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Fact of the Day - FRÈRE JACQUES Did you know.... This simple nursery rhyme comes with a number of unanswered questions about everything from its authorship to who inspired it. The nursery rhyme “Frère Jacques,” also known as “Brother Jacques” or “Brother John” in English, tells the tale of a monk who is being summoned to ring the bells, which he seems not to have done yet because he’s still asleep. The French lyrics are: “Frère Jacques, Frère Jacques Dormer-vous? Dormer-vous? Sonnez les matines! Sonnez les matines! Din, din, don. Din, din, don.” While the song seems to tell a simple story, “Frère Jacques” has actually been the source of more debate over the years than you might expect, from disagreements over the most accurate translation of the lyrics to speculation over whether the central character was inspired by a real-life figure to the possibility that the true author of the music was one of the most important French composers of the 18th century. Here’s a look at the story—and some of the unanswered questions—behind the nursery rhyme we know today as “Frère Jacques.” Who Wrote “Frère Jacques”? The origin of the song “Frère Jacques” isn’t entirely clear. According to American Songwriter, the melody seems to have first appeared under the title “Frère Blaise” in a manuscript called “Recueil de Timbres de Vaudevilles” that dates back to around 1780. Jean-Philippe Rameau. Research into who composed that music has identified one of the most notable 18th century composers as a candidate. In 2014, the classical music scholar Sylvie Bouisseau presented a research paper arguing that the music was written by the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. Among other evidence, Boisseau notes that Jacques Joseph Marie Decroix—a collector of scores who compiled a number of Rameau’s works that were given to the Bibliothèque Nationale de France—included it in a manuscript of canons and attributed the music to the composer. In addition, Bouisseau pointed out that the first time the music appeared in print (as opposed to the handwritten form of the 1780s manuscript) was when it was published in 1811 by the Société du Caveau, a group of composers that counted Rameau as a member. This added further credibility to the idea that he may have been the composer of “Frère Jacques”; his membership would explain why the group was in possession of the music. That said, Rameau died in 1764, and the music wasn’t published until almost half a century after his death—raising the question of why the society would have kept a piece by such a renowned composer under its hat for so long. The Meaning of “Frère Jacques” In addition to the questions surrounding its authorship, the meaning of “Frère Jacques” has been muddled over the years thanks to translations of the lyrics from French to English. Some early English versions of the rhyme, for example, turned Frère Jacques into Brother John. But John isn’t the direct equivalent of Jacques in English; it’s a closer match for the name Jean, with Jacques having more similarity to Jack. The third line, “Sonnez les matines,” was also once translated as “Morning bells are ringing”—but that doesn’t accurately communicate the situation to which the poem is alluding. This is because matines has sometimes been mistakenly translated as a reference to “morning,” due to the word’s similarity to matin, which translates to “morning” in French. But matines actually refers to a canonical hour in Christianity which takes place in the early hours of the morning. The summons to “ring the matins” is therefore a call to ring the bells to usher in this period for prayers. A more recent English language version translates the line as “ring the matins,” which is a more accurate version of the original. Who Was the Real Frère Jacques? There has also been speculation about whether the title character of the nursery rhyme was inspired by a real person. Some have theorized that the real Frère Jacques was Jacques Beaulieu, a pioneering lithologist who sometimes wore a monk’s habit and referred to himself as Frère Jacques, even though he wasn’t actually a monk. He was one of the first to take a lateral approach to perineal lithotomy (a surgical operation for the removal of calcium deposits like kidney and bladder stones via the perineum) and performed around 5000 lithotomies over the course of his career. But a 1999 research paper into the history of the real Beaulieu didn’t find a direct connection between him and the nursery rhyme character, instead concluding that the rhyme was more likely to refer to a number of monks who were prone to oversleeping. The Influence of “Frère Jacques” Whatever the truth about the origins of the rhyme, “Frère Jacques” has been influential in a number of ways. The melody has been important to the legacy of classical music—and that would be true whether Rameau composed the music or not. “Frère Jacques” became an inspiration to the composer Gustav Mahler, who knew it by its German name, “Bruder Martin”; he used the melody in the third movement of his Symphony No. 1. It also has its place in music history outside of the classical genre: George Harrison and John Lennon slipped “Frère Jacques” into the Beatles’ song “Paperback Writer” (listen carefully during the third verse). It’s in its nursery rhyme form that “Frère Jacques” is most frequently heard today, and it’s sometimes cited as a good choice to use for educational purposes. Leonard Bernstein, for example, asked the audience at one of his Young People’s Concerts to sing the rhyme as a way to illustrate how sequence can be used in composition. A 2019 survey even suggested using “a musical mnemonic” based on the song, which, according to researchers, “can help learning and remembering of the proper [handwashing] technique.” Source: “Frère Jacques”: The History of the Classic Nursery Rhyme

What's the Word: PREPOSSESSING pronunciation: [pree-pə-ZES-ing] Part of speech: adjective Origin: English, mid-17th century Meaning: 1. Attractive or appealing in appearance. Examples: "The neighborhood has become more prepossessing with the recent renovations." "Miriam had a prepossessing aura that always attracted people to her." About Prepossessing In the 1610s, this word was related to “getting possession of land beforehand.” The meaning morphed about 20 years later into “possessing a person beforehand with a feeling or notion.” And in the 1640s, the meaning broadened into causing someone to “have a favorable opinion of something; to preoccupy the mind or heart of.” It's been simplified over the years as an adjective to mean “attractive.” Did you Know? “Prepossessing” also has some archaic definitions that mean "creating prejudice" and "possessing something prior to a specific time."

Vegapunk's message continues, with him now saying a mega earthquake will rock the world at some point. And that the waters will rise at least 1 meter in most places, or more, thus losing more land to the sea. We see Mother Flame in its container, and then the message go one about the Void Century. Of course reactions varied. Edison tries his damndest to let the Straw Hats escape. And then Vegapunk tells us Joyboy was the first man on the sea to be called a pirate.

Fact of the Day - JAWS: MATT HOOPER INSPIRATION Did you know... Dr. Donald “Reef” Nelson was part of the inspiration for Matt Hooper, Richard Dreyfuss’s character in the iconic 1975 summer blockbuster. In 1975, Jaws changed several things forever: It created the modern-day summer blockbuster, made millions of people terrified of the ocean, and did a pretty terrible PR job for the great white shark, all things considered. Someone less than thrilled with how Jaws led people to feel about sharks was Dr. Donald “Reef” Nelson, science advisor on both the original film and its 1978 sequel, and part of the inspiration for Richard Dreyfuss’s character, oceanographer and double-denim enthusiast Matt Hooper. When Nelson had his first encounter with a shark back in 1959, scientists knew very little about their behavior. They’d looked at dead ones and spied live ones from afar, but firsthand encounters tended to be brief and often slightly more frenzied than the conditions science tends to favor. Nelson had finished a degree in biology at Rutgers University in 1958 and subsequently moved to Florida to—among other things—join the awesomely-named spear-fishing team, the Glug Glugs. He had an epiphany after spearing a grunt, a small but surprisingly loud fish, which reacted to being speared by making a lot of noise. A tiger shark immediately appeared, which Nelson then also proceeded to spear. But he took more home with him than just the fish and shark: He also had an idea. Were sharks attracted to sound? Nobody had investigated that before, so along with his research partner Samuel “Sonny” Gruber, he looked into it. The pair recorded fake sounds of struggling fish like his screaming grunt and played them underwater from an ultrasonic speaker that had been developed by the Navy. Those low-frequency vibrations drew in an astonishing 22 sharks, and the pair published their findings in Science in 1963 while still grad students. Diving Deeper In the years leading up to Nelson’s research, there had been several high-profile incidents in which the U.S. Navy had suffered huge casualties thanks to sharks. The story of the USS Indianapolis that Quint (Robert Shaw) famously tells in the original Jaws was based on a real event, and several similar incidents had occurred in the Pacific, as well as the South Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea. What Nelson and Gruber had uncovered during their research would help to save lives. They found that the same kind of sounds made by an injured, thrashing fish can be made by swimmers, something that can work out pretty sub-optimally for those swimmers. By 1965, Nelson was in California, working as a biology professor at Cal State Long Beach and trying to develop ways to repel sharks (including via a cattle-like prod that was intended to stun one if it drew too close), although none of them worked out. Perhaps coincidentally, Adam West’s Batman had a can of shark repellent in 1966’s Batman: The Movie, which was shot in California. More interesting than repelling sharks, though, was getting as close to them as possible. For a while, Nelson did this in the most absurdly badass way possible, by free-diving up to 60 feet and chasing reef sharks until they got angry, something known as the Kamikaze technique. By doing this, he observed reef sharks’ “agonistic display,” meaning the behavior they performed when under threat. Around this time in the early 1970s, a young Steven Spielberg made a visit to the Shark Lab at Cal State, which Nelson had founded in 1966. Nelson’s lifelong habit of drawing on napkins and scraps of paper meant his office was a messy, shark-filled dream, especially for a filmmaker. This wasn’t a side of scientists that viewers were used to seeing, but it worked—Spielberg made photocopies of all the maps, scribbled napkin notes, and photos he saw and his team ultimately recreated everything for Hooper’s office in Jaws. “An Ultimate Marine Biologist” Although Nelson was involved with the making of Jaws and Jaws 2, he didn’t let Hollywood go to his head. Even after Jaws, he was still using the Kamikaze technique, and he only retired it in 1976 after a close call with a very combative shark. He swiftly invented a one-person, fiberglass submarine known as the SOS, or Shark Observation Submersible, and got right back to studying sharks up-close in their underwater environment. He even took video footage, and along with his team, eventually developed methods for tracking sharks using ultrasonic transmitters. This kind of acoustic transmitter technology served as a precursor to the technologically advanced tracking methods used today. In the process, he learned so, so much about sharks. His team was the second in the world to put a transmitter on a shark in the wild, which opened up a whole new world of discovery. Everyone had assumed they were solitary, mindless killing machines, but Nelson and other scientists at the Shark Lab learned that they were in fact much more social than suspected, far less aggressive (except when threatened), and some species had complex, mutually beneficial relationships with other ocean-dwellers. There was vastly more to them than just being the sharp-toothed murderers-in-waiting depicted in those films. Unfortunately, post-Jaws, there were a great many people who simply didn’t want to know. Both Spielberg and Peter Benchley, co-screenwriter on Jaws and author of the original novel, expressed regret over rendering the public so terrified of sharks, as well as disappointment in the shark killings that followed. In 1978, Nelson himself had endorsed a publicity poster accompanying Jaws 2 that scared the crap out of a lot of people, as it was claimed that the “seas off our shores are aprowl with many killers” and that sharks were capable of attacking in freshwater and causing boats to sink, so it was essential for audience-goers to “know their enemy.” But by the time Nelson died in 1997, humanity had a far more detailed knowledge of the world of sharks—knowledge used to keep people safe from them, but also to protect them from people. With all the video footage of sharks that he had captured with his team, Nelson was able to make over 20 documentaries between 1968 and 1994, most of which were shown in school classrooms or aired on TV. A glowing memorial published in 2001 by the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes [PDF] praised Nelson as “an ultimate marine biologist.” Over the course of his career, which had spanned more than three decades, Nelson influenced multiple generations of scientists to follow in his (wet) footsteps and explore the worlds of these fascinating creatures. Nelson also produced nearly 50 papers about sharks, which means if you’re planning on reading his output ... you’re gonna need a bigger shelf. Source: The Real-Life Marine Biologist Who Helped Inspire ‘Jaws’

What's the Word: REGALIA pronunciation: [rə-GAYL-yə] Part of speech: noun Origin: Latin, mid-16th century Meaning: 1. The emblems or insignia of royalty, especially the crown, scepter, and other ornaments used at a coronation. 2. The distinctive clothing worn and ornaments carried at formal occasions as an indication of status. Examples: "The higher the military rank, the more regalia will be featured on formal dress." "The collection of crown jewels is part of the queen’s regalia. " About Regalia This word stems from the medieval Latin meaning “royal privileges.” It originates from the neuter plural of “regalis,” meaning “regal.” Did you Know? The word “regalia” traditionally applied to those with royal backgrounds, but in the Middle Ages, the definition started to broaden a bit. Academic regalia in graduation ceremonies — gowns, caps, hoods, and medals — is a tradition from that time when hooded gowns were necessary to keep the graduating students and educators warm.

Fact of the Day - LIGHTNING ROD Did you know... Ben Franklin’s famous experiment with the kite and key gave him a better understanding of the nature of electricity. But did that event lead to the lightning rod? On September 13, 2021, a severe thunderstorm pelted New York City with heavy rain, strong winds, and a wild lightning show. During the tempest, One World Trade Center—the Western Hemisphere’s tallest building at 1792 feet, including its antennae—was struck by several impressive bolts. Fortunately, the lightning strikes produced amazing photos and videos rather than catastrophic, fiery destruction—thanks to the skyscraper’s sophisticated lightning protection system based on the designs of Benjamin Franklin. But did Franklin really originate the concept of a lightning rod with his famous experiment? Kite and Key In the late 1740s, Franklin—Founding Father, inventor, and storm chaser—began investigating whether lightning was a form of electricity, as other scientists had suggested. To test the idea, he procured a kite and attached a metal key to it with an insulating silk cord. In 1752, he flew the kite during a thunderstorm and witnessed the key attract an electrical charge, proving the theory. Franklin started advocating for metal rods to protect buildings and the people inside them from the destructive forces of lightning. He hypothesized that an iron spire on top of a building or ship could protect it from fire by attracting the lightning’s energy and dispersing it safely. In a letter to a friend, he theorized that “the electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently before it could come near enough to strike.” For his efforts, Franklin is often thought of as the father of the lightning rod. But he might have been beaten to the idea. The possible pre-Franklin origins of the lightning rod are vigorously debated. Around 1730, a Russian industrialist named Akinfiy Demidov built the 189-foot-tall Leaning Tower of Nevyansk in Sverdlovsk Oblast, north of Yekaterinburg. It’s topped with a metal spire that connects to metal within the building’s structure, grounding what might be considered the first known lightning rod. It’s not clear whether Demidov intended the spire to act as such, but it could be an instance of nearly simultaneous invention. Source: Did Ben Franklin Really Invent the Lightning Rod?

What's the Word: SACHET pronunciation: [sa-SHAY] Part of speech: noun Origin: French, mid-19th century Meaning: 1. A small perfumed bag used to scent clothes. Examples: "Sadie bought French lavender sachets to put in her dresser drawers." "The women would meet monthly and bring different dried herbs to make sweet-smelling sachets." About Sachetp This word comes directly from French, meaning “little bag.” It is a diminutive of the Latin “saccus,” meaning “sack, bag.” Did you Know? Sachets have had varied cultural uses in history. For instance, in ancient China, a sachet was worn on the body, intended to absorb sweat and repel insects and evil spirits. During the Qing dynasty, a scented sachet was considered a token of love. In medieval Europe, sachets called “plague-bags” were worn around the neck to provide protection against what we now know were parasites and germs. In modern times of better hygiene, sweet-smelling sachets are still used in linen closets and clothing drawers for freshness.

Fact of the Day - LINGUISTICS TERMS Did you know... Grade school English teachers do their best to send you off into the world with at least a cursory understanding of how language works. Maybe you can tell your dependent clauses from your independent ones and your transitive verbs from your intransitive ones. Maybe you’re even pretty savvy at distinguishing between basic rhetorical devices—hyperbole versus oxymoron, simile versus metaphor, and that sort of thing. But unless you majored in linguistics in college or routinely spend your free time reading grammar blogs, there’s a whole world of words to describe language mechanics that you’re probably not aware of. Here are 15 of our favorites, from formal terms like amphiboly to colloquial ones like snowclone. Amphiboly Amphiboly, or amphibology, occurs when a sentence or phrase’s grammatical structure lends itself to multiple interpretations. There are countless ways this kind of ambiguity can happen. Maybe the placement of a prepositional phrase makes it unclear what that phrase is modifying, as Groucho Marx exploited in this classic joke: “One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas I don’t know.” Or maybe it’s not obvious which part of speech a certain word is functioning as, which happens fairly often (and sometimes to hilarious effect) in headlines. In “Eye Drops Off Shelves,” for example, drops is a noun—but the headline takes on a different meaning if you mistake it for a verb. (Ambiguous headlines are their own subset of amphiboly, colloquially called “crash blossoms.”) Back-formation We usually think of word formation as taking a root word and adding affixes (like prefixes and suffixes) so the resulting word is longer than what you had before. From friend, you can make friendly, friendship, and befriend. But it doesn’t always work that way: Back-formation is the process of creating a new word by removing affixes. English is full of surprising back-formations. Burglar, for example, didn’t arise from burgle. Burglar came first, and people then created burgle as a verb to describe what a burglar does. And legislate isn’t the stem for legislation, legislator, or legislative; all three actually predate it. Cutthroat compound Plenty of compound words include the subject (also known as the head) within the compound itself. Watermelons are melons, bluebirds are birds, and bedrooms are rooms. But there are also exocentric compounds, in which the head isn’t part of the actual term. A specific class of these compounds involves an action (verb) being performed on an object (noun). A cutthroat, for example, isn’t an actual cut throat; it’s a person who cuts a throat, literally or figuratively. Scarecrows scare crows, daredevils dare the devil, and so on. Though they’re formally called “agentive and instrumental exocentric verb-noun (V-N) compounds,” historical linguist Brianne Hughes gave them a much catchier nickname: cutthroat compounds. And while they’re not super common in English, you might start noticing them in unexpected places. Technically, William Shakespeare’s surname counts as a cutthroat compound: “one who shakes a spear.” Dysphemism You’ve probably heard of euphemisms: expressions that use “agreeable or inoffensive” language in place of terms “that may offend or suggest something unpleasant,” per Merriam-Webster. Pass away is a euphemism for “die,” and do it is a euphemism for “have sex.” Dysphemisms are the exact opposite of that: expressions that intentionally use harsh language to describe something more or less innocuous. Rug rat is a dysphemism for a “young child who’s still crawling on the carpet,” for example, and ambulance chaser is a dysphemism for “personal injury attorney.” Eggcorn Eggcorns are misheard expressions that actually make sense—e.g. deep-seeded instead of the technically correct version, deep-seated, and free reign rather than free rein. The term, coined by linguist Geoff Pullum, is a nod to acorn’s history of being misheard as eggcorn. Epenthesis and Syncope You might find it irksome that so many people pronounce realtor as “REEL-uh-ter” instead of “REEL-ter,” but they’re not disregarding letter order for no reason. It’s not uncommon for us to add an extra sound (often, but not always, a vowel sound) to a word to make it easier to pronounce—a phenomenon known as epenthesis. Athlete is another example: “ATH-uh-leet” rolls off the tongue better than “ATH-leet.” Some linguists even consider the “n” sound in the article an to be epenthetic: It neutralizes the difficulty of uttering two vowel sounds back to back, as we’d otherwise have to when talking about, say, a archer shooting a arrow at a apple. We drop sounds to make words easier to pronounce, too. This type of contraction within a single word is called a “syncope”—you can find examples in vegetable, whose second “e” sound is often omitted, and family, widely pronounced “FAM-lee.” (Syncope typically refers to dropped vowels, but some linguists do also use it for dropped consonants. The dropped-sound phenomenon overall is known as deletion.) Kangaroo word Recreational linguists have a name for words that contain their own synonyms: kangaroo words (because kangaroos carry their joeys in pouches). Rambunctious harbors raucous, respite has rest, and there’s ruin in destruction. In order to count as a true kangaroo word, the letters of the joey word must be ordered correctly in the parent word—i.e. you can’t do any unscrambling. You do have to remove letters from between the letters of the joey word, though; if there aren’t any, it doesn’t count. (E.g. belated and late and action and act are disqualified.) Mondegreen A cousin of the eggcorn is the mondegreen, “a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung,” per Merriam-Webster. Mondegreen is a mondegreen: Sylvia Wright coined the term in a 1954 Harper’s Magazine article in reference to Lady Mondegreen, a mishearing of “laid him on the green” from the Scottish ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray.” One of the most famous modern mondegreens is ’Scuse me while I kiss this guy from Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze.” (The actual lyric is “’Scuse me while I kiss the sky.”) And Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” gave us All the lonely Starbucks lovers, which is really “Got a long list of ex-lovers.” Nonce word A nonce word is a word that was coined for one occasion only. They’re not uncommon in linguistics studies on language acquisition, as researchers need to use words that participants won’t already be familiar with. (Psycholinguist Jean Berko Gleason memorably made up wug, gutch, and many other nonce words for this purpose.) Sometimes, people create nonce words to fill the need for a term that simply doesn’t exist, like puzz to describe the puzzle fuzz you find in the bottom of a puzzle box. But other times, writers are just making up words for fun—looking at you, Lewis Carroll. Some nonce words do end up filtering into the general lexicon, at which point they lose their nonce-word status. (But it’s hard to identify exactly how common a nonce word needs to become in order for it to stop being a nonce word.) Carroll is an interesting case because some of his nonce words did catch on, like chortle, while others are still nonces (e.g. slithy, a portmanteau of lithe and slimy). RAS syndrome Since PIN stands for personal identification number, saying “PIN number” is redundant. The same goes for the phrase ATM machine, as ATM stands for automated teller machine. In 2001, New Scientist gave this variety of redundancy its own tongue-in-cheek title: RAS syndrome, for redundant acronym syndrome syndrome. Even DC Comics is an example of RAS syndrome—DC stands for Detective Comics. (Strictly speaking, though, DC and ATM are initialisms, not acronyms. A more apt title would be redundant abbreviation syndrome syndrome.) Rebracketing Rebracketing occurs when we break up a word into different parts than were used when putting it together, a concept much easier to understand through real-world examples. Take hamburger: The term comprises Hamburg, the city in Germany, and the suffix -er. But as hamburgers gained popularity, people inadvertently rebracketed it as ham and burger—and burger became its own customizable term (cheeseburger, bacon burger, veggie burger, etc.). Alcoholic is another excellent example: It’s a fusion of alcohol and -ic, but we rebracketed it as alco- and -holic, appropriating -holic as a suffix to refer to other (mainly unofficial) addictions, e.g. chocoholic and workaholic. Blog is technically the result of rebracketing, too—it began as weblog (web and log), but we shifted the b from web onto log in shortening it. Snowclone Snowclones, as Geoff Pullum described them in 2004, are “some-assembly-required adaptable cliché frames for lazy journalists.” In other words, they’re clichés that you can customize for whatever you’re writing (or saying) by swapping out a couple operative words—like Hamlet’s “To be or not to be,” wherein you can fill in be and be with whatever verb you want. X is the new Y and In space, no one can hear you X (from Alien’s tagline “In space, no one can hear you scream”) are a couple other examples. The term snowclone, coined by economics professor Glen Whitman, is a nod to another snowclone: X have [a number of] words for Y, after the complicated but common claim that the Inuit people have 50 words for snow. Spoonerism A spoonerism is a phrase in which phonemes of two words have been switched, e.g. half-warmed fish instead of half-formed wish and blushing crow instead of crushing blow. They’re named for British clergyman William Archibald Spooner, who gained a reputation for absent-mindedness and lexical errors while serving as the warden of New College, Oxford, in the early 20th century [PDF]. It’s unclear how many spoonerisms Spooner actually uttered, but it’s probably less than what’s been attributed to him. Tmesis Tmesis involves shoehorning a whole nother word between two parts of a word or phrase—like abso-freakin’-lutely. Knowing where exactly to insert the word is one of those grammar rules that most native English speakers follow without even realizing it: As James Harbeck explained for The Week in 2015, it goes “right before a stressed syllable, usually the syllable with the strongest stress, and most often the last stressed syllable.” Source: Fascinating Linguistics Terms You Didn’t Learn in School

What's the Word: PARAGON pronunciation: [PAR-ə-gahn] Part of speech: noun Origin: Greek, mid-16th century Meaning: 1. A perfect diamond of 100 carats or more. 2. A person or thing regarded as a perfect example of a particular quality. Examples: "I’ve never seen a paragon on display in a museum or a jewelry exhibit." "The family held the matriarch up as a paragon of cherished virtues." About Paragon This word stems from French by way of the Italian “paragone,” meaning “touchstone to try good (gold) from bad.” It is originally from the medieval Greek “parakonē,” meaning “whetstone.” Did you Know? The largest flawless diamond in the world is the Paragon, a gem that weighs over 130 carats. The diamond’s current owner, London jeweler Graff Diamonds, cut it and set it into a necklace with other colored diamonds. It attracted a lot of attention in 1999 when it was linked to end-of-millennium celebrations — supermodel Naomi Campbell wore it at a diamond gala jointly sponsored by De Beers and Versace at London’s Syon House.

I agree with every single part of this. Down to the characters & which parts of Grandia III are good.

I did run Forgotten Memories, which was a final fantasy focused fansite that moved on to a lot of Square-Enix news and jrpgs. Then there was Judgement Ring before Shadow Hearts Infoholic. Shinra Insider and even Kingdom Hearts Trinity. At one point there was Gates of Heaven, a Legend of Dragoon fansite. Among many others through the years. My website numbers is probably something close to 30. I mean I had a bunch of Yugioh related sites back in the day under many different names, merging them with friends sites, merging again, and again, etc. I really enjoyed the battle system of Grandia 3, and the story started off pretty good imo, but it fell apart in the second half. Also the two best characters leave your party early in the game and then never show up again. >_> Grandia 2 remains my favorite, but geez the blocky-style could really use a redo. I'd love a remake with the style of Dragon Quest XI graphics while leaving the battle system as-is or simply incorporating some of the updates from Grandia 3. Please no "FF7 Remake" style.

Part of my willingness to stick with physical is that I have abundant space, never had a negative experience like yours in losing my archive & still make frequent use of my physical discs. I was playing my Saturn just the other day. SEGA Bass Fishing on DC a few days before that. I play 50/50 new and old stuff, it doesn't phase me, thus my bookshelves of games see a pretty decent rotation. I'm pretty active in lending my games out to friends/coworkers & still play a fair bit of couch co-op too. I have more use cases than the average gamer and probably revisit older titles more than most people. I suppose while I'm at it, I'll mention that I've never paid a subscription service either. All that Hulu/Netflix/PSPlus type stuff. This gave me deja-vu because I had this exact conversation in 2018 with a forum admin I'm under no delusions that physical will be an option forever. I'm fully aware that the battle is practically lost already and console manufacturers are salivating at the idea of going digital only, and 90%+ of gamers don't care one way or the other. I'll stop buying games, I guess that's my only option. I don't watch movies/shows in the first place so I don't have much commentary on those. I've heard that physical game sales account for between 6-10% at this point, it's SO over. I don't have an expansive Steam library by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I only bought like 2 of those, the rest were gifted or bought with Steam giftcards I didn't ask for. I'm doing what little I can to not play into the live-service, always-online, digital, DRM, etc. hell that we're heading into (and already in, honestly). It boggles my mind that a game can cost the same physical & digital. When I started seeing the download cards for 3DS games I couldn't make sense of it. In Tokyo, they were $5 more than the physical copy! Haha. Space comes at a premium for many people and I respect that. For me, ownership is most important with games. It began for me as a thing I did on principle...then Steam removed ~500 games from my Library and will no longer reply to my support tickets. That solidified me as a physical extremist, if there is such a thing. Haven't given them money since & I don't think I ever can again. Give any company selling digital games an inch and they'll take a mile. For as much whining as people tend to do about the state of the gaming industry (Youtube video essayists and the like) they all support it financially. It doesn't have to be this way, but I'm well aware that I can't win against 10's of millions of people on Xbox/Steam/PSN/Nintendo eShop.

I'm trapped in the same spiral with Grandia III. While looking at the old threads on here regarding Grandia, I found mention of some of your old fanpages. I did some snooping through Wayback & found more fanpages, then more, and more. Do you know off the top of your head how many fansites you've run over the years and for how many different IPs? I thought it was just Kametsu & the Shadow Hearts one, but I was sorely underestimating you.

I haven't collected physical media since 2012. Having your entire archive stolen by an ex-girlfriend kind of kills your desire to archive physically. Besides now days I simply don't have the space for it and what few things I still have on Blu-ray and DVD have been stored in boxes unseen since 2017. What're you going to do next gen as it's pretty clear they're working on phasing out physical games as a whole? This gen had the digital-only option as a start, but next gen that might be the only option. When it comes to movies and television shows, Hollywood says discs only make up like 8% of their profits these days. It's all about the digital distribution and streaming.

I tried playing Xtreme back in the day, but didn't get too far into it before putting it down and have never revisited it. I'd like to give it another chance, but the backlog is ever growing so I just never find the time to return.

Fact of the Day - ORIGIN OF IN A PICKLE Did you know... There’s something adorable about the expression in a pickle. Whatever trouble or predicament you’re in, once it’s described in that way, it sounds kind of cute. You can even apply it to all kinds of scenarios (i.e. “The Mafia has discovered I’ve been stealing from them, so now I’m in a bit of a pickle!”). At a little over 4 feet long, even the largest pickle jar in the world isn’t big enough for most to actually enter. So where exactly does this idiom come from? It shows up in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (written around 1610), spoken by Alonso: “And Trinculo is reeling ripe: Where should they find this grand liquor that hath gilded ’em? How camest thou in this pickle?” Generally speaking, if somebody’s camest in your pickle, it’s time to get new roommates. But in this context, Alonso is referring to Trinculo being drunk—according to Grammarist, pickled in early 17th century England was a colloquialism for “being heavily intoxicated.” Alonso’s also asking how Trinculo managed to get so drunk, given that they’re both on an island with no booze. While the idiom appears in The Tempest, it wasn’t the first instance where the word pickle was used in print. It appears in John Heywood’s 1562 collection Proverbs and Epigrams (“Freilties pickell”), although the meaning is somewhat ambiguous and doesn’t seem to suggest drunkenness. The term pickle itself is thought to come from the Dutch pekel, referring to brine rather than its contents, hence pickling. The leap from “preserved due to being submerged in liquid” to “drunk” isn’t a huge one, especially given alcohol’s preservative qualities. In the Brine vs. In a Bind But how did being in one come to mean a tricky situation? Fifty years after Shakespeare, diarist Samuel Pepys appeared to be using it that way, writing in 1660 of being “at home with the workmen all the afternoon, our house being in the most sad pickle.” So at some point in that intervening half-century, it acquired that second meaning. Some point to the Dutch phrase in de pekel zijn (meaning “to sit in the pickle brine”) as the ultimate root of the idiom. However, certain Dutch etymological dictionaries maintain that the expression may have been more literal (directly pertaining to brine) or along the lines of Shakespeare’s usage. According to a theory by food writer Sam Dean, the expression makes a lot more sense when you remember that the word pickle means something completely different in the UK than it does in America, where it generally refers to the dill variety—a cucumber rendered more delicious by the cunning application of brine, herbs, and the passage of many months. However, in Britain, that’s known as a gherkin, and the term pickle usually indicates a condiment made from a mishmash of vegetables, spices, and vinegar, a deliciously tangy-sweet brown slop that turns a cheese sandwich from a mundane experience into a culinary adventure. This pickle, while glorious, is also all over the place. It’s sticky, slimy, and isn’t entirely texturally dissimilar to the penultimate vomit that comes from a bout of food poisoning. What a jumbled mess. Therefore, what a pickle indeed. Source: Why Do We Say ‘In a Pickle’?

What's the Word: FULCRUM pronunciation: [FUHL-krəm] Part of speech: noun Origin: Latin, late 17th century Meaning: 1. A thing that plays a central or essential role in an activity, event, or situation. 2. The point on which a lever rests or is supported and on which it pivots. Examples: "He pointed to his relationship with his wife as the true fulcrum of his success." "Levers are a simple way to demonstrate how fulcrums work." About Fulcrum This word comes from the Latin “fulcrum,” meaning “bedpost, foot of a couch.” It stems from “fulcire,” meaning “to prop up, support.” Did you Know? Zoologists sometimes use the word “fulcrum” to describe an animal’s joint that serves as a support or hinge, such as the one in a bird’s wing.

Ouzen (Made in Abyss)

Not much for me this year since my last post in mid-January. Trying to play what I already have. Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth Trails of Cold Steel III & IV (PS5) III was a double-dip for me since I have it on PS4 I think I may have a few Kickstarter games coming through this year?

Tio Plato [Trails series]

Grandia II for me. The first game's art style was a little rough in-game, I didn't feel that the anime inspired characters from promotional art carried over all that well. Character portraits looked nice though! I wasn't a fan of the combat system. Although it's very similar in Grandia II, I feel like the attacks had more weight & I could tell what I was doing better. Haven't finished III yet. I like the combat in III best, but the characters and story are beyond bland/forgettable. Haven't played the others (yet). Grandia is a classic series for sure, but not one of the 'greats' in my opinion.

I mildly considered picking this up just to show support (I already own these on PS1 & Dreamcast, respectively) but when I heard that they released in a janky state I backed off. Not sure if they've been fixed since. I wish we could get this treatment for Xenosaga or the .hack I/M/O/Q games.

Interesting read, as I haven't had Grandia Xtreme explained to me in detail. I only knew the name. In the late 2010's I played through Grandia, then Grandia II around 2020/2021. I've been working on Grandia III off and on since then. It isn't bad, but it doesn't grab me the way the first two games did. Has anyone here played Xtreme? Is it any good? I've heard mixed to negative things in the past.

I'd do the same if it were available physically on PC. I guess I could acquire it elsewhere for free on PC but I want to support the game, and my only option to own it on a disc is PS5. Squeenix's sales expectations on PS5 alone are dumb. They say this about almost all of their AAA releases, but it seems like they were serious this time with all the cancellations announced.