Turkey has changed its name to Türkiye. See here. This apparently is how the Turks refer to it, and now they want everyone else to do so. At least they’re not demanding that we use Arabic script to do so, although having an umlaut is slightly annoying.
In other news, the James Webb telescope has reached L2, the second Lagrange point. These points are named after Joseph-Louis Lagrange, a mathematician of French and Italian descent, who calculated where they are. I’m sure that since he is a dead white male, some annoying woke person will insist upon those points being renamed something like “points of stability.” It will turn out that he owned slaves (by owning property in the West Indies), or supported slavery, or met someone who owned slaves and didn’t denounce them, or wasn’t sufficiently against slavery, or something or other along these lines that the woke will find offensive, after which they will begin a campaign to erase him from history. And they will probably succeed.
la grange = "the farm" in French
Posted by: Kevin Kim | 01/26/2022 at 10:02 PM
Sorry, I was drunk or senile or something. "La grange" actually means "the barn." In French, "the farm" is "la ferme," which also happens to sound like one of several ways to say "shut up" in French.
Ferme la bouche! = Shut your mouth!
Ferme-la! = Shut it!
La ferme! = Shut it!
Tais-toi! = Be quiet!
Ta gueule! = nasty way to say "Shut up," from the longer expression "Ferme ta gueule," literally, "Shut your animal-mouth."
This is what happens when you post a comment while half-asleep. Apologies.
Posted by: Kevin Kim | 01/28/2022 at 10:31 AM
No problem
Posted by: John Pepple | 01/30/2022 at 08:12 PM
Kevin, if your half-asleep comments lead to interesting lessons like ways to say “shut up” in French, please keep them coming.
Posted by: Charles N. Steele | 01/30/2022 at 08:43 PM