h2g2bob @h2g2bob@mastodon.dbatley.com

John Finnemore on the French horn/cor anglais:

"I was idly wondering why the cor anglais has a French name meaning ‘English horn’, and the French horn has an English name meaning… well, ‘French horn’. I looked it up, even though I knew there would just be some reasonable but rather dull explanation.

"There isn’t. There is a completely bonkers explanation, in both cases. Here’s the first.

"So. The cor anglais isn’t English, or French. But that’s nothing, because another thing it isn’t is… a horn. It’s basically an overgrown oboe, and it’s from Silesia. But being thin with a bulb on the end, it looks a little like the trumpets angels are shown playing in medieval art.

"Or at least it did to the Germans, who started calling it the Engellisches Horn, or angel’s horn. Can you see the hilarious misunderstanding that’s about to happen? Well, that happened. The Italians thought the Germans called it the English Horn, so they translated it to corno inglese. The French got it from the Italians, and called it the cor anglais. The British got it from the French, and presumably stared at it, thought ‘We can’t call that an English horn! It’s nothing to do with us, we’ve only just this minute seen one!’ …and I suppose decided just to keep the French name to save embarrassment.

"But that is rationality itself compared to what happened with the “French” horn.

"Right. The French horn. It isn’t French, or English… but it is a horn. So that’s something. (In fact, horn players just call it ‘the horn’, and they wish you would too, but they can’t make you.) This story is simpler than the cor anglais one, but even more gloriously stupid.

"The French were famous for making beautiful hunting-horn type horns: curly tubes that made a nice noise when you blew through them. Then the Germans came up with a more complicated horn with slides and crooks and valves and what-have-you. So British horn players started calling the horns they played in orchestras French Horns, to make it clear they were having nothing to do with those funny looking new German horns with all the bits hanging off them. But the thing is… slides and crooks and valves and what-have-you are a really good idea. You can play tunes with them and everything. So, before long, in a brilliantly British combination of ruthless pragmatism and equally ruthless face-saving, British horn players were playing German horns… but still calling them French horns.

"In summary then: the cor anglais, or English horn, is a Silesian oboe that the Italians thought the Germans thought was English, but the Germans actually thought looked angelic. Whereas the French horn is a German horn that the British called the French horn to distinguish it from the German horn… which is what it is.

"All clear? Good. Carry on."

🧵A Covid thread - but a good news one! I’m barely writing about Covid anymore because there is barely any Covid to write about. I thought it was worth celebrating this in this thread. 1/7

Curation of oddball typography, gotta smile: https://unsung.aresluna.org/good-type-against-all-odds/

#typography

Every summer I repost this article on how to spot drowning. Please read it and pass on. In the last few years I’ve had SIX messages from people who saved a kid’s life after clicking on the link from my feed. slate.com/technology/2...

Drowning Doesn’t Look Like Dro...

The good @drfootleg has been busy, creating a "hardware abstraction framework" to run MicroPython games on any hardware! His first task? Porting Asteroids to the Tufty 2350! https://blog.pimoroni.com/dr-footleg-saves-the-galaxy-creates-tufty-2350-asteroids-game/

I've been making a linguistics puzzle game where you decipher a language (which happens to be German) using shared etymology, shared cultural knowledge and pattern matching.

It's called German Is A̶w̶f̶u̶l̶ Easy and the first five levels are up! No German knowledge necessary, and feedback is very welcome.

https://michellefullwood.com/languages/german/is-easy/

#etymology #linguistics #puzzles #LearnGerman

On the way home I introduced two women on the overground to birdnet - "is that like shazam for birds?!?!" so overall a good night out

I ❤️ Debian: https://nerds.xyz/2026/05/debian-13-5-linux-security-update/

#debian #linux

🆕 blog! “GDS weighs in on the NHS's decision to retreat from Open Source”

Within the UK's Civil Service you occasionally hear the expression "being invited to a meeting without biscuits". It implies a rather frosty discussion without any of the polite niceties of a normal meeting. In general though, even when people have severe …

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/gds-weighs-in-on-the-nhss-decision-to-retreat-from-open-source/
⸻
#AI #gds #government #nhs #nhsx #OpenSource

My Suica has been vandalised!

It transpires this has a leuco rewritable coating, so special products (like this 1 day season) are literally lasered onto the front (including a map!) and overwritten/removed once used.

Extremely extra but very cool. I've never seen one of these in the wild before.

https://www.ricoh.com/technology/tech/062_laserrewritable

TODAY — Tickets to attend the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony are now on sale at https://eventfrog.ch/ignobel2026 —— The 36th First Annual Ig Nobel Prize ceremony will take place in Zurich, Switzerland, in early September

Apple and Google are gradually expanding their use of hardware-based attestation. They're convincing a growing number of services to adopt it. Google's Play Integrity API and Apple's App Attest API are very similar. Apple brought it to the web via Privacy Pass, which Google intends on doing too.

“You opened this page. It already knows the following.”

https://sinceyouarrived.world/taken

Had a nose around the 50kW community hydro plant in Reading

They have some good data on the website https://readinghydro.org/data/

The official map was useful, but a bit squashed; I wanted to see the 2-councillor results directly, and I wanted an actual map underneath I could look around, and so I have knocked up https://dracos.co.uk/wrote/2026-birmingham-elections/

Just published on FOSS Force: Can ‘Smart Window’ Revive Interest in Firefox? https://fossforce.com/2026/05/can-smart-window-revive-interest-in-firefox/

Extremely happy to see that those irritating gaps in Hansard have finally been filled. They have plagued my research for an awful long time.

https://commonshansard.blog.parliament.uk/2026/05/01/historical-hansard-bridging-the-gaps/

🆕 blog! “NHS Goes To War Against Open Source”

The NHS is preparing to close nearly all of its Open Source repositories.

Throughout my time working for the UK Government - in GDS, NHSX, i.AI, and others - I championed Open Source. I spoke to dozens of departments about it, wrote guidance still in use today, and briefed Ministers on why it was so…

👀 Read more: https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2026/05/nhs-goes-to-war-against-open-source/
⸻
#government #nhs #OpenSource #politics