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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 1d

The Harvest Moon (full moon nearest the autumnal equinox) has real astronomical importance to the harvesting of crops (or did, in the days before mechanical harvesters with headlights). Here's an illustrated essay I wrote a few years ago, about that orbital quirk:

oikofuge.com/harvest-moon/

Harvest Moon

In the northern hemisphere, the Harvest Moon falls on 1 October in 2020, which is what provokes this post. The Harvest Moon is defined as the full moon that occurs closest to the autumnal equinox, whi...

oikofuge.com

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 2d

C'mon folks. "Mucous" is an adjective; the noun is "mucus".
See also phosphorous/phosphorus, callous/callus, humous/humus.
There are actually very few nouns ending in -ous in English, and they're usually obvious foreign imports.

#copyediting
#proofreading

oikofuge.com/phosphorus/

Phosphorus

Click to enlargeDetail from The Alchymist, In Search of the Philosopher’s Stone, Discovers Phosphorus (1771) by Joseph Wright of Derby The [Saharan] dust particles provide nuclei for the formation of ...

oikofuge.com

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 2d

In Scottish Gaelic it's a bit like SAH-ween, though we usual add the definite article, An t-Samhain, which renders the s silent—so ann TAH-ween.
Manx decided not to mess around with lenited consonants, and uses a more intuitive spelling—Sauin.

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 3d

LLMs train on human writing—so they latch on to common features of human writing.
Do we now abandon all these frequently used features, for fear of being accused of using "AI"?
Or do we just learn to ignore simplistic and ill-informed internet memes, instead?

oikofuge.com/em-dash/

Em Dash

If the em dash is an indicator of text generated by AI, then Shakespeare, Swift, Ruskin and Joyce were AIs. (Hint: they almost certainly weren't.) Here's the story of the em dash and its uses.

oikofuge.com

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 3d

Publisher's webpage:
www.newconpress.co.uk/info/book.as...

A Jura for Julia, Ken MacLeod - Books - A Jura for Julia

NewCon Press is a multiple award-winning independent publisher specialising in science fiction, fantasy, dark fantasy and horror.

www.newconpress.co.uk

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 3d

The story, by the way, features in the collection _A Jura for Julia_, which I commend to your attention.
www.goodreads.com/en/book/show...

Goodreads

Discover and share books you love on Goodreads.

www.goodreads.com

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 3d

Just happened on a marvellous turn of phrase in Ken MacLeod's (@amendlocke.bsky.social) short story "The Vorkuta Event".

The once-adventurous and vigorous paleontologist, now an aged emeritus professor, is "more Quatermass than Quatermain". 💯
I'll cherish that!

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 3d

Seeing a lot of CAPITAL LETTER outrage from speakers of American English over the spelling "woah" for the stop-the-horse sound. What's that about?
Depending on your accent, it works about as well as "whoa", and doesn't lead to any potential confusion I can think of.

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 3d

In Scotland, I've heard people pronounce "whoa" with the same initial sound we apply to other "wh-" words---presumably having seen it written, but without associating it with the stop-the-horse sound.

(For a while, as a rhotic-speaking child, I made a similar error with the BrE spelling of "er".)

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 3d

It is in Scotland, and a few other places, where "wh" sounds different from "w". "Whoa" just looks odd in these parts, as if everyone started spelling "wow" as "whow".

(We also have an Er/Eh divide, between rhotic and non-rhotic speakers of BrE.)

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 4d

While I accept all the usual arguments in favour of "whoa", there's this:
Because "w" and "wh" are not homophones in Scottish English, "whoa" is something that no-one here actually says, whereas "woah" would sound right, but generates a prohibitive amount of ire.

More:
oikofuge.com/the-sounds-o...

The Sound(s) Of wh

You know how to whistle, don’t you Steve? You just put your lips together, and blow. Lauren Bacall, To Have And Have Not (1944) No, your browser hasn't had a stroke---this post really has wh in its ti...

oikofuge.com

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 4d

Strange emotional response today.
Found out that my name is listed as an author in the Anthropic piracy dataset---then found that it's another author with the same name as mine.
Why on earth should I be feeling vaguely disappointed and a bit left out?

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 5d

Oooh. My head melts further.
Here we go:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Embryonic Learning of Vocal Passwords in Superb Fairy-Wrens Reveals Intruder Cuckoo Nestlings

How do parents recognize their offspring when the cost of making a recognition error is high [1, 2, 3]? Avian brood parasite-host systems have been us…

www.sciencedirect.com

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 5d

That is head-meltingly amazing. Thanks for the link.

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 6d

One hopes (in a way) that this person is an outlier, who perhaps has genuine social difficulties and can access help.

Because the alternative is that there's a whole generation out there who are simply looking on while ChatGPT uses their phones to have a conversation with itself.

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 6d

Ah, right. I was in the "baffled misinterpreting" camp.

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 7d

And that, of course, is why I put scare quotes on "thinking".

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 7d

As a clinician, I'm unsurprised that two clinicians perform better than clinician+AI.
One can ask a colleague, "But what's bothering you about this image?" or, "Aren't you worried about this feature here?" and get a relevant, reasoned reply, rather than trying to guess what the AI is "thinking".

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 7d

I don't see mention of an important part of a modern radiologist's work, which is interventive radiology. In the last couple of decades radiologists have been performing minimally invasive treatments that would previously have involved more major surgical procedures, to the benefit of patients.

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 7d

Today's blog. English has a lot of words for "defeat utterly", particularly in a sporting context.
Here are eleven, with their surprisingly varied etymology.
#words

oikofuge.com/eleven-handy...

Eleven Handy Words Meaning “Defeat Utterly”

English is remarkably well-endowed with words that imply utter defeat in a sporting contest. Here are eleven.

oikofuge.com

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 8d

And I'm not making it up for the pun:

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 8d

Coincidentally, we have a rocking drain cover at our back door, on which one day I'll turn my ankle if I don't fix it.
So my to-do list includes "Make grate stationary again."

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 8d

Today's crossword word: AIOLI

Pleasingly rich in vowels, this sauce gets its name from the Provençal words "ai", garlic, and "oli", oil, its main ingedients. You can make it a bit creamier by adding egg, or jazz it up with lemon or mustard, but the purists use only garlic, oil and salt.

#words

The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 9d

Today's crossword word(s): "À LA"

French for "in the manner of the". Because of that feminine definite article, it sits awkwardly with most proper names, particularly male ones ("à la Elon Musk") and very awkwardly with a following "the" ("à la the FDA").

#words

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The Oikofuge @oikofuge.bsky.social · 11d

Today's crossword word: EMU.

Even by the standard of 3-letter, 2-vowel words, "emu" turns up a lot. P.G. Wodehouse once wrote a letter to The Times, welcoming "emu" back after a brief absence from the crossword.

Probably Old Portuguese "ema", also applied to the crane, rhea and cassowary.

#words