I have so much more respect for this song when I see how correctly it was crafted as a counterpoint to Bruno Mars' song.
The song is revealing about her ephemeral marriage and breakup.
Wednesday, June 28, 2023
Sunday, June 25, 2023
Saturday, June 24, 2023
Friday, June 23, 2023
Wednesday, June 21, 2023
Monday, June 19, 2023
Saturday, June 17, 2023
A history of aerial surveillance technology. Reconnaissance
12:45 ARGUS-IS system in 2010 13:56 that monitors 36 square miles generating 21TB of data every second.
Such huge data streams are processed to extract object movement. 14:20 It tracks optically defined signatures of up to 65 simultaneous objects, building a searchable timeline of movement...14:38 for forensic investigators and intelligence analysis of patterned human behavior.
A good podcast episode on this technology is "Eye in the Sky."
Sunday, June 11, 2023
Electric classic car conversions
6:45 a remarkable 14-year-old who's converting a Porsche to an electric drive train.
What did I axe you?
Who knew that the alternate pronunciation of "ask" has roots more than a thousand years old, and was the preferred form by Chaucer and early manuscripts of the Bible?
This guy really nerds out over pronunciation.
Holy cheese!
How concertgoers wristband light effects work
Thursday, June 8, 2023
Making perfect ice cubes in NYC
Monday, June 5, 2023
Portmanteaux
Portmanteau is derived from the word for a French two-part suitcase. It combines the words porte, which means "to carry," and manteau, meaning "cloak." Like the suitcase, a portmanteau word holds or carries the meaning of two or more words.
A few of my favorites (some real and some invented)
slithy, from lithe and slimy;
chortle, from chuckle and snort,
slimsy from slim and flimsy.
birl (birr + whirl),
scrooch (crouch +hunch),
scuzzy (scum + fuzzy),
ginormous (gigantic and enormous),
bodacious (bold + audacious),
splotch (spot, blot, and blotch),
blotch (blot and botch),
meld (melt + weld),
splurge (splash and surge),
squiggle (squirm +wriggle),
gawp (gape + gawk – Bill Bryson),
mingy (mean + stingy),
wodge (wad+ wedge)
minify (minimum + magnify),
ditsy (dotty + dizzy),
judder (jerk + shudder),
judgmatic (judg(ment) + (dog)matic,
jalopidated, (jalopy and dilapidated),
titivate (tidy + elevate),
twiddle (twist + fiddle),
bathetic (bathos + pathetic),
slurb (slum or slovenly + suburb),
bumble (bungle + stumble),
bumboozle (bamboozle + fuddle + fuzzy),
bumptious (bump + presumptious),
galumph (gallop + triumph),
[Katy: flustrated, insinuendo],
peasely (piddly + measly),
compliable (complacent + pliable),
blistery (blustery + wintry),
thin & bones,
explursion (explosion + splurge),
onomatic (on +automatic),
frizzling [bacon] (fry + sizzling),
fleckled (fleck + speckled),
realable (real + believable),
tinch (titch + pinch),
slunch (slouch + hunch),
(and from Maureen) incringing (infringe + cringe +impinge)Surrender Quotes by Bono
Perfect audiobook for your next road trip! We're all lucky Bono waited until now to deliver this epic audiobook autobiography, as time has granted the perspective of self-deprecation, self-awareness, remorse, wisdom, candor, ego, and experience that rise off the pages in his surprisingly engaging, endearingly happy Irish lilt.
The audiobook is punctuated with impromptu, unplugged performances purpose-made for the audiobook. Beautifully and compellingly written with a surprisingly good vocabulary (think "inchoate","invective," "palimpsest," "bacchanalia.") And embellished with not only the half-century love story with his middle-school sweetheart, but gems like the ten commandments of punk rock. And it contains a lot of his anti-establishment but deep Christian faith that ranges from the occasional f-bomb to billion-dollar altruism through his connections at high levels. A delightful invitation to journey through the life of a rock star.
Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story https://a.co/d/14nUwe6
Surrender - Libby https://share.libbyapp.com/title/8988566
"I'm not sure a professional psychologist would agree, but something in me understands that until we deal with our most traumatic traumas, there's a part of us that stays at the age at which we encountered them."
"I could get angry if I saw people in corners of the world begging for a breath, fighting for their life through hunger or illness, and then see privileged people throwing their life away. I know this is deeply unsound thinking. I know people can be in such a dark place that they'll do anything to escape it, including escaping this life itself. I know it's not a loving response, but that was the furious me writing the lyric of "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of.""
"I'm suspicious of the idea of oneness. I don't buy into the homogeneity of the human experience. I don't think we're all one. We can be one, but I don't think we have to see things the same way for that to be so. An anarchic thought: We're one but we're not the same. We get to carry each other, not that we've got to, just that we get to."
"You can disagree on everything but still work together on one thing... if that one thing is important enough."
"Well, while I hope God is with those of us who live such comfortable lives, I know God is with the poorest and most vulnerable."
"God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them."
"There's stuff you can learn from people who don't tell you anything. Like how not to react when there is a crisis. Like how to stay still and maybe even unearth levity from the seriousness of a situation. Edge is the silence inside every noise."
"The arc of the moral universe does not bend toward justice. It has to be bent, and this requires sheer force of will. It demands our sharpest focus and most concentrated effort. History does not move in a straight line; it has to be dragged, kicking and screaming, all the way down the line."
"Every age has its massive moral blind spots. We might not see them, but our children will."
Campaigning for support for AIDS drugs for Africa:
"Where you live should not determine whether you live, or whether you die"
"In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows...they learned to swim"
"We can't fix all problems but we must fix the ones we can"
"To touch is to heal, to hurt is to steal, if you want to kiss the sky, better learn how to kneel"
Sunday, June 4, 2023
Syndet, Dove soap
"Syndet" means a synthetic detergent, and the word is a portmanteau of synthetic + detergent.
Dove soap is a syndet, meaning it's a soap made by chemical processes completely different from traditional saponification (lye + fat) reactions.
Saturday, June 3, 2023
Fire whirls and firestorms
https://youtu.be/YvfDbODi-vQ
The very tall flames reported in wildfires are probably "fire whirls," a tornado-like cyclone subset of "fire storm." This video explains it. They can even be used for good, employing their intense heat and clean burning to remove oil spills in the ocean.
American women are in the vanguard of speech innovation
You can start watching at 2:18-2:55 to understand what he's on about.
At 7:03 he gives some surprising examples from social media of this phenomenon.
But here's a sentence that really surprised me. This phonetic linguist says @7:46 "It may be that young American women are in the vanguard, as they often are in speech innovations."
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