Thursday Things: Happy October Edition
1 October 2020. Vol 2 No 40 By Dan McGirt. #60
Welcome to Thursday Things! For the first edition this October we focus on reading and writing. And dodging the NSA.
Not my actual library. But I wish. Photo by Ivo Rainha on Unsplash
If you missed it, I did a Thursday Things Tuesday Book Report this week, sharing two novels with a presidential election them that I enjoyed. One is horror, the other science fiction. Have a look if you missed that. And tell me if you’d like more book reports in the future!
Speaking of books…
The Richest Man in Babylon is a classic book on building personal wealth. I just notice the Kindle version is free. $5.95 for the print version is also an insane bargain that will pay for itself many times over if you read and apply this book. (There are multiple editions available — the book was first published as a series of pamphlets in the 1920s.)
The Richest Man in Babylon is not a get rich quick book. It simply gets across one of the most fundamental ideas that so many people -- tragically -- fail to ever grasp: Consistently spend less than you earn, and put the money you save to work for you. I read this as a teen and more than any other book on money or personal finances or investing I've read since, the lessons of The Richest Man in Babylon stuck with me. It is a short book -- you could read it in a couple of hours. It consists of a series of short (fictional) stories about a young man in ancient Babylon getting -- and following -- advice from a wise old moneylender on how to prosper and build his fortune.
From the description: "Countless readers have been helped by the famous “Babylonian parables,” hailed as the greatest of all inspirational works on the subject of thrift, financial planning, and personal wealth. In language as simple as that found in the Bible, these fascinating and informative stories set you on a sure path to prosperity and its accompanying joys."
If you haven't read it, read it. It's never too late. And give it to your kids -- the lessons in this book are more powerful and more effective the sooner in life you grasp them.
Still on the writing theme — what is the plural of dwarf? In normal usage, it is dwarfs. But fans of fantasy literature might say dwarves. A thing I learned this week is that is all down to an error by J.R.R. Tolkien:
Tolkien himself admitted that “dwarves” was a misspelling. In a letter to Stanley Unwin, the publisher of The Hobbit, he wrote (emphasis mine):
No reviewer (that I have seen), although all have carefully used the correct dwarfs themselves, has commented on the fact (which I only became conscious of through reviews) that I use throughout the ‘incorrect’ plural dwarves. I am afraid it is just a piece of private bad grammar, rather shocking in a philologist; but I shall have to go on with it.
The popularity of The Lord of the Rings trilogy made dwarves the default spelling when referring to the fictional race of bearded, subterranean, axe-swinging orc-smiters, and was adopted by almost every fantasy author and role-playing game designer since then. Tolkien later concocted a post hoc justification for using dwarves as the plural, but his earlier letter does suggest it started as simply a mistake on his part.
Do you ever need to do a search or search and replace in your Word document that is a little more powerful than “find this word”? (Like say, figuring out if you pluralized dwarf more than one way in a manuscript. Just as a for instance.) I often do. So I was excited to learn about using wildcards and other advanced search and replace features in Word.
Halloween postcard sent in 1920 finally gets delivered to a Michigan home a century late
A woman from Michigan received a postcard in her mailbox which had been sent almost exactly 100 years ago.
Brittany Keech from Belding, east of Grand Rapids said the message was completely unexpected and is now trying to find relatives of the intended recipient.
The postcard had a George Washington stamp affixed in the top right hand corner and was postmarked October 29th, 1920 having been sent just before Halloween of that year, from Jamestown, Michigan.
Better late than never, I guess. I miss postcards and real letters. Do you?
If you don’t want other people using your phone to track you, then consider The NSA's Tips to Keep Your Phone From Tracking You:
This week, the National Security Agency shared a three-page primer on how to limit your location data exposure. They would know! …
In addition to turning off location services on your device, the NSA says, you should turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi whenever you're not using them. For extra caution, turn on Airplane Mode whenever you're not actively using your phone. Turn off or decline location-sharing permissions for apps whenever possible—including your browser—or at the very least limit their ability to check your location to when you have the app open. Reset your phone's advertising ID at least weekly to confound the ad networks that track you—we have our own guide on how to do that here. Don't use iOS and Android's FindMy or FindMyDevice features, and consider using a trusted VPN provider.
Useful tips, all. I was doing most of these things already, along with my #1 tip for not being tracked through your phone: Don’t take your phone with you!
Maybe Millennials would find it too traumatic and emotionally devastating to be without their precious smartphone for a few hours, but I often leave my phone behind when I leave the house. Can’t track me now, can you, NSA? (I mean, except with all the surveillance cameras and your sophisticated spy satellites that can read a car license plate from space. But other than that.)
Here is a link to the NSA document referenced in the article.
Finally, a few Thursday Things housekeeping notes.
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Thank you for reading Thursday Things! I’ll see you next Thursday.