marianne

So this happened at work today.

I

Ok brief storytime–

I used to live in the Japanese countryside. Directly outside my house? Rice fields for a quarter mile. All sorts of wildlife lived in these rice fields- huge snails, crabs, crayfish, cranes, SPIDERS (coming home through them at night was highkey awful in the summer), and any other bug you can think of- ticks!!- you name it.

Well enough wild shit used to happen to me out there in the middle of nowhere where my crazy stories became kind of notorious with my friends. Half of them, I later discovered, probably thought I was embellishing or exaggerating half the time. One of those friends came over to stay with me for a week, and she arrived at my single-street-light orange-crate of a train station at night. “Fastest way home is a half mile walk through the rice fields but we have to use our phone lights and watch out for spiders- are you game?” She shrugged it off. So we began our journey, milkyway visible overhead in the pitch black dark. Yes we were caught in webs. Yes we saw a juicy one that had set up shop in the path for the night that we had to wiggle around. But weirdest of all- after we made it past, we looked down and realized, at our feet, along the very edge of the path, was a CONGA LINE of crabs and crayfish walking single-file down the ENTIRE LENGTH of the goddamn rice field. One after the other. Not a hoard, but an orderly, civilized crustation moving line. Crab, crayfish, crab, crayfish, crab, crayfish, crayfish, crab, crab, crab, crayfish– we looked behind us and it was there, too, but we’d been so caught up in web hell we didn’t notice right away until we had to wiggle away from the big boi. We watched them for a moment, in silence, as they slowly trundled along. After awhile, we kept walking, but now in silent shock. I mean what else can you do after a sight like that? “You know….I used to think you were making it up. That all your stories were just kind of….lol, you know. But after that? …..what the fuck *was* that???” she said to me as we got closer to home. “I don’t know,” I told her. “I honestly don’t ask questions anymore. 🥲”

YOUR BODY DOES THIS ON PURPOSE

and I'm like....... okay that is a perfectly normal way to describe energy and reads totally clear to me, but I KNOW you don't mean hit points/health points which is the first place my brain goes, so what are YOU using hp to mean

and it's not explained in-text, which means it was common enough to not warrant explanation to the 1908 audience, so gotta look elsewhere

horsepower. turns out it's horsepower.

and I'm absolutely FASCINATED that a commonly used initialism from 1908 now stands for something different AND YET the contextual meaning is still the same to a 21st-century reader

I could hand this guy my nintendo switch and he'd be like, ah yes I understand, this ''''pokemon'''' loses horsepower throughout the fight

Riding Coat from the court of Saxony, ca. 1601

This riding coat, made of black cloth and decorated with silk, is one of 24 coats ordered for the servants of the Saxon court in 1601. Additional mittens could be pulled over the sleeves during cold weather.

Like most riding coats of that time, this example is double-breasted and closed with hooks and eyes. The back is cut wide to allow the wearer to sit comfortably on the back of a horse without fabric getting in the way.

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov