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In Quebec, there's a town named Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha! for similar reasons (as well as two Baie des Ha! Ha! and one Rivière Ha! Ha!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Louis-du-Ha!_Ha !
See also the 'Punic ditch'. I can't find a good description online ([1] is the most specific), but basically it's a fortification comprising a human-scale haha with the wall on the outward side, and the slope on the inward side. The idea is that attackers can cross it easily, by jumping down the wall, then charging up the slope, at which point you open fire on them, then when they turn to run way, they have to climb…
Seems pretty irrelevant if you've got the numbers on the defenders. Just don't retreat and throw bodies into the wide open breach. You'd drive right over just fine like a spike strip facing the wrong way.
The popularity of freerunning/parkour makes me doubt their usefulness as a security device, unless they're made significantly wider & deeper than the wikipedia examples.
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You chose some relatively ordinary demonyms, these are some fun ones: Mancunian, Muscovite, Liverpudlian, Glaswegian, Munsonian, Buddies.
I know the rest of these, but Buddies is a new one; to whom does it refer?
One of their info signs mentioned that female officers were forbidden from attending a royal visit during WWII but got round the ban by standing behind a Ha-ha wall so only the tops of their heads could be seen.
I was planning to come back and look up "Ha-ha wall" but it conveniently turned out to be on the front page of HN!
And in Ankh Morpork, there's the hoho: A cunningly designed ditch like a Haha, only the Hoho is 50 feet deep. Has claimed three Palace gardeners. Also once trapped Dr. Cruces, then head of the Assassins' Guild.
Yep, and as mentioned in the article, there's also a he-he. A description is never given of it, but it's a safe assumption that it's a tiny haha, possibly only a couple inches high. Interestingly, if this is accurate, it means that the front/backness of the vowel in hehe/haha/hoho correlates with its size.
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You chose some relatively ordinary demonyms, these are some fun ones: Mancunian, Muscovite, Liverpudlian, Glaswegian, Munsonian, Buddies.
‘Muscovite’ is from ‘Muscovy’, denoting the Middle-Ages' Duchy of Moscow and in turn descending from Latin ‘Moscoviae’. Since English has chronic trouble mapping sounds, especially vowels, that are fundamental for Russian, ‘Muscovy’ is in fact a rather reasonable approximation. ‘Moscovia’ would be better, but alas. It's like we're seeing different fundamental colors―which we sort of do with English ‘indigo’ and Russi…
> Newton divided his color circle, which he constructed to explain additive color mixing, into seven colors. His color sequence including the tertiary color indigo is kept alive today by the Roy G. Biv mnemonic. Originally he used only five colors, but later he added orange and indigo to match the number of musical notes in the major scale.
So, the concept of there being uniquely-important indigo (and orange!) points on the hue spectrum were just, kinda... made up, as a bit of numerological whimsy, by Isaac Newton. And everyone else in the Western world just followed his lead, because he seemed to know what he was talking about.
I would note that no English-speaker actually seems to describe anything as “indigo” in practice. People do tend to describe plenty of things as “light blue”, though! We get taught “ROY G BIV” in kindergarten, but we basically ignore it, because it doesn’t actually fit anything else we get taught. (I don’t even recall any children’s picture books that bother with examples of “indigo” objects.)
IMHO, there’s also a much more fundamental distinction made in English-in-practice, between three kinds of green: yellow-green (“spring green”, “olive green” when desaturated), “green green”†, and blue-green (“sea blue”, cyan, turquoise.) Many people will insist that, if orange is a separate color from yellow or red, then yellow-green and green-blue are separate colors as well.
† https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrastive_focus_reduplicatio...
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I did not find the comment patronizing. Assuming bad intent on the part of other commentators is ALSO not in the HN spirit.
How is it not patronising?! The person is telling me that they disagree with my viewpoint - and rather than then explaining why they disagree, they decide to explain to me that I can edit Wikipedia! To me, that is patronising. While their language is mild and friendly, their message is utterly patronising.
To me, that is not patronizing. Just like your original comment about the photos and the original reply, this is all subjective.
That you chose to take offense to subjective, measured comments is something you may want to spend time considering.
See also the 'Punic ditch'. I can't find a good description online ([1] is the most specific), but basically it's a fortification comprising a human-scale haha with the wall on the outward side, and the slope on the inward side. The idea is that attackers can cross it easily, by jumping down the wall, then charging up the slope, at which point you open fire on them, then when they turn to run way, they have to climb…
The ancient world’s dark pattern.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
‘Muscovite’ is from ‘Muscovy’, denoting the Middle-Ages' Duchy of Moscow and in turn descending from Latin ‘Moscoviae’. Since English has chronic trouble mapping sounds, especially vowels, that are fundamental for Russian, ‘Muscovy’ is in fact a rather reasonable approximation. ‘Moscovia’ would be better, but alas. It's like we're seeing different fundamental colors―which we sort of do with English ‘indigo’ and Russi…
Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROYGBIV (emphasis mine): > Newton divided his color circle, which he constructed to explain additive color mixing, into seven colors. His color sequence including the tertiary color indigo is kept alive today by the Roy G. Biv mnemonic. Originally he used only five colors, but later he added orange and indigo to match the number of musical notes in the major scale . So, the conce…