Schnee's journal

NetHack 5.0.0

schnee — Sat, 02 May 2026 18:53:10 GMT

NetHack 5.0.0 has been released. Get it while it's hot!

(No, the version number is not a late April fool's joke. Apparently the DevTeam decided to release what used to be 3.7 until quite recently as 5.0.0.)

R.I.P. Björgvin Halldórsson

schnee — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 20:59:05 GMT

It's with the greatest sorrow and with tears in my eyes that I have to report that Björgvin Halldórsson has died. Björgvin was, IMO and until now, the greatest living Icelandic musician, a towering giant, a legend. I cannot express how great of a loss this is.

Gullvagninn var loks sendur að sækja þig. Góða ferð, Bó, og við munum aldrei gleyma þér, þó liði ár og öld.

I am left dumbfounded, devastated. I didn't know Björgvin personally, of course, but I saw him perform, and I listened to his music time and again, and loved it. He is – was – an absolute legend; Pop Star of the Year in 1969, and that was merely the beginning. You can't overstate how important, how influential and how just plain amazing he was. What an absolutely terrible tragedy. I'm at a loss for words.

This is truly the day the music died.

My thoughts, are, of course, with his family — his wife, his children, everyone; and with his friends, his colleagues, his loved ones, his fans.

May love rest gently in your broken hearts.

Deactivating the "share" drag tray in Windows 11

schnee — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 18:11:30 GMT

Newer versions of Windows 11 have a drag tray at the top of the screen in Explorer that pops up when you start dragging an item, say a file.

If you find this behavior annoying and want to disable that tray, the relevant setting is Settings > System > Nearby sharing > Drag Tray. Just turn it off and you're good.

u umlaut in Icelandic

schnee — Sun, 19 Oct 2025 10:37:56 GMT

I just thought that it's really fascinating how differently the u umlaut in Icelandic can affect different words. The most basic rule taught to beginners is that before an inflectional ending involving an u, a stressed a becomes ö and an unstressed one u, but this is only part of the truth. For instance, the ending may in fact be a null ending (södd), or it may not trigger the umlaut (saddur), or the ending itself may be affected (bökuðu). But what I always find fascinating is that the first a to change may not be the first one in the word.

Here's some interesting examples of the u umlaut at work. fag becomes fög (nom./acc. pl.); fagur becomes fögur (nom. sg. f.); banani becomes banönum (dat. pl.; the alternate form bönunum is equally valid); almanak becomes almanök (nom./acc. pl.; neither *almönuk nor *ölmunuk are valid forms); and Emilíana becomes Emilíönu (acc./dat./gen. sg.).

Given names are interesting anyway. Anna becomes Önnu (acc./dat./gen. sg.), María becomes Maríu (dto.), and Annamaría becomes Önnumaríu (dto.); Barbara becomes Barböru (dto.; *Börburu is not valid), and Alexandra becomes Alexöndru (dto., and again, there are no valid alternate forms).

In contrast with Anna and Annamaría, BTW, annasamur become annasöm (nom. sg. f.), as anna- is already in the genitive case here, derived from önn. And as that last word shows, it's of course perfectly possible for an u umlaut that occurs in the dictionary form to disappear again in inflected forms.

Fanney Hrund Hilmarsdóttir's Fríríkið and Dreim: Fall Draupnis feature a character nicknamed Allamma, which becomes Öllömmu (acc./dat./gen. sg.), and I was quite tickled to read the following dedication: Þessi bók er tileinkuð æskustöðvum mínum – Hamarshjáleigu – og öllum Öllömmunum sem þeim fylgdu. Öllum Öllömmunum! That's positively delightful.

And then there's of course there's other kinds of vowel change, and words that undergo several different ones, e. g. þröstur, which inflects as þröstur — þröst — þresti — þrastar in the singular, and þrestir — þresti — þröstum — þrasta in the plural.

R.I.P. Tom Lehrer

schnee — Mon, 28 Jul 2025 06:34:46 GMT

From thewayne comes the word that Tom Lehrer has died at the ripe old age of 97 of undisclosed causes. Tom was not just a gifted mathematician but also a talented musician who gave us a host of satirical songs, ranging from National Brotherhood Week to The New Math. He had no surviving immediate family, but he's survived by friends and fans.

The NY Times has a good obituary.

Also, Tom kindly released all his songs and lyrics into the public domain a few years back, so you can download all of his songs on this website.

Words that don't exist but should

schnee — Mon, 21 Apr 2025 08:16:39 GMT

One that came up in a conversation today:

clutty, adj. (comp. cluttier, superl. cluttiest)

Cluttered.

If you want to make your house cozier by adding more stuff, make sure it's cozy stuff, otherwise it'll just get cluttier instead.

This may seem redundant (greetings from the department of redundancy department!), but it avoids the awkward use of more and most when comparing cluttered.

Setting the display language in Opera

schnee — Sun, 30 Mar 2025 08:53:49 GMT

Just because it's not wholly obvious how to do so, here's how to set the display language in Opera — this might be useful if you're using a locked-down computer at work where your IT department set the system to a local language and when you want English instead:

Go to the settings (opera://settings).
Scroll down to Preferred languages (this is the fourth block in the Browser section).
If English (not English (United States) or so!) is not yet in the list, add it.
Click on the three dots next to English.
Select Display Opera in this language.

Voilà — that's all. Complaining to your IT department is optional but not recommended since experience shows it never achieves anything.

GIMP 3.0

schnee — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 07:27:40 GMT

After a long period of development, tweaking, fine-tuning and polishing, GIMP 3.0 has been released. I've not tried it out yet, but the release notes sound promising. And new feature releases should also be more frequent from this point onwards.

R.I.P., James Harrison

schnee — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 18:47:06 GMT

I just learned that James Harrison died: the Man with the Golden Arm, who regularly donated plasma for over sixty years and whose blood contained a rare antibody that is needed to treat a potentially fatal disease in newborn children.

It is impossible to overstate the positive contribution to humanity that this man has made.

James died peacefully in his sleep at the age of 88 at a nursing home on February 17. My thoughts are with his family, his friends and his loved ones, and with everyone who owes their life to James and his golden arm.

Hraunkælingarstjóri er orð ársins 2024

schnee — Wed, 08 Jan 2025 18:13:16 GMT

RÚV published the result just about an hour ago: hraunkælingarstjóri is the Word of the Year (Orð Ársins) 2024, having received about a quarter of the votes in the preceding poll.

The word means, literally, lava cooling manager, and is the (unofficial) job title of the person whose job it is to make sure that flowing lava is cooled down so as to minimize the risk of damage and accidents:

Hraunkælingarstjóri er starfsheiti þess sem stendur vaktina við rennandi hraun og kælir jaðar þess til að minnka hættu á slysum og skemmdum.

The earliest article I can immediately find that uses the word is from from August 2, BTW: Nýr hraunkælingarbúnaður settur upp til að verja Svartsengi, written by Alma Ómarsdóttir and published by RÚV. This article already uses it like an established/well-known word, however.

The only person whose born this title so far, BTW, is Helgi Hjörleifsson. Til hamingju Helga!

Listing Icelandic given names

schnee — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 15:51:29 GMT

Yesterday's entry on given names in Hrím had me looking at the official register of given names. There's no complete list available, and since I wanted one in a useful format (such as CSV) I decided to put it together myself. Here's how.

Start by getting the list of names for each initial letter by applying filters and saving the page with the table in your browser. In Firefox at least, make sure you save it as Web page, complete rather than Web page, HTML only, since the latter will save the original page, not the current page with dynamically-loaded elements.

Put all the files in a subdirectory, say orig, and run the following script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use feature qw/say/;
use File::Slurp qw/read_file write_file append_file/;

my @files = <orig/*.htm>;

write_file("merged.htm", "");

for my $filename (@files) {
    say "Processing $filename ...";

    my $file = read_file($filename);

    $file =~ s/^.*<tbody>//gs;
    $file =~ s#</tbody>.*$##gs;
    $file =~ s/ class=".*?"//gs;

    my $checkmarksvg = q|<div><div><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" data-testid="icon-checkmark" fill="#0061ff" color="#0061ff" width="16px" height="16px"><path fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="32" d="M416 128L192 384l-96-96"></path></svg></div><div>|;
    my $infosvg = q|<div><span tabindex="0" aria-describedby=".*?"><svg viewBox="0 0 512 512" data-testid="icon-informationCircle" fill="#99c0ff" color="#99c0ff" width="16px" height="16px"><path d="M256 56C145.72 56 56 145.72 56 256s89.72 200 200 200 200-89.72 200-200S366.28 56 256 56zm0 82a26 26 0 11-26 26 26 26 0 0126-26zm48 226h-88a16 16 0 010-32h28v-88h-16a16 16 0 010-32h32a16 16 0 0116 16v104h28a16 16 0 010 32z"></path></svg></span></div>|;
    my $opensvg = q|<svg viewBox="0 0 512 512" data-testid="icon-open" fill="currentColor" color="currentColor" width="24px" height="24px"><path d="M384 224v184a40 40 0 01-40 40H104a40 40 0 01-40-40V168a40 40 0 0140-40h167.48M336 64h112v112M224 288L440 72" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="32"></path></svg>|;
    my $crossmarksvg = q|<div><div><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" data-testid="icon-close" fill="#b30038" color="#b30038" width="16px" height="16px"><path fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" stroke-width="32" d="M368 368L144 144m224 0L144 368"></path></svg></div><div>|;
    $file =~ s/$checkmarksvg/samþykkt/g;
    $file =~ s/$infosvg/(i)/g;
    $file =~ s/$opensvg//g;
    $file =~ s/$crossmarksvg/hafnað/g;

    $file =~ s/ target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" tabindex="-1"//g;
    $file =~ s#</?span.*?>##g;
    $file =~ s#</?div.*?>##g;
    $file =~ s#</?p.*?>##g;
    $file =~ s#</tr><tr>#</tr>\n<tr>#g;

    (my $outfilename = $filename) =~ s#orig/##;

    my @lines = split /^/, $file;

    append_file("merged.htm", (@lines, "\n"));
    @lines = ("<table>\n", @lines, "\n</table>\n");
    write_file($outfilename, @lines);

}

This'll write a new file, merged.htm.

Run the command cat merged.htm | sort | uniq >merged2.htm to filter out duplicate entries (probably not necessary).

Run the command cat merged2.htm | perl processit.pl, using the following script:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use utf8;
use open qw(:std :utf8);
use feature qw/say/;
use Data::Dumper;
use List::Util qw/uniq/;
use Text::CSV;

my $nöfn = {};

while(<>) {

    chomp;
    s/\r//g;
    s/\n//g;
    
    s/<tr><td>//;
    s#</td></tr>##;
    s/Úrskurður\s*//gi;
    
    my @dót = split m#</td><td>#, $_;
    
    my $kyn = $dót[0];
    my $ritbr = 0;
    if($kyn =~ /\s*\(ritbr.\)$/) {
        $kyn =~ s/\s*\(ritbr.\)$//;
        $ritbr = 1;
    }
    
    #say join "\n", @dót;
    
    my $nafn = $dót[1];
    my $upplýsingar = 0;
    if($nafn =~ /\(i\)/) {
        $nafn =~ s/\(i\)//;
        $upplýsingar = 1;
    }
    
    my $ákvörðun = $dót[2];
    my $dagsetning = "";
    my $tengill = "";
    my @athugasemdir = ();
    $ákvörðun =~ s#</a>$##;
    $ákvörðun =~ s/\s*$//;
    $ákvörðun =~ s/^\s*//;
    
    if($ákvörðun =~ /\s*-\s*sératkvæ/) {
        $ákvörðun =~ s/\s*-\s*sératkvæ//;
        push @athugasemdir, "sératkvæði";
    }
        
    if($ákvörðun =~ /<a href=".*?">/) {
        $ákvörðun =~ s/<a href="(.*?)">//;
        $tengill = $1;
        $tengill =~ s/amp;//g;
    }    
    my $dagsetningar_re = '(\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.(\d{2,})(\s*-\s*\d{1,2}\.\d{1,2}\.(\d{2,}))?|\d{1,2}\. (janúar|febrúar|mars|april|maí|júní|júlí|ágúst|september|október|nóvember|desember) (\d{2,})|\d{2}/\d{4}|\d{2}.\d{6}|\d{4})';
    if($ákvörðun =~ /$dagsetningar_re/) {
        $ákvörðun =~ s/$dagsetningar_re//;
        $dagsetning = $1;
    }
    
    my $athugasemdir = join ", ", @athugasemdir;
    push @{ $nöfn->{$nafn} }, {
        "Kyn" => $kyn,
        "Ritháttur" => $ritbr,
        "Upplýsingar" => $upplýsingar,
        "Ákvörðun" => $ákvörðun,
        "Dagsetning" => $dagsetning,
        "Tengill" => $tengill,
        "Athugasemdir" => $athugasemdir,
    };
    
    # say Dumper $nöfn;
    # last
    
}

#my @x = map { $_->{"Ákvörðun"} } values %$nöfn;
#say join "\n", uniq(@x)

# my @x = grep { ($nöfn->{$_}->{"Ákvörðun"} ne "✓") and ($nöfn->{$_}->{"Ákvörðun"} ne "❌") and ($nöfn->{$_}->{"Ákvörðun"} ne "") } keys %$nöfn;
# say join "\n", @x;

# say Dumper $nöfn;

my @atriði = qw/Kyn Ritháttur Upplýsingar Ákvörðun Dagsetning Athugasemdir Tengill/;

my $kag = Text::CSV->new({ binary => 1, eol => "\n" });
open my $FH, ">", "nöfn.csv" or die "Ekki tókst að opna nöfn.csv: $!";
open my $HTML, ">", "nöfn.html" or die "Ekki tókst að opna nöfn.html: $!";

$kag->print($FH, ['key', @atriði]);
say $HTML "<html><body><table><tr><th>Nafn</th><th>", join("</th><th>", @atriði), "</th></tr>";

my @icelandic_order = qw(A Á B C D Ð E É F G H I Í J K L M N O Ó P Q R S T U Ú V W X Y Ý Z Þ Æ Ö);
my %rank = map { $icelandic_order[$_] => $_ } 0 .. $#icelandic_order;

sub compare_keys {

    my @a_chars = split //, uc($a);
    my @b_chars = split //, uc($b);

    my $len_a = scalar @a_chars;
    my $len_b = scalar @b_chars;

    for my $i (0 .. $len_a - 1) {
        last if $i >= $len_b;

        my $rank_a = $rank{$a_chars[$i]} // 999;
        my $rank_b = $rank{$b_chars[$i]} // 999;

        return $rank_a <=> $rank_b if $rank_a != $rank_b;
    }

    return $len_a <=> $len_b;
}


for my $nafn (sort compare_keys keys %$nöfn) {
    for my $færsla (@{ $nöfn->{$nafn} }) {
        my @röð = ($nafn, map { $færsla->{$_} // '' } @atriði);
        $kag->print($FH, \@röð);
        
        if($færsla->{"Tengill"} ne "") {
            $færsla->{"Tengill"} = '<a href="' . $færsla->{"Tengill"} . '">Smelltu hér</a>';
        }
        @röð = ($nafn, map { $færsla->{$_} // '' } @atriði);
        say $HTML "<tr><td>", join("</td><td>", @röð), "</td></tr>";
    }
}

say $HTML "</table></body></html>";

close $FH;
close $HTML;

This'll give you two files: nöfn.csv, and nöfn.html. The former is suitable for further processing, the latter provides an unstyled overview over all names.

What I haven't done yet is integrating the annotations for names that the original pages also have. Right now, there is only a flag indicating that there is an annotation, but obviously in order to process the whole thing further you'd ideally wand the text of the annotation itself. Also, dates aren't normalized to a common, sensible format yet.

The list of names reveals various curiosities, BTW. Quite a few names were apparently applied for several times until they were finally permitted, and I feel not all of them integrate well into the Icelandic language (which is to say I'm not sure would have voted to permit them all). Others were denied for no reason I can readily discern (such as Aðalbjörgvin). Still others are funny but were probably rightly denied, such as the seasonally appropriate Eldflaug (rocket) for a girl. And then there's names that made me think that a child shouldn't be made to bear them just because the parents thought they had a funny idea, such as Kóbra.

Nöfn í Hrími

schnee — Wed, 01 Jan 2025 14:47:35 GMT

I love the variety and beauty of Icelandic given names, and I was very happy when I started Hildur Knútsdóttir's Hrím recently that all the people in the book have beautiful names.

Out of curiosity I made a list (for the first five chapters, which is how far I've read so far) and checked my copy of Guðrún Kvaran's Nöfn Íslendinga (2011 edition), the Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls (online), and the official register (mannanafnaskrá) to see which of them actually exist.

Turns out that Angi, Bresi, Eirfinna, Hlér, Holti, Iða, Jófríður, Jóra, Kára, Máney and Úlfrún are listed in all three.

Feldís is listed in Nöfn Íslendinga and in BÍN, but is (surprisingly) not on the official list. Sóli is listed as a pet name by BÍN (only). Ylfingur is on the official list, but was added fairly recently, on October 27 2017, and doesn't appear as a name in either NÍ or BÍN.

Auðni, Áni and Karki are not listed anywhere, but Nöfn Íslendinga has Auðna, Án and Karka, so I think they would easily be accepted as variants.

Finally, Aða, Krafla, Suðri and Þjarki don't exist as names at all it seems, but they do exist as regular words and should therefore be acceptable as given names too.

I should do the same for the Dísa books by Guðmundur Theodór Eggertsson, as well as his Furðufjall series, some day; he also had beautiful names for his characters, such as Vár (which, just to give it away right away, is not in NÍ but is on the official list, having been accepted on September 6 2007).

Things NetHack yells

schnee — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 18:38:07 GMT

Just out of boredom, here's a list of things that NetHack (the game) will yell at you, or have others yell at you:

Bang!
Beware!
Blecch!
Boing!
Boom!
BOOM!
Bummer!
Clang!
Clash!
Congratulations!
Crack!
Crash!
CRASH!
Delicious!
Dude!
Eek!
Egads!
Flupp!
Fractals!
GAME!
Hark!
Help!
Idiot!
Kaablamm!
KAABLAMM!
Kaboom!
KABOOM!
KADOOM!
Kerplunk!
Klick!
Klonk!
Klunk!
Memory!
NetHack!
Ooph!
Ouch!
Pheew!
Plop!
Scrooge!
Splash!
Splat!
Squelch!
Thief!
THUD!
Thump!
Ulch!
Wait!
Whee!
Whoa!
Wow!
Yecch!
Yikes!
Yow!
Yuck!
Yum!

The list was generated as follows:

$ git clone https://github.com/NetHack/NetHack/
$ find NetHack -type f -exec egrep "(You\(|pline\(|pline_dir\(|pline_xy\(|pline_mon\(custompline\(urgent_pline\(|Norep\(|Your\(|You_feel\(|You_cant\(There\(|You_hear\(|You_see\(verbalize\()" "{}" \; >outputs.txt
$ perl -nE 'm/([A-Z]\w*?)!/; say "$1!" if(length($1));' outputs.txt | sort | uniq > exclam.txt

Out of these, GAME!, NetHack!, Memory!, and Scrooge! are flukes (feel free to come up with a smarter regex), but the rest are real, and sure are fun. :) Bonus points if you can tell in which context they occur without checking (I can't)!

Til hamingju með daginn, Ísland

schnee — Sat, 16 Nov 2024 09:02:26 GMT

Mynd: Gerðaskóli. Takk. <3

On current affairs

schnee — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 19:05:55 GMT

Disabling Tenor GIF search in Windows Emoji Picker

schnee — Sat, 19 Oct 2024 11:31:32 GMT

The emoji picker dialog that Windows includes (use Windows + . to access it) not only allows you to insert emoji and smileys with relative ease, but also does GIFs. I find this distracting, and on top of that these are provided by an external service that the tool connects to automatically and without my consent.

There is no option to disable this (to my knowledge), but here's a working solution, due to RetsuAsakura on Reddit: disallow outbound network traffic from the program in question. Here's how to do it, using Windows' built-in firewall:

Open settings (Windows + i is the easiest way).
Open the Windows Defender Firewall (typing firewall into the search box is the easiest way).
Click on Advanced Settings in the left-hand sidebar.
Click on Outbound rules in the left-hand sidebar.
Click on New Rule... in the right-hand sidebar.
Select the Program rule type (default).
Select This program path (default), click Browse, and navigate to C:\Windows\SystemApps\МісrоѕоftWіndоwѕ.Сlіеnt.СВЅ_сw5n1h2tхуеwу\ТехtІnрutНоѕt.ехе.
Select Block the connection (default).
Check Domain, Private and Public (all checked by default).
Assign a name to the rule so that you'll remember later what it's for. This is not strictly required, but it's a REALLY good idea.

After you do all that, GIFs won't trouble you anymore:

elsewhen/anderswann, elsewhy/anderswarum and so on

schnee — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 07:56:19 GMT

Just recently I noticed that while there are words such as elsewhere, anderswo and annarsstaðar, we don't seem to have the equivalents for other things one could want to talk about using appropriate adverbs, such as time, manner, reason and so on. Put more simply, there is no elsewhen, elsehow, elsewhy and so on; we have to resort to somewhat stilted constructions and say at another time, in another manner, for another reason and so on.

Well, no more. Languages are inherently productive, linguistic prescriptivism is dead, and if you're a human being endowed with the ability to speak (in a very general sense), then you may engage in wordcoinery as you please. That's what I'm doing, so the following are now words in my English and my German:

elsewhen, anderswann (colloquial spoken German already has wann anders)
elsehow, anderswie
elsewhy, anderswarum
elsewhither (German already has woandershin)
elsewhence (German already has woandersher)

Feel free to suggest improvements, alternatives, and additions. kalogrenant may recall that I used anderswarum in a conversation with him recently; it allowed me to express what I wanted to say more succinctly.

I'm not including ones for Icelandic here since I feel my Icelandic is not sufficiently developed yet for me to extend it this way; my focus is still on learning the standard language as it is spoken.

BTW, Esperanto is much more systematic about this sort of thing, and I'm sure any learner of Esperanto will have encountered the following table of tabelvortoj (table words) early on:

Image: moi

'course, there's no prefix indicating an alternative. Maybe there should be one.

Side note: this table is one of the reasons why I always have to grin when I see a Kia Picanto. It sounds like an exasperated sigh of frustration in Esperanto: kia picanto!

Tiefschürfendes zu später Stunde

schnee — Thu, 26 Sep 2024 05:55:38 GMT

An interesting excerpt from an interview with Leigh Ann Henion about her new book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, in the Christian Science Monitor:

An idea that intrigued me was this notion that people ask bigger questions in the dark. Why is that?
Consider the conversations that take place at a campfire as opposed to conversations that take place at a conference under fluorescent lighting. Research indicates that we, as a species, have tended to fill [darkness] with more creative storytelling and music and artistic ways of interacting and communicating knowledge versus the more practical aspects of daylight conversations. Night gives us this palette. Light allows us to see, but then it creates boundaries. When you’re in darkness, the possibilities are infinite.

This is an interesting thought for sure, and the atmosphere at a campfire at night is certainly vastly different from a conference under artificial light. Whether I would posit a causal link to darkness as such is another question (and a campfire is a source of light anyway), but I think that this points to the fact that sitting at a campfire at night is something that is human nature. We've been doing that sort of thing for tens of thousands of years. It's likely literally in our genes. Conferences under fluorescent light where you talk to strangers about things that do not truly move you (you, the person!) is not our nature. No wonder, then, that the former feels right in ways that the latter doesn't, and fosters conversation the latter does not.

The book sounds interesting as well. Maybe I'll read it some time; for now I have Matt Haig's Midnight Library ahead of me, which was recommended to me last night and which sounded like something I should indeed read.

Contronyms

schnee — Thu, 19 Sep 2024 05:47:56 GMT

Today I learned that words that have different, opposite meanings are called contronyms (thanks Merriam-Webster). The example that MW give is sanction; other examples, from Wikipedia, include to clip (which can indicate both removal and fastening) and oversight. (Wikipedia actually lists a bunch more, several of which I find questionable, or even incorrect, especially in languages other than English.)

I'd also list inflammable, which can mean both flammable and (perhaps) nonflammable. See this entry.

On textbooks

schnee — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 10:19:17 GMT

Here's another brief thought. It's sometimes asked why it's so difficult to learn a new language (even though children, all children, are really good at it).

There's different reasons. People sometimes claim that children's brains are more malleable, or in any case more adaptable, than adults'; I'm not sure I believe this. One of my own thoughts I wrote down here somewhere years ago is that as adults who already learned a language, we already have conceptualized the world, and we are seeking to impose a new (perceived) structure of the world where there already is a prior one in our brains. Children, in contrast, have no concept of the world, and learn to speak at the same time that they build this structure: language shapes perception, and perception shapes language.

Recently I thought of another, much more profane reason: textbooks. Specifically, many of the textbooks I've seen are based on studying grammar, and on receptive use of a language. The questions that textbooks ask are what does this mean? (reception) and what is the structure of this/why is this structure used and not another? (grammar), but what textbooks should really be about is expressive intent: how do I say this?.

Expressive intent is seen at the beginning of textbooks, of course: how I do I say hello, how do I order food at a restaurant, how do I ask for directions, that sort of thing. But after a certain level of language acquisition, this stops, perhaps because there's so many ways to go (so many different intents to cover after the basics have been learned). And, coincidentally, that is when (in my experience) people start having trouble progressing further. There's Beginner Hill, which is all friendly and easily climbed, and then there's Mount Fluency, whose summit is accessible only to advanced alpinists with a dogged perserverance.

Image: Itchy Feet. Read the comic, buy the books!

Perhaps there's a business opportunity here: since there's so many things to cover after the basics, why not produce a whole load of textbooks for advanced learners, covering all sorts of things? But I guess it's not something that'd pay well and cover the costs, especially for the languages I'm interested in and where I'd like to improve (specifically, Icelandic).

Learning to be human

schnee — Sat, 14 Sep 2024 10:08:14 GMT

A while ago I met a flying fox who had raised by humans after being rejected by both her mother and by the group of flying foxes at the zoo where she was born.

What struck me about her was that she never learned to fly.

It's in her genes to fly, of course; she's a flying fox. But that's not enough. You have to learn these things, which entails having someone to show you how it's done. When there's no one around you who knows how to do it, then you won't.

And I thought: the same is true for many things, and for many species, including humans. Just like it's in a flying fox's nature to fly, there are things that are in our nature because we're human beings. But even though it's in our genes, we never learned to truly be human.

What things are those, exactly? I'll leave that up to you, but just consider how we are living today, and whether any of us would be able to survive in the world of 5,000 years ago.

Complex arithmetic, IEEE, and R

schnee — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 06:58:26 GMT

As seen/discussed on one of the several R mailing lists:

R version 4.4.1 (2024-06-14 ucrt) -- "Race for Your Life"
Copyright (C) 2024 The R Foundation for Statistical Computing
[...]

> atan(1i)
[1] 0+Infi
> atan(1i)*2
[1] NaN+Infi

Oops. The reason for this is that apparently, when multiplying (or dividing) a complex number by a real number, R first converts the latter to a complex and then carries out the computation. In this case, this yields

(0 + Inf i) * (2 + 0i) = 0*2 + 0*0i + Inf i * 2 + Inf i * 0i

= 0 + 0i + Inf i * 2 + NaN * i^2

= 0 + 0i + Inf i * 2 - NaN

= NaN + Inf i

since 0 · ∞ is not sensibly defined, and set to NaN in IEEE 754. MATLAB is more sensible about it (same for Octave):

>> ver
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MATLAB Version: 24.1.0.2689473 (R2024a) Update 6
[...]
>> atan(1i)
ans =
   0.0000 +    Infi
>> atan(1i)*2
ans =
   0.0000 +    Infi

As is Mathematica:

In[1]:= $Version
Out[1]= "14.0.0 [...] (64-bit) (December 13, 2023)"

In[2]:= ArcTan[I]
Out[2]= 𝕚 ∞

In[3]:= ArcTan[I]*2
Out[3]= 𝕚 ∞

Is that the correct answer? Well, there are some subtleties involved since the complex numbers can be conceptualized in a variety of ways. What's more, it's not clear the real and imaginary parts should be treated separately for the purpose of infinities, not-a-numbers and other such beasts: it is also sensible to augment the complex numbers by only a single point at infinity (often written as ̂∞, and BTW, if the hat is not on the ∞ symbol, then it's because it's only 2024 and Unicode is apparently still an unsolved problem). In any case, R's answer seems both unintuitive and wrong (even if it is technically correct — the best kind of correct, as we all know), unlike MATLAB's and Mathematica's, but we'll see whether there'll be any changes in R as a result of this.

EDIT, 2024-09-14: Python also gets it wrong (numpy specifically; math.atan in base Python cannot handle complex arguments to begin with):

Python 3.11.7 | packaged by Anaconda, Inc. | (main, Dec 15 2023, 18:05:47) [...]
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import numpy
>>> numpy.arctan(1j)
<stdin>:1: RuntimeWarning: divide by zero encountered in arctan
infj
>>> numpy.arctan(1j)*2
<stdin>:1: RuntimeWarning: invalid value encountered in scalar multiply
(nan+infj)
>>>

Off by 100

schnee — Thu, 29 Aug 2024 08:30:35 GMT

I was just looking at Albert's The World’s Most Difficult Constitution to Amend? (published in the California Law Review in 2005, and available in a more convenient form here). This states, at the very beginning of section I:

There have been roughly 12,000 attempts to amend the United States Constitution since its creation 235 years ago. Of those thousands of amendment proposals, only 27 have become official—an extraordinarily low rate of success drifting near 0.002%.

The last figure is wrong: it's actually 0.225%, give or take a bit depending how rough roughly is: drifting near 0.2%, if you will. In other words, the author is off by a factor of 100, perhaps because he did not convert the share of amendmends adopted to a percentage.

I'm not blaming the author; mistakes happen. I'm surprised that no reviewer, referee or editor caught this, however, and I'm also surprised that almost 20 years after publication, this was not fixed — I'd have expected the version on the California Law Review website to have an erratum, at the very least.

Delocalizing R

schnee — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 08:27:04 GMT

If you, like me, are sometimes using R in the salt mines, and if you're stuck with a work computer that's got a localized copy of Windows installed where changing the system language is no an option, and if you're annoyed that R then translates every fucking thing including error messages …

… then set an environment variable called LANGUAGE to en, and restart R (i. e. RStudio or whatever IDE you use).

Setting an environment variable is somewhat convoluted, but in Windows 11, here's how you do it:

Right-click on This PC.
Select Properties.
Click on Advanced system settings.
Click on the Environment Variables… button.
Click on the New… button under User Variables (NOT the one under System Variables).
From here on it should be obvious how to proceed.

Also, tell the R developers to stop this crap. Translating user-facing error messages is one thing; translating developer-facing error messages is actively harmful when you're trying to figure out why an error is happening.

V1 word order in Icelandic

schnee — Sat, 24 Aug 2024 06:57:07 GMT

While reading the coverage of the newest eruption in Morgunblaðið yesterday, I noticed something that you see in Icelandic on occasion: V1 word order, where the (finite) verb of an otherwise ordinary sentence precedes the subject. Consider the following paragraph:

Gosið kom upp á svipuðum slóðum og í síðustu jarðeldum í maí sl. eða austan Sýlingarfells. Mikill kraftur var í gosinu í upphafi og á rúmum klukkutíma var sprungan orðin um 4 kílómetra löng. Rann hraunið frá sprungunni til austurs og vesturs. Var mestur kraftur nyrst í sprungunni. Þegar Morgunblaðið fór í prentun á miðnætti voru ekki vísbendingar um að sprungan væri að opnast til suðurs, í áttina að Grindavík.

The first two sentences are perfectly ordinary, but the next have the verb at the front: Rann hraunið frá sprungunni til austurs og vesturs. Var mestur kraftur nyrst í sprungunni. ("Ran the lava from the fissure to the east and west. Was the greatest power northernmost in the fissure.")

It sounds fairly dramatic to me, and today I actually decided to look it up. Daisy Neijman discusses this in her super-useful Icelandic: An Essential Grammar (section 14.4.3, p. 434):

When the finite verb is purposely given the front position, rather than occupying this position because of clause type (as in a question or imperative clause), it is usually for stylistic effect, to create a more dramatic or vivid narrative (cf. English “says he”). This is most commonly done in written and literary language:

Fór konan nú að ógleðjast; spurði bóndinn hana hverju það sætti
(“The woman now started to get sick; the farmer asked her what the reason was”)

(Side note: I wonder if bóndi shouldn't be translated as husband here, but I'll defer to Daisy's expertise, doubly so since I don't know if it's even a quote from a published work to begin with or just an example sentence she made up.)

Re: creating more dramatic and vivid narratives, this word order inversion also features in Diana Wynne Jones's Tough Guide to Fantasyland (the Updated and Revised Edition), which contains the following entry:

MANAGEMENT DIRECTIVES occur when the Management requires heavenly choires to add to the usual OFFICIAL MANAGEMENT TERMS (OMTs). This is when the Tour gets particularly doom ladden (OMT), usually in the lead-up to the CONCLUSION. Then the OMTs go into overdrive and start saying things backwards. Typical MDs are Grim were they and of awesome countenance, or Wan was that dawn and spectral the Sun, or High and frowning were the walls but undaunted the assault thereon, or Sang they with eagerness and sang their swords with them. Anyway, you'll known one when you see one.

If you've ever read a classic sword-and-sorcery novel, you'll have encountered these! The last one features V1 verb order — the others put adjectives first, which is also possible in Icelandic; Neijman writes (p. 435):

Subject complement[s] […] are easily fronted, as a whole or in part:

Stór og sterkur var Jón Páll (“Big and strong was Jón Páll”)
Stór var Jón Páll og sterkur (“Big was Jón Páll, and strong)

A well-chosen example, BTW!

It's perhaps difficult to pull any of this off in English these days without it sounding intentionally or unintentionally silly, though it still seems to be quite possible in Icelandic. Morgunblaðið regularly uses this kind of language, for certain.

I also wonder if I should start talking like that myself. Went he to work, and worsened his mood while his woe went up …

(0 + Inf i) * (2 + 0i)	=	02 + 00i + Inf i * 2 + Inf i * 0i
	=	0 + 0i + Inf i * 2 + NaN * i^2
	=	0 + 0i + Inf i * 2 - NaN
	=	NaN + Inf i