Fairies in Britain, how they were affected by Greek and Roman stuff during the Renaissance, etc.

 This deserves a ton of study... this website has some great research. 

https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/anti-paracelsus-the-man-who-messed-up-faery/

Katharine Mary Briggs

That whole thing on Paracelsus is interesting and funny.

Note that the website author loves
Katharine Mary Briggs
so keep her in mind. She compiled all sorts of fairy info.

And check: 

Paracelsus and folk tradition

Now, we already know that classical mythology had started to taint native beliefs as a result of the renaissance rediscovery of Greek and Roman legends.  British fairies were regularly made synonymous with Mediterranean fauns and such like:

some are of fyre, and some of the ayre,/ Some watrye and some earthly, and some golden and fayre/ Some lyke unto sylver…” (The Buggbears, George Gascoigne, 1565) 

Funky -YRE spellings. Well doesn't the fyre, ayre, watrye just tie right into my post a couple back on weird old word pronunciations and WATER and FIRE being special. 

Does duergar come from .. The Anglo-Saxon word for dwarf, dweorg, ??

From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, Long-leggety Beasties, And Things that go bump in the night....

Version 1 is via Weird Tales ... and via The Magic Casement: An Anthology of Fairy Poetry:

From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, 
Long-leggety Beasties, 
And Things that go bump in the night.
Good Lord, deliver us!
     - Old Cornish Litany / - Quaint Old Litany

Version 2, Scottish pronunciation from a commentor (rhymes better, eh?):

Frae Ghoulies and Gheesties, 
Long-leggedy Beasties, 
And Things that ga' bump in the night.
Good Lord, deliver us!
     - Litany

https://wordhistories.net/2018/07/24/things-go-bump-night/

... preface to The Magic Casement: An Anthology of Fairy Poetry. Edited, with an introduction, by Alfred Noyes¹ (London: Chapman and Hall Limited, 1908):

“And if that the bowle of curds and creame were not duly set out for Robin Good-fellow, why, then, ’ware of bull-beggars, spirits,” etc.
“From Ghoulies and Ghoosties, long-leggety Beasties, and Things that go Bump in the Night,
     Good Lord, deliver us!”
                              Quaint Old Litany

GREAT LIST OF MONSTERS, NAMED in 1859, RELATED KINDA, dude talkin' 'bout hobbits: https://www.etymonline.com/word/Hobbit

and more info here, thanks Thoul: https://thoulsparadise.blogspot.com/2015/12/gallytrots-spoorns-and-tantarrabobs.html and https://dn790004.ca.archive.org/0/items/denhamtractscoll02denhuoft/denhamtractscoll02denhuoft.pdf

This has some rare ones defined: https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/tag/duergar/

Below, I've underlined and bolded several interesting ones. Looks at those word relationships. Some are different pronunciations of the same word in different dialects most likely, others are related to words we use today! How about "kidnappers" as a monster... wondering if it's like the changeling type situation, is it? Death-hearses, really that was a monster?! Snapdragons weren't always just a flower? 

Of course we know ghost = geist, so likely -> guest -> barguest 

Spoorn... couldn't find much out there, very rare.

Note all the instances of hob+other, but no hob listed by itself. Wikipedia says a "hob" is a house spirit. 

Elf-fires - as in DnD fairy fire, right? 

Bug - wikipedia, on the Bugbear entry, says derived from either Middle English "bugge" or Old Welsh "bwg" (evil spirit or goblin type thing) or Old Scots bogill (goblin)... and probably related to the words "bogeyman" and "bugaboo", they say. Which I say would mean related to boggles, 

Bugbear - wikiped says was a creepy hairy bear type monster lived in the woods in medieval England.

mannikins / gnome(?) -  like our modern mannequin? This says... the word gnome was made up by Paracelsus (born 1493) way after dwarves and kobolds, and they also explain mannikins was used for goblin in the 1920s apparently: https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/tag/mannikin/ and funny stuff here https://britishfairies.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/anti-paracelsus-the-man-who-messed-up-faery/ ... says Paracelsus called gnomes apparently also by the names/descriptions "pygmies" and "mountain mannikins". ... "so, as Katherine Briggs wrote in the Dictionary of fairies, gnomes “belong rather to dead science than to folk tradition.”

undines - (not listed in the big super quote) nymphs of water and 

sylphs - nymphs of the air (Paracelsus made up sylphs also they say)

The word also turns up in a very long list of folkloric supernatural creatures in the writings of Michael Aislabie Denham (d. 1859) as an aside to his explanation that those born on Christmas Eve cannot see spirits. Denham was an early folklorist who concentrated on Northumberland, Durham, Westmoreland, Cumberland, the Isle of Man, and Scotland. This was printed in volume 2 of "The Denham Tracts" [ed. James Hardy, London: Folklore Society, 1895], a compilation of Denham's scattered publications.

What a happiness this must have been seventy or eighty years ago and upwards, to those chosen few who had the good luck to be born on the eve of this festival of all festivals; when the whole earth was so overrun with ghosts, boggles, bloody-bones, spirits, demons, ignis fatui, brownies, bugbears, black dogs, specters, shellycoats, scarecrows, witches, wizards, barguests, Robin-Goodfellows, hags, night-bats, scrags, breaknecks, fantasms, hobgoblins, hobhoulards, boggy-boes, dobbies, hob-thrusts, fetches, kelpies, warlocks, mock-beggars, mum-pokers, Jemmy-burties, urchins, satyrs, pans, fauns, sirens, tritons, centaurs, calcars, nymphs, imps, incubuses, spoorns, men-in-the-oak, hell-wains, fire-drakes, kit-a-can-sticks, Tom-tumblers, melch-dicks, larrs, kitty-witches, hobby-lanthorns, Dick-a-Tuesdays, Elf-fires, Gyl-burnt-tales, knockers, elves, rawheads, Meg-with-the-wads, old-shocks, ouphs, pad-foots, pixies, pictrees, giants, dwarfs, Tom-pokers, tutgots, snapdragons, sprets, spunks, conjurers, thurses, spurns, tantarrabobs, swaithes, tints, tod-lowries, Jack-in-the-Wads, mormos, changelings, redcaps, yeth-hounds, colt-pixies, Tom-thumbs, black-bugs, boggarts, scar-bugs, shag-foals, hodge-pochers, hob-thrushes, bugs, bull-beggars, bygorns, bolls, caddies, bomen, brags, wraiths, waffs, flay-boggarts, fiends, gallytrots, imps, gytrashes, patches, hob-and-lanthorns, gringes, boguests, bonelesses, Peg-powlers, pucks, fays, kidnappers, gallybeggars, hudskins, nickers, madcaps, trolls, robinets, friars' lanthorns, silkies, cauld-lads, death-hearses, goblins, hob-headlesses, bugaboos, kows, or cowes, nickies, nacks [necks], waiths, miffies, buckies, ghouls, sylphs, guests, swarths, freiths, freits, gy-carlins [Gyre-carling], pigmies, chittifaces, nixies, Jinny-burnt-tails, dudmen, hell-hounds, dopple-gangers, boggleboes, bogies, redmen, portunes, grants, hobbits, hobgoblins, brown-men, cowies, dunnies, wirrikows, alholdes, mannikins, follets, korreds, lubberkins, cluricauns, kobolds, leprechauns, kors, mares, korreds, puckles korigans, sylvans, succubuses, blackmen, shadows, banshees, lian-hanshees, clabbernappers, Gabriel-hounds, mawkins, doubles, corpse lights or candles, scrats, mahounds, trows, gnomes, sprites, fates, fiends, sibyls, nicknevins, whitewomen, fairies, thrummy-caps, cutties, and nisses, and apparitions of every shape, make, form, fashion, kind and description, that there was not a village in England that had not its own peculiar ghost. Nay, every lone tenement, castle, or mansion-house, which could boast of any antiquity had its bogle, its specter, or its knocker. The churches, churchyards, and crossroads were all haunted. Every green lane had its boulder-stone on which an apparition kept watch at night. Every common had its circle of fairies belonging to it. And there was scarcely a shepherd to be met with who had not seen a spirit! 

 

Dragonsbane (1985) or Mistborn - fantasy books

1. Dragonsbane (1985) influenced some other popular author, I think the Mistborn guy. 

2. Mistborn stuff:

 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/68428.Mistborn

 Maybe kid should read. 

 

WIN: Brandon Sanderson can write the hell out of an action scene. (And since the final quarter of this book is pretty much all action, playing directly into Sanderson's strengths, it kicks all kinds of ass.) The fights in this book are gut-wrenching without being overly gory, and the chases and sneaks are heart-stopping as well. Perfect combination of pace and detail. Amazing. Possibly the best I've ever read from an author in this genre, and if he's able to do that so effortlessly, so early in his career, it gives me hope that he can fix...

FAIL: ...the dialogue. In spite of being favorably disposed due to the use of inform….

Tell Tale Heart by Poe has some fun words

https://poestories.com/print/telltaleheart 

Random observation: Right brow lower than left (and one image mirror-flipped left to right).

Got looking into it since Eggars did a short movie free on youtube on it. Been so long since I read it, wondered how close his movie was to the orig. very close!

 dissimulation - Hiding under a false appearance.

dissemble - same sort of meaning, but funny spelling with an E compared to the I in dissimulation. 

sagacity - the pronunciation is (sa ga city) basically, no J sound is what caught my attention. 

deputed = delegate - as in "deputy sheriff" as in... the guard was deputed to watch the gate.

tattoo - as in a drumlike beating

Death Watches - it's a dern beetle! = Deathwatch beetles. Any of various small beetles (family Anobiidae) that are common in old houses where they bore in woodwork and furniture and make a tapping noise as a mating call. See this cool write up, maybe he got the idea from Henry David Thoreau the poet/naturalist:

https://www.eapoe.org/pstudies/ps1970/p1971105.htm

Some tidbits from eapoe.org : 

Under the date of August 10, 1838, Henry David Thoreau recorded in his Journal a note on “The Time of the Universe” that includes an allusion to “the cricket’s chant, and the tickings of the deathwatch in the wall” (3). Thoreau incorporated a revision of this passage in his “Natural History of Massachusetts” published in the July 1842 issue of The Dial. The complete paragraph in The Dial reads as follows:

In the autumn days, the creaking of crickets is heard at noon over all the land, and as in summer they are heard chiefly at [column 2:] night-fall, so then by their incessant chirp they usher in the evening of the year. Nor can all the vanities that vex the world alter one whit the measure that night has chosen. Every pulse-beat is in exact time with the cricket’s chant and the tickings of the deathwatch in the wall. Alternate with these if you can (4).

The context reveals that Thoreau is writing with general optimism of man’s possible closeness to nature, in contrast to the anxiety which marks the usual literary reference to the deathwatch. “Entomology extends the limits of being in a new direction,” writes Thoreau, “so that I walk in nature with a sense of greater space and freedom.”

I cannot show beyond question that Poe used Thoreau’s essay in writing “The Tell-Tale Heart.” Nevertheless, apparent relationships are so impressive that the facts should be reviewed and their implicit significance brought out.

In the first place, it is probable that Poe read the paragraph by Thoreau. The dates of publication are close enough to require careful examination. Emerson had just taken over the editorship of The Dial from Margaret Fuller, the July 1842 number, which contains Thoreau’s essay, being the first for which he assumed responsibility, and the issue was off the press by the first or second day of that month (5). “The Tell-Tale Heart” appeared in January 1843, in Lowell’s The Pioneer, and had been submitted before December 17, 1842 (6). It is impossible to determine how much earlier Poe may have written the story, but on the ground of his desperate need of money in the summer of 1842, as well as his habits of publication, it seems unlikely that he completed the tale before Thoreau’s essay was in print (7).

One can suppose that Thoreau and Poe, both masters of word-play, expect their readers to be aware of the common meaning of “deathwatch” as a vigil held over a person who is dying ot dead. Shortly after recalling the “death watches in the wall” Poe’s narrator declares that “Death, in approaching him [the old man] had stalked with his black shadow, before him, and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the unperceived shadow that caused him to feel — although he neither saw nor heard—to feel the presence of my head within the room.” Hence the murderer is holding a kind of macabre-”deathwatch,” and the victim one of “mortal terror,” as both wait, almost motionless, for a sound or sight that will end their vigil.

Skunkworks, Skonk Works, and comicbook origins

 Via the wordsmith guy:

skunkworks

PRONUNCIATION:

(SKUNGK-wurks) 

 

MEANING:

noun: A small, loosely structured corporate research and development unit or subsidiary formed to foster innovation.

 

ETYMOLOGY:

From Skonk Works, a fictional facility in Al Capp’s comic strip Li’l Abner that processed dead skunks, old shoes, kerosene, and other odd ingredients. Earliest documented use: 1960.

 

NOTES:

The term gained real-world application in 1960 when Lockheed Martin used it to describe a secretive unit tasked with developing advanced fighter planes. The facility, located near a plastic factory with an acrid odor, inspired an engineer to nickname it Skonk Works, later adapted to Skunkworks. The term now symbolizes agile, creative problem-solving in corporate or engineering environments.

 

USAGE:

“The company’s skunkworks, for example, are decentralised to encourage innovation, but its accountants are centralised. ‘We don’t want highly innovative accountants,’ says Motorola’s Mr Canavan.”
Partners in Wealth; The Economist (London, UK); Jan 21, 2006.

Crazy tornadoes dixie alley, Brookhaven, Mississippi, etc.

 MONSTER wedge twister in Bude, Mississippi linked here, and see mini twister at 4:22. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSM3_WMWI2o&t=311s

Bude, Miss.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZczT1NFoRE

Other:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Reg3lJo8pJQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgDTE80g7lc&t=7615s&pp=ygUiTGFyZ2UgdG9ybmFkbyBpbnRlcmNlcHQgYnJvb2toYXZlbg%3D%3D

Alexandria, La.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7-4iStERjk&pp=ygUiTGFyZ2UgdG9ybmFkbyBpbnRlcmNlcHQgYnJvb2toYXZlbg%3D%3D

Phone apps sell your driving to car insurance secretly

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/car-insurance-companies-secretly-collecting-driver-data-with-the-help-of-phone-apps-report/ar-BB1nXGIA

Damn those bastards! Uninstalled! Which others might be? Better deny all location tracking on phones apps.  

The subscription-based apps Life360, MyRadar and Gas Buddy are providing user data to an Allstate-owned company, Arity, which computes the numbers to create a “driving score” that takes into account any risky behavior behind the wheel, such as distracted driving, speeding and sudden braking. 

…

Old words in English, spelled weird vs. pronounced

Updated 12-30-2024

 Willing to be a lot of these are simply old words, spelled out when things were not settled, or pronunciations changed over hundreds of years (or moving to the US). Gonna make a little list and probably check it later. Pronunciation is based on common ways to say things in my region of English speakers. 

WORD - PRONUNCIATION

1. What - pronounced "wut" usually.

2. One - "wun"

3. Two - "too"

4. Women - wimmin

5. Fire - fah_ee_yer    or   fiyer  or  fi-er, but one or two syllables... you know what I mean. 

6. Water - waw-ter  ... how the hell is this pronounced like that based on the spelling? Compare to daughter. 

7. have - "hav" not a long A

8. give - giv not long I

9. juice- joos, not joo-iss, (compare and contrast to ruin)

10. 

Local or USA oddities:

• bizzare - pronounced "bizzar"... yeah, I think we say the short "i", but m-w says it is a schwa sound like bazaar. 
• Mary, merry, marry - all said the same way around here. I think the hollywood accent coach on ty said there is one small part of the US where you can hear a difference in one of them. NE i think. 

Funny words that annoy me:

1. Queue - sounds like "cue" as in "kyoo". Doesn't follow any of the damn rules that any other "QU" word would use. And why the EUE at the end? Bothers me a lot. 
1. Examples of normal QU words:
1. quiet - "kwi - it" with the long i sound on first syllable. 
2. quaint - "kwaint" long A
2. xxxxxx

These are fun, often mispronounced words: https://www.yourdictionary.com/articles/mispronounced-words

like

• anemone
  (ah-NEM-oh-nee) not 
  (ah-NEn-oh-nee)
• açaí
  (ah-sah-EE)

• antennae

  (an-TEN-ee) - the plural can also be said "antennas"... Let's just say it like it's really converted to English. Latin is dead, let it die a little bit. 

• Bob wire vs. Barbed wire. It's a fun colloquial way to say it, chill out. 

• barbiturate
  (bar-BIH-chur-ite) not "bar bih chooy ite" ... WRONG, M-W.com says you can use either one as in: bär-bə-ˈtyu̇r-ət

• bon appétit
  (bow nap-uh-TEA) not -TEAT ... interesting, that makes sense, but I wonder about locals locals

• cacophony 

  (cuh-CAW-fone-ee)  WRONG, M-W says it can be ka-ˈkä-fə-nē  -ˈkȯ-,  also  -ˈka-

•  

Microplastics - pods in dishwashers, clothes washers, etc.

 2021 article by forbes says, don't trust. I for one can say, I don't want to eat plastic, I get more than enough of plastic chemicals leaching through plastic stuff I can't void. And if the pods don't totally dissolve, then it's pretty obvious that the plastic is still there. So if they mostly dissolve, how do you know it isn't coating all your plates I ask you? See: 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffkart/2021/08/08/study-says-up-to-75-of-plastics-from-detergent-pods-enter-the-environment-industry-says-they-safely-biodegrade/

This website, which sounds like it is a company that sells pods, says they are safe. Not sure I trust it, but here you go:

https://www.cleaninginstitute.org/debunking-myths-about-pva-and-detergent-pods

BTW, UPDATE on the black plastic thing. There was a big fat math error, which when corrected shows that typical usage with hot food and black plastic will keep exposure basically exactly at or below the EPA guidelines. Still too much for me, especially since you-know-who was accidentally melting the ends of our spatulas as they were being cooked. No thank you. 

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/12/17/0222233/huge-math-error-corrected-in-black-plastic-study

Apparently this yt dude caught the error also. Good on that:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58HUM40gDPU&t=717s

Sound effect in Castlevania from The Rah Band?

 The Rah Band's "Messages from the stars" from 1983 has a sound effect you hear 2 or 3 times probably that sounds like a powerup(?) or medusahead or something sound in Castlevania, 1986. Did the Rah Band make up the sound or is it some open license sample type thing? 

See time 0:27 and time 1:00 for the sound effect... it's layered behind probably 3 other sounds, but it sounds very Castlevania to me. :

https://youtu.be/YenvGAdZ8lQ?t=27

Is that a "pick up a whip powerup" sound?! I think it might be that! ... Listening to the game... no, it's close to some of those sounds though. Look at when he picks up the big heart... kinda similar but different tone or speed, time 2:56 - https://youtu.be/tsyeWrFPl5I?t=176

Or cross, time 2:51 -  https://youtu.be/tsyeWrFPl5I?t=152

Time 2:45, the invulnerability potion is pretty different  - https://youtu.be/tsyeWrFPl5I?t=165

The Wicker Man, 1973, lead to a 1977 Children of the Stones TV Miniseries

Disturbing, freaky pagan inspired tales. 

And so was Children of the Corn influenced by Children of the Stones or vice versa? 

The Wicker Man was a big hit. 1973. Influenced lots afterwards. 

Children of the Stones, a Brit series, was a more child oriented PG version of similar themes of ancient pagan rites (gets more scifi though), using ancient rock circles as the focus. 1977. See, https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2012/11/14/children-of-the-stones/

When did Steven King write Children of the Corn? March 1977.  Hmmm.   

Oh, let's not forget HBO's True Detective in Louisiana, with the animal masks. Wait... I can't find an actual shot of Season 1 with animal masks... only was in Season 2? Hmmm. 

The Wicker Man 1973 showed this ancient Springtime game (forgot the name, May dance or something), that you still see around Germany, Austria, and Switzerland today... although it's less and less popular they say. 

Animal mask scene from The Wicker Man 1973. 

True Detective Season 1 antlers on victim. 

True Detective. Unrelated to other movies/shows, but the bird spiral vision similar to the spiral on the victim. Spooky. 

This says animal masks in season 1 (and 2) so I don't think I'm misremembering:

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/true-detective-discussion-could-seasons-807841/

quote "The piece notes the bad guys’ penchant for masks in both seasons — mostly animal heads in season one, while the gunman who shot Ray (Colin Farrell) at the end of episode two was wearing a bird headdress (although the wall of Caspere’s apartment featured a bunch of animal heads)."

Vampire Hunter D movies. Not enough monsters in the second?

 Did I write this before? The forst movie had tons of varied monsters… a dinosaur type thing, werewolves, and the Raistlin-tower like gross things. The humanlike mutants… the guy that warps spacetime, the flying batguy with spikes on wrists n heels.  Snake ladies.  

Second movie, Bloodlust, is great but felt like it had less... let's list some:

vampires, zombie-vamps(?), giant manta rays (see Demonsouls), … maybe the small dragon things on the poles (dead?) 1/4 way through. The shadow mutant(?).  A fishman, snake ladies.  Wait, a ton of monsters (or just mutant ppl?) entering the Barbarois (sounds like 'barberroy', a little French twist there) castle… https://vampirehunterd.fandom.com/wiki/Special:Search?scope=internal&navigationSearch=true&query=barbarois

Later on bridge, the werewolfish guy with xray vision and giant maw on torso.  

BTW, Dunpeal is a poor way to spell it, since it is a translation from eastern Europe, Dhampir.  See wikiped, tons of info. Like they often hunt vamps. Very close to vamp hunter D and Blade.  I suppose the fans wanted the Japanese pronunciation for some reason. 

BTW, 1985 D's hand was cooler looking

1985's trio of fairly monstery guys. Love the tongue bridge-present thing. And yeah that green guy definitely was the inspiration for Gen-An in the Samurai Shodown the arcade game, right? 

1985's monsters entering the castle... much grosser but definitely more monster than human. Was Raistlin's tower guardian monsters and spirits an influence on this or vice versa (I've asked this before)? 

Raistlin's gross monsters in his tower, in Dragonlance. 

Bloodlust's monsters (more monster than human is what I'm looking for mostly, and they seem to have a lot of very humanoid monsters. Still pretty good.). 

Oh, and this fellow's music list has some good ones to try out, btw ran into his site before:

https://thedanmancan.blogspot.com/2021/04/vampire-hunter-d-1985.html

https://www.blogger.com/profile/15546325694413183168

Favorite Music

Air, ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, Aphex Twin, The B-52's, Beach House, Beck, Bikini Kill, Björk, Boards Of Canada, David Bowie, Jonathan Bree, The Breeders, James Brown, R.L. Burnside, Kate Bush, Cake, Can, The Cars, Neko Case, Johnny Cash, The Chemical Brothers, Chromeo, The Clash, Patsy Cline, Concrete Blonde, Sam Cooke, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Cure, Death Cab For Cutie, Deftones, Descendents, Devo, Dinosaur Jr., Eels, El-P, ELO, Electric Six, Brian Eno, Enon, Roky Erickson, Failure, Fear, Fishbone, Ella Fitzgerald, Fleetwood Mac, Fugazi, Fujiya & Miyagi, Peter Gabriel, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Serge Gainsbourg, J. Geils Band, Genesis, The Go! Team, Goblin, Goldfrapp, Hall & Oates, Heart, The Helio Sequence, The Hives, Billie Holiday, Buddy Holly, Interpol, INXS, Jean Michel Jarre, Jawbox, Billy Joel, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Sharon Jones, Joy Division, Juno, The Kinks, KMFDM, The Knife, Kraftwerk, L7, Led Zeppelin, Huey Lewis, The Life And Times, Little Richard, Living Coloür, Madonna, Biz Markie, Maserati, Massive Attack, Metric, Ministry, Mirah, The Misfits, Steve Moore, Morphine, Harry Nilsson, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Gary Numan, Roy Orbison, Pearl Jam, Tom Petty, Pink Floyd, Placebo, The Police, Cole Porter, Poster Children, Perez Prado, Elvis Presley, Pretenders, Primus, Prince, Public Enemy, Queen, Queens Of The Stone Age, Radio Birdman, Radiohead, Ramones, Steve Reich, Jonathan Richman, Röyksopp, The Rolling Stones, Roxy Music, Run-D.M.C., St. Vincent, Erik Satie, Scissorfight, DJ Shadow, Shiner, Nina Simone, Six Finger Satellite, Snowden, Spoon, Bruce Springsteen, Starlight Mints, Steely Dan, Sunny Day Real Estate, Sunshine, Superdrag, The Sweet, T. Rex, Talking Heads, Tears For Fears, Television, The Thermals, Thin Lizzy, Trans Am, The Traveling Wilburys, UNKLE, John Vanderslice, Gene Vincent, Tom Waits, Whale, White Denim, The Who, Hank Williams, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Yes, Susumu Yokota, Neil Young, Zombi, ZZ Top

Favorite Books

And Then There Were None, The Big Sleep, The Black Dahlia, A Clockwork Orange, Murder On The Orient Express, 1984, No Country For Old Men, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Road, The Shining, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Oil Spill - Immune issues in dolphins (and people)

 https://www.sciencealert.com/decades-after-the-deepwater-horizon-oil-spill-the-local-dolphins-are-still-suffering-from-the-effects

Completely unrelated picture of healthy dolphins. 

"The parallel between findings in dolphins exposed following the Deepwater Horizon spill and laboratory mice experimentally exposed to oil was impressive and really helped build the weight of evidence between oil exposure and specific effects on the immune system," explained De Guise.

...

Both the mice exposed to oil and the dolphins had increased T lymphocyte (white blood cell) proliferation and more cells that suppress the immune system – T regulatory cells. These cells usually prevent autoimmune diseases. ...

Studies in rodents have previously linked such immune system changes to increased susceptibility to disease. De Guise's team showed these immune differences could also be passed down from rodents who had been exposed to oil pollution to their young. And as the changes were not just present in the older dolphins, the team is concerned these impairments are being passed down through the generations of dolphins. ...

Researchers are concerned the long term effects of oil spills may not be limited to dolphins. We still know little about the health outcome from other long-lived species like turtles. Immune effects have also been reported in humans who have worked to clean up oil spills, suggesting there's a common response to oil exposure across mammals.

Meteor Showers- And kid saw one recently

 https://www.sciencealert.com/2024-closes-with-one-of-the-years-best-meteor-showers-heres-how-to-see-it

Completely unrelated picture of a meteor. 

And also kid saw one during trip... it broke apart then broke apart again. Yellowish-orange I think? 

UPDATE 0.5 - this might have some of the best accurate conservative info, not yt hyperbole: https://starwalk.space/en/news/meteor-storms and they say, meteor STORMS are so hard to predict, you never know, but in like 2028 (maybe more than 1000 per hour, AKA "ZHR"), 2094 (850 ZHR) and especially in 2098 (20,000 ZHR) there might be a big one. 

UPDATE: so this December meteor shower is nice for here, longer nights than summer at least. Need clear skies though. 200 meteors per hour is what I read, we saw a ton... I saw like 12 Friday night when it was clear. The whole family saw several. Another site says: "The Geminid Meteor Shower 2024 peaks in mid-December and can bring more than 100 meteors per hour."

UPDATE 2: There are meteor STORMS, that happen not quite randomly. There was one in 1833, where there were an estimated 50,000 to 150,000 meteors per hour... PER HOUR you read that right. Insane!  https://www.astronomytrek.com/the-great-leonids-meteor-storm-of-1833/

Great info here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBFXO9A9-xg ... he has smoke trail video from 1999-2002 Leonid shower (from Chinese video?) around time 17:00. He has a nice graph of when the Earth passes through the old Leonid trail around time 15:33. 

We'll have a better than avg showing maybe in 2027, 2028, 2033-2035, but nothing like 100K per hour. 

Old timey art of the 1833 meteor storm, part of the Leonid's leftover trail from 33 years before or something. 

Another cool story: https://www.astronomytrek.com/the-great-leonids-meteor-storm-of-1833/

Other accounts of unusually large numbers of meteors during the month of November include those from 1799, when German scientist Humboldt and his companion reported the sighting from what is now Venezuela, over which it was said that a similar event had occurred in 1766. As Humboldt stated:

“…thousands of fireballs and falling stars fell in a row for four hours, often with a brightness like Jupiter. Long smoke trails were left behind.”

More crazy info... most meteors are only millimeters in width apparently. Example, Leonids that are on the large size are 10 mm across in diameter and only be of mass around 0.5 grams (0.02 oz.).  

NASA says the smaller ones are super tiny: https://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/meteor.html 

METEORS: Meteors are better known as "shooting stars": startling streaks of light that suddenly appear in the sky when a dust particle from outer space evaporates high in the Earth's atmosphere. We call the light phenomenon in the atmosphere a "meteor", while the dust particle is called a "meteoroid". 

• Size: Most visible Leonids are between 1 mm and 1 cm in diameter. For example, a Leonid meteor of magnitude +5, which is barely visible with the naked eye in a dark sky, is caused by a meteoroid of 0.5 mm in diameter and weights only 0.00006 gram.
• Speed That tiny particle can cause a light so bright that it can be seen over distances of hundreds of kilometers. The reason is the astronomical speed of the meteoroids. Just before they enter the Earth's atmosphere, Leonid meteoroids travel at 71 kilometers per second, or some 2,663 times as fast as a fast pitch in baseball, or, if you want, around the Earth in 3.8 minutes!

• Source of light When meteoroids enter the Earth's atmosphere, they collide with numerous air molecules. Those collisions sputter away the outer layers of the particle, creating a vapor of sodium, iron and magnesium atoms. In subsequent collisions, electrons are knocked into orbits at larger mean distances from the nucleus of the atoms. When the electrons fall back to their rest positions, light is emitted. This is the same process as in gas discharge lamps. 
• Colors of meteors The color of many Leonids is caused by light emitted from metal atoms from the meteoroid (blue, green, and yellow) and light emitted by atoms and molecules of the air (red). The metal atoms emit light much like in our sodium discharge lamps: sodium (Na) atoms give an orange-yellow light, iron (Fe) atoms a yellow light, magnesium (Mg) a blue-green light, ionized calcium (Ca+) atoms may add a violet hue, while molecules of atmospheric nitrogen (N2) and oxygen atoms (O) give a red light. The meteor color depends on whether the metal atom emissions or the air plasma emissions dominate.
• Sounds Meteors do not normally cause audible sounds. Hence, they will pass by unnoticed if not seen. But watch out for hissing sounds that have been reported for very bright meteors. These sounds are thought to be due to very low frequency (VLF) radio waves interacting with the local environment. A sonic boom is sometimes heard for very bright Leonid meteors, called fireballs, that appear near your own observing site high in the sky. If the particle is larger than the mean free path of the air molecules, a high Mach number shock wave forms in front of the meteoroid. Very rarely, this shock wave penetrates deep enough in the atmosphere that it can be heard. It sounds like the sonic boom of an airplane, but as a distant rumble.

NOTE: The SMOKE is really a "train", see below. Complicated. 

PERSISTENT EMISSIONS: Bright meteors leave persistent glows.

• Wake is the brief glow behind the meteor head. The wake is caused mainly by the green light of neutral oxygen atoms. Wakes last 1-10 seconds. Sometimes the term wake is also used to describe the area directly behind the meteor head.
• Afterglow is the persistent metalic atom (Na, Fe,Mg) emission glow in the path of bright fireballs. The afterglow lasts a few seconds.
• Persistent train is the long enduring emission that remains in the path of a bright fireball once the afterglow has faded. Persistent trains can last for 1-30 minutes (typically 4-6 minutes) at an apparent brightness of +4 to +5 magnitude. The optical light of these long enduring trains is from Na (sodium) and FeO (iron oxyde), from airglow-type chemistry of the recombination of oxygen atoms and ozone molecules that is catalised by sodium and iron atoms. Persistent trains last long enough to enable telescopic studies of the path of a meteor. Upper atmosphere winds distort the shape of the train.  

 

Drizzt, love this artwork. Link for more random DnD.

 

BTW, tons of stuff here, click on BY ARTIST then poke around: https://dungeonsdragons.fandom.com/wiki/Rock_gnome?file=Dragon_413.jpg

Dragonlance - the books - some spoilers

 Chronicles were great and all. Some spoilers so stay clear if you didn't read yet. Trying to be a little vague, but it'll still spoil.

But Legends, wow, they really ramped up the stakes/drama... something, b/c wow. And I can't believe, didn't want to believe, what became of my fav dude. Luckily, some redemption there. 

So this dude says read them in this order: https://dragonlancenexus.com/recommended-dragonlance-reading-list/

But I reread Chronicles, then read Legends just finished yesterday. Now I happen to have found one of hte ones (Lost Chronicles) that goes back in that time, written around 2006, has the original characters. I want to stick with the original characters, so I think this makes sense to me. 

Well hang on, he might be saying same thing... he says read the original 6, like I just did, then read the Lost Chronicles, like I am ...

Next, you should read the Lost Chronicles series. Despite the fact that Lost Chronicles series fills in the gaps between novels in the Chronicles series, Weis & Hickman have gone on record as saying that they should be read after the reader has completed both Chronicles and Legends. Dragons of the Dwarven Depths, Dragons of the Highlord Skies, and Dragons of the Hourglass Mage are the novels in this series.

As noted at the beginning of this article, I recommend you read the Classic core novels first, so I would finish that group by reading The Second Generation and Dragons of Summer Flame, and then reading the core Fifth Age books: the Dragons of a New Age trilogy and The Dhamon Saga trilogy.

Next, I would recommend the Age of Mortals core books: the seminal War of Souls trilogy and the Dark Disciple trilogy

LineRider is still the best. And Scratch programming is fun.

Old good stuff:

 https://www.linerider.com/

Be sure to get an orange block to start things off... one of the ones like "click green flag thing" to start. You can also just mouseclick on the top block to start... and that has a different effect, it won't reset it all, so SWIRL for instance, will keep on swirling further and further. 

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/editor/?tutorial=home