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Greek plural

The woman at the supermarket checkout counter this morning had a nametag that said “Fatoumata”, \and my brain just wouldn't stop yelling at me that this was obviously the plural of “Fatouma”.

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Race-switching The Dukes of Hazzard

While the 2005 film remake of The Dukes of Hazzard was being planned, there were rumors that Anthony Anderson was being considered for the role of the villain, Boss Hogg . This would have been interesting, as Anderson is Black, and Hogg is not. But they ended up giving the role to Burt Reynolds. Boss Hogg is a malevolent but jolly buffoon, and I have trouble picturing handsome, self-possessed, well-built Burt Reynolds in the role. But I haven't seen the film, so maybe it worked. Today I saw a picture of Anderson and once again regretted the lost opportunity. But then I thought: why not a versi

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Richard Blair

Richard Blair, the adopted son of George Orwell, has a surprising amount to say about what his father was like, considering that he was four years old when Orwell died.

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On futile explanations

The best sentence I wrote last week: It's true that ‘California regulatory compliance / bureaucratic dysfunction’ is a plausible explanation, but without specific details it's unsatisfying in the same way as ‘it's God's will’: it applies equally well to all puzzles and it explains nothing.

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A difficulty in race-switching the Dukes of Hazzard

A couple of weeks ago I considered a version of The Dukes of Hazzard in which most of the characters, and the Duke Brothers themselves, were Black. I overlooked at least one important detail that I have not been able to resolve. I said: One thing absolutely must be changed: The General Lee must have a new name and it cannot have the Confederate flag on the roof. I said the new car could be named for Robert Smalls . It would be a black Dodge Charger, with the state flag of South Carolina on the roof. I'm still satisfied with this. But I forgot an important detail. The General Lee's horn plays t

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The horn of the Robert Smalls

I can't stop thinking about the Black-centered remake of The Dukes of Hazzard . (Previously: [ 1 ] [ 2 ].) In the previous article I observed that while I had found a satisfactory way to replace the General Lee (now the Robert Smalls) and its Confederate flag, I was stuck on its horn sound, which in the original plays “Dixie”. I workshopped this with Claude yesterday and found what I think is an excellent solution. James Brown's “I Got You (I Feel Good)” starts with: I feel good! (Wah-wah wah-wah wah-wah wah) Listen here Even the parts of this that aren't already horns still sound like horns!

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Uthiramerur: The Grandmother of City Administrations

Last weekend was a long one and, with many roads empty owing to the great migration “to the native,” as Chennai says, I decided to visit Uthiramerur. It had long been on my list of must-see places in and around the city. To someone deeply interested in civic history, this was a kind of pilgrimage. […] The post Uthiramerur: The Grandmother of City Administrations first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

The Government Farm Village of Madras

Most accounts of the city, including those written well into the 1980s, mention with some wonder that the lands south of Gemini Circle comprised essentially farms with wet cultivation. Wet cultivation was common across these areas, and many writers added the caveat that this remained true “until recently.” Working backwards, it would appear that farming […] The post The Government Farm Village of Madras first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

Government Plans for Fort St. George: What Next?

The Tamil Nadu government has opened yet another chapter in its century-old search for a new assembly and secretariat complex. In August this year, the Chief Minister announced the decision to relocate them, after which three possible sites were shortlisted. Foreshore Estate near Santhome was eventually chosen. Several questions remain unanswered regarding the choice, land […] The post Government Plans for Fort St. George: What Next? first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

The Sapta Sthana of Mylapore

Of late, the cult of the Sapta Sthana circuit has been growing in Mylapore. It involves seven Shiva temples in the area. If social media is to be believed, the tradition is a thousand years old! And yet, until the early 2000s, none of us Mylaporeans had even heard of it, familiar though we were […] The post The Sapta Sthana of Mylapore first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

Documenting Chennai’s Architecture

The Hindu’s boardroom witnessed a book release earlier this week. It was a slim volume titled Chennai Contemporary Architecture, A Guide, written by A. Srivathsan and Fiona Evangeline S. The book was brought out by The Hindu Group of Publications and the Chennai Architecture Foundation. Receiving the first copy, I could not help reflecting on […] The post Documenting Chennai’s Architecture first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

New Secretariat and Airport: Season of Dither

The sensational announcements have been made. And they have created the sensations that were expected. There is anger in a few places, mockery in others and genuine concern in a few quarters. All of this would have been well enough had there been well-thought-out reasons behind the decisions. Now that the announcements have been made […] The post New Secretariat and Airport: Season of Dither first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

The Avadi Story

Last week, I went to the Sir Ramaswami Mudaliar School in Ambattur to judge an elocution competition. The topic was (what else?) ‘If Chennai’s old buildings and streets could speak.’ Driving back, I reflected on how, if the neighbouring area of Avadi could speak, it would scream from the rooftops that its name is not […] The post The Avadi Story first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

The Madras Gate at Pondicherry

Each time I drove to Pondicherry, I would resolve to stop just before entering the city and read the inscription at the base of the massive obelisk that stands on the left. But then, you know how it is – the priorities of others in the vehicle invariably take over. In January this year, however, […] The post The Madras Gate at Pondicherry first appeared on Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music .

Madras Heritage and Carnatic Music · EN

Cross-Site Requests

Hello, Internet. I thought about cross-site requests and realised we have both CSRF protection and CORS and it doesn’t make sense from the first glance. It does generally, but I need a thousand words to make it so. CSRF stands for Cross-Site Request Forgery. It was rather popular in the earlier internet but now it’s almost a non-issue thanks to standard prevention mechanisms built into most of popular web frameworks. The forgery is to make user click on a form that will send a cross-site request. The protection is to check that the request didn’t come from a third-party site.

Smagin · EN

I Need your Help to Improve Money Formatting on the Internet

I noticed the other day that a popular ruby library for all things money, Money , formats Serbian Dinar incorrectly. I spent several evenings to learn and describe what the correct formatting would be and how to achieve that. The answer requires croudsourcing, which you probably figured already. TL;DR: Unicode categorised it all; ECMA 402 contains lots of wisdom; if you make a money formatting library, make sure it uses CLDR; if you know about a less popular currency or language more than most, check if CLDR is correct. Update 10.01.2026: most of the PRs I mentioned are merged now, thanks ever

Smagin · EN

Ordinary Life Improvements since 2018

Gwern wrote a post about his ordinary life improvements in 2018. I feel like now is a good time to write a follow-up. Obviously, we’re different people who live in different places and have different habits. What’s better, people in comments live in other places, and have other habits and hobbies and I hope would bring 10x of what I can think about. So, for me, compared to 2018, Laptops are fast and live all day. Smartphones live two days on one charge. Noise cancelling headphones are great. Dishwasher and robot vacuum remain the best quality of life improvements for home. Both bec

Smagin · EN

AI for Personal Finance?

Y Combinator published their latest request for startups , and one area they’d want to see startups from is called AI for Personal Finance. I make a personal finance tool . This post is a brainstorm where AI could enhance it, and the conclusion is it’s better if AI is involved on a higher level. What Personal finance tools as I understand them should be very different for people in different financial situations. E.g. what they say on the YC page about investing and tax optimization usually comes after you have your own contingency fund in place. I make a tool to help get there. It

Smagin · EN

Spacing Over Cards

This post is a rationalisation of “I don’t like cards”. I say that in most cases where cards are used, they don’t need to be used. Specifically, they take space, they let you skip gestalt principles and be lazy and undisciplined, and being so easy to implement they are often used by developers. To multiply the effect, you can put a card into a card, and it seems so hard not to do so. We recognise patterns. This is known for quite some time, specifically Wertheimer in 1923 wrote the paper that everyone cites, where he said just that, and additionally suggested a number o

Smagin · EN

Software on Its Users Side

When I try to pitch my budget app people always say that they have some kind of analytics in their bank app. I then tell that banks and their apps are not on the side of the clients. This article is to explain what I mean by that. Your bank and you have different goals Here is how I imagine a normal person relations with money: you are in charge of your budget, so you need to be in control of it. You also don’t want to stress about it now or later. To achieve this, you should control lifestyle creep, have a contingency fund and a plan of what you’d do when you stop working. If you&

Smagin · EN

Neovim colorscheme doesn't have to be about colors

I have an nvim theme called Boring Tomorrow that highlights different things in and around the code than most of the themes. I have a post about it. I changed the theme recently to use terminal colors instead of colors set in neovim, splitting things I want to highlight from the the colors I like. Incidentally, this brings dark mode switch a problem of the terminal. TL;DR: Terminals support hex colors, it doesn’t mean I should use them In 2026, basically all terminals support all the same colors as browsers. It was an achievement when the standard was made and implemented. Before, it was

Smagin · EN

Popovers

Here is what I know about popovers. Most of popovers are avoidable Or, to put it strongly, popover is the most stupid thing you can do ( in Russian, use browser translation ). Really, putting content into a popover doesn’t require you to think how to put it on the screen. So, with some effort, most of the content could either become their own pages or put into existing pages. I have to mention dickovers here. Surely if you’re making them you know what you’re doing and it has nothing to do with good UX. This part reads as a disclaimer but really the first thing I would do befo

Smagin · EN

Crystal Clear

After more months than I ever would have imagined, I have finally finished taking notes on David Crystal’s The Story of English in 100 Words. As I had expected, this book was an invaluable first step in my research for the analogous book about Spanish that I plan to write. Now I will move on […]

Spanish Linguist · EN

I didn’t forget the paragraph

My (adult) children still remember that when they they were schoolchildren, if they left the house in the morning but ran back a minute later crying “I forgot my lunch!” I would always say, “You didn’t FORGET your lunch, you REMEMBERED your lunch”. This undoubtedly got old after a while. Anyway, today I realized that […]

Spanish Linguist · EN