Diary (January 2, 2021)

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

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Diary

Tafl games

Tafl games (pronounced [tavl], also known as hnefatafl games) are a family of ancient Nordic and Celtic strategy board games played on a checkered or latticed gameboard with two armies of uneven numbers.

Most probably they are based upon the Roman game Ludus latrunculorum.

Names of different variants of Tafl include Hnefatafl, Tablut, Tawlbwrdd, Brandubh, Ard Rí, and Alea Evangelii. Games in the tafl family were played in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland, Britain, Ireland, and Lapland. Tafl gaming was eventually supplanted by chess in the 12th Century, but the tafl variant of the Sami people, tablut, was in play until at least the 1700s.

The rules for tablut were written down by the Swedish naturalist Linnaeus in 1732, and these were translated from Latin to English in 1811. All modern tafl games are based on the 1811 translation, which had many errors. New rules were added to amend the issues resulting from these errors, leading to the creation of a modern family of tafl games. In addition, tablut is now also played in accordance with its original rules, which have been retranslated.

• Tafl games @ Wikipedia

Vampires carry money?

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?

• Post @ Twitter

Moon Knight

Moon Knight (Marc Spector) is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Doug Moench and artist Don Perlin, the character first appeared in Werewolf by Night #32 (August 1975).

Moon Knight has often been compared to DC Comics' Batman due to similarities between them: both are millionaire entrepreneurs that use their wealth to pay for the equipment used by their alter ego to fight crime. They are also expert detectives, and even use similar gadgets, such as boomerang-like projectiles (Batarangs for Batman, and Moonrangs for Moon Knight).

However, there are some major differences between the two, such as the fact that Moon Knight uses multiple identities, and has superpowers (although he later lost them).

• Moon Knight @ Wikipedia

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