My German friend asked me, “What’s a 3-letter word for compete?”

I said, “Vie?..”

He replied, “Because I’m trying to do ze crossword.”

🟢 🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝🌝

And some anagrams for you (spaces are there just to throw you off the track; you only need the letters): 1. CELO QUEEN 🎻 2. NO EPIC SIR 🎠 3. A GAY SIN 👨‍❤️‍👨 4. KLENARS TEAT 😢 5. HOLI MAN IS GO ✝️ Molto difficile!! 🤌🏼 ой а а а а забыл сказать, № 3 —…

Ye Aulde Riddle 1. Shiver =❓= Holder 2. Upset =❓= Fluff 3. Light =❓= Just 4. Proximate =❓= Conclude 5. Soar =❓= Bolt Bсе слова, кроме первого, ужасно простые, типа А2 максимум. Первое, наверное, С2?..

And some anagrams for you (spaces are there just to throw you off the track; you only need the letters):

1. CELO QUEEN 🎻

2. NO EPIC SIR 🎠

3. A GAY SIN 👨‍❤️‍👨

4. KLENARS TEAT 😢

5. HOLI MAN IS GO ✝️

Molto difficile!! 🤌🏼

Ye Aulde Riddle

1. Shiver =❓= Holder

2. Upset =❓= Fluff

3. Light =❓= Just

4. Proximate =❓= Conclude

5. Soar =❓= Bolt

Bсе слова, кроме первого, ужасно простые, типа А2 максимум. Первое, наверное, С2?..

When I was growing up my neighbor across the street was in the mafia, and he was a really nice guy. He used to pay me 10 bucks every morning just to start his car!

💵

I went to a doctor recently. He ran some tests and then said: “Don’t eat anything fatty.”
I said: “What, like bacon and burgers?”
He said, “No, fatty! just don’t eat anything!”

🍔

So K. Калий. Part of the whole famous «калий-натриевый насос» arrangement, more popularly known as «натрий-калиевая аденозинтрифосфатаза». Калий goes in, Натрий goes out; these two are basically at the centre of all animal physiology.

Still, if you haven’t encountered these terms in real life, you may not know натрий is called sodium (hence «сода»; please don’t confuse this with soda = carbonated drink) and калий potassium (hence Russian «поташ»). This whole насос thingy is therefore called, understandably, the sodium-potassium pump.

Now Na and K (I mean, “sodium” and “potassium”, English, seriously—you couldn’t’ve made better use of these letters?) are also in two very famous щёлочи. Namely «едкий натр» NaOH and «едкое кали» KOH (только мы с КОНём по полю идем), which I personally think is just top-tier naming. Yeah, you say; but what’ve I got to do with all that chemistry nonsense?

Well NaOH (sodium hydroxide) is often found in solid soaps, and KOH in liquid soaps. So you might suddenly ask yourself: how come I don’t know the name of a basic class of chemical compounds? And I’m willing to bet you don’t know the word for «щелочь» in English even though I will just as willingly bet you know «кислота» is acid.

That word, meine Damen und Herren, is alkali (al-kuh-lie); notice how it practically contains KOH inside. And this is where it gets interesting. Of course, you say! — alkylation! it all makes sense now!..

Except these two words are different (which is just as well, since the chemical processes are unrelated). Alkylation comes from alkyl, which was loaned from German… Alkohol; and that one, as you may know, and as I may have mentioned here, comes from Arabic al-kuhl = «кохль» (look it up; it’s a sort of eyeliner).

Alkali (калий-джан!), on the other hand, comes from Arabic al-qāly = burned plant ashes, literally pot ash 🔥 => potash. And that, having absorbed a Latin suffix -ium, became potassium. So it is all linked.

Expect for «щелочь». Nobody really knows where that stuff came from, but a link to Old Icelandic (of all languages!) has been proposed.

🧼

I was going to write a lengthy post about K, but then it requires a clarity of thinking that I don’t have right now, so instead I’ll share something random that made me unexpectedly happy (and you will probably think I’m crazy but that’s okay).

So there’s this TV show called The Penguin. Set in the DC/Batman universe, it’s a story about the rise of the notorious gangster whom many of you will remember back from the days when he was played (very hauntingly, too) by Danny De Vito. This time in this show, Colin Farrell is the guy inside the skin suit (for want of a better term), and he is absolutely unrecognizable. Now clearly, it was something of a point of difference for these showmakers to create this absolutely stunning combination of make-up and prosthetics that not simply conceals Farrell but more like… entombs him. Yet even so his acting is still a tour de force, and for that alone I recommend watching an episode or two.

So having watched all of the available episodes, I was watching credits (since I want to have a nice green checkmark next to all the episodes I've seen because I'm anal like that), and apparently one of the production companies is called 6th and Idaho. And I was really curious to know why, so I went ahead and googled it and apparently it is an intersection of streets in Santa Monica where the founder of that company was born. So I opened Google maps and found that intersection, and it turns out it exists; and Idaho is a whole avenue!

And that, somewhat inexplicably, made me happy, but if you were hoping for a plot twist, there ain't any.

🎭