Random Rambles

Some AAVE speakers pluralize 'child' as 'childrens'. People get racist about this ("It's already plural!"), but 'children' actually comes from Middle English speakers doing the same thing: slapping their plural marker on word already pluralized by an extinct plural marker.

To oversimplify: in Old English, 'childer' ('ċildra') was the plural of 'child' ('ċild'). Middle English developed an '-en' plural marker, which we see in 'oxen'. Instead of updating to 'childen', people slapped their preferred '-en' onto the end of 'childer' - so now we have 'child-er-en'. AAVE carries on this tradition with 'child-er-en-s'.

"Pure" language is just impurity obscured by the passage of time.

We’ve seen a dramatic increase in the biodiversity in the neighborhood since. We have birds that we haven’t seen since we moved into the city from living rurally and those birds are starting to nest in the trees and gardens in spring. The swallows and bats are back at night. The single woodpecker we would only occasionally see visits daily and even has a friend that has joined it. We have more squirrels and rabbits and shockingly fewer moles and voles. We heard an owl outside last fall.

I mean the weeds growing through concrete, the fungus that grows on the rotten shed, the nettles that always seem to return and the scary, spindly cellar spider in the corner of the bathroom.

Nature is not always pretty or magical - the pigeons and seagulls you swat at are nature too, the wasps and flies that hover by your meals are animals too, store-bought strawberries and the leaves that fall from your neighbour's tree are not all that different from the Giant Sequoias and it's seeds.

Just reading the summer/autumn edition of my RSPB magazine and theres a dedicated section in welsh!

Unsure why its orientated like that sorry!

Ah! It's an advert, look, for Transport For Wales trains - they're trying to convince you to take a train to Wales to look at birds

TfW trains are shit on toast, actually (ALTHOUGH SHOUT OUT to their nice overhead baggage space, which fit suitcases); but I must say I truly and genuinely admire their commitment to bilingualism. They run services throughout Wales, but that means running services on the main lines from Welsh places in the West to English places over the border. For example, they operate the service from Fishguard Harbour in West Wales, to Manchester Piccadilly in England, a route that covers 15 Welsh stops before crossing the border and passing through 13 English stops. Here it is in turquoise:

NOW. In Wales, of course, the announcements are all bilingual on trains. TfW trains have TV screens in the carriages that tell you which service you're on, which stops it will pass, and which stop is next. It alternates between Welsh and English to do this. So far, so normal. We are accustomed to such treatment.

You would think. You'd think, wouldn't you. That when they cross the border into England, it would switch to English-only. You'd think so. After all, every other service does this! Bristol is not far from Newport, but the moment you reach it, First Great Western don't bother with bilingualism anymore. Cross Country only goes into Wales as far as Cardiff, but they do not bother adding in Welsh for the Newport/Cardiff leg of their journeys. You'd think that a service that runs fully half in England - and that's stop numbers, the length of time for the journeys is longer in England than in Wales - would not keep strictly adhering to Welsh language inclusion for that part.

Except the operators of TfW do not agree. Not only do you get a bilingual service all the way up to Manchester, they have even included the Welsh names for the English places they pass. And that is notable, because while larger places in England usually have Welsh names (with exceptions), smaller ones generally don't; so, the dedicated translators of TfW either coined new terms, or - and this is my favourite part - they delved deep into the history books to find a time when those places had archaic Welsh names in the past.

So you get:

Manchester: Manceinion

Shrewsbury: Amwythig

Hereford: Henffordd

Ludlow: Llwydlo

So far so sensible. All major market towns or cities near to the border, would have had a lot of trading and migration with/from Wales over the centuries. Of course there are Welsh names for them. "Manceinion" is a back-formation from the New Latin "Mancunium", from the 1700s; "Henffordd" means "old road" and so is a Welsh corruption of the English via hypercorrection; "Llwydlo" is a corruption via hypercorrection to include the word "grey"; "Amwythig" is actually so old a name we don't even know what it means anymore. Fine. Move on.

Then you get:

Whitchurch: Yr Eglwys Wen

Literal translation! White church = eglwys wen. Yeah, that makes sense. There's a Whitchurch in Cardiff with the same translation. Why not just re-use it in both languages? Fine. Move on.

And THEN you get:

Leominster: Llanlieni

Nantwich: Yr Heledd Wen

I. I promise you. No one used the name yr Heledd Wen in centuries before TfW found it listed in the depths of some dusty etymology encyclopaedia. No one remembered the original name of Leominster was Llanlieni until TfW dug it out of the fucking Doomsday Book. Want to know what's really mad? Both of those are the original place names. The English names came later. Wild. Absolute scenes. TfW explain yourselves challenge.

Which means, if you are English, living in Nantwich, and you want to hop on a train to Manchester and back for the day, you legitimately might have to get on a train that talks to you in the language of the country next door and learn archaic place names that had been lost to the mists of time in order to do that. And while I think TfW really needs to learn how to add some extra fucking carriages to their services and maybe step into the 21st century by learning that you can let passengers book seats if they want, I respect the hell out of their policy of Compulsory Welsh.

… wait what is special about scottish water

And yeah , actually, while I have never experienced the above with naturally soft water, now that I think about it, showering at my inlaws where they have a system can make my hair feel a bit like there's a film on it.

Which I just assumed at the time meant their system needed changed, but now I’m comparing the sensation, it wasn’t the same weird brittle residue left over by hard water.

I have also experienced installed soft water. It was weird how unclean I felt after showering. Everyone in the house (my parents and sisters) had the same opinion. Water tasted great, felt horrific. My oily hair never felt right. They had the thing adjusted so it would only impact the kitchen faucet. Immediate improvement. It's been over 20 years, and I can still remember how gross I felt. I was genuinely worried I would be dealing with this when we learned about the well. It was explained by our then-landlady that installed systems use chemicals or something to sorta pull the minerals from the water. It leaves something behind, though, which is what we feel. Naturally soft? Bliss.

But the big difference between softened water and actually soft water is that soft water has generally low levels of dissolved salts in it, while softened water has high levels of salts. They're just ones that don't so readily precipitate in your kettle or bind to soaps. I can see two ways in which this may feel gross for your hair after washing.

1: It won't form limescale but it will still leave a precipitate on your hair and skin after drying out.

2: It's still more alkaline than actual soft water. Which will likely leave hair in particular feeling Bad.

I'm not going to get right into the fact that there's actually two types of soft vs. hard water here, but at a basic level there's permanent hardness (Mg2+ and Ca2+ concentrations) and carbonate hardness (how much carbonate ions there are in the water). The first is what water softening deals with, the second is what makes most hard water alkaline.

And tl;dr: hair reacts to pH. Your hair is covered in tiny scales which will raise under high (alkaline) pH and flatten down under low (acidic) pH. If you rinse your hair with bicarbonate of soda it will feel rough or squeaky, and often look dull or dry. Conversely, rinsing your hair with vinegar will leave it feeling smoother and glossier. At least, it's very apparent on straight hair, idk how obvious shine will be with more textured hair but the rough feeling will for sure be apparent. Similarly, I don't know what's going on with skin but I find that sodium bicarbonate solutions makes skin feel slippy and slimy.

what is pudding?

some sources say it's just a general word for dessert, some say it's a specific type of dessert, but then there's things called pudding that aren't dessert at all as far as i can tell, and it's all just very confusing

I'm always flattered but bewildered WHY you guys ask me this stuff

When buying leather, there’s a tier list of ‘how environmentally harmful is this’ and it’s important to note that even the worst ways of commercially tanning leather are less harmful than the plastic manufacturing process. But if you have the option to choose:

Brain tan is the best of the best and basically impossible to find because it’s a labor intensive process. But there is no better way to make soft, durable leather goods that will last for generations.

Biotan/Freetan/Chrome-free tanning, if you can find it, is next best - it’s kind of commercial brain tanning where the tanning agents used are various animal and plant extracts.

Veg tanning is where we get the word 'tannin’ from, and is a very ancient method right up there with brain tanning. It uses plant extracts exclusively and produces rugged, durable leather - not as soft as brain-tanned leather, which is more suited to garmets - it’s good for bags/shoes/straps/saddles/etc.

Chrome tanning is the commonest in industrial tanning and the least environmentally friendly - The process uses trivalent chromium (Cr III) which in small amounts is entirely safe (it’s in your multivitamin!) but in industrial amounts can damage watersheds and soil biomes. The process is also fairly water-use intensive. This is the process that makes the 'new leather’ smell that you’ll experience in a new car interior with real leather, or a lather jacket store. But even this, the least sustainable leather making practice, is WAY less environmentally impactful than the process of making plastic 'leather alternatives’

The internet has taught people to archive your opinions and weaponize your growth. If you evolve, you're a flip-flopper. If you admit uncertainty, you're weak. If you take time to rethink, you're stalling.

So people fake certainty to avoid punishment.

This research used the same methodology as this paper on water use by ai models, that focused on gpt-3's water use. Gpt-3 used about 500ml for 10-50 medium-length responses, gpt-4 uses 519ml to generate one 100-word email:

Total water use depends on data center location as some (with cheaper electricity) use air-cooling over water-cooling

This is true

more on the environmental impact of ai: