Reol's "YoiYoi Kokon" is a super catchy song that nails to fuse the traditional aspect of Japanese culture with modern trends. The lyrics are written in Old Japanese, and from a perspective of an Old Japanese connoisseur, it holds up to a good standard. Having said that, here are the few gripes I have with the Old Japanese language used in the song (and perhaps someone could correct me if I'm wrong):

- If we assume the lyrics on the side of the screen in the MV as the interpretation, the line "俗な答えなどはあらざらむ" does NOT mean "全てを満たせる答えなどは最初からないよ". "俗" meant... "俗" in Old Japanese; but also "世間一般". The second meaning allows for a broader interpretation inside the scope of the meaning "俗", but does not allow for a completely new meaning (like is purported in the side lyrics: "全てを満たせる(ような)" ~ "普遍的").

- "あまりてなどか人ぞ悲しき" is inspired by the 39th poem in 小倉百人一首, spare "恋しき" for "悲しき". It's hard to find a good analysis of haiku, even in Japanese, that would include grammatical nuances. The problem is with the word "あまりてなどか", which is linked to "しのぶれど" that comes before it in the poem, so there it makes sense. In Reol's song, however, it is not clear what gets "あまりて" (what "overflows, grows in excess"), and why it's in 連体形 (why there's semantically a comma after it).

"We have the best government money can buy." Mark Twain

「やまたのおろち」って本当に八つの俣だったら頭が9個あるはずでしょう~

Best spoiler: "something happens, and it leads to some more things to happen"

Philomantis extension is only seen in one species - __ 

Philomantis extension is only seen in one species - Moorish idol

It grants mobility in turning.

Tokelau is a real nation in Polynesia.

Loosely administrated by New Zealand, the nation has its own parliament - General Fono; although before 1993, the territory was directly administered by a New Zealand government department. The General Fono ('fono' meaning 'assembly') has 20 members, and elections are held every 3 years. Members of the Fono have different functions (Village Elders, Council of Women, Men's Group...) and represent one of three atolls of Tokelau. Tokelau is a de facto non-partisan democracy since both village and Fono elections are made without political parties.

The national badge of Tokelau depicts a tuluma, which is a traditional Tokelauan carved wooden “tackle box” used by local fishermen, with a christian cross in the middle. Tokelauans, however, worshipped the Polynesian gods before the advent of Christianity. The main god for them was Tui Tokelau. I wonder what they imagine he looks like. It's difficult to find any depictions of Tui Tokelau.

slander vs libel 

slander = verbal defamation
libel = written defamation

Is there a province called Holland in the Netherlands? 

There are two provinces: North and South Holland

Holland was a pivotal place in the history of the Netherlands, but was divided into North and South Holland in 1840.

Is there a Tokelauan language? 

Yes, the Tokelauan language is the official language of Tokelau, a de-jure dependent territory of New Zealand. It is similar to Tuvaluan.

"північ" means both "north" and "00:00", while "південь" means both "south" and "12:00" in Ukrainian. Nice little connection.

Two main islands of New Zealand are called __ and __ 

New Zealand consists of the North Island, the South Island and 700 smaller islands

What is the oldest school in the world? 

The King's School in Canterbury is the oldest school in the world. It was established in 597, 1425 years ago.

Origin of the word 'hecho' (Spanish)? 

Apparently, it comes from 'factus' (Latin), which also means 'done'. I'm done.

Spanish developed unique conjugation, so 'o' instead of 'us' is to be expected. Also, there was an intermediate step - 'fecho'. The corresponding verb ('hacer') developed the same way, with the intermediate form 'facer'.

"Now on vacation is what I would say if I was thoughtfully mitigating the loss of my job"

youtube.com/watch?v=TNXYHNdGYf

There is a high-quality list of semi-random words for people to use in passwords. It was crafted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 2016 and is free to use:

eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/new-

Now, you might think that having a list of words expected to be used in passwords, that is published on a major resource, could be kind of counterproductive for security if it's widely adopted. But here actually recommends using passphrashes - combinations of these words, and that means they're exponentially harder to crack. But then the problem of character count arises. I don't know a lot of sites where you can set a 30 character long password.

But, at the end of the day, it's your password and you can easily make a neat and rememberable by getting rid of excess words etc. The distinctive feature of this list is that it has common, user-friendly words, that are memorisable by anyone pretty quickly. So if anything, have that for your reference.

Reading of 三枝? 

さえぐさ、さいぐさ、みえだ、さえくさ、さいくさ、みえ、みつえ、みつえだ、さんし

This is an example of a word that, even though it's pretty useless, has unreasonably many readings... But let's go through them.

さえぐさ、さいぐさ、みえだ are the most common readings, さんし - slightly less. These are all uncommon family names. The combination 三枝 is pretty unpopular as a family name, although there is one famous rakugo performer, 桂三枝 (かつらさんし).

The most interesting reading is さきくさ, since it's also a word meaning "three-branched tree or plant". It was used for some kind of plant in the past, but now we don't know which species it was.

But you have to agree, the readings are fascinating. Upon hearing さきくさ, you would imagine 咲草, but not 三枝...

2↑↑↑↑↑2 = ? (↑ is Knuth's up-arrow) 

2↑↑↑↑↑2 = 2↑↑↑↑2 = ... = 2↑2 = 2^2 = 4

Derive the general expression for million, billion... (if the prefix number is n) 

10^(3+3n)

The word million comes from the Italian "mille" meaning "thousand", which is definitely weird. But after million, the numbers in the name are consequent natural numbers. Let's take some examples: bi means 2, tri means 3, so let's try to write billion and trillion down:

billion = 1 000 000 000 = 10^9
trillion = 1 000 000 000 000 = 10^12

We have a pattern: 9, 12, 15... It's times 10^3 for every next number. Now if we go back and the other way, we have million = 10^6, thousand = 10^3. Since bi is 2, million is 1, and thousand is 0. Even though its "name" number is 0, thousand is 10^3. That means there's always a constant multiplier of 10^3.

Hartree boosted

お昼休みはウキウキどんどん
あちこちそちこちマストドン

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