Diary (January 2, 2021)

Online diary of Karl Jones for Saturday January 2, 2021.

Previous: Diary (January 1, 2021) - Next: Diary (January 3, 2021)

Diary

Vampires carry money?

Never really occurred to me, but I suppose they do.

Caution! Some coins have crosses on them, don't they?

Not here in America, of course: our primary god is Money itself.

But surely *somebody* has hammered out coins with crosses, maybe in Transylvania?

• [] @

Subjunctive mood

The subjunctive is a grammatical mood, a feature of the utterance that indicates the speaker's attitude toward it. Subjunctive forms of verbs are typically used to express various states of unreality such as: wish, emotion, possibility, judgement, opinion, obligation, or action that has not yet occurred; the precise situations in which they are used vary from language to language. The subjunctive is one of the irrealis moods, which refer to what is not necessarily real. It is often contrasted with the indicative, a realis mood which is used principally to indicate that something is a statement of fact.

Subjunctives occur most often, although not exclusively, in subordinate clauses, particularly that-clauses. Examples of the subjunctive in English are found in the sentences "I suggest that you be careful" and "It is important that she stay by your side."

• Subjunctive mood @ Wikipedia

Optative mood

The optative mood (/ˈɒptətɪv/ or /ɒpˈteɪtɪv/;[1] abbreviated opt) is a grammatical mood that indicates a wish or hope. It is similar to the cohortative mood, and is closely related to the subjunctive mood.

English has no morphological optative, but there are various constructions which impute an optative meaning. One uses the modal verb may, e.g. May you have a long life! Another uses the phrase if only with a verb in the past or past subjunctive, e.g. If only I were rich! Another uses the present subjunctive, e.g. God save the Queen!

• Optative mood

Subjunctive Minute

Subjunctive Minute - mashup with New York Minute

Hasselblad

Hasselblad, Hasselblad

Fly away home!

Your aperature's open!

Your film is exposed!

Compare Database Database

Pirates as Robin Hood

Quite right. Which makes me wonder—

Do pirates ever use their ships to steal from rich ships, in order to give to poor ships?

Pirates as Robin Hood sort-of-thing.

Probably not. Hrmph. May have to do it myself, impossible to find good help these days, etc.

• Post @ Twitter

Fiction cross-reference

• Gnomon algorithm
• Gnomon Chronicles