Windows 11 recently gained two German extended keyboard layouts: German extended E1, and German extended E2. The difference to the regular German keyboard layout is that in the AltGr plane, they add a few characters and a whole bunch of new dead keys,[1] which should be quite useful. Here's a comparison, using the layouts given on the Microsoft ( Read more... )

Just out of boredom, here's a list of things that NetHack (the game) will yell at you, or have others yell at you:

Bang ( Read more... )

( Read more... )

( Read more... )

The emoji picker dialog that Windows includes (use Windows + . to access it) not only allows you to insert emoji and smileys with relative ease, but also does GIFs. I find this distracting, and on top of that these are provided by an external service that the tool connects to automatically and without my consent.

There is no option to disable ( Read more... )

Just recently I noticed that while there are words such as elsewhere, anderswo and annarsstaðar, we don't seem to have the equivalents for other things one could want to talk about using appropriate adverbs, such as time, manner, reason and so on. Put more simply, there is no elsewhen, elsehow, elsewhy and so on; we have to resort to somewhat ( Read more... )

An interesting excerpt from an interview with Leigh Ann Henion about her new book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, in the Christian Science Monitor:

An idea that intrigued me was this notion that people ask bigger questions in the dark. Why is that?

Consider the conversations that take place ( Read more... )

Today I learned that words that have different, opposite meanings are called contronyms (thanks Merriam-Webster). The example that MW give is sanction; other examples, from Wikipedia, include to clip (which can indicate both removal and fastening) and oversight. (Wikipedia actually lists a bunch more, several of which I find questionable, or even ( Read more... )

Here's another brief thought. It's sometimes asked why it's so difficult to learn a new language (even though children, all children, are really good at it ( Read more... )

A while ago I met a flying fox who had raised by humans after being rejected by both her mother and by the group of flying foxes at the zoo where she was born ( Read more... )