I usually take my Waikawa Beach photos from across the estuary, somewhere south of the river throat. That's several hundred metres south of the river throat where a groyne is.
Standing at the groyne looking south on a particularly high tide gives quite a different impression.
This was such an interesting podcast episode! Lingthusiasm Episode 99: A politeness episode (1 hour):
…different uses of “please” in UK vs US English, levels of indirectness, email etiquette across generations and subcultures, rudeness and pointing … and how a small number of politeness ingredients can combine in so many different ways that are culturally different.
For my own future reference — Hawaiian Language:
Hawaiian diacritical marks, ʻokina (ʻ) and kahakō (macron) are not just symbols but essential components of the Hawaiian language. The ʻokina represents a glottal stop, a pause in speech, and is typographically represented as a reversed apostrophe. The kahakō, on the other hand, is a bar above a vowel that indicates a prolonged sound. These marks are crucial for accurate pronunciation and meaning in the Hawaiian language.
// @hawaiiboy
Hah, a potential buyer is coming to look at our house this afternoon, in the single hour today when the 100% cloud cover drops to 27%. 😀
Ugh. Looks like creepy spam. Blocked!
It turned out today was floor washing day — prompted in part by the full cup of coffee that started the process in the lounge.
Our floors are all vinyl: we learned while building that houses close to the beach shouldn't have carpet because of all the sand that appears.
Wiped myself out today sorting stuff in the grounds and garage, carting stuff around and loading a skip. Even used both chainsaw and weedeater, as well as a spade. Whew!
It's amazing how much stuff you can clear out when you're moving …
I apologised to this rather chubby Green and Golden Frog for making it homeless. I'd just removed a pile of stuff it was sheltering under on the property.
Glad to see the frog at all though — we're concerned there seem to be fewer around these days.
What hope does a non-American have when the answer to a puzzle is that 4 words with 3 different vowel sounds have the 'same' vowel sound:
From Conlextions #505.
Post delayed to reduce spoilers.
Quite a rattle to wake us at 1130 at night. 〜
Magnitude 5.2, 33 Km deep, not very distant.
No harm done; just a rattle.
Not the most gripping, but an easy read — An Unfortunate Christmas Murder (The Dinner Lady Detectives Book 2) by Hannah Hendy. 📚
Margery [and] her wife, Clementine … are caught in the crossfire when the stage lights collapse at the first [Christmas concert] practice, killing Mrs Large, the music teacher.
Yay. Our building company uses a service called BuilderTrend. They started sharing photos of our new build with us. 🏡
All the empty land behind and beside our new place will eventually have houses on it, but until then we get a bit of a view.
Between having guys working in the 'garden' stirring up sand, dust, pollen etc yesterday and a painter in the house sanding and painting, I think my hay fever is really doing its thing. No sneezing but I have sore eyes, headache and woolly brain, general blahs.
I'm glad it's a warm sunny day.
It's turned in to a hot day. We have a painter in the house touching up spots that need it, and two men in the garden cutting back flax, toting mulch, weed eating.
I've been dragging stuff up from under the house.
It all feels very busy. And hot!
Last night I left the south facing window above my bed wide open to keep the room cool. That didn't work out so well at 1 a.m. when a southerly front blasted in, showering me with wind-blown rain while I slept.
Still it was a good opportunity for a cup of tea and a read …
The whole hour of this Lingthusiasm podcast episode (#98) is fascinating — Helping computers decode sentences. The part about pragmatics, especially so:
if you really want the computer to behave the same way that a person would behave if they heard something and understood it, then you need way more than linguistics. …
if we want to get to “Okay, but what did the person mean by saying that? How does that fit in with what we’ve been discussing so far…?” that’s a whole other set of problems – that’s called “pragmatics”
I was struck by a phrase in an interview (my emphasis) with an Australian woman:
I grew up on Bunuba country, which became a pastoral property when colonisation came into the Kimberley … The land itself is country that we and our generations of families going back to time immemorial have occupied. We hold the stories and the knowledges of that country.
Via: June Oscar on First Nations gender justice - A Podcast of One's Own with Julia Gillard, Season 6, Ep. 17, November 21, 2024.
Out of nowhere I thought of Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner and their huge shouting matches, from the early days of Coronation Street when I was a kid. Hooray for YouTube where I found this: Coronation Street - Elsie Tanner vs. Ena Sharples (27th January 1965).
I still remember many character names.
Not something I've seen in the skies above Waikawa Beach before now. 😳
This applies to Ruakākā, where we're moving to later this year — Fast-track legislation stirs up opponents of Northland sand mining plan | RNZ News:
If the proposal goes ahead, 250,000 cubic metres of sand will be removed per year from an area of seabed about 4km offshore.
The sand would be collected by a suction dredge