Monument

questions they refuse to answer

Tue, 18 Jan 2022 19:28:58 GMT

[I wrote this on LJ back in 2008. Some of the links may have expired. I do have OED access now.]

I commend Cecil Adams's Straight Dope to you. For thirty-odd years they have been fielding difficult questions from the public with snarky answers. Reading the archives will probably teach you as much as a year in some schools.

There are, however, some questions they refuse to answer. In a spirit of homage, I'll take my lunchbreak to answer them here.

Why do we need a hot water heater? If it's hot it doesn't need to be heated.

Your grasp on the concept of apposition is shaky. Apposition is the placing of two nouns or noun phrases together, so that the one tells you more about the other. In some cases they are simply two ways to describe the same entity, like "my sister Lucy". You seem to be thinking that a "hot water heater" must be a heater to heat hot water, and that's one option, but consider other examples like "sausage machine", a machine to make sausages. A hot water heater is a heater which produces hot water.

How can we have jumbo shrimp?

This is a rather amusing question, because although the person asking it is presumably aware that "shrimp" is both the name of a creature and a description of size, they are possibly not aware that the same is true for "jumbo". Jumbo was a famous elephant in London Zoo in the 1880s; if he had been a particularly small elephant we could have said he was a shrimp Jumbo. Use of his name to mean "very large" followed within ten years. Shrimp are in fact so called because of their smallness (the word is related to "shrink") and we have records from the 1300s of using the term to describe people. So the fact that the adjectives in both cases are derived from comparing whatever it is to very large or very small animals is irrelevant; everyone knows you can have small elephants and big shrimp.

Why isn't phonetic spelled the way it sounds?

1) It is. The word is not irregularly spelt at all. (There are other ways of spelling the sound which "ph" makes, but that is irrelevant; the point is that "ph" can make no other regular sounds.)

2) Even if it wasn't, it is not necessary that a word should describe itself. This would lead us into shaving barber territory.

Why do our noses run and our feet smell?

This is a confusion about the two meanings of the verbs "run" and "smell". "Run" is a word which, in various forms, has meant "flow" since Proto-Indo-European; its use in describing the flow of your feet in bipedal motion and the flow of mucus from your nostrils are two applications of the same idea. "Smell" is one of those interesting words which can mean both sides of an action (compare dialectal "itch" for scratch and "learn" for teach); it's meant either to produce or notice an odour for almost a thousand years (probably longer, but we don't have attestation). There is an untrue story that Samuel Johnson, on being told, "Sir, you smell!", replied, "No, Sir, I stink, you smell."

Why does quicksand work slowly?

"Quick" here has the original meaning of "alive", as in "to judge the quick and the dead", and not the newer sense of "fast" (which has only been around since the fourteenth century).

Why are boxing rings square?

A lot of people seem to want to know this, for some reason. I think if you imagine a real fight between exactly two people, without all the formalised rules and layouts of boxing, the other people in the bar or marketplace or wherever tend to fall back into an approximate circle; people were using squares to fight in at least by 1743, when Jack Broughton's seminal rulebook on the conduct of bareknuckle fighting was published. I suspect it's simply easier to draw up a square on the floor, and it's easier to say that you start from opposite sides after a fall than saying you have to start from 180° from your opponent, but that's just a guess.

Why, when lights are out, they are invisible, but when the stars are out, they are visible?

"Out" is a word with a number of meanings, few of which can be descriptions of the same objects. You might as well ask whether Jodie Foster coming out meant she became more or less visible based on stellar or light analogies. If I still had access to the OED, I would tell you when the word came to mean "extinguished" when applied to flames (and hence electric light), but I don't.

[Update: Jonathan Jarrett, who does have OED access, shows me that the earliest record of the word being so used was by John Trevisa in his 1398 translation of De Proprietatibus Rerum: "For þat þe wynde schulde nouȝt blowe out þe light". You rock. Thanks.]

Why do we call them apartments when they are all together?

This question makes no sense because it is backwards. If you take a house and put all the parts together, it is precisely then when it is not apartments. If you split it apart into separate pieces, you have apartments.

If cows laughed, would milk come out of their noses?

I do rather find it hard to understand what kind of mental confusion would produce this question even as a joke. Firstly, when humans produce milk (or coffee, or whatever) from their nose when they laugh, it is because they were drinking it. Cows drink milk only in calfhood; the rest of their lives they drink water (around six gallons a day, although it varies by temperature). So only a baby cow would even be drinking the milk to start with. Secondly, why a cow? All mammals from mice to giraffes produce milk. Furthermore there is no connection between the mammary and the respiratory system. Finally, as far as I am aware, cows cannot laugh in the first place. Some zoologists have recently reported laughter in non-human primates, but not in other mammals.

Why does Denny's have locks on the door if it's open 24 hours?

A moment's thought should show you that the problems which would result from not being able to close the restaurant in an emergency, or in leaving it empty but unlocked, would far outweigh the few tens of dollars it costs to add locks to the door. Imagine, for example, closing the restaurant while refitting after a fire, or not being able to scrape enough staff together to run the place at 4am during a flu epidemic. (In addition, some jurisdictions may require that restaurants close on certain days or nights of the year.)

[Updates: rethought points out that a building may not have been open twenty-four hours a day in the past; shaunm points out that even buildings which are generally permanently open often close for a few hours a few times a year to have a cleaning crew do a thorough pass rather than the incremental cleaning that happens day-to-day.]

Why do ships carry cargoes and cars carry shipments?

"Car" (a Norman word which they took from the Celts) and "cargo" (a Spanish word that comes from Latin) are unrelated. Incidentally, it is interesting that people assume that the Welsh word for car, "car", is a loan-word from English, but its irregular plural belies this.

When will a building actually become a built?

The -ing on the end of "building" is not the "-ing" on the end of "singing"; it is another ending which was once "-ung" but merged. (The word in Scots is "biggin".)

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dwim again

Fri, 26 Nov 2021 23:15:52 GMT

I'm picking up a Dreamwidth app project from a while back called dwim.

Currently it works by scraping HTML, which is fine.

I have three questions:
- have there been any new moves towards an official API? (Fine if not; see above)
- what happened to "?style=lynx"? It made scraping so much easier
- where did DW's IRC channel go after freenode ended, so I can ask questions like these?

Maybe brainwane knows?

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kepi and libraries

Tue, 23 Nov 2021 17:24:04 GMT

For the last couple of years, I've been working on and off on a Mastodon-like microblogging server called kepi.

I have reached an impasse: I've done all the interesting stuff (Mastodon API and ActivityPub support) and what's left is dull (the HTML/JS interface, which TBH wouldn't need to be much different from Mastodon's own anyway).

Unfortunately, a microblogging system you can't use from a browser isn't all that useful for most people, and a lot of work would be needed before you could. It could work if someone wrote the bits I'm not enthused about, but I've asked around a few times and nobody seems interested on collaborating.

However, a lot of kepi would work well as standalone libraries. In particular, trilby (the Mastodon API support) would be useful for other people in other places, and indeed I've been playing with adding it into GROGGS. And bowler (the ActivityPub support) is something a lot of people might need. There are also some functions in busby (support for some .well-known services) which might be useful to others.

I'm not confident enough about writing general-use standalone Python libraries to do this at present. In particular, I don't have a reasonable grasp on all the possible use cases for something like bowler. I will read up on it, but help would be appreciated.

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Pierre de Litre

Sat, 19 Jun 2021 15:24:11 GMT

Fun fact!

Everyone remembers that the newton is named after Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered gravity, and that the kilogram is named after Lord Humphrey Kilogram, who climbed trees to drop apples on Newton.

But few remember Pierre de Litre, who introduced water to France.

Before de Litre's time, everyone in France drank only wine, and bathed only in wine. (White wine— bathing in red was forbidden because it terrified the pathologists.)

de Litre's breakthrough revolutionised industry. Winemills (not windmills) became watermills. The invention of water also led to useful innovations such as ice cubes and bidets.

However, after de Litre's death the wine growers of France hushed up his work. It wasn't until after the Revolution that people rediscovered water.

"Eau!" they said in surprise— hence the name.

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font

Wed, 26 May 2021 20:54:49 GMT

Some people were asking about the Anchoress font. All the ASCII letters and some basic punctuation now exist. Some of the letters still need to be tidied. The leading widths are still wrong. Anyway, this is what it looks like right now.

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Fri, 30 Apr 2021 19:28:55 GMT

When I was in Year 6— in 1986, so I was eleven— a local cop came into our class every day for a week.

It was a rather horrifying week, and much of it is still etched on my memory.

( cw sexual assault, police violence, etc )
And one day I was late for school and arrived to find the whole class had slipped out and were trying to overturn his cop car. That was excellent. He came back before we managed it, though.

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"eristic"

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 00:33:38 GMT

Today I learned the word "eristic", meaning arguments for the sake of it rather than to find truth. Twitter, really.

For example, here's a passage from Plato's "Euthydemus", c. 384 BCE.

If you will answer my questions, said Dionysodorus, I will soon extract the same admissions from you, Ctesippus. You say that you have a dog.

Yes, a villain of a one, said Ctesippus.

And he has puppies?

Yes, and they are very like himself.

And the dog is the father of them?

Yes, he said, I certainly saw him and the mother of the puppies come together.

And is he not yours?

To be sure he is.

Then he is a father, and he is yours; ergo, he is your father, and the puppies are your brothers.

Let me ask you one little question more, said Dionysodorus, quickly interposing, in order that Ctesippus might not get in his word: You beat this dog?

Ctesippus said, laughing, Indeed I do; and I only wish that I could beat you instead of him.

Then you beat your father, he said.

[I want to hear more about the dog]

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certainly not

Tue, 23 Mar 2021 02:45:59 GMT

I was discussing Section 28 with our care worker, who had never heard of it despite being 50 and schooled in England. This led to the following story.

When she was in Year 10, in 1986-ish, there was a trans boy in her class. His parents knew and were fine with it, but the teachers knew and were not.

Now, there was some sort of costume event, like World Book Day, and each year group of the school had to dress as characters from a given era. Our care worker's year were 1950s/1960s. The boy asked the teachers whether he could dress as a boy from that era, and was told, "Certainly not— you're a girl." So he went off and planned his next move.

On the day, he turned up in a gimp suit. With a ball gag. And a skirt, in case anyone thought he was dressed as a boy. He brought copies of his careful research to show it was an authentic 1960s gimp suit.

The teachers hit the roof and summoned his parents. His parents said, "Well, you did say he couldn't dress as a boy." They produced the receipt to demonstrate he had bought the suit after the discussion with the teacher, rather than borrowing it from someone.

The teachers were not impressed, and suspended him. They also called social services. There was a big fuss, but it all blew over, and the boy became an absolute legend.

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"Meditation in Lamplight" by J C Squire

Mon, 08 Feb 2021 18:42:53 GMT

( morbid poem )

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Swan Song

Thu, 17 Dec 2020 21:28:57 GMT

A lullaby, about why I'm standing on this bridge in a swan costume.

Original content: share as you wish. Get the track and follow me at https://marnanel.bandcamp.com/track/swan-song

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Flash fiction: "It's just mine"

Mon, 09 Nov 2020 04:16:23 GMT

It’s Friday morning and I’m the only person in church— just like every other morning for the past five years. I’m the only person in town. I have a lot to pray about.

This town, my town, is under a curse of sorts. When I was a child here, and my father would come home blackened with coal dust from the mine, he’d say, “Centralia is beautiful, son.” I believed him-- it was the only town I’d ever known, after all. As he washed the coal dust away, he’d say it again. “Your town, she’s dirty beneath. Above, she’s beautiful.”

When I was twenty-five, someone threw half a ton of garbage down a hill off the side of a side road just out of town. And nobody wanted to bring it back up. So the town council made a decision. My father always called them “those fools on the council”. They decided to burn it.

Of course the burning garbage fell through a crack and into a mine. Of course the coal seam caught fire. My father was nearly killed down there. That was twenty-five years ago.

And it’s still burning. The ground is warm to the touch. Everywhere there are small cracks with smoke curling out of them, and the small cracks become big cracks. At night you can see the glow. Every so often, a house falls in.

So everyone else has left town. The government gave everyone money to buy houses somewhere else. I won’t take their cash: this is my town.

And now… well, I guess it’s just mine.

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Kepi hackathon

Fri, 02 Oct 2020 00:34:40 GMT

Here's my hackathon session for APConf2020 on Kepi:

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/hackathon-wheres-kepi-going-next/988

Thank you to all who encouraged this!

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ActivityPub in Godmother's House, part 2: is it really you?

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 15:44:17 GMT

Last time, you received an ActivityPub message claiming to be from your goddaughter, Marigold. But it's possible that someone is tricking you, pretending to be Marigold. How can you be sure the message is really from her?

We're going to do a bit of crypto here, but don't be afraid. All you need to know is:

Everyone on ActivityPub has two related keys: a public key (which is public), and a private key (which is, er, private). We'll represent Marigold's public key as PPPPP.
Any message can be represented by a unique signature, which we'll represent by SSSSS.
Signatures are created using private keys.
Signatures are verified (checked) using public keys.

Let's look at the HTTP headers of Marigold's message to you.

Content-Type: application/activity+json Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2019 20:40:09 GMT Digest: SHA-256=DDDDD Host: house.example.com Signature: keyId="https:‌//pegs.example.org/users/marigold#main-key",algorithm="rsa-sha256",headers="(request-target) host date digest content-type",signature="SSSSS"

As you see, the Signature line contains a bunch of different parts: "signature" gives the message signature, and "keyId" tells us where to find the public key. The other parts of Signature aren't directly relevant right now, but I can explain them in comments if you like.

keyId isn't the public key; it just tells us where to find the public key. If it contained the public key itself, it would be really easy to fake a message and sign it using your own key. So we have to go looking.

Unsurprisingly, this message is signed using Marigold's own main public key (https‌://pegs.example.org/users/marigold#main-key). If it was signed using someone else's, it would be time to ask questions!

Now, do we already have a copy of Marigold's public key? If this is the first message from her, probably not. keyId told us to look in https‌://pegs.example.org/users/marigold#main-key. The "#main-key" part is a "fragment", which doesn't form part of the address itself. So let's take a look at https‌://pegs.example.org/users/marigold.

Up till now, we've only received ActivityPub objects from other people. Now that we're going to fetch them ourselves, over ordinary HTTPS. we have to remember to include the header

Accept: application/activity+json

Otherwise the remote server would assume we were an ordinary web browser, and show you text/html content meant for mortal humans.

We look up https:‌//pegs.example.org/users/marigold and receive:

{ "@‌‌context": "https‌:‌//www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams", "id":"https://pegs.example.org/users/marigold", "type":"Person", "inbox":"https‌://pegs.example.org/users/marigold/inbox", "preferredUsername":"marigold", "name":"Marigold Mobbs", "summary":"Ordinary. Not called Sarah or Anne.", "publicKey":{ "id":"https‌://pegs.example.org/users/marigold#main-key", "owner":"https‌://pegs.example.org/users/marigold", "publicKeyPem":"PPPPP" },
(... and plenty more information)

Now we know that Marigold's public key is PPPPP. We check the first message's signature with this key, and it matches! So we can be reasonably sure that message came from Marigold.

Next time we'll look at the types of information you can send with ActivityPub: posts, reblogs, likes, follows, and so on.

Click for: previous part, all parts.

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ActivityPub in Godmother's House, part 1: the beginning

Mon, 20 Jul 2020 00:09:15 GMT

ActivityPub is a protocol which connects social media sites, like Mastodon, together to form a network called the fediverse.

Let's start with an example.

Once upon a time, your goddaughter Marigold decided to follow you on social media. You received a message containing a JSON object:

{ "@‌context": "https:‌//www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams", "id": "https:‌//pegs.example.org/activity/1234", "type": "Follow", "actor": "https:‌//pegs.example.org/users/marigold", "object": "https:‌//house.example.com/users/godmother" }

As you can probably guess, someone named "https:‌//pegs.example.org/users/marigold" (that's Marigold) is asking to follow someone called "https:‌//house.example.com/users/godmother" (that's you).

You are delighted! You reply, accepting Marigold's message:

{ "@‌context": "https‌://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams", "id": "https‌://house.example.com/activity/9876", "type": "Accept", "actor": "https‌://house.example.com/users/godmother", "object": "https‌://pegs.example.org/activity/1234" }

Now Marigold is following you, and will hear all your news.

Next time: how did we know the message was really from Marigold?

Click for: next part, all parts.

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the cop in year 6

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 19:24:00 GMT

So I promised someone the story of the cop who came into my primary school class. CW for sexual assault and violence.

( Read more... )

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hurra for soshul distuncing!

Fri, 17 Apr 2020 17:16:43 GMT

since i last wrote, dere readers, st custards hav been closed becos of the dred CRONERVIRUS, a diseas so evil that even matron canot stare it down.

alredy for sevrul weeks we hav been taking weedy precortions eg. washing our hands, which is aparantly a new idea to peason, and standing 6 ft apart at all times. thus rugger hav becom v difficult.

(SCENE: rugger field. gillibrand is bearing down on me)
GRIMES: tackle him, molesworth!
ME: (pulls out long stick with CLAW on the end)

gillibrand did recover and was back on his feet in a few days.

since then, we hav all been sent home early becos of soshal distuncing. the cheering of the boys was matched only by the grones from yore mater and pater when they find they must live with you for six weeks and canot leave the hous. as for me i am locked in my room with the inturnet for at least eight hrs a day. molesworth ii bang on my door.

molesworth ii: please pla animal crossing with me
me: silence, i am bisy
molesworth ii: merge dragons is fun
me: begone
molesworth ii: wot are yore thorts on pokamon
me: (pulls out long stick with CLAW on the end)

pulls out long stick with CLAW on the end

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Gentle Readers - what is love?

Fri, 14 Feb 2020 01:46:35 GMT

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That's not jade!

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 18:01:57 GMT

A man longs to become a jade carver. So he apprentices himself to a master jade craftsman.

Every day he comes to the workshop, and the master asks him to sit and hold a jade carving, a different one each day, while the master talks to him.

And every day the master tells him stories, about the great jade carvers of the past, and about the principles of jade carving, and about the particular piece of jade the apprentice is holding. Then he sends the apprentice home again.

This goes on for months.

The stories fascinate the apprentice, and the jade carvings he has to hold are beautiful, but he's getting impatient by this time. He wanted to learn how to carve jade, not to sit and get lectured!

Then, one ordinary morning, the master hands him a carving. As soon as the apprentice touches it, he blurts out, "That's not jade!"

The master says, "Good. Now we can begin."

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Take Hands and March

Tue, 03 Dec 2019 23:54:38 GMT

-- a new political protest song, by me.

Charity single out on Friday.
Vocals by Jane Cameron, with Kit Thurman backing.
Thanks to Wanda Lotus, Tim Packer, Aldabra Stoddart, Kit Thurman, and Mike Thurman for being part of the video.
Like it, share it, sing it.

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Kyrie

Sun, 24 Nov 2019 01:49:11 GMT

Lord, have mercy on your children:
reinstated, though resigned;
Christ, have mercy on your children:
rescue us who fall behind;
Lord, have mercy on your children;
shine upon the lost, and find;
Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy,
for the love of humankind.

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if you ever wait and wonder

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 14:22:12 GMT

CW sui mention. Still working on this.

If you ever wait and wonder why you're living on the earth
If you're thinking that you might as well be dead;
If the darkness ever whispers that your life is lacking worth
And your place should pass to someone else instead:

There waits a task that no-one else is competent to do.
Without your hand it never could be done.
There lives a mind that keeps a place particular for you,
That can't be filled by any other one.

Oblivion may call you— as it must do, by and by,
But contradict the darkness with the truth:
You thought the world won't miss you, but remember that's a lie:
your loss would linger like a missing tooth.

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1988 Tory manifesto: teapots and homophobia

Sat, 02 Nov 2019 21:12:16 GMT

According to the Tories in 1988, Labour councils waste money on "NUCLEAR FREE ZONES", "POLICE MONITORING", and "GAY SEMINARS".

*Especially* "GAY SEMINARS".

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Ding dong, the evil teacher is (probably) dead

Tue, 29 Oct 2019 19:35:11 GMT

CW non-sexual child abuse, ableism

( Read more... )

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"Free"

Wed, 16 Oct 2019 15:47:33 GMT

Poem by Jackie Hagan. Animation made by Marnanel Thurman as part of the short film "Sickos" about chronic illness, for the 2019 Sick Festival, in Manchester, England.

Here lies Jackie Hagan.
She is finally free
from her disability,
from the constant pills that made her drunk
so quickly and so inexpensively,
free from the attention she was warned about
that she courted,
blissful.

Free from her disability,
her favourite colour,
her sexuality,
and small, bearlike gender identity.

Here lies Jackie Hagan.

She is free from being
working class.
Maybe now she will be able to
pronounce "chimley" right,
and drink wine
at a ladylike speed.

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I Don't Like Thursdays

Fri, 11 Oct 2019 23:09:02 GMT

A new mashup of the Hitchhiker's Guide with the Boomtown Rats.
Share and enjoy!

Lead vocals: Kit Thurman
Filk, montage, and backing vocals: Marnanel Thurman
Parody of: I Don't Like Mondays by the Boomtown Rats, via Karaoke Version
Video taken from the 1981 BBC TV series (without permission)
Always sadly missed: Douglas Adams

I Don't Like Thursdays from Marnanel Thurman on Vimeo.

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