Today’s Te Reo Māori quirk: tātahi is the beach. You don’t put a ‘te’ in front of it, just like you wouldn’t put a ‘the’ in front of a placename. So: “Kei te haere au ki tātahi.” I’m going to the beach. “Kei te haere au ki te whare pukapuka.” I’m going to the library.
So, any thoughts about what’s heading our way and how long it’ll take to get here?
Interesting word of the week, bdelloid
: From the Ancient Greek βδέλλα (bdella, "leech").
That bd
combination at the start! Can't wait for this to come up in Scrabble.
Where I got this word from: a SciShow video.
Your New Social Credit Score: A powerful 3 minute video about a possible, even likely, future. I specially like: “If you’re a citizen of Google, Facebook, or another corporation…”
We like the horses down the road. Moose has recently joined the other two. When he's standing right beside them you can see what a big fellow he is. The other day he joined me in a selfie. Photos: 3 horses grazing in a paddock; big horse next to me — headshot.
Drat! Last week’s sutures from a trivial excision came out today. Except for one that resisted. Now I have 4 new sutures in the middle of my back. No actual pain, but ouchy! Plus it was so muggy I may have been approaching fainting in the nurse’s office. Recovering at home now.
At sunrise today there was a nice little inversion layer over the paddock next door. Photo: 2 black and white steers grazing in a misty paddock with flax spears in the foreground.
One of the delights of Te Reo Māori is that it doesn’t have to suffer apostrophes. But what I was really going to say was “Good on you Ōtaki for these bilingual road works signs”.
This morning’s beach theme: black-backed gulls and an oystercatcher on the wet sand with Kāpiti Island in the background.
I really enjoyed Elseworlds parts 1 & 2 under the show names of Flash and Arrow. But part 3, under the name of Supergirl, was all about the boys, extra boys even. Supergirl barely even had a role. Pretty darn perturbing!
These starlings, I think, have given themselves orange heads by dipping into the flax flowers. Photos: starlings on flowering flax spears; flowering flax spears against a green paddock and blue sky background.
And again it’s thundery weather. These are my favourite clouds today.
One of the best parts of this story about a homeless man in hospital in Brazil:
The pups were eager, but also patient — settling at the doorway to wait for their friend.
While the staff got César squared away … they … invited his dogs inside as to not keep them apart.
There’s thunder in the air. Photo: low and dark clouds.
The farmer next door is baling hay a couple of paddocks over. Hooray for a zoom lens. Photos: tractor and baling machine collecting hay, wrapping it into big round bales, putting the bales on end on the ground.
Jean @macgenie was kind enough to send me a copy of The Sun. By the looks of these amazing night sky photos by Marc Toso there’s some good summer reading awaiting me.
Dogs are great! Pets are being trained to detect invasive fish: “The dogs sniffed 17-samples …holding their nose by the sample … for long enough they received a treat. If they did not detect koi carp they nudged a little lever which brought around the next sample.” Video too.
On this morning’s beach walk we saw (photos) two horses, and a fishing boat. The sea was very calm.
Bush Giant Dragonflies often come into the house at this time of year and generally can’t find their way out again. I rescued this one (2 photos) today (finger for size). It’s about 80mm long.
