The German word for guinea pig is Meerschweinchen, or "sea pig" (diminutive). The use of Meer refers to the animal as coming from overseas.

Dew in the grass

For some reason I got fixated on extracting one of those videos of disasters and videos of people doing stupid things from the BBC website. I was eventually able to using yt-dlp. This is a drunk guy losing control of his car and driving into the Nottingham Guildhall. Don't drink and drive.

Today it dawned on me that فلوكة (felucca) derives from the Quranic fulk (الفلك) — ship — which in turn is likely from Greek ἐφόλκιον (ephólkion).

I'm on PTO!

I am mere hours away from not thinking about automatic speech recognition for ten full days.

Mary and Joseph praying over Jesus in the manger, or TWO T. REXES FIGHTING OVER A TABLE SAW? Once seen, cannot be unseen.

—Don't heed— 👂 Don't heed the words of the wise, and listen to sinners when they call. Leave virtue and clean living to others; a goody two-shoes life is no life at all. —Ibn Wakīʿ al-Tinnīsī (Egypt, d. 1003)

1/n 2 NEW epic images of Phobos over Mars just released by @esa.int Mars Express This view is especially striking, with Phobos between the Tharsis volcanoes and Noctis Labyrinthus–Valles Marineris Full resolution 300MP(!) & info on: flic.kr/p/2rMW4so Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/AndreaLuck CC BY 🧪🔭

🎶🍷🔥 You blame me for listening to music and drinking wine to start my day— I make my own choices, so let me go my own way. What does it matter to you if I do what I desire? Go enjoy your paradise; I'll content myself in the fire. —Ibn Wakīʿ al-Tinnīsī (Egypt, d. 1003)

Making Mandelbrot sets with Python's Pillow library

I watched some videos on the Internet and now I can kind of finger whistle. But I'm annoying my family so I can't practice to get good at it.

Why is "I don't know" the one sentence that can be reduced to a nasalized grunt and you can still understand it?

I think I've seen enough pictures of Jeffrey Epstein now. I'm good.

—On giving up— I've resigned myself to obscurity, given up on rank and wealth — I know the taste of success and fame but I prefer my health. —Ibn Wakīʿ al-Tinnīsī (Egypt, d. 1003)

—Wind and wine— 🍷💨 Let's drink. The river is choppy. The wind is twisting the branches' tresses: brocade rags hanging from a row of spears. And the sky is wrapped in a musky robe that lightning's embroidered with gold. —Ibn Wakīʿ al-Tinnīsī (Egypt, d. 1003)

I woke up this morning thinking about wokery. The -ery suffix is from Old French -erie, e.g. chevalerie. This in turn is from Latin -ārius (feminine -āria, neuter -ārium). E.g. ordō (“line, row”) + ‎-ārius → ‎ordinārius (“ordinary, of the rank and file”) or the New Latin planetarium.

I took pictures of some agate on a light pad

Power's out ⚡🔌

Something similar I find neat is that OE tīma like tīd could mean a season of the year, but French saison displaced that sense, though we still say eg springtime (cf lenctentīma). It's interesting that "time" was once connected to natural cycles but its meaning is mostly just the abstract sense now.

🎶I don't care it rains or freezes Long as got my AI Jesus🎶

What is social media for if not posting about Dubai chocolate?

I just blocked "the bridge between brands and Gen Z" on LinkedIn. It was really satisfying.

Idk why online leftists are like, "it's not our fault if we conflate Jews with Israel, tell the Israeli govt to stop doing it" and I'm like ok I will call them and let them know they need to stop immediately so that you don't have to do any critical thinking.

Read this to test your knowledge of obscenities and mixed-register Arabic.

Hanukkah derives from the root (kh-n-k) חָנַךְ, "to dedicate" but also means "to teach" as in Pro 22:6. Its Arabic cognate, حنك, originally meant to rub chewed dates on a baby's palate to begin weaning or to put a rope in a horse's mouth > "To make experienced through trials (esp. age, time, fate)"

I watched the Coen brothers' version of True Grit twice in the last two days and then it occurred to me that it's an adaptation of a book so I'm going to read that now.

my cover letter opening line

The verb "cringe" derives from Old English cringan or crinċġan [ˈkrin.d͡ʒɑn] meaning "to fall," "to die in battle." E.g., describing Roman ruins: hryre wong gecrong into ruin the site has fallen where the strong verb gecrong [jeˈkrɑŋɡ] with prefixed ge- is conjugated in the past with Ablaut.

Happy Friday from Chimp and Kimp

The Unicode for the "Smiling Face With Horns" and "Smiling Face with Halo" emojis are only one digit apart. That's deep.

Arabic word of the day: عيدية ʿīdiyyah A gift given for Eid al-Fitr at the end of Ramadan, which will be March 19th or 20th next year.

If anyone wants to get me anything for Christmas, I wouldn't refuse this Lego Death Star, retailing for only $999

Geese and sky

That is a pretty scary-looking cat

Today in “Arabic dialects don’t come from classical Arabic”. Several dialects have a pronominal -t ending, e.g., Egyptian an-nās dōlat, “those/these people”. This, afaik, isn’t attested in classical Arabic but is found in several other Semitic languages. This feature thus didn't come from MSA.

I watched too many episodes of Resident Alien last night and now I'm tired and don't want to do anything. And I kind of feel like a corned beef sandwich for some reason.

There's a famous Quranic lexeme, ṣirāṭ, a straight path. It's generally thought to derive from Latin strata, a paved road, whence also our "street." As far as I can tell it doesn't occur in pre-Islamic poetry, but maybe this word, surāṭī, is an instance of it? It could mean "straight" (of a sword).

Woke up this morning to this email offering to create a Wikipedia page for my book, for a fee. I didn't even know this was a thing. I've truly arrived.

I do a lot of laundry. I should get into money laundering.

The first time I heard this new idiom "live rent free in one's head" was about two years ago when I was working in labor law compliance. The employer I was investigating a claim against complained "I'm living rent-free in [this employee's] head" at least five times in my telephone interview.

My eight-year-old's first job application, for hallway monitor. It's noteworthy for its disenchanted response to application questions and for its reanalysis of "dealt" as a contraction.

Cheesman tn #denver

has anyone made it to the top of maslow's pyramid i have a question

Me at the end of the workweek

Another brilliant career as a mall security guard is born

Happy Sinterklaasavond Dutch friends 🎅

German proverb of the day: "Eine Doktorarbeit aus etwas machen" Literally: to make something into a doctoral dissertation. Used to describe overcomplicating a simple task ~ reinventing the wheel.

Looking east towards Union Station, Denver, 8:32 AM