turkeys don't live on Mt Snowden. It's the exonym thing.) That's because its name has been officially changed to Yr
Wyrddfa. Pronounced 'Er WERTH-vah', 'th' as in 'the'. TIL that we've been
pronouncing Gwynedd wrong in Pennsylvania for, probably, about 300 years. Our
bad. It should be like 'Paltrow'.
The
Welsh and the Irish amuse me mightily as a linguist: I sometimes feel like their spelling is revenge on the English for hundreds of years of having to
live next door to them. I don't blame them, even as I am repeatedly forced to
check my spelling. I used to be a translator and let me tell you: no languages
have harder dictionaries to use than Celtic languages. Learning another
alphabet is child's play compared to having to figure out what letter a word
really starts with when you're staring at it in an oblique case.
So, yes, you may be personally inconvenienced
by the choice of modern people to choose endonyms in order to show solidarity.
But as a way to be friendly and polite, it's cheap at the price.
Just be
glad nobody's demanding you learn the local language before you go on your next
package holiday.
More Structures
to Admire?
by DG
As Stephen Sondheim wrote, 'All things are
beautiful, Mother; all trees, all towers, beautiful…'
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