#16 - write my words
"Written words are a message to the future. The person reading it is always further ahead in time than the person writing it" ('How To', Randall Munroe)
… McHenry was bitten by a rabid fox while on a morning run through Capitol Hill in 2022. He did not publicly mention the incident until months later, commenting that “I didn’t want my Wikipedia page to say, 'And he got bitten by a rabid fox'“
~ Patrick McHenry’s Wikipedia page
“In 1404, King Taejong fell from his horse during a hunting expedition. Embarrassed, looking to his left and right, he commanded, “Do not let the historian find out about this.” To his disappointment, the historian accompanying the hunting party included these words in the annals, in addition to a description of the king’s fall.“
~ Taejong Sillok Book 7. 5th year of King Taejong’s Reign (1404)
“If you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all.”
~ God. From Futurama, S04E08, Godfellas
A word in which each of the vowels appears once and only once is called a supervocalic. Which is itself a supervocalic. Other supervocalics include ambidextrous and delusional.
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Eye Rhymes are words that look like they should rhyme but don’t, such as “lemon and demon.”
"There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover"
~ Metropolitan Police spokesperson, as seen on Banksy's book cover
“There’s Tony Cicoria, an orthopaedic surgeon who was struck by lightning at a New York park in 1994. It went straight through his head and left him with an irresistible desire to play the piano. To begin with he was playing other people’s music, but soon he started writing down the melodies that were constantly running through his head. Today he’s a pianist and composer, as well as a practicing surgeon.”
~ The mystery of why some people become sudden geniuses (BBC)
I was aware that Asimov was a major figure in American literature, the author of numerous science fiction and science books. I didn’t know just how many books: about five hundred. The man wrote five hundred books. I don’t think I’ve written five hundred Post-it notes. He wrote so many books, even his biographers are reduced to the vague “about five hundred.” The Britannica can be depressing that way. As you read accomplishment after accomplishment, Nobel after Nobel, you are reminded just how little you’ve done with your life.
~ The Know-It-All (A. J. Jacobs)