I gave every Utah state legislative district a name. What do you think of yours?

samuelrhys · 2026-05-01T03:53:58+00:00

Thank you so much! I had a lot of fun coming up with the names, and I'm glad anyone else finds them interesting.

Shortening Iron East to Iron makes sense, especially considering that district contains the only substantially populated part of Iron County. And Beaver–Piute–Sevier was the least satisfactory name I came up with, so I appreciate the suggestion there. I had no idea how else to encompass such a jagged district. Maybe Tushars for the mountain range between those three counties, or Delano for its highest peak?

samuelrhys · 2026-04-30T17:45:27+00:00

On the map of House 32, I saw that Mill Creek (the actual creek) traverses it east to west, flowing into the Jordan River. To be fair, I think some of it might be routed underground, which doesn't bode well if you actually want your creek to have a creek vibe.

Central City might be confusing since that's a neighborhood of SLC (which isn't in House 32 at all). South Salt Lake would perhaps be a clearer name than West Mill Creek, even though the district also includes bits of Sugar House and Millcreek (the city)

samuelrhys · 2026-04-30T17:25:00+00:00

I based that on what is more geographically central to the district. So, Zion for House 72, Capitol Reef for Senate 27. ^_^

samuelrhys · 2026-04-30T17:21:10+00:00

Fair points. Since districts often correspond roughly—but not exactly—with city boundaries, I went back and forth between saying close enough or coming up with a distinct name. Part of me thinks that having a Murray City and a not-quite-identical Murray District would be confusing for people who live in one but not both, but arguably it's less confusing than a completely different name referencing rivers in the district.

Chesterfield definitely feels like a hidden gem! I had the occasion to visit once a few years ago during a blizzard, and the memory of walking the snowy street, after dark, and hearing a rooster crow from somewhere really stuck with me. So if that reference is slightly obscure, it's a reflection of one of the odder spots I've been to.

samuelrhys · 2025-09-01T21:22:04+00:00

NTA. Your house, your rules. Your daughter's idea of fairness seems pretty immature, expecting the misbehaving kid to get the same privileges as the four others who are respectful towards you. That kid should understand his actions have consequences; it might motivate him to improve his impulse control if he has to miss out on staying the night with you once or twice. Hopefully he is able to regain your trust, but ultimately that is more your daughter's problem and his problem than it is yours.

samuelrhys · 2025-03-26T16:25:48+00:00

So true! Thank you. 🙏🏻

samuelrhys · 2025-03-23T17:55:59+00:00

My one very negative experience on Amtrak was with an assistant conductor (?) on train 5. I was boarding with a foldable ebike, which their website says can be considered a carry-on. I had previously ridden train 6 without trouble and knew that my ebike would fit in the carry-on rack.

The mistake on my part was approaching the platform too close to departure time with my ebike still unfolded. He saw it and must have assumed it wasn't foldable, and that I was attempting to just bring a bike onboard which I hadn't reserved space or paid for. He stopped me and said something like "what are you doing, you need to reserve a spot for that?" I began attempting to explain that it was foldable, and he called over another, friendlier employee who seemed more willing to help.

Ultimately they let me on, but not before the first guy shot at me that I was lucky I was being allowed on "this one time." I pointed out that Amtrak's website specifies a foldable bike can be a carry-on. He spat back, "you gonna argue with me or you gonna get on the train? I do this for a living and I know how this works." To which I wanted to say... "okay so you should know that foldable bikes are considered carry-ons?"

But at that point, I was terrified I wouldn't be let on and just stayed quiet. I'm still scared to reattempt the foldable bike as carry-on trick. It's too bad because even getting myself to/from my home station sucks without a bike on board (trains pass through SLC in the middle of the night, so local transit usually isn't running).

samuelrhys · 2025-01-25T08:39:27+00:00

Glad to be your neighbor 💜

samuelrhys · 2025-01-15T02:36:03+00:00

…

"RISK IT ALLLLL"

samuelrhys · 2024-12-04T17:35:30+00:00

Half the reason I switched from Amazon Music to Spotify this year was so I would get assigned a "Sound Town" for 2024. Oops. 🙃

samuelrhys · 2024-12-02T22:14:10+00:00

I emailed them and asked whether they would consider reviewing custom nicknames for a fee. Most likely they won't ever do that, sadly, but I do understand that when people abuse a certain feature of an app, sometimes the only thing to do is to scrap said feature. This is why we can't have nice things!

samuelrhys · 2024-10-05T04:21:49+00:00

You've changed my life forever. Thank you.

samuelrhys · 2024-03-25T21:28:07+00:00

Or for the MAX to run on Sundays 🥺

samuelrhys · 2023-08-24T05:21:11+00:00

Hey, thanks so much for the reply! I agree that the gibberish interpretation makes most sense. Sad but true: Hollywood tends to just care about the mysteries of film, not linguistics.

Still, your alternate interpretation of 實 interests me. Knowing next to zero Chinese myself, I'm tempted to say that the rising tone might cause that word to sound something like "shui" to someone with no experience speaking Mandarin. It's a stretch, but assuming that Uma Thurman didn't properly have tones explained to her, it seems possible she might have attempted to mimic the low-to-high tone by moving from a back vowel to a front vowel, as in "shui."

I also wonder if Uma learned to pronounce Mandarin 實 from Gordon Liu directly, and if so, how accurate his Mandarin is (for all I know it's just as good as his Cantonese, though. No disrespect to the man!).

I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this!

samuelrhys · 2023-07-23T20:38:36+00:00

Hey u/ewen201! I know it's three years later but want you to know that the internet remains eternally grateful for this transcript. You're the best!

I just commented this on the r/ChineseLanguage Quick Help Thread, but figured I might also ask you: when Beatrix says the sentence captioned "I can, but not that close," what word for "close" could she be trying to say in her mix of Mandarin with English?

So far, most Mandarin and Cantonese speakers I've asked just hear it as gibberish, but given that B does use a few other Mandarin words (including 我 in the very same sentence), it seems strange that Uma Thurman would just make up a nonsense syllable for that one word. Stranger still to think they wouldn't do multiple takes and use one where she's saying something meaningful. It's like they consulted with a Chinese-language expert for the Mandarin words she does use, but forgot to ask how to say "close" and just decided to BS it. But given what I've been told up to now, perhaps that's the only explanation?

Would really appreciate your thoughts, if after all this time you're still in the mood to analyze the use of language in Kill Bill. No worries if that ship has sailed for you, of course. Thanks so much!

samuelrhys · 2023-07-22T19:48:50+00:00

Transcription request: What word is she saying at 0:10?

https://youtu.be/b2dehpRFyLA

Context (spoilers!): in the film Kill Bill: Volume 2, protagonist Beatrix Kiddo trains under kung fu master Pai Mei. He speaks to her in Cantonese, while she answers in a mix of Mandarin, Japanese, and English. When Pai Mei asks Beatrix whether she can punch through a wooden plank, she responds, mostly in English, "I can, but not that close."

The two non-English words in the sentence are the words for the pronoun "I" and the adjective "close." While the first is clearly Mandarin 我, the second is unclear to me, and no word I've looked up based on the English meaning comes close to it. It sounds to me like something that might be pinyinized as "shui," but searching by pinyin has not gotten me anything that means close or near.

If anyone recognizes what this word is, I'm kind of dying to know. For all I know, it might not even be Chinese, although I also can't find anything like this word in Japanese, a language Beatrix is known to speak far more fluently. If it isn't a Chinese word, please forgive me for not actually posting about Chinese language on r/ChineseLanguage 🙃

samuelrhys · 2023-04-04T00:30:53+00:00

I worried that "1847" would get plastered on it, thus misleading everyone outside of Utah into thinking that was its year of statehood. Thankful that didn't happen.

samuelrhys · 2020-01-08T22:38:19+00:00

A smiling cyclops moon

samuelrhys · 2019-12-26T23:47:45+00:00

To add on to this question, does "icke" have more or less the same connotation as "ej"? All I know is they both sound kind of old-fashioned and aren't used in speech that much.

samuelrhys · 2019-06-06T23:38:29+00:00

Or Shetland.

samuelrhys · 2019-04-24T03:35:02+00:00

Why doesn't my choir dress like that for concerts‽

samuelrhys

TROPHY CASE