Old words in English, spelled weird vs. pronounced

 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. 

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