If you’re interested in the source that Wikipedia cites, it’s Google Books: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=eat+your+cake+and+have,have+your+cake+and+eat&year_start=1800&year_end=1990&corpus=15&smoothing=3

It just occurred to me that the #English #FigureOfSpeech ‘You can’t have the cake and eat it too’ is silly. It should be ‘You can’t eat the cake and still have it’ or something like it.

I wanted to know if there’s a reason for the ‘reverted’ #idiom and looked up its origin. And, lo and behold, the Wikipedia says, ‘my’ version ‘used to be the most common form of the #expression until the 1930s–1940s, when it was overtaken by the have-eat variant.’

Huh. The more you know.

#randomFact #language

Does anyone remember the fantastic #wordProcessor #Marcel for the #AtariST? (I think it was also released for other systems.)

The last version can easily be found online, but I’m looking for older versions and, most importantly, a scan of the physical #manual.

Boosts appreciated. 🙏

#atari #retrocomputing #vintagecomputing

By the way, I’m using #AudD as the service and I am impressed, that it not only identified the song but also the album correctly! 😳

Today is #DigitalIndependenceDay again and because missed it a couple of times as I was busy on the first Sunday of the month, I prepared something in advance this time:

I replaced #Shazam with #Audile! #IDidIt 😌

https://github.com/aleksey-saenko/MusicRecognizer

#music #musicRecognition #freeSoftware

So, my cousin had a baby, how do you call this kind of #kinship?

As it turns out, the term differs a lot from #language to language:

#English: first cousin once removed.

#French: little cousin (petite-cousine)

#German: niece of the second degree (Nichte zweiten Grades)

#Esperanto: second ranked niece (duaranga nevino)

How do you say in your language? 🤗

#family #Consanguinity

#Question: where is the line between a #walk and a #hike? Is it the distance? Or the time spent? Or the rucksack?!

#walking #hiking

So, I’ve been mining #bitcoin. Weird thing to say on mastodon.green, I know. Then again, I did it before I was a member here or, indeed, before Mastodon was even invented.

Back at uni, we had a 3D lab (which implies that the others labs had just two dimensions, which they hadn’t, but maybe they had four and I just didn’t notice) with some pretty beefy hardware. Using a #miningPool I gained a miniscule fraction of a coin, which I promptly forgot about.

It is now worth €650! 😳

#cryptocurrency

I dreamed #Russia had invaded #Belgium. Because #Germany held the presidency of #NATO, it was chancellor #Merz’ responsibility to activate Article 5. He refused, stating it was too early for that. Half of Belgium was already occupied when I woke up.

There are a lot of things wrong in this scenario. Merz’ reaction is not one of them. 😭

#dream #nightmare

I made the error to read some of the #news. 🤬

#weltschmerz #depression

POKéMON?

#pokemon #gameboy #retrogaming

I just learned that a friend of mine had committed suicide. We were never that close and lost contact altogether two or three years ago, but I am still shocked. 😔

If you are considering to take your life PLEASE seek help instead!

#suicide #depression #mentalhealth

Finally got my #covid shot. 💪

#39c3

I just saw a #Petite #ULTRA400 #typewriter in a #thriftstore. This is a #toy for children, not a real typewriter. But, as one did in the late 70s to mid 80s, they build it completely functional! It types in CAPS only, but it types. Almost completely made out of plactic this is the 1980 counterpart to an ultra portable notebook or the old iPad you give to your kids. I am SO tempted to buy it...

#AdhdBrain #impulsebuying

I was looking for an #app to teach me how to play the #piano. I was testing several and for one I forgot to cancel the #subscription before the end of the trial periode. So, I guess the die is cast. I will use this one. 🙄

#adhdbrain

I finally upgraded from #elementaryOS 7 to 8. I am not happy, because the #Nextcloud SyncClient is unusable. I can set it up, but there is no way to open its settings afterwards or see what it’s doing. 😭

Yes, there is a German word for how you feel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltschmerz

If the #Internet and the #Fediverse had existed in 1933, it would not have changed things, but it would have made them more palatable.

Thank you, everyone.

#fascism #coping #humour

They just said on the radio that every #EU citizen bought 19 kilos of #clothing in 2022. 19 kilos! Since I barely buy anything, someone else must have bought almost twice as much. 😱

#fashion #fastfashion

Ever seen fancy italics, bold text, or even gothic letters in a slick marketing post on social media?

These platforms do not offer text formatting, so people use weird mathematical characters from the fringes of the Unicode spectrum. And because they aren't really letters screen reader software will announce them as silence or incomprehensible garbage.

@aardrian has the lodown in "Don’t Use Fake Bold or Italic in Social Media"
https://adrianroselli.com/2025/03/dont-use-fake-bold-or-italic-in-social-media.html

#a11y
#accessibility