Content-Type: text/shitpost

• Spanish for “tumbleweed” is “la rodadora”.

• There is a really cool-sounding museum in Ciudad Juárez called La Rodadora espacio interactivo (Tumbleweed interactive space). New place on my should-visit list!

• Townsville, Australia is not a joke. It is named for Robert Towns.

Montana is the U.S. version of Inner Mongolia.

The last thing I remember from my dreams this morning is someone informing me, very authoritatively, that there are three things that Alexander the Great really wants.

I don't remember the first two but the third was bow-tie pasta.

Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen
Had a very shiny nose.

Today I learned that Reddit has an r/notinteresting forum.

Amused, I checked into it, and was disappointed to discover that it was not interesting.

Disappointed?

It's kinda funny that we still have “happen”, “happy”, “mishap”, “hapless”, “haphazard”, and so on, but the original word “hap” is completely gone.

“Pissburgh”.

I did this twice.

I am so, so sorry.

I don't know why you would care, but here are the additions I have made over the years:

    #
    # MJD additions
    #
    <Multi_key> <p> <i>                             : "π"    U03c0   # GREEK SMALL LETTER PI
    <Multi_key> <e> <p> <s>                         : "ε"    U03c0   # GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON
    <Multi_key> <grave> <grave>                     : "ʻ"    U02BB   # MODIFIER LETTER TURNED COMMA (Okina)
    <Multi_key> <o> <equal>                         : "ő"   U0151   # LATIN SMALL LETTER O WITH DOUBLE ACUTE
    <Multi_key> <O> <equal>                         : "Ő"   U0150   # LATIN CAPITAL LETTER O WITH DOUBLE ACUTE
    <Multi_key> <O> <1>                             : "①"   U2460   # CIRCLED DIGIT  ONE
    <Multi_key> <O> <2>                             : "②"   U2461   # CIRCLED DIGIT   TWO
    <Multi_key> <O> <3>                             : "③"   U2462  # CIRCLED DIGIT  THREE
    <Multi_key> <O> <4>                             : "④"   U2463   # CIRCLED DIGIT  FOUR
    <Multi_key> <O> <5>                             : "⑤"   U2464   # CIRCLED DIGIT  FIVE
    <Multi_key> <O> <6>                             : "⑥"   U2465   # CIRCLED DIGIT  SIX
    <Multi_key> <O> <7>                             : "⑦"   U2466   # CIRCLED DIGIT  SEVEN
    <Multi_key> <O> <8>                             : "⑧"   U2467   # CIRCLED DIGIT  EIGHT
    <Multi_key> <O> <9>                             : "⑨"   U2468   # CIRCLED DIGIT  NINE
    <Multi_key> <O> <0>                             : "⓪"   U24EA   # CIRCLED DIGIT  ZERO
    <Multi_key> <bar> <minus>                       : "⊢"    U22A2  # RIGHT TACK
    <Multi_key> <bar> <equal>                       : "⊧"    U22A7 # MODELS
    <Multi_key> <i> <n>                       : "ϵ"    U03F5 # GREEK LUNATE EPSILON SIGN
    <Multi_key> <bracketleft> <bracketleft>     : "⸢"    U2E22  # TOP LEFT HALF BRACKET
    <Multi_key> <bracketright> <bracketright>   : "⸣"    U2E23  # TOP RIGHT HALF BRACKET
    <Multi_key> <slash> <backslash>   : "∧"    U2227  # LOGICAL AND
    <Multi_key> <backslash> <slash>   : "∨"    U2228  # LOGICAL OR
    <Multi_key> <hyphen> <comma>      : "¬"    U00AC  # NOT SIGN
    <Multi_key> <tilde> <tilde>       : "¬"    U00AC  # NOT SIGN
    <Multi_key> <G> <H>     : "Ȝ"    U021C  # LATIN CAPITAL LETTER YOGH
    <Multi_key> <g> <h>     : "ȝ"    U021D  # LATIN SMALL LETTER YOGH

It turns out that the file I was given already had sequences for Ő and ő, but only with the <equal> before the letter, not after, which meant that 50% of the time I couldn't find it.

Following Tony Finch's suggestion I have been using ⸢ and ⸣ (square quotes) as scare quotes.

I sometimes think about adding sequences for Greek letters other than π and ε, but it's really not the right place to solve the problem.

My computer environment came equipped with a giant .XCompose file full of useful abbreviations, many of which I use frequently. It is much easier to commit to spelling ‘Sierpiński’ correctly when there is an easy and natural way to type the ‘ń’.

But some things were missing, and I have gradually added them over the years. Today I discovered that while it predefined sequences for þ and ð, it had none for ȝ. (This makes sense, as þ and ð are still used in modern Icelandic, and even appear in ISO 8859-1, whereas ȝ is obsolete.)

Early on I had to add a sequence for ‘ő’ so that I wouldn't have to misspell “Erdős”. You can see where my priorities are.

“Kennel” is (ultimately) from Latin canis.

I went searching for Thomas Caxton and instead I typed “caaxtron”.

ALL TREMBLE IN FEAR BEFORE CAAXTRON 9000 THE INVINCIBLE, PRINTER OF WORLDS

Trump is talking about using tanks to quell the George Floyd protests, but the Pentagon is getting cold feet:

As of Monday morning, 17,000 National Guard troops had been deployed in 23 states and Washington, DC. No state has requested federal assistance, however, subverting the normal process for domestic military intervention, Pentagon officials told The Beast.

I can't get over the word “subverting” there. What do the unnamed Pentagon officials think the “normal process” is, or should be?

I think Richard nixon would have looked better with a mullet.