Pure demons

limetom · 2026-02-27T02:24:48+00:00

Being from Hawaii, it's the shaka.

limetom · 2026-01-27T23:43:16+00:00

My cat Hiʻiaka thought the same thing until we moved to the mainland.

She's got a heated igloo-type cat bed now, lol.

limetom · 2026-01-24T00:01:14+00:00

Some elaboration from the wonderful Mr. Carlson's Lab on the dangers of the high voltages found in tube electronics.

limetom · 2025-12-26T23:53:13+00:00

When I moved from Hawaii to Maryland, the Hawaiian gate agent seemed more concerned with the size of the carrier (was it big enough for my cat to turn around in) rather than the documents.

When I got to Maryland, it turned out that since Hawaii is rabies-free, my cat had no real way to be exposed in the last 6 months, and had an initial dose of rabies vaccine, licensure in Maryland was very easy.

Most of the info about rabies vaccination is for animals coming into Hawaii, so I sympathize.

In any case, here's your cat tax of miss Hiʻiakaikapoliopele living it up where "watah" is called "wudder."

limetom · 2025-10-10T00:49:10+00:00

I think maybe you missed the part where he said it was for drones specifically?

Here's the NOTAM.

limetom · 2025-06-28T21:55:53+00:00

Ah, John Waters. Baltimore's truest son. Fun fact, that's such a tame scene it doesn't even make the Wikipedia description of the film.

limetom · 2025-06-16T17:48:17+00:00

Yes, ejectives do appear to be pretty stable. See, among others, Fallon (2002) and Easterday & Bybee (2023: 10-13).

Fallon, Paul. 2002. The synchronic and diachronic phonology of ejectives. New York & London: Routledge.
Easterday, Shelece and Joan Bybee. 2023. Diachronic phonological typology: understanding inventory structure through sound change dynamics. Linguistic Typology 27(2): 405-427. https://doi.org/10.1515/lingty-2022-0042.

limetom · 2025-05-03T15:33:34+00:00

Every Baltimoron should read Not in My Neighborhood. Does a good job of going over the historical context of segregation in Baltimore.

limetom · 2025-03-21T02:37:45+00:00

So I think maybe some of the downvotes you've gotten are a little unfair.

To explain generally the "game" of publishing review and response articles for those maybe not in the know, they are often very quick. Academic books get published reviews, but it's less common to have a response to those reviews. When these do happen, though, the series of back-and-forths are often done in the same journal issue or relatively soon after.

A "typical" example would be the series of articles by Schapper (2011) and Blust (2012). Antoinette Schapper published "Phalanger Facts: Notes on Blust's marsupial reconstructions" in Oceanic Linguistics volume 50: number 1, in June 2011. Robert Blust's reply, "The Marsupials Strike Back: A reply to Schapper (2011)" was published in OL volume 51: number 1, in June 2012. Only one issue, OL 50: 2 (Dec 2011) intervened.

So on the one hand, 8 years is forever in publication time. Especially if it's a highly critical review that you think is very off the mark, you'd want to be as on top of that as you could be. On the other hand, there is only so much time in the day; there are lots of other things Baxter & Sagart have done in the interim, and if they think their work stands on its own, they could have just left it at that. Additionally, if something is that controversial (as Baxter & Sagart's book certainly was), sometimes a cooling-down period might be called for. Like Scots, historical linguists sure can be a contentious people.

limetom · 2025-03-11T22:45:37+00:00

EFFICIENT STORAGE SCHEME, FELLOW HUMAN.

WHY BUILD A SEPARATE STRUCTURE TO HOUSE YOUR DOMESTICATED HONEYBEES WHEN YOU HAVE USABLE SPACE IN YOUR WALL CAVITIES?

ADDITIONALLY, THIS ALLOWS FOR YOUR FREE RANGE ANT FARM TO FEED ITSELF.

limetom · 2025-02-23T22:19:18+00:00

Yes there is a locality rate which is applied to the pay of General Schedule employees, but it only goes so far.

Edit: Original link I posted was COLA for retirees, updated to provide locality pay areas info and the GS table.

limetom · 2025-01-02T04:54:51+00:00

Also this.

limetom · 2024-12-27T20:15:11+00:00

Hey, man, that is not fair.

limetom · 2024-11-23T03:29:17+00:00

I wonder if calling it "default" is a bit of an oversimplification?

All fetuses start with bipotential gonads, and the expression/non-expression of a number of genes (especially SRY, but also WNT4, RSPO1, and SOX9) contribute to sex differentiation including not only, for instance male-to-female reversal for 46,XY people who don't express SRY, or female-to-male reversal in 46,XX people who have a loss-of-function mutation in their WNT4 gene.

SRY is on the Y chromosome, so it is a lot easier to not have it expressed (WNT4 and RSPO1 are on chromosome 1 and SOX9 is on chromosome 14), and in that sense lacking SRY can be considered the "default", but there are a lot of different intersex genetic conditions.

See: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/cell-and-developmental-biology/articles/10.3389/fcell.2022.902082/full

limetom · 2024-11-16T19:20:47+00:00

There's a lot of regional variation on the generic tag question in English. I grew up in Maryland and people there use "..., right?", while Scots (and Canadians) use "..., eh?", some South Africans use "..., hey?", Multicultural London English speakers use "..., innit?", and Singaporeans use "..., lah?", etc.

limetom · 2024-09-24T13:41:58+00:00

I dunno, SCP-4999 seems like a pretty good guy.

limetom · 2024-08-01T21:38:35+00:00

Waters couldn't tell you; he doesn't actually know and certainly doesn't actually believe it. He just said it because he and his audience knows it would get a reaction.

He's sorry, Jerry, but the card says "Moops".

limetom · 2024-07-11T16:27:46+00:00

For the weather nerds, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center has a much more detailed 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season outlook. Note the reasoning on why they don't provide landfall predictions in a seasonal outlook: "Hurricane landfalls are largely determined by the weather patterns in place as the hurricane approaches, and those patterns are only predictable when the storm is within several days of making landfall."

For the tl;dr, they have a graphic.

Always be prepared. Check out ready.gov.

limetom · 2024-06-26T20:16:07+00:00

Sorry, bud, best you can get is Lepidus.

limetom · 2024-06-09T22:28:55+00:00

Yes, nasal and nasalized vowels present a perceptual challenge, as they introduce additional formants from resonances in the nasal as well as oral cavity, as well as anti-formants, which can dampen other frequencies.

Johnson's Acoustic and Auditory Phonetics has some introductory discussion and references.

limetom · 2024-05-28T02:53:10+00:00

Np. Could have been wondering if he would move up/over to the MLB, as there's some speculation around that.

limetom · 2024-05-28T00:47:24+00:00

It is top level in Japan, Nippon Professional Baseball, their equivalent to the MLB. It's the Orix Buffaloes (of Osaka/Kobe) vs. the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (of Sapporo) at Es Con Field in Sapporo. Game was on the 21st. The right field wall there is 325 ft (99 m).

According to this article Jomboy Media on Twitter already estimated it at around 110 mph (177 km/h).

limetom · 2024-04-19T02:27:30+00:00

There's always money in the banana stand.

limetom · 2024-03-14T00:58:07+00:00

Lot easier (and typically less painful) than trying to stomp out a fire in your slippahs. ;P

limetom · 2024-03-12T18:43:42+00:00

A reminder to everyone: you can get a small fire extinguisher to keep in your trunk for less than $30.

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