interesting words

Here is a list of interesting words I've encountered. 

Feel free to contact me if you have a word you think I should add. All suggestions will be taken into consideration. 

oneiric/21 Nov 2020

iatrogenic/18 Nov 2020

palimpsest/Nov 2020

aposematism/24 Oct 2020

senescence/20 Oct 2020

sophistry/10 Oct 2020

hematochromatosis: the disorder of having too much blood

skyrodemichor [I came up with this word via some etymological analysis. It means "the smell of concrete after rain."]

sylvurban [I came up with this word. It describes areas where manmade structures and nature meet in an interesting way, or where urban space/infrastructure and wilderness intersect. Think observing a murmuration from a highway overpass with noise pollution in the background, not a vegetable garden next to a house. Alternative form: sylvurbimarginal] 

Popular posts from this blog

AI chatbots

I just read a highly interesting and very fascinating article in the San Francisco Chronicle about a man who used AI to simulate his dead fiancee in a chatbot. This happened to include multiple topics that interest me, such as epistolary formats and the concept of death mixed with AI in a slightly similar scenario to the movie Her , which is one of my favorites.  I suppose I might be an ideal candidate to create an AI chatbot out of because there would be a decent amount of source material to feed into it, so as to better simulate me. I imagine it would be more difficult to accurately capture the voice of someone who is less inclined to communicate at length via writing. Training the AI on text messages from someone who never texts more than fifteen words at a time might not result in  a particularly personalized AI chatbot. That's my theory, at least; though maybe I'm wrong?   Although not explicitly referred to in the article, it made me think about the possibility of paraso
Read more

DC Ride of Silence 2019

Image
The  Ride of Silence is an annual ride occurring on the third Wednesday of May in locations around the world. It is in memory of cyclists who have been killed while biking . This year, DC's bike community suffered a particularly devastating loss -- a driver killed Dave Salovesh last month. Although I didn't know him personally, he was a dedicated activist for safer bike infrastructure in DC. It's only more recently (within the past year) that I've gotten involved a bit in the local biking community ( #bikeDC , as well as #bikemoco / #bikerockville , which I've been trying to make a thing), so this was really the first group ride of any sort I've participated in. It was an impactful experience. Thanks to everyone who worked hard to organize the ride beforehand, and thanks also to the people who marshaled/stopped car traffic at intersections and led the group during the ride so everything went pretty swimmingly, even though we only had a police escort for
Read more

A deep dive into the DC Metro challenge

On Saturday, Aaron Landry and I completed the Metro Challenge. It entails passing through every single station in the Metro system in a single trip. This is an extremely detailed explanation of what it's really like to attempt and finish the DC Metro Challenge. It's also probably more than you ever wanted to know about the Metro Challenge, but here goes. A Washingtonian writer did the challenge recently , which is how this idea got in my head.  Here's an earlier preview post with some of my thoughts about the challenge prior to attempting it . All in all, it was an adventure. Though some people may not find the concept appealing at all, doing the Metro challenge may be of interest to those who like transit. It's an interesting day trip idea and rather doable with the proper planning and execution. Here's a current map of the WMATA/Metrorail system  (PDF), for reference. At best, the challenge can be completed in around eight hours. Our final time was 7 hours,
Read more