Why is actors appearing alongside themselves in two roles such a theme of the moment? Mickey 17 (Robert Pattinson), The Monkey (Theo James), The Alto Knights (Robert DeNiro), and soon Sinners (Michael B. Jordan)

By chance I came across the idea of Chesterton's Fence again. It's very apt in the age Musk's arson on the US state.

Today's French word I didn't previously know: 'matinale', as in 'Je suis pas très matinale'= 'I'm not much of a morning person'

There's something so perfect about this headline - delicate yet hilarious.

"Athletics Australia says it's making a 'bold' rebrand to 'Australian Athletics'" – Reuters
www.reuters.com/sports/athle...

Ralph Fiennes, very demure, very mindful youtu.be/wGA8RzhCgLA?...

A lovely bit of trivia that was new to me: the Cornell University Pumpkin Prank

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell...

Getting a tour of Dad's 3D printer, currently midway through a three-ring fidget spinner

My new favourite example of coincidentally named films: Zzyzx and Zyzzyx Road are unrelated except by location and both came out in February 2006

"To get the capybara sound, the sound engineer had to travel to a zoo and tickle capybaras. However, the real capybara sounds did not match the personality that the capybara character would have, so instead they used a baby camel for this one."

It's weird to me that adding irregular line breaks qualifies undistinguished prose as shareable poetry in some quarters.

Another little etymology treat I learned yesterday: Greek 'bombyx', meaning silk or silkworm, transferred to Latin, became 'bombax' meaning cotton, and eventually became 'bombast', raw cotton used for stuffing upholstery and clothing, hence 'bombastic': puffed up and pretentious

Sarah Lancashire never fails. I love every line delivery of hers in #BlackDoves so far.

"Oh, well there's that Oxbridge degree you didn't take coming in handy"

I joined a French-speaking alliance in a mobile game, and got to learn that you can say "à plus tards, les nénuphars", literally "see you later, water lilies" but idiomatically "see you later, alligator" (dunno if it's standard or if they coined it on the spot)

According to Etymonline, 'lots' meaning many is attested "by 1812". Remarkably recent! That would be very easy to get wrong in historical fiction.