I scrapped NYT crossword puzzle answers and plotted the frequencies of the letters. It turns out that the actual data is a bit taboo, with many past projects having to remove them from the internet (see here or here). I used a site like this one, which have been aggregating answers for a few years.
The data consisted of a total of 85687 answers; some answers were pruned due to numerical answers and other oddities from the data source. The tools used were Python for wrangling and Seaborn for plotting.
It’s clear that there is an abundance of A, E and S in crosswords, while T and H in the English language is comparatively higher in frequency (use of the word “the” probably). I would love to have cleaner data and see the frequency changes along Monday through Sunday similar to this and this.
– Intellectual curiosity: I like to think that I am reasonably intelligent with a natural inclination to learn. It is a great trait to have (mister self-aggrandizing here) , and I honestly find that it is far easier to hold and maintain a fun conversation with an inquisitive person. The banter can flow from one topic to another with little turbulence, and what is a relationship without nice back-and-froths?
The $64000 question is how does one find this quality in another person? There are no marked physical manifestation to my knowledge (I presume a tattoo of “Reading Rainbow” might count, though it has to be done tastefully). I reckon a shallow answer is to look for degrees at elite institutions like Brown. From my time there, people either fall into one of two categories: the ones I seek, and the ones with multiple Canada Goose jackets.
– Reasonably active: one of my clarinet teacher from high school had a great remark on her Facebook back in the day: “doing my best to avoid morbid obesity.” This describes me to a fairly large degree as well. For awhile, I was walking a fine line between trying to bulk up and not looking like Thor in the first part of Endgame. Even my parents mentioned how I looked like I was getting a bit fat.
I guess the message here is that I stay active, and active people actively seek out other active people to do fun activities with. For now, since I’ve been doing yoga basically everyday ever since this whole quarantine business started, I really want to try some of those “couple poses.” Maybe I’m just seeking a fellow yogi? And a good one at that; my down dog can use a lot of help.
– Can sport a pixie cut: it’s probably the case that pandemics will become more common in the future. It’s an unfortunate fact due to the density of humans paired with our propensity to breed lots of animals in grotesque and cramped spaces, and then subsequently eating them in various delicious ways. I still haven’t gave up on meat completely if you can’t tell. This will last until my BYND stocks have doubled or tripled.
Nevertheless, the pandemics will continue. Hence it’s probable that I would need to give a haircut to my partner in the future. While the pixie cut is not the easiest to do, someone self-confident enough sporting one would allow me to cut her hair. Maybe I just think of haircuts as a proxy for self-confidence?
– Friends with Daniel Radcliffe: I just really want to be friends with Daniel. There are so many questions I want to ask him. Like why Swiss Army Man? Did you method act and visit a Victorinox factory? What is why and how this scene:
– Attended Hogwarts School of Wizardry: well not in the literal sense. I find that ever since undergrad, there’s been a lack of “magic” in my life. A sense of wonder that I … oh wait, I was just describing Emma Watson wasn’t I?
Finishing a good work of fiction is always sad for me. It doesn’t matter if it’s an anime, a short story or, pertinent to this case, a novel. It was the case with Where the Crawdads Sing and certainly the case with the Dutch House. Unfortunately, American Gods didn’t elicit that sense of wonder or yearning when I read the last word. Don’t get me wrong, the book was fascinating, but there was no pang of longing as I left the world of the walking gods.
It was certainly an epic in every sense of the word: gods and men fighting, fantastical beings, themes of sacrifice and honor, and, since I was reading the special edition, some 600 pages of writing. The prose was solid, and at points, remarkably beautiful, but the most poignant passages were not about our protagonist Shadow, but rather describing tales of how gods wondered onto America. There was a fascinating short story about about how the first god arrived onto the new world through the Bering strait. Another interlude described the atrocities of the slave trade, and the subsequent transplanting of African traditions to Haiti and New Orleans.
I reckon it’s the measly amount of world building that Gaiman did that caused the disinterest. As someone who enjoys the superhero franchises, the premise is absolutely enticing for me. What powers would they have? Can they influence major world events? Is there going to be a tier list of gods somewhere on YouTube? But I didn’t as much as bat an eye at the feats of gods from the book. Most of the gods were more a plot vehicle, rather than a focus of development, and i would love to have read the opposite of that. Maybe I’ve just been spoiled by Stan Lee and the Russo brothers.
The book did make me want to start up coin magic, so there’s that.
There is a section in American Gods which detailed the early slave trade in a gruesome fashion. It follows a pair of twins as they were transported from their home, onto the slave ship and finally as they were separated in the New World. They never saw each other again, with the brother dying in the slave revolt of Haiti and the sister eventually finding a semi-fulfilling life (maybe?) in New Orleans.
I’m not sure why this particular passage hit me so deeply. Part of the reason might be my personal interactions with twins, and seeing how they can be so intertwined. Forcefully separating any family is a travesty, but destroying the bonds of fraternal or identical twins seems somehow worse. The chapter reminded me of Three Identical Strangers, and how even though the triplets were separated, they presented similar personality traits when the reunited years later.
Maybe it’s how Gaiman described the entire affair. While he did write about the physical tortures that characters had to suffer through, he also detailed all the new names that the character had assigned to them. This little detail really made me pause. I guess I’ve never really thought about how humanizing a name is, how an identity is so important to self worth.
If I write enough, hopefully I can better express how poignant passages touches me.
Sort of inspired by the video by GMTK, I spent a few hours last week making the following graph, showing synergy between the Silent cards. The arrow between card A and card B means that A makes B better.
Some of them are pretty obvious, but others, less so (example: Piercing Wail and Well-Laid Plans is quite good). There are also other cases where a card is “good” with anything: Burst is obviously “good” with any card, but particularly good with Catalyst and After Image can be procced by any card for example.
This definitely isn’t complete, and the Silent is my worst character in terms of heart kills so I would appreciate feedback.
On the very long drive down to Florida, I listened to the Crazy Rich Asians audiobook. The whole time, I just couldn’t understand how the movie made such a big splash when the book just felt was so unrelatable on so many levels, with a prose that is simply… adequate. I honestly thought “shit, how did this book get turned into a film. I don’t want this book to reflect Asian-Americans.”
The main plot between Rachel and Nick was, in most ways, a standard feel-good romcom variations, but subplots involving Astrid and Eddie were jarring. Were we suppose to sympathize with a multimillionaire heiress who suspects her husband was cheating on him? What about a conceited “family” man who’s main purpose in the plot is to further magnify the fact that money doesn’t buy happiness? Like the people in the story, it just seems to me that there’s too much fluff between the covers, and not enough substance
… which is probably why the movie was such a big hit. The math is simple: glamour + good actors = pretty decent film.
Otherwise known as a SMURFETTE, and unwitting namesake for a principle describing how in many popular culture “a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined.”
Honestly, what a great name for an absolutely terrible trend in media. Maybe Joe Biden can learn something about this.
The recent Sunday crossword puzzle had a clue relating to the source of bay leaves, whose answer was LAUREL. I was curious afterwards and stumbled upon two horrifying uses:
They’re used in entomology as an “active ingredient in killing jars.” Apparently, the tender leaves releases vapors which slowly kills small insects. It turns out, the essential oil concentration is the active ingredients and not some intrinsic mechanic property, which really begs the question of why people fall for those MLMs shelling oils.
Speaking of…
Maybe burning a bay leaf does have noticeable effects on the human body as this website suggests, but it seems there’s a non-zero population in the world who like to think that burning this dried plant leaf can also bring fame and fortune. Maybe it’s because it’s the color green? Maybe because bay leaf sounds somewhat like bay life, and San Francisco is part of Silicon Valley? Maybe it’s just humans wanting to believe in the supernatural? Or just an attractive person able to convert superstition into a successful YouTube career?
On the issue of using them in cooking, I firmly believe they are overhyped and doesn’t really contribute much.
