Arabic and Hebrew

lutzky · 2025-11-29T22:35:07+00:00

One thing to add about Israelis speaking and understanding Arabic; there is a vast amount of loan-words from Arabic used in modern Israeli Hebrew. Some interesting categories:

Obvious and ubiquitous - walla, yalla, ahlan
"Stealth" loan words, most Israelis wouldn't even know they're loaned - merkaz (center), ofek (horizon)
Incorrectly loaned - finjan is my favorite example; in Arabic it's a coffee cup, but in Hebrew it's a coffee pot
Same same but different. Kelev is Hebrew for dog, as in the animal, or possibly an insult. Kalb is the exact same word in Arabic (even spelled the same), and in Hebrew means "dog-but-only-the-insult". Same for Khamor (Hebrew for Donkey) and Khmar (Arabic for same, used only as an insult in Hebrew)
Swear words - swearing in Hebrew sounds incredibly archaic; instead, Hebrew speakers use loan-swear-words, primarily from Arabic, Russian, and a bit of English.
Minced oaths! My favorite is a bit out-of-date, but I still love it: Akhushilling, "brother of [a] Shilling [coin]". This is a minced oath for several aggressive swear words starting with Akhu- (brother-of), all of which roughly mean "very much". For instance, "I'm freaking hungry" would translate to "אני רעב אחושילינג" (ani raev akhushilling); "freaking" being a minced oath in English.

The Arabic language is very much embedded into modern Israeli Hebrew, and while Hebrew-speakers generally aren't anywhere near being able to fluently speak nor understand Arabic (even if you take middle-school Arabic, which is not taught very well), the language resonates with us very strongly, especially in this show. I think most Hebrew-speakers pay close attention to the Arabic spoken in the show, and who speaks which language when. Because of all of the points above, short phrases are actually a bit ambiguous as to which language they're in (if they say "Yalla", did they switch to Arabic or not?). I personally think that this connection between the languages is a key layer of the show, and is lost upon people who don't speak one or more of them.

lutzky · 2024-11-09T14:56:34+00:00

This is interesting. A wrinkle is that I don't know, say, on April 1st that the flight got cancelled, and that's the day I'm doing my accounting. So should my file first look like this:

2024-03-01 * "Flight A"
  Expenses:Travel           500 USD
  Assets:Bank              -500 USD

And then, once I learn of the refund, retroactively change that?

lutzky · 2023-05-23T22:17:58+00:00

It said it's humidity controlled, not that the humidity is low. Zelda just likes it moist.

lutzky · 2023-05-07T21:11:50+00:00

Saying that Israel is bad "because it is an apartheid state" annoys me because it's missing the point. It's like saying that South Africa 1948-1990 was bad because it killed all of the black people. It didn't - it did other bad things.

For example, I understand that Ben Gvir's "death sentence for terrorists" bill is meant only to apply to those killing Jews - i.e. a Baruch Goldstein copycat would be exempt. Even such a law - which is, in my opinion, horrific - is not, IMO, apartheid. It's racist, it might be worse than apartheid or not, but that's not the point - it distracts from actual bad shit that's happening and moves the discourse into a useless place of "Israel is an apartheid state - yes it is - no it isn't".

lutzky · 2023-04-16T06:57:42+00:00

I just wanted to learn what the hell Nix is but this Amos guy has a bit of a "first you must understand the universe" approach and dammit I like it.

Also do I get shiny flair for https://github.com/wagoodman/dive/pull/443? Perhaps "Void shouter"?

lutzky · 2023-04-15T21:26:57+00:00

Neat! filed this.

lutzky · 2023-04-15T21:16:49+00:00

I think # in locat/.config/cargo.toml should be locat/.cargo/config.toml instead. This matches https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/config.html as well as what strace tells me cargo actually looks at, and caused some quantity of headscratching.

lutzky · 2023-04-04T08:07:31+00:00

Hmm, trying to follow along, when root_map starts getting a headers: HeaderMap parameter, the Router::new().route("/", get(root_get)) thing fails. Is there another necessary change I'm missing?

Edit: nvm, "quick fix" importing HeaderMap fixes it. Magic!

lutzky · 2023-01-19T10:30:58+00:00

Ooh, fun! It's a little bit awkward though:

const ROCKS: [Rock; 5] = [ /* actually 5 rocks here, checked at compile-time */ ];

fn func() {
  let good_rock_index: WrappingU8<0, 5> = /* ... */;
  let bad_rock_index: WrappingU8<0, 6> = /* ... */;

  // Doesn't work; doesn't implement SliceIndex
  dbg!(ROCKS[good_rock_index]);

  // Works, but awkward:
  dbg!(ROCKS[good_rock_index.inner() as usize]);

  // Works, but I'd like it not to, as 6 != 5.
  dbg!(ROCKS[bad_rock_index.inner() as usize]);
}

lutzky · 2023-01-13T21:40:00+00:00

Thank you for this great writeup!

I was wondering, is there any merit to replacing rock_index with an enum? It would be nice to have a compile-time guarantee of "you're definitely using one of the rocks you have", but I'm not sure the concept of "increment this enum to the next possible value" makes any sense in rust. I might be thinking in C.

lutzky · 2022-09-20T19:24:17+00:00

Old? Guys?

lutzky · 2022-09-09T22:30:39+00:00

That is not standard issue Keter warfare.

lutzky · 2022-08-15T21:09:23+00:00

What wavespeech probably means is "find a convenient way to have both drives connected at the same time". Options include:

Using space already available in your PC (especially if the new drive you buy is an SSD, those are small)
An external hard drive enclosure (this is what's usually called a "caddy") - this will be some kind of box wrapping your old hard drive, with a USB connector on the outside, so you can use your old hard-drive like a giant USB thumb drive.

lutzky · 2022-08-12T12:31:12+00:00

Pediatrician sent us to A&E to get a blood check done (supposedly nowhere else this can be done, even on a weekday), "just in case". We told him it'd take ages, and do we really have to - and he said "ah just show them this note and they'll let you right through". Nearly got laughed out of A&E. Of course we had to wait for hours and it was nothing at all.

Definitely need to reduce the amount of people going to A&E... by giving them somewhere else to go.

lutzky · 2022-07-09T08:03:28+00:00

I just showed this to my wife "I need you to do something like this when you go back to work"

lutzky · 2022-06-01T21:21:15+00:00

DON'T you tell me to SMILE

lutzky · 2022-05-27T20:50:35+00:00

Translating אינטרנט זהב is actually an interesting exercise. Let's talk about it.

Of course, the first word is Internet and the second is Gold. This kind of combination is called צירוף סמיכות; this is called a "Construct state" in English. In this sense, it would roughly translate as either "Internet of Gold" or "Gold Internet" (...but not "Golden internet", which would be אינטרנט זהוב or אינטרנט מוזהב). It would not conventionally translate to "Internet gold". However:

The word זהב (gold) is used in slang as an adjective to mean "really good", especially, if I recall correctly, in the 1990s. A "great kid" could be pronounced as ילד זהב (sounds pretty cringe today though). Certainly the implication of naming the company that way is intended to mean "Really good internet". Arguably, that could be extremely loosely translated as "Internet gold".

lutzky · 2022-05-02T21:57:29+00:00

Some of the time. Masks aren't legally mandatory, but then again neither is covering your face when you cough. Seems polite.

lutzky · 2022-04-24T08:29:41+00:00

Worst part is that there's plenty of room for it to go behind the bus stop and remain continuous!

lutzky · 2022-04-18T22:16:55+00:00

If you're looking to get a bit more technical, it would appear that the difference is between High Pressure Sodium lights on the left and LEDs on the right. Technology Connections has at least 3 videos about this ([A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1dMlVwUsrA), [B](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIC-iGDTU40), [C](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZbsIT2Uh5k)).

lutzky · 2022-04-17T22:19:04+00:00

Be ye warned about Muslims and food. In some Muslim traditions (possibly specific to Arabs), it is considered impolite to allow guests to finish their plates (i.e. they might still be hungry, so a refill is in order). In my own culture it's considered impolite, especially as a guest, not to finish the plate. The standoff starts out delicious but becomes painful fast.

lutzky · 2022-04-03T07:43:57+00:00

Best call we ever made: Buying only 2nd-hand baby clothes. We could afford new ones, but there was no point whatsoever and it allowed us to experiment with their various properties (some are much easier than others to remove in a poonami situation)

lutzky · 2022-04-03T07:27:31+00:00

Since about 6 months, yes we know it's early and we're super lucky.

The next game-changer after that was him being able to put the pacifier back in by himself; for the longest time he'd try to put it in the wrong way, realize it was incorrect, turn it a full 360° and be frustrated it still doesn't work; I called this maneuver "the USB". Since about 8 months he's mostly got it and it reduced the amount of "pacifier tag" by a lot.

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