Tag: asked and not worth asking
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Why so vague?
Why do companies always put a misleading warning on envelopes containing bills or invoices? The envelope says Do not discard! Contains information about your utility bill. or IMPORTANT! Information regarding your medical plan! Information usually means updates to the Terms And Conditions or increases in rates. I don’t need to know those things. If they…
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Random language notes
1. Spam email from Grammarly: Apply to Jobs With Confidence. Sorry, I don’t have confidence in a grammar and style app that thinks ‘apply to jobs’ is preferable, and doesn’t capitalize consistently. You ‘apply for jobs’ and you ‘apply to General Motors’. (If you had good afterlife connections you might ‘apply to Jobs’ for a…
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Speaking?
Most old movies and TV shows have totally unrealistic phone behavior. Businesses don’t pick up the phone with the name of the business, they just say “Hello” or “Yeah?” The caller always does the ID. “Is this Acme Construction?” When shows try for realism, they use a method that may have been real in some…
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Never stopped to think…
I’ve been reciting the alphabet since I was 3, but never looked at the pattern of the official syllables. There’s a fairly consistent logic. All stops come before a vowel, most liquids and some fricatives come after a vowel. H is an odd exception. If it’s considered a fricative, it should be He. If a…
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Size = subject
A silly online poll asks how you arrange your bookshelf, and gives four illustrations. By size, by color, by author, or random. The poll didn’t include the way libraries do it, by subject. I arrange books by subject but not intentionally. I sort by size, which also sorts by subject. With only a few exceptions,…
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Another phonograph puzzle
One of the analog tech fans featured the Sony Flamingo. It was a marketing flop; apparently it didn’t work well and people didn’t like putting records in vertically. Raises yet another question about the history of the phonograph. When cylinders were replaced by disks around 1915, why weren’t the disks vertical, with a threaded gear…
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Antonym
I noticed a package of chocolate S’Mores in the grocery store. What about a S’Less? Spinach Cookies. Artichoke Chips. Limburger burger. Liver Krispies. Blood Pudding. Granola Bars. Oops, some of those aren’t fictional. Old-fashioned “health food” was nothing but S’Lesses. Not the best way to sell a basically good thing.
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Reassuring, sort of
I guess it’s reassuring. Amid the invasion by celebrities turning Substack into MSNBC and increasing Andreessen’s share value, the native Substackers are still quibbling about Oxford commas and em-dashes. I stopped using em-dashes about 10 years ago, obviously not because it resembled ChatGPT. Simply because the usual way of doing it—like this—is confusing. Words are…
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Speaking of swans, sort of
Just amusing myself during a hard store walk by making up some nonsense. There was a young farmer from Worcester, who had some fine hens and a rorcester. The rorcester got ill, and took some big pills, but the rorcester still needed a borcester. = = = = = Fine print: This limerick not valid…
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The one difference
Since I’m doing random food-related stuff this week, here’s another. Fussy foodies have always been a complex mix of types and classes. Some of the species have moved their ‘coding’ over the decades, but the species are constant. The measurements treated as important in Fussy Food Talk changed just once, rather dramatically. The three major…
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Where was the research?
I’m trying to do a tech history piece on Western Union. Not trying very hard at the moment, mainly focusing on courseware. I wondered how big WU’s research department was at the height of telegraph dominance in the 1920s. The answer: Not very impressive. But they used their relatively small staff effectively, covering a wide…
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Total puzzle
As a non-driver and non-iPhoner, I’m WAY out of the modern loop. I can’t grasp the habits and assumptions of those castes. Spokane News facebook page always posts car accidents along with fires and crimes and overdoses. Many of the readers seem to be professional drivers, Uber or similar, who are constantly in touch with…
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Meaningless meandering about dreams
For the last 10 years or so most dreams have signaled time to wake up by catching the bus from downtown Spokane to home. This was the real-life routine during the 90s. After 2001 I’ve been working from home. Dreams always run 20 years late; in the 90s most dreams were still in Oklahoma where…
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Belated mystery
Listening to these Postal Service training films brings back a memory of a situation that I didn’t question at the time, but seems puzzling now. In 1978 I worked night shift for a quasi-private part of OU in Norman. This “business” ran two facilities on the OU campus. One was the Conference Center at the…
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Wrong question
Headline: Lawfare Exposed: How Democrats Weaponized Justice Against Trump HOW is not a mystery. Politicians have been playing the lawfare game forever. Opposition research coupled with nuisance lawsuits are a great way to distract the opponent and force him to make stupid moves. Both sides know HOW to play the game. In this specific case…
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