"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."
I've worked at a few companies where they'd offer to sell, for a nominal amount, the work-laptops to ex-staff.
I know the last time I left my job I was given the opportunity to buy an M1 mac with 16Gb of RAM for €100, so of course I did.
(Though I also paid €500 to keep the phone they'd bought for me, which was perhaps not such a good deal, it was convienent and I do like the phone, but I'd have been happy to have a random cheap android phone, I have no specific requirements beyond "small enough to fit inside a sporran"!)
As somebody born with the name Steven I'm curious about the relative popularity of "Steven" vs. "Stephen".
I feel like when I was a child more people were present with a PH, but nowadas virtually nobody. Most of the Stephens I know are "old", and I think "Steve" won.
But no doubt it varies on country, and who you know.
(I legally changed my name from Steven to Steve, a couple of years ago, because it was the only name I'd ever used and it got too tiresome dealing with my official passport, and ID saying one name when I signed/wrote another name on all my official paperwork. To the extent that employers would book flights in one name but my passport was in the other name, cue much hilarity at boarding time..)
My brother was born in 1984 is Stephen. We have only ever called him by that name, Steve never stuck. At the time I thought Steven was the more common spelling already; but we were catholic and he was named for St. Stephen.
Finland has some naming rules, but they don't necessarily apply to everyone in the country because they're rules for naming people born here, rather than those who later moved here.
There is a public index of forenames and surnames which I learned about when I was with my pregnant wife, and back then I was obsessively searching for my/our surname to see it increase by one when our newborn was registered and became "official".
Apparently within the whole of Finland there 22 men with the same surname as me, and 25 women. 21 of these people are in Finland and 26 are abroad but known.
Interestingly if I go to the forename search and look for people named "Steve" there are < 5 women with that name (i.e. non-zero, but the number masked for privacy reasons):
That sent me down a rabbit hole. Seems like having rules on what you can name your own kid are in place in several European countries. From an American perspective, I find this simultaneously off-putting (you are going to tell ME what I can name MY OWN child?!!) and also probably a net positive. I've often thought that a lot of tragedeighs could be averted if hospital registrars ran the names through a checker and pushed back on the parents to verify they really wanted that. But that's based on an assumption that it's often not intentional.
It is customary for anyone receiving Confirmation to choose a patron saint, but this name is not essential to the ceremony, and not usually added to one's legal or commonly-used names.
Men and women entering consecrated religious life often receive a religious name. Sometimes their surname is suppressed. Their new name may be chosen by their institute, community or their superior. It is not uncommon to see compound names, and opposite-gendered names in usage there.
Except the kid is not YOUR OWN child, in the meaning of possession. You are the custodian to the child, not the owner. The child basically is owned by itself and you are (usually) allowed to take care of it and lead it on that way.
And there are tons of laws that forbid abusing childs. Like you can't hit them, shake them. In the USA they perhaps have a law that you can't put them in a microwave, I dunno.
And the laws in the european countries that forbid silly names are usually not restrict your "owners rights", but to protect the kid. In Germany, I mean, over here they forbid that people called their kid "Rumpelstilzchen", the name of an imp/goblin in a very well know fairy tale. If the parents would have come through I expect that the kid would have ridiculed in school and outside quite a lot. Other kids can be cruel ... and even the odd mindless adult.
Actual names that german parents wanted for their kids, but that weren't granted: Bierstübl, Borussia, Crazy Horse, Gastritis, Grammophon, Januar, Joghurt, Kirsche, Liebknecht, McDonald, Millenium, Möhre, Pfefferminze, Pilulla, Porsche, Rosenherz, Rumpelstilzchen, Satan, Schmitz, Schnucki, Schröder, Seerose, Sputnik, Störenfried, Rasputin, Verleihnix, Waldmeister, Whisky, Woodstock
Some have outright negative connotation (Satan, Störenfried, Rumpelstilzchen), others are just extremely uncommon and thus standing out. For example, in Germany we don't name girls about other things like Melody, Crystal, Daisy, Faith, Grace, Haven, Hazel, Amber, etc. So if you name your kid after a product or a thing, e.g. Porsche, Kirsche or Joghurt, then it will draw the wrath of the other kids onto itself.
And THAT is the reason the authorities don't allow a name. It's not about unusualness alone. A lot of unusual first names were the parents could show "Esenosarumensemwonken is a first name in Nigeria" go through.
I myself have a name so rare I couldn't share it without uniquely identifying myself (I am not aware of anyone else having it as a first name, although a minor historical figure has it as a last name). The spelling also does not quite match the expected pronunciation. Yes, it stands out a bit, I get "wow that's an unusual name where does it come from" every single time, but I like my name a lot, and I of all the things I was bullied about, my name was about the most minor.
Admittedly I'm glad not to be called "Gastritis". I don't think I would be too upset at "Crazy Horse", except that it sounds like a name you should receive at a coming-of-age ceremony, Native American style. I might go by a nickname usually, but insist my lovers use my full name in the bedroom.
Really? With the spelling Portia it's a perfectly respectable girl's name in English, why not in German? Or are they completely unrelated? The English Portia stems from Brutus' wife.
Surely it was the name of a person long before it was the name of a thing?
I really loved your comment, it's something that we take for granted these days with it being easy to buy these things.
For me I've been collecting (mechanical) watches for 20ish years. Half my collection is high-end Swiss watches, and the other half is more ecclectic but I have a real soft spot for the former Soviet designs.
They were not expensive, and even now you get a great watch for €50 because they made so many of them.
Although the focus of the USSR watches wasn't that level of quality you see in the Japanese pieces they're so rugged and simple that most of them will outlive me.
I regularly buy 50+ year old watches that have never been serviced and still run properly. Obviously there's some element of survivorship bias at play, but the engineering there is top-notch.
Thank you for your kind words. I’m not sure what the state of prosumer digital photography is these days, but about a decade ago, if you wanted to build a lens collection on a tight budget, you looked for vintage Soviet-made camera lenses. They were super cheap and functional.
I sometimes feel like functionality and longevity were hallmarks of pre-2000s manufacturing. I remember my mother talking about an old children’s bicycle that a relative had bought in Germany. That bicycle was passed across through multiple families, and an entire generation of kids learned to ride on it.
I collect watches and the only digital watch I've owned for the past 20ish years is the ubiquitous F91W.
I've been strongly tempted by the g-shocks over the years, but never quite pulled the trigger. There are so many to choose from, with various features. But seeing this post I figured why not just pick one that looks fun, so I ordered the GMA-P2100-4AER (which is pink).
Because being surrounded by people who use English as a second/third language, they often encourage us to report "mistakes" and "weirdness" in their language, as a way of improving and learning.
I don't think its that deep, man. I think its more like: "ha look you made a mistake, here's how it's meant to be written, dumb ass." Like the person above said already: the majority of the time people do this it's a simple typo and they know how it's spelt. So I don't really think adults appreciate being corrected on basic shit.
It's like the people who attack grammar in arguments instead of the core point. I've seen enough people doing this across the Internet to know the reason they do it. And it has everything to do with being a smug asshole and nothing to do with helping.
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