From The Spamfiles

I love it when there’s a bonus Tuesday and I don’t have to think about my goals for another week.

I shudder to think what’s supposed to be “made easy” here.

Cassiebrida??? Is that supposed to be a name? Of who/what?????

It has a copyright symbol after it. That’s how you know it’s real.

Quite a few enjoyable bits here. First is the fact that it’s asking to confirm my “unsubscribe”, as they always do. Then there’s the TM after Gmail, which like the above is how you know it’s Super Legit. Next is the space in the word Google, because they’re always misspelling their own name. And finally is the fact that I’m apparently supposed to be unsubscribing from “adulte” and dating emails. From Google. That’s a lot of stupid for one email line.

But not as much stupid as this! So I won almost a million dollars on a frigging Facebook Online Promotion (don’t know what that’s supposed to promote, or why they would even need to), and then there’s the fact that they want me to email an AOL Account to claim my prize. AOL. In the year 2021. AOL. Do you know how many serious companies have AOL accounts? I do, because the answer is a big old zero.

Yep, this is the same guy who emailed me two weeks ago. I guess he doesn’t have those finer details ironed out yet.

They’ve Shown Up Already

I got a new laptop! It doesn’t take five hours to turn on and do the most basic tasks! I had forgotten what that was like.

It took like two hours for one to show up. For crying out loud, it’s still March!

Language Of Confusion: Tracts, Part III

Yay, back to this. Aren’t you having fun? This week, we’re looking at more words that end in tract, which comes from Proto Indo European tragh-, to draw or drag something along. There are quite a few of them.
 
Extract showed up as a verb in the late fifteenth century, while extraction actually showed up earlier, in the early fifteenth century. As a noun, extract showed up in the middle of the century, but it didn’t mean what we know it as. Back then, it meant a summary of something written, kind of like we use abstract for today. It didn’t mean something extracted until the late fifteenth century. Funny, huh? Anyway, extract comes from the classical Latin extractus, drawn out, from the verb extrahere, to draw/pull out. Ex- means out, obviously, and trahere is draw/pull. Isn’t it nice when the words make sense?
 
Retract showed up in the early fifteenth century (retraction was a bit earlier, in the late fourteenth century), coming from the Old French retracter and classical Latin retractus, drawn back. Its verb form is retractare, to withdraw or draw back, with the re- meaning back and the tractere coming from trahere, to draw. To draw back. How sensible!
 
Subtract showed up in the early sixteenth century, though much like the other words we’ve looked at today, subtraction showed up before that, a whole century earlier in fact. Subtract comes from the classical Latin subtractus, withdrawn, and its verb form subtrahere, to withhold or take away. Sub- means from under, which is kind of weird. Subtraction is to pull something from under, I guess.
 
Protract is just like the other words here. It showed up in the early sixteenth century, while protraction came almost a century earlier, and then protractor, the tool, didn’t come until the seventeenth century and no, I don't know why a tool for measuring angles is called that, it just is. It’s from the classical Latin protractus, which means drawn along, from the verb protrahere, protract. Pro- means forward, so this word is to draw forward, which morphed protract into prolonging. But protract isn’t the only word given to us by that. Ever wonder where portray comes from? Yep. Here. It showed up way earlier than any of these words, in the mid thirteenth century, coming from the Anglo French purtraire and Old French portraire, to draw, paint, or portray. That por- used to be pro-, and the traire comes from trahere. I have no idea how you get portray from that, but there you go.

 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Fordham University

From The Spamfiles

Hungry for spam?

What do you mean you capitalize your last name? Next you’ll be telling me you put a space between the abbreviation and your first name.

Because this is very alarming for some reason!?????
 

This one is also alarmed, but less so than the previous one. Though they did make the same faux pas of putting the exclamation points before the question mark.

No thanks. I’ve seen what goes on in the Wonka Factory and I want nothing to do with it. It’s just one safety violation after another.

All dream marriages have at least a dozen nude selfies.

Has anyone anywhere ever received an actually important message that has emojis in the address? I’m thinking no.

Revising

This always seems to happen.

I can already tell what goals I won’t be reaching this month.

Language Of Confusion: Tracts, Part II

We’re back looking at tract, and all the words related to it. As I said last week, tract is from the Proto Indo European tragh-, which means to draw or drag something along. This week we’ll be looking at a bunch of different words with -tract as a suffix.
 
First, attract showed up in the early fifteenth century, meaning basically what it does today—also in a medical sense, it was used to mean how the body absorbed (as in, drawing out) nutrients. Okay, sure. Attract comes from the classical Latin attractus, attraction, from the verb attrahere, to attract. Not exactly surprising. The prefix of the word is from ad, to, while the rest is from trahere, which, as I mentioned last week when discussing tract, means to pull. To attract literally means to draw/pull to. Isn’t it nice when the words make sense?
 
Contract showed up in the early fourteenth century as a noun meaning an agreement, then later in the century, it was a verb meaning to shrink. How are those totally different meanings from the same word? Well, let’s see. The verb comes from the Old French contracter and classical Latin contractus, which again, means to shrink. The noun comes from the Old French contract and classical Latin… contractus. See, metaphorically, to make an agreement was to draw something together. And that’s what the contractus literally means. The con- means together while the rest is from trahere. A contract draws things together. So does shrinking.
 
Distract showed up in the late fourteenth century, coming from the classical Latin distractus, which actually means torn or severed. Its verb form, distrahere, means to distract or draw in different directions: the dis- means away and trahere means to draw. Figuratively, to distract someone is to draw them away from something.
 
Now for abstract. It showed up in the late fourteenth century as a term meaning nouns that don’t name concrete things, not meaning an abridgment until the mid fifteenth century, and not an art term until 1914. Though it was used in music since the nineteenth century to mean music without lyrics. It’s from the classical Latin abstractus, withdrawn, and its verb form abstrahere, draw away. Ab- is another prefix that means away, because you can’t have just one, and trahere, to draw. Abstract also means to draw away from, and for some reason it means a lot of other crazy stuff, too.
 
Finally today, we’ll look at detract. It showed up in the early fifteenth century from the classical Latin detractus, withdrawal or drawing away, and its verb form detrahere. The de- means down here, and with trahere, to detract is to pull down. That… actually makes a ton of sense.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language

From The Spamfiles

Don’t you just love spam?
 
I can tell from your silence that you agree with me.
 

Showing me pictures of cats actually is a good way to make me smile for a while.

I’ve won… a bunch of arms I guess? Not really sure what I should do with them. Maybe go chuck them at cars.

Asking my permission for what? To have more than 18 zombies? Frankly one is too many.

I love how vague they are. They just want “the rest of the documents.” Oops, “The Rest Of The Documents.” Capitalizing every word makes it more official!

This man I never met would never lie! He’s a captain!

This is just delightful. The Anti-Spam Association! First, they insist their message is “from a trusted Source”. Then there’s the delicious bit about “Email spam is real-life spam”. Like, as opposed to what? Imaginary spam? Fake life spam?

Temporary Interruption

 Hey, guys. No posts this week. One of my aunts died Saturday, so I’ve been dealing with that. I probably won’t be around much, but hopefully I’ll be back next week.

See you then!

It Haunts Me

Seriously, this is what it feels like.

I did eventually find it. I threw it in the trash, and then the next day took the trash out. I have no idea what possessed me to do this.

Language Of Confusion: Tracts, Part I

Time for another multi-parter. I do love not having to come up with post ideas.
 
Tract first showed up in the mid fifteenth century, meaning an area or a period of time. Yeah. It comes from the classical Latin tractus, which just means tract, a noun from the verb trahere, to pull. I have no idea how pull came to mean tract, but it is from the Proto Indo European root tragh-, to drag.
 
Traction showed up in the early fifteenth century, from the Medieval Latin tractionem, which is from trahere. Basically, it’s tract with -ion on the end to make it a noun, and fun fact, traction as in friction showed up in 1825, from the traction of a wheel and the surface it’s on, and traction in medicine showed up in 1885 because of “a sustained pull to part of the body to hold fractured bones in position”. Not really sure why that one’s traction, but whatever. As for tractor, it showed up in 1856, from the Latin tractor, from tract. Not much of a story there.
 
You wouldn’t believe the words related to tract. First of all, trace. It showed up in the fourteenth century from the Old French tracier and Vulgar Latin tractiare. That word is also from tractus, meaning it’s also from tragh-, to draw, drag or move. I mean, following the path of something I suppose is kind moving after it. I guess I can’t complain about it too much.
 
Now, obviously with all this talk about drag, we have to see if it’s related. Which it might be, but because this is etymology, it also might not be. Drag first showed up in the fourteenth century, meaning to draw something along the bottom of a river in search of something, not meaning to drag something in general until a century later. It’s thought to be from the Old Norse draga or Old English dragan, both of which are from the Proto Germanic draganan and Proto Indo European dhregh-, which is thought to be a variant of tragh-. Considering it means to draw or drag on the ground, that certainly seems possible, but considering this is etymology, it’s probably more likely that they aren’t related at all.
 
Finally today, treat. Yeah. It showed up in the fourteenth century, first as a verb and then as a noun. But back then, it only had to do with negotiation. A treat was a discussion of terms, while to treat was to negotiate. It wasn’t until the fifteenth century that treat had to do with treating someone with food and drink, in the sense that you’re being nice to butter them up, and then in the eighteenth century it started being to treat someone with medicine (I guess because you’re “negotiating” with the ailment). Treat comes from the Old French traitier, to deal with, from the classical Latin tractare, which means to treat, though it originally meant to drag around. It’s from trahere, so the drag part makes sense, but not how it evolved from there.
 
Sources
Online Etymology Dictionary
Google Translate
Omniglot
University of Texas at Austin Linguistic Research Center
University of Texas at San Antonio’s page on Proto Indo European language
Tony Jebson’s page on the Origins of Old English
Old English-English Dictionary
Dictionary of Medieval Latin
Encyclopaedia Britannica

March Goals

Well, March is here already, and I for one am glad to see February gone. It’s always the worst month, for some reason. I’m certainly glad it’s the shortest. Anyway, what goals did I totally not do?
 
February Goals
1. Do my first pass of notes on the new WIP, and start working on them.
I did make all the notes (almost 1000!!!), but I couldn’t bring myself to start working at them. It was quite an emotionally exhausting month.
 
2. Do all the adult stuff I need to that’s giving me a constant panic attack.
Yes, I did this. Now if only the constant panic attack would go away.
 
3. Actually get to work on my old WIP notes.
Did not do this. I could barely bring myself to look at anything involving writing. Ugh, February is the worst.
 
And that was February. Which, to reiterate, is the worst. I’m really hoping March won’t be such a frigging ordeal.
 
March Goals
1. Actually work on those damn notes!
 
2. Work on some non-writing projects to try and recharge my creativity.
 
3. Work on some new ideas I have floating around.
 
That is what I want to do. Will I make it? Knowing me, probably not, but maybe! What do you want to do this month?