Ormond

Thanks! That's a particularly great article because it doesn't oversimplify and points out that different regions of Ireland have different dialects in the pronunciation of the Irish language which means there are different ways some of these names can be pronounced. And of course that famous people have an effect -- I love their information that Saoirse Ronan pronounces her first name to rhyme with "inertia", and that before she was famous this was actually the least common of three possible pronounciations in Ireland (the others being "Sorsha" and "Seersha"), but that her fame has now meant the "inertia" rhyme is taking over everywhere in Ireland.

In terms of rents and perceptions of the economy-- from what I've been seeing, the recent fall in rents is much more pronounced in the Sunbelt, esepcaoilly in the West, than it is in the North. In terms of the now "Big Six" swing states, lower rents would be most factoring in to people's perceptions of the economy in Nevada and Arizona, but not much in WIsconsin, Michigan, or Pennsylvania. I also saw one report that said rents are for the most part only going down for brand new leases -- people who are renewing a lease on a place where they've already been living are still seeing rents go up some on the average. Falling rents in many Sunbelt cities are related to a big chunk of brand new multifamily dwellings coming on to the market this year. It seems that a lot of experts are expecting prices of houses to begin falling in many Sunbelt areas this year also -- especially in Florida. Florida evidently has multiple problems that ironically are forcing many people to sell their homes because they can't afford them anymore. This is because of the huge increase in homeowner's insurance rates in Florida combined with property taxes. Fees for those who lived in communities with Homeowners' Associations are also going up. And all of this is much worse for condominiums than detached houses -- Condo Association fees are having astronomical increases, not only because of the insurance problem and general inflation, but because new laws the state has passed because of the Surfside condo collapse are forcing condo associations to both perform a lot of deferred maintenance they should have done years ago and to greatly increase the amount of cash they have on hand to deal with future emergency repairs. So many people on fixed incomes who now own Florida condos are going to be putting them on the market because they won't be able to afford them any longer. -- And then on top of that the short term AirB&B-like rental phenomenon which has boomed in the last decade and contributed to the increase in housing costs everywhere is also starting to falter. So renters in Florida may be happy but homeowners unhappy because of changes coming soon in housing there. Will that help Democrats or Republicans more, or just be a wash?

I am also baffled they would put these particular Bujold books in a "fantasy" list -- even though I love those books and have always thought Cordelia was one of the best characters ever created in science fiction, more impressive to me than her son Miles, who gets most of the love from Bujold fans. Not sure how well-known in the past something has to have been to be considered "forgotten" rather than just never given enough attention in the first place -- but I certainly wish a lot of young people would discover or rediscover the "Trio for Lute" trilogy by R. A. MacAvoy and Evangeline Walton's four-volume retelling of the Welsh Mabinogion.

I see the retreat is at the Greenbrier. One of my great-grandfathers and several of my mother's cousins worked there years ago. President Eisenhower used to golf there and it was the site of the bomb shelter the Congress would have been evacuated to if we had had a nuclear attack back in the day. I see that Jim Justice, millionaire present governor of West Virginia who will probably be the Republican replacing Joe Manchin in the US Senate in 2025, has owned the Greenbrier since it almost went bankrupt in 2009. Personally I'd love to spend a weekend in that hotel -- as long as I didn't have to go to a retreat with a bunch of Republican House members. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Greenbrier

If you think that sentence was personal psychoanalysis you have an odd idea of what goes on in Freudian talk therapy.:) And don't worry, I am not a clinical psychologist, so I can't legally charge you a fee.

The fantasy and "ghostly mystery" author Jaime Lee Moyer has died: https://locusmag.com/2024/03/jaime-lee-moyer-found-deceased/ https://reactormag.com/author-jaime-lee-moyer-has-passed-away/

Dreams of missing or failing exams are among the most common for American adults of any age. I'm 72 and retired and still occasionally have them. Dreams of flying are also common. It's possible these exam dreams occur when something is going on in your life which could be seen as a "test" in a real or metaphorical sense, but also just that this is how general anxiety tends to be expressed in dreams of anyone who spent many years as a student when they were young. One of the main functions of dreams seems to be to help one consolidate memories by linking images from whatever happened in the day before to other memories from your past. So we should all have images in our dreams that come from our personal past almost every night.

I think people's feelings about that are more complex, and it depends on whether or not one is actively thinking of selling their dwelling. Most of my friends who own property often complain about its value rising, because that then increases their property taxes.

And I'd like to know if Clive Barker will ever finish the Abarat series.

I tend to agree with the above. Though I love having DMC back and agree with him on most things, I don't see how loudly proclaiming the good economic statistics is going to impress the average swing voter, because I think the average American is going to think the economy sucks for quite a while from the memory of the recent high inflation. Average Americans aren't going to care that inflation in the USA was actually less than in many other developed countries. Most of them also aren't going to change their mind about the economy being bad just because the rate of inflation is now lower, even if it gets back to no higher than it was before the pandemic, because so much of the inflation was in food and housing costs, the two most basic items in everyone's budget. I am old enough to remember the high inflation of the 1970s and that we all survived it, but the great majority of voters are too young to remember that and really will believe the economy is "bad" unless and until we have a big deflation in food prices to get them back to pre-pandemic levels -- and unfortunately that is a completely unrealistic wish, so I don't see how it won't be at least several more years or even an entire decade before people are enough used to the new food prices to be able to see the economy as "good".

Although I certainly agree more states should pass this and that it's worth a try, it's hard for me to see the present US Supreme Court not declaring this unconstitutional somehow when the inevitable court challenge is brought to it after the first Presidential election held under it. Though when that happends, hopefully it will then energize people to get rid of the Electoral College through an actual constitutional amendment.

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-jasmine-blooms-in-popularity-thanks-to-aladdin-and-other-shows/article_91fce044-dca7-11ee-9ac9-b3bedd5ee54e.html I think the most incredible coincidence in all the research I've done for my column is that the first sure example of a Jasmine I found in the United States census was a woman born as Jasmine Whitley in MIssissippi, and the character who most popularized the name was a "Southern belle" type named Whitley and played by the actress Jasmine Guy. Jasmine Whitley MacMahon, who as I mentioned in the column spent most of her married life in Laredo, Texas and is buried there. I have linked to her headstone at the "Find A Grave" site. As far as I can tell she was just an "everyday citizen" and I don't see how the producers of the TV show "A Different World" could have possibly heard of her. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/50244505/jasmine-macmahon

Thank heaven neither Zelenskyy nor I have to agree with Putin.

According to Wikipedia, though Zelenskyy grew up primarily speaking Russian, he was born to a Ukrainian Jewish family. I think in terms of his main "ethnicity" most people would say he's ethnically Jewish, with Ukrainian nationality and Russian cultural background, if Wikipedia is correct.

I just saw a post by a YouTube "Book Tuber" who said Lynch will be publishing some novellas with stories set in the time period between his third and fourth novels, so perhaps in terms of these preorder date speculations some people are confusing the novellas with the fourth novel.

British author Brian Stableford died February 24: https://locusmag.com/2024/02/brian-stableford-1948-2024/

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/local/cleveland-evans-sean-has-roots-in-irish-ancestry/article_6e36f098-d10b-11ee-a07c-9fc2d77585fc.html Here I was quite surprised by just how recent the use of Sean in official records in the USA is. When I wrote my column on Iann a while back, I found that Ian really was not used as an official name in an English-speaking context until 1858, with it being automatically translated to "John" otherwise. With Sean, it looks like it was not used in an English speaking context until the late 19th century in Ireland, and wasn't used in the USA until the 1920s! I know I have read many fiction pieces and seen many examples in film and TV of men of Irish descent called Sean in the 19th century or even the 18th century. It turns out that if the characters are not supposedly in an Irish Gaelic speaking context, this is an anachromism, and any man called Sean when people were speaking the Irish language would probably automatically have been called JOhn when people were speaking English before around 1890.

Here is the link to today's column: https://omaha.com/life-entertainment/cleveland-evans-brandys-fame-hasnt-translated-to-names-popularity/article_d7bdad1a-c68c-11ee-84eb-5bbbeba953ac.html I didn't realize before researching this just how "American" the name Brandy is. It doesn't seem to have reached anwywhere near the level of usage in the UK, Australia, or even Canada that it achieved in the USA during the 1980s and 1990s.

It's been quite a while since I posted one of the right-wing fundraising emails I get here but this one is so outrageous I feel like I should share it. And it's not even directly from Trump, but from the RNSC:

That was not Phylum of Alexandria, it was me, and again, I do not think there is any condemnation of slavery in general in Exodus or anywhere else in the OT. There is a recognition that it was bad for the Israelites to be slaves, but never any statement that because they hated being slaves that they should never enslave anyone else. Just that they should treat their slaves better -- and if they gouged out a slave's eye they had to give him or her freedom in compensation. But that's not the same thing as a general condemnation of slavery.

Where do you think there is a general condemnation of slavery in the Old Testament? Having just looked up all the OT verses my concordance says have the words slave, slavery, or slaves, I can find a few places where it says Israelites shouldn't own other Israelites as slaves, at least not permanently, but can't find anywhere that says slavery of any human being is wrong,

I happen to presently be reading Weavers, Scribes, and Kings by Amanda H. Podany at the moment. This is a book about the history of those areas of the ancient Near East that used cuneiform writing (mostly Mesopotamia, but also parts of modern Syria, southern Turkey and southeastern Iran.) Podany seems to make it clear that slavery was an accepted part of ancient cultures as far back as we have written evidence. Some people sold themselves, or were children sold by their parents, into slavery to pay debts, but there were also many prisoners of war and people born into slavery. Some of those whose slavery was connected with debt would automatically be freed after the debt was considered repaid, but that wasn't the majority. A bit of Googling seems to show that the first known real anti-slavery statement in the ancient world was made by the Christian bishop Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century C.E. Over the next few centuries the church developed the rule that Christians could not own other Christians as slaves, which meant that in most places in Europe during the late Middle Ages full-blown slavery was non-existent (serfdom evidently not being quite as bad as that.) In order to justify lifetime slavery (as opposed to indentured servant status) European Christians had to go full-blown racist in their justifications. You had to see non-Whites as being less than fully human in order to rationalize it. But in my opinion the close link between racism and slavery this created led to even worse consequences for society as a whole than ancient slavery did. A culture where slave-owners themselves could theoretically become slaves in the future through war or debt would at least be a bit "fairer" and less dehumanizing than the race-based slavery that developed in American colonies. And that has made the legacy of slavery especially hard to overcome in the modern USA.

Just want to say this is a great title because it not only fits what's going on in terms of the trials of Trump and his cronies, but also the judgments being made about Biden's and Trump's mental fitness AND the argument of judging slave-owners that dominated the end of the last thread -- So, bravo!

Do you really get Evangelicals knocking on your door? The great majority of those using door-to-door methods for religious conversion in the USA are either Jehovah's Witnesses or LDS (Mormons), neither of which are "evangelicals".

Here is a link to the Locus obituary for British horror author Brian Lumley, who died January 2: https://locusmag.com/2024/01/brian-lumley-1937-2024/