Darkoshi

Does anyone else mix up the website name "Overstock.com" with "Stack Overflow" like I do, and keep thinking "Stock Overflow"?

I'm flabbergasted. While I have an account at StockOverflow.c... oops, Overstock.com, it seems that I've only ever ordered from them ONE SINGLE TIME, way back in 2004!! I mean, how can that possibly be? When I'm shopping online, I find myself on their site fairly often, and I always have that feeling in the back of my mind, that I've ordered from them several times before, and that it's a good site.

Tapeten (German) - wallpaper

Tapetenwechsel (German) - literally, a change of wallpaper. Figuratively, a change of scenery or surroundings.

daffadilly (chiefly British) - daffodil

daffadowndilly (chiefly British) - daffodil (the link is a nice poem)

Annett Louisan - Ich brauch Tapetenwechsel


The above song is originally by someone else, but I like this cover of it. The song is both cute and sad, about a birch tree which wanted a change of scenery, and went looking for it.
German lyrics
English translation of lyrics



Mark Knopfler - Redbud Tree


The vocal notes/key/whatever you call it in part of this song reminds me of kd lang's Ingénue album. I need to check out more of his music. Mark Knopfler's name isn't familiar to me, but he used to be in the Dire Straits.

39 ways to close your emails

Some of my favorites from that page, including the comments:

Be well, do good deeds, and keep in touch
Confusion to your enemies
Tag. You’re it
The end (for now)
Up, up, and away,
Ta,
Happy Trails
Ciao for now
Upward and onward
osmosis, amoeba
Have a magical day

You mean to tell me that sugar plums aren't really sugared plums, nor even prunes, and they never were?!

The other night, around midnight, I went to check my mailbox. There were 2 youths/teenagers walking up the street at the same time - I had seen them before leaving my yard, and had a brief thought that I could just wait until they had walked on by. Because shy little me doesn't like having to interact with other people. But that would be acting like I was afraid of them, and I wasn't. They weren't giving off any bad vibes. So I headed down the street, enjoying the night air. As I approached them, I heard one of them say, fairly loudly, "Spect!" In the first moment, I thought he must be saying something to the other guy, but I wasn't sure... so I just dipped my head in greeting as I walked past. By then it was too late to say anything anyway. I got the mail, walked on back, and kept thinking about it. He must have been saying "Respect". Was that a greeting? Oh dear, maybe he was greeting me in a friendly way, and I just walked on by without saying anything. Maybe they didn't even see me dip my head. Maybe now they think I'm an unfriendly snob.

There have been a few times when I've said hello to other strangers while walking by them in this neighborhood, and they didn't say anything back. (That may be why I really wasn't expecting these two to say anything to me.) That gave me a feeling like... not that I clearly remember... like they were thinking "Why are you talking to me?" But I brushed it off, thinking maybe they didn't hear me, or were just surprised at being talked to. Or whatever, not important. So maybe this is what it's like from the other side.

After getting back inside, I googled whether "Respect" is ever used as a greeting. Apparently it is, in Jamaica.

Another reason why I'd rather just nod my head in greeting to people, is that if I hear them say something that sounds like a greeting, even if they are alone, they may really just be speaking on their cellphone, with an earpiece... Had it happen a few times where I replied "Hi" to someone, and then felt chagrined, realizing they were talking on their phone.

I worked from home yesterday after voting. The dazed feeling didn't go away. The streets outside my house felt quiet and empty, as if the city's population had disappeared into thin air. That would explain the empty polls, right? Qiao and Forestfen both later told me that they didn't have to wait in lines either, even though they voted later in the day. The election commission seems to have done a very good job this time.

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Per the scvotes.org website, South Carolina voter turnout was 67.42% yesterday. In the 2012 election, it was 68.92%. There are 254,000 more registered voters now than 4 years ago, so there were still more ballots cast this time than last. So it wasn't that people weren't voting. They just weren't stuck waiting in lines.

In the 2008 election, the voter turnout was 76%.

In all 3 years, the Republican presidential candidate got about 54% of the votes (2008: 53.87%. 2012: 54.56%. 2016: 54.90%)
So it doesn't seem that dislike of Trump affected his results much.
The Democratic candidate got... 2008: 44.9%. 2012: 44.09%. 2016: 40.71%.
So disapproval of Hillary may have dropped her results about 3 to 4% compared to the usual.

All those numbers are only for South Carolina, mind you.
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In the evening, when I checked the TV, the first state results were being called. Trump's numbers were in the lead. But those were from the typically red states, so I told myself that was surely to be expected, and would change.

When I checked again later, it still wasn't looking very good. I brought up the Democracy Now coverage online, and listened for a while.
"This is just like Brexit", I thought, "isn't it?"

By midnight things hadn't improved much. I finally turned the TV off around 1:30am, with things looking quite grim, but still a slight chance Hillary could win. It took me a while to fall asleep. I resisted the urge to get back up and check the TV again.

But this morning, the news was no better.

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Yet, as this page points out: Tuesday Shouldn’t Change The Narrative,
that Trump won doesn't mean that the world is suddenly a much different place than it was yesterday. It is the same world, with the same people. Based on the current count, Hillary actually won the popular vote. Nearly half of voters nationwide voted for Trump, and the other half for Hillary. And many of the people who voted Trump didn't do it because they like him or most of his rhetoric, but simply because he's the Republican candidate with the Republican platform, and because they dislike Hillary more than they dislike him.

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In looking up the word trump, I was surprised to see one of the definitions: Informal. a fine person; brick.

trump == fine person???
fine person == brick ??????

But yes, apparently brick can mean:
Informal. an admirably good or generous person.

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Something else. In past presidential elections, I remember seeing a lot more yard signs and bumper stickers for the major candidates. This year, here, I only saw a couple of Hillary yard signs, and that was only during the primaries. Since then, I don't recall seeing any for either side. That seems to show how unpopular both really are.

I'm reading Terra Aluvis, volume 2 (pre-release), in German.

In a couple of places, it uses "seine" to refer to "das Mädchen". For example, "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände". (And she's looking at her own hand, not someone else's). That sounds totally wrong to me. "Seine" is what you use for males. But "ihre" is what you use for females. Even if Mädchen is a neuter word as indicated by the "Das", "seine" still sounds totally wrong for it.

So I looked it up.
heisst es "das Mädchen und sein Bruder" oder "das Mädchen und ihr Bruder"

Based on the answers, "seine" is grammatically correct. But several of the replies (and they sound like native German speakers) reflect my own gut feeling, that it should be "ihr", ganz klar, NATÜRLICH.

And now I realize that German doesn't have a separate pronoun for "its". The same word "sein" is used for both "his" and "its". Yet I generally translate it as "his". So "Das Mädchen blickte auf seine Hände" sounds to me not like "The girl looked at its hands" (which is bad enough), but rather "The girl looked at his hands" which makes no sense, unless I imagine her as a gender-bending girl.

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Another thing that has confused me is the use of Ihr/Euch/Eurer for 2nd person singular pronouns. Normally you use "Du" for friends/family, or "Sie" for strangers/politeness/formal situations. Ihr/Euch is the informal 2nd person plural, not singular. But in the book some of the characters are royalty or nobility, so this usage seems to correspond to the English royal we/majestic plural. Looking at the book again, now I see that it is always capitalized in the royal sense, but lower case in the 2nd person plural sense.
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erbarmen - to arouse someone's pity; to take pity on; to have mercy on.

Erbarmen - mercy/pity

erbarmenswert - pitiable, wretched, pitiful

erbarmungslos - pitiless, merciless

erbarmungsvoll - compassionate, full of pity

erbärmlich - pitiful, wretched, terrible

Erbärmlichkeit - wretchedness, misery, awfulness, terribleness

barmherzig - compassionate

Barmherzigkeit - compassion, mercy

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leiden - to suffer

Leiden - suffering, tribulation

Leidenschaft - passion

leidenschaftlich - passionate

leidenschaftslos - dispassionate

Leid - sorrow, grief; misfortune, harm.

leid tun - to be sorry

leidlich - reasonable, fair; more or less, so-so.

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hervorragend, herausragend - outstanding

sagenhaft - incredible

zaghaft - timid

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Umgehung (accent on 2nd syllable) - avoidance, circumvention, bypass

umgehen (transitive verb)(accent on 2nd syllable) - to avoid.

umgehen (intransitive verb)(accent on 1st syllable) - to walk around; to treat/handle something; ...

umgehend (accent on 1st syllable) - immediate; immediately. Etymology explained here

While thinking about the pronunciation of words starting with 'kn', I realized that in English the 'k' is always or nearly always silent. Whereas in German, both the 'k' and 'n' are spoken.

Then I thought about words starting with 'gn'. Again, in English the 'g' is nearly always silent (the GNU software term being an exception). Whereas in German, both the 'g' and 'n' are spoken.

And I was thinking, maybe that is why I always want to pronounce the 'g' in the English word 'gnome'.

Tonight I found a website that provides both British and American pronunciations of words.

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/british/gnome

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/british/gnu

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/british/gnocchi

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/british/gnomic

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/british/gnawing

British, like German, seems to generally be spoken with a higher pitch than American English (or maybe it seems that way due to its vowels being spoken higher in the throat?).

I started mimicking the online pronunciations. You know, how when you say the same word over and over again, it gets funny?

Gnome. Gn^oem. Gnoume. Gneoum. Gnome. Nu. N^u Nu N^u... Nocky! Nokey. Nocky! No Key. No Key.
Nong. Noing. Nong. Noing!

Zorro didn't like it. She left the room.

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A few days ago while walking to my car, I realized that people's names and faces were coming very easily to my mind. I tested myself, thinking of more and more coworkers, even from long ago. There were only a few I couldn't easily name. It seemed quite surprising to me, as usually there's a significant pause between me thinking of someone and remembering their name (if I'm able to come up with a name at all).

A couple days later I tried again, but my memory seemed back to normal, ie. not easily remembering many names.

So I wonder, what could cause memory changes like that?

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Something else I've wondered: Where do slugs go in the daytime?
Google? Ah, ok. So I'm not the only one who has wondered that.

After reading several arguments on the spelling of "to say one's peace" versus "to say one's piece", I've grudgingly been convinced that "to say one's piece" must have been the correct or original way to write it.

To me, "to say one's peace" implies that one feels at peace, having stated one's opinion, and that one doesn't plan to argue about it regardless of further discussion. Whereas "to say one's piece" doesn't imply one's emotional state - one might feel at peace and finished with the subject, or one might still be willing to consider other opinions, or one may feel argumentative and/or dismissive of other opinions.

This re-evaluation of the phrase's meaning comes after Qiao calmly ended a discussion with, "I've said my peace [piece]". At first I heard it as "peace" and and interpreted it in that manner. But after reading about the correct usage, it seems that he must have said "I've said my piece", which means that he may not be at peace with it after all. Considering the context, I suppose he wouldn't likely be at peace simply for having stated his opinion. Does anyone ever feel at peace simply for stating one's opinion?

I wonder if I saw it written as "peace" in any books I read as a child, or if I never saw it written and always misheard it.

So, apparently a hyphen is different from a minus sign which is different from a hyphen-minus, not to mention the n-dash and m-dash.

Oh. Oh, my. My, my, my.