Em Fleming 🍁

My goodness, it's like the kids in Bruce Coville books grew up. Excellent.

I am counting my lucky stars that most days I work from home.

I didn't actually need gas last week, alas. Only put in a half tank today.

I waited 20 minutes and filled up at 1.50/L at Costco today. Super impressed with the guy directing traffic, what a pro.

Hot damn.

Good old schwa saving the day as usual

Cambridge dictionary tells me that the short i (as in kiss) is a valid American pronounciation, so that is cool!

(Latin dissecare, apparently, hence the extra s, blame Latin)

One thing I love about English's otherwise ridiculous spelling is it keeps the word's history.

Ooh, I know this. That rule doesn't apply when it's a prefix. Think "diode" or "diatom". To dissect is di-sect (compare with vivisect, don't ask me where the extra s came from). To section something is to carve it into parts.

Second one, if I am speaking English.

...apparently we are expecting 2-3cm of freezing rain on Wednesday and Thursday. Fuckity fuck.

(I don't mind most weather we get around here, and Hydro has significantly improved plans and infrastructure since '98, but I really hate freezing rain.)

I was in Tehran this time last year. I want you to see how beautiful my city is. I want you to see the city the US/Israel is trying to wipe off the face of the earth

Kerry Washington is really good at her job.

Look at this excellent piping plover!

anyway, if you're going to use a euphemism, use it for the worse thing

(I don't know if suicide is objectively worse than natural death? But I'm aware that that's thornier.)

All this kerfuffle about "unalived" when 90% of the people I know won't ever say someone died. (passed on! Passed away! Just plain passed. Left us. Etc.) Even with animals, we don't "help them die," we "put them to sleep."

It's so weird when murder is objectively worse than just normal death.

Pride and Prejudice. Objectively excellent and I enjoy many things that would probably not exist without it, but I just want to smack everyone in it.

... I may have just burned through (ha) Emily Tesh's THE INCANDESCENT in one delicious sitting after work, pausing only to move from chair to bed via brushing my teeth.

My butter-chicken-loving self feels this. Delicious, delicious cliché.

If you're doomscrolling, guess what? So far there are 51 kākāpō chicks hatched and thriving this season, the same number of birds as we had in TOTAL in the 90s! Only one chick has died and there are still fertile eggs waiting to hatch!

People who know better than I do can correct me, but can we conclude that Oz is probably in India, which is (afaik) the only place to have lions, tigers, and bears?

(oh my)

North Africa had lions and bears for a bit, but no tigers, right?

Has anyone pointed out to him that Christianity is not a Western religion? Western religions tend toward polytheism.

(Being pedantic because I'm so tired of being furious and this statement makes me want to punch things.)

Facts are good! Cool pictures are good! Rhymes and words that are fun to say (like "Murgatroyd") are also good!

Hey, #astronomy and #teacher and #book folks - can you recommend me a book suitable for a relatively bright five-year-old who went to a planetarium for the first time today and fell in love with Jupiter?

The first Shakespeare I saw performed properly in English was Macbeth (with Sean Bean!). I had read it and loved it, but Mark Bazely as MacDuff just gutted me with the "he HAS no children!" line in ways I did not expect. It still sounds in my head, nearly a quarter century later.

Love that play.

Shit. Yeah.

Montreal's 90's equivalent of Al Capone bought me a hot dog once.

Jerusalem is a weird hymn, because climate change is bad but the only way you're ever gonna turn a green and pleasant land into a desert city is by building more satanic mills.

Granted, I am still bitter that Persuasion didn't end with Anne dressing up in men's clothing and running off to sea with Captain