Abstract Nonsense

A place for long-form blog posts.

2025.08.09 An Afternoon Reading the Dictionary

words

I’m a heavy user of Apple’s Look Up for words on macOS. With a quick force click you can instantly summon the dictionary or thesaurus for a selected word, which removes the friction of pursuing “hmm, that’s a new word - what does it mean?”

I’ve been collecting new words I discover in an Apple Note for years and recently started migrating my list to a living blog page. Rather than manually collecting the macOS built-in Oxford Dictionary definition for each word (of which I have hundreds), I thought I’d script it. It turns out that Oxford Dictionaries has a very neat API, but unfortunately it’s exorbitantly expensive.

Poking around some more, I noticed an Apple Shortcut called Show definition of, but it just opens Dictionary.app with a deep link to the word entry.

But after some searching, I uncovered the path to the OED dictionary database on my Mac and a wonderfully detailed blog post and GitHub repo explicating how to extract the entries from the encoded dictionary files.

After munging around with XPath queries on the resulting dictionary.xml file, I settled on the following xmlstarlet snippet that extracts out the definition and example for each headword in new-word-list.txt and formats it as a YAML list:


# Construct an XPath filter expression for each headword
xpath_expr="//d:entry["
first=1
while read word; do
  if [ $first -eq 1 ]; then
    xpath_expr="${xpath_expr}@d:title='${word}'"
    first=0
  else
    xpath_expr="${xpath_expr} or @d:title='${word}'"
  fi
done < new-word-list.txt
xpath_expr="${xpath_expr}]"

# and extract the definitions and examples for each headword
xmlstarlet sel -N d="http://www.apple.com/DTDs/DictionaryService-1.0.rng" \
  -t \
  -m "$xpath_expr//span[starts-with(@class, 'msDict') and .//span[@class='df']]" \
  -o "- word: \"" \
  -v "ancestor::d:entry/@d:title" \
  -o "\"" -n \
  -o "  definition: \"" \
  -v "normalize-space(.//span[@class='df'])" \
  -o "\"" -n \
  -o "  example: \"" \
  -v "normalize-space(.//span[@class='eg']//span[@class='ex'])" \
  -o "\"" -n \
  -n \
  dictionary.xml > vocabulary.yaml

This YAML definition list gets popped into a data/vocabulary.yaml file and a layouts/_shortcodes/vocabulary.html Hugo shortcode constructs the entries in the blog post at build time. From here on, if I want to add a new word it’s trivial to simply update the vocabulary list manually with the word and definition.

I probably spent more time working out how to automate this process (relevant XKCD) than it would’ve taken to do it manually, but I had good fun learning how to read the dictionary this afternoon.

An aside on copyright and fair use: I went down an interesting little rabbit hole understanding how copyright and dictionaries relate. I am most definitely not a lawyer, but my understanding is that, whilst you cannot copyright the definition of a word, the broader composition of headwords with word senses, parts of speech, IPA transcription, examples, and other components commonly found in a dictionary is certainly copyrightable. However, considering I am replicating a vanishingly small proportion of the dictionary, and I am attributing appropriately, I believe this usage satisfies fair use.

2025.08.09 Hard problems: the Hadamard matrix problem

mathematics unsolved-problems

There’s a lot of unsolved problems in mathematics. A lot. It’d be a bit imprecise to define a measure on the set of open problems, but I’d wager that it is much larger than the set of solved problems. In fact, for every solved problem, I’d conjecture that the process of solving it simply creates more open problems.

One such open problem that I find deeply unsettling is the Hadamard conjecture. Let’s define a Hadamard matrix and explain the conjecture:

Definition: A Hadamard matrix of order $n$ is a square matrix whose entries are either $+1$ or $-1$, and whose rows are mutually orthogonal.

A succinct way to phrase this is that $H \in \mathcal{M}^{n \times n}(\left\{ \pm 1\right\}) $ is Hadamard of order $n$ if

$$ H H^\intercal = n I_n .$$

You can use this to show proofApplying standard properties of the determinant, if $HH^\intercal = n I_n$, then $ \det(HH^\intercal) = \det(n I_n) \implies \det(H)^2 = n^n \implies \det(H) = \pm n^{n / 2} $ that $\det(H) = \pm n^{n / 2}$ which is the maximum determinant value that any matrix with elements bounded in magnitude by $1$ can achieve, by the Hadamard inequality.

The Hadamard conjecture posits that

Conjecture: Hadamard matrices exist for all orders $4n$, where $n$ is any positive integer.

You can prove by contradiction that Hadamard matrices can only exist for dimensions $1$, $2$, or multiple of $4.$

There are constructions of Hadamard matrices for specific sets of orders, such as the Sylvester construction, which generates Hadamard matrices of order $2^n$ for all non-negative integer $n$, but a general solution for all orders $4n$ remains elusive.

What I find more astonishing than the lack of a general solution, is that the current smallest unknown Hadamard matrix is of order 668. That is, to date, no one has been able to successfully construct a Hadamard of this order, or prove that it does not exist (in which case, the entire conjecture collapses!).

As always, combinatorial explosion defies comprehension: it feels like given enough compute power and time, you could simply brute-force your way to a solution. But the search space grows exponentially with the size of the matrix, making it infeasible to check all possibilities even with an astronomical compute budgetnoteThere are various observations on symmetry you can apply to reduce the search space, but even still, a brute-force approach is intractable.. If each element can be either $+1$ or $-1$, and there are $n^2$ elements in a Hadamard matrix of order $n$, then the search space has $2^{n^2}$ possible configurations to check. For $n = 668$, this is a number far, far greater than the number of atoms in the universe - clocking in at a measly $\approx 10^{80}$ atoms.

When I find some time, I’ll try to update this post with more content about the Hadamard matrix problem.

2025.08.01 A Living Log of Lexical Learnings

words

This is a living document in which I collect new words I encounter in my reading and daily life. All definitions herein are from the Oxford Dictionary of English unless otherwise stated.

anadiplosis: wikitionary, the repetition of the last word of a preceding clause: Mine be thy love, and thy love's use their treasure.

antimetabole: wiktionary, the technique of repeating a phrase while reversing the order of certain elements or its grammatical structure, as a form of juxtaposition: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

autological: wiktionary, of a word, possessing the property it describes.: The word polysyllabic is autological, but the word monosyllabic is not.

apricity: the warmth of the sun in winter: Thursday dawned with grudging apricity.

anfractuous: sinuous or circuitous: the line of gold extends and becomes anfractuous.

abstemious: indulging only very moderately in something, especially food and drink: ‘We only had a bottle.’ ‘Very abstemious of you.’

acausal: not governed or operating by the laws of cause and effect.

adduce: cite as evidence: a number of factors are adduced to explain the situation

agist: take in and feed (livestock) for payment: the dairy farmer might wish to agist lambs after the cows are housed for the winter

ambit: the scope, extent, or bounds of something: a full discussion of this complex issue was beyond the ambit of one book

anhedonia: inability to feel pleasure in activities that are usually considered to be pleasurable.

annexure: a supplement or appendix to a written document: the annexure of the technical proposal

annunciate: announce (something).

anodyne: not likely to cause offence or disagreement and somewhat dull: anodyne music

antedate: precede in time; come before (something) in date: a civilization that antedated the Roman Empire

antediluvian: of or belonging to the time before the biblical Flood: gigantic bones of antediluvian animals

antediluvian: ridiculously old-fashioned: they maintain antediluvian sex-role stereotypes

antimacassar: a piece of cloth put over the back of a chair to protect it from grease and dirt or as an ornament.

Antipodean: a person from Australia or New Zealand (used by inhabitants of the northern hemisphere): a brisk Antipodean, she moved with speed and efficiency

apophenia: the erroneous perception of patterns or correlations in random or unconnected phenomena, events, and data: conspiracy theories can result from apophenia— seeing a nefarious pattern in random or disconnected incidents

apophthegm: a concise saying or maxim; an aphorism: the apophthegm ‘tomorrow is another day’

aposiopesis: the device of suddenly breaking off in speech: in coping with the unsaid and unsayable, oral history is impelled towards aposiopesis

appurtenance: an accessory or other item associated with a particular activity or style of living: the appurtenances of consumer culture

arcology: an ideal integrated city contained within a massive vertical structure, allowing maximum conservation of the surrounding environment.

argent: silver; silvery white: the argent moon

argot: the jargon or slang of a particular group or class: teenage argot

argument: a summary of the subject matter of a book.

aspartame: a very sweet substance used as an artificial sweetener, chiefly in low-calorie products. It is a derivative of aspartic acid and phenylalanine.

asperity: harshness of tone or manner: he pointed this out with some asperity

asperity: harsh qualities or conditions: the asperities of a harsh and divided society

aubade: a poem or piece of music appropriate to the dawn or early morning.

avoirdupois: a system of weights based on a pound of 16 ounces or 7,000 grains, widely used in English-speaking countries.

avoirdupois: weight; heaviness: she was putting on the avoirdupois like nobody's business

ballonet: wiktionary, Any of several small balloons, inside a dirigible, that can be inflated or deflated to control buoyancy during flight.

borborygmus: a rumbling or gurgling noise made by the movement of fluid and gas in the intestines

bailiwick: one's sphere of operations or area of interest: after the war, the Middle East remained his bailiwick

baize: a coarse, typically green woollen material resembling felt, used especially for covering pool, snooker, and billiard tables: he had a great love of snooker and won several awards for his ability on the baize

bantling: a young child.

bascule: a type of bridge with a section which can be raised and lowered using counterweights.

bathos: (especially in a literary work) an effect of anticlimax created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous: his epic poem has passages of almost embarrassing bathos

bawd: a woman in charge of a brothel.

bijou: (especially of a house or flat) small and elegant: a bijou residence

bijou: a jewel or trinket.

boodle: money, especially that gained or spent illegally or improperly: he's spending tons of boodle

bordello: a brothel.

boreal: of the north or northern regions.

borstal: a custodial institution for young offenders.

boustrophedon: from right to left and from left to right in alternate lines: in some examples the composition of pages is such that they must be read boustrophedon

brio: vigour or vivacity of style or performance.: she told her story with some brio

bromide: a trite statement that is intended to soothe or placate: feel-good bromides create the illusion of problem-solving

brut: (of sparkling wine) unsweetened; very dry.

burr: (loosely) a regional accent: a soft Scottish burr

burr: the coronet of a deer's antler.

burr: a persistent source of irritation.

clbuttic: wiktionary, A type of error in which some bowdlerizing software garbles words by replacing objectionable words that occur within a word with tamer alternatives.

corflute: wiktionary, A sign made of corrugated plastic, especially for electioneering.

cunctatory: wiktionary, delaying; procrastinating

cacoethes: an urge to do something inadvisable

crepuscular: resembling or relating to twilight: a kind of crepuscular glow | the drama unfolds in a crepuscular gloom.

conurbation: an extended urban area, typically consisting of several towns merging with the suburbs of a central city: the major conurbations of London and Birmingham.

corrigendum: a thing to be corrected, typically an error in a printed book: the 1980-84 cumulation contains corrigenda which are not included in the annual volumes.

cabochon: a gem that has been polished but not faceted: two big ruby cabochons

calque: originate or function as a loan translation of: ‘it goes without saying’ is calqued on French ‘cela va sans dire’

calumny: the making of false and defamatory statements about someone in order to damage their reputation; slander: a bitter struggle marked by calumny and litigation

canard: an unfounded rumour or story: the old canard that LA is a cultural wasteland

cartouche: a carved tablet or drawing representing a scroll with rolled-up ends, used ornamentally or bearing an inscription.

cartouche: an ornate frame around a design or inscription: a coat of arms in a cartouche

castellan: the governor of a castle.

catarrh: excessive discharge or build-up of mucus in the nose or throat, associated with inflammation of the mucous membrane.

ceteris paribus: with other conditions remaining the same; other things being equal: shorter hours of labour will, ceteris paribus, reduce the volume of output

chiaroscuro: the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.

chiasmus: a rhetorical or literary figure in which words, grammatical constructions, or concepts are repeated in reverse order.

chicanery: the use of deception or subterfuge to achieve one's purpose: storylines packed with political chicanery

chyron: an electronically generated caption superimposed on a television or cinema screen.

cingulum: a curved bundle of nerve fibres in each hemisphere of the brain.

clangour: a continuous loud banging or ringing sound: he went deaf because of the clangour of the steam hammers

codicil: an addition or supplement that explains, modifies, or revokes a will or part of one: Francis has remembered him in a codicil to this will

comity: an association of nations for their mutual benefit.

conch: the roof of a semicircular apse, shaped like half a dome.

confabulate: engage in conversation; talk: she could be heard on the telephone confabulating with someone

confabulate: fabricate imaginary experiences as compensation for loss of memory: she has lapses in attention and concentration—she may be confabulating a little

conniption: a fit of rage or hysterics: his client was having conniptions on the phone

conspecific: (of animals or plants) belonging to the same species.

conterminous: sharing a common boundary: the forty-eight conterminous United States

conterminous: having the same area, context, or meaning: a genealogy conterminous with the history of the USA

coolth: pleasantly low temperature: the coolth of the evening

coolth: the quality of being fashionable: the pinnacle of 1960s coolth

coot: a foolish or eccentric person, in particular an old man.

copacetic: in excellent order: he said to tell you everything is copacetic

coprolalia: the involuntary and repetitive use of obscene language, as a symptom of certain neurological or mental conditions.

corbel: a projection jutting out from a wall to support a structure above it.

corniche: a road cut into the edge of a cliff, especially one running along a coast.

corrigendum: a thing to be corrected, typically an error in a printed book: the 1980-84 cumulation contains corrigenda which are not included in the annual volumes

cortège: a solemn procession, especially for a funeral: a funeral cortège

coxswain: the person who steers a ship's boat, racing boat, or other boat.

credentialism: belief in or reliance on academic or other formal qualifications as the best measure of a person's intelligence or ability to do a particular job: credentialism is to a large degree responsible for people assuming that they need a degree

crepuscular: resembling or relating to twilight: a kind of crepuscular glow

crotchet: a perverse or unfounded belief or notion: the natural crotchets of inveterate bachelors

cruck: either of a pair of curved timbers extending from ground level to the transverse beam or ridge of a roof and forming a structure frame in a medieval timber-framed house: a cruck barn

cynosure: a person or thing that is the centre of attention or admiration: Kirk was the cynosure of all eyes

deipnosophist: wiktionary, A master of the art of dining, particularly learned conversation in the manner of Athenaeus's characters.

dactyl: a metrical foot consisting of one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables or (in Greek and Latin) one long syllable followed by two short syllables.

debonair: confident, stylish, and charming (typically used of a man): all the men looked debonair and handsome in white tie and tails

defilade: the protection of forces against enemy observation or gunfire.

deicide: the killing of a god: the urge to destroy civilizations or commit deicide

demesne: the lands of an estate: a levy of one tenth on property in the royal demesne

demesne: possession of real property in one's own right.

demonym: a noun used to denote the natives or inhabitants of a particular country, state, city, etc.: he struggled for the correct demonym for the people of Manchester

desideratum: something that is needed or wanted: integrity was a desideratum

dexter: on or towards the right-hand side (in a coat of arms, from the bearer's point of view, i.e. the left as it is depicted).

diaphanous: (especially of fabric) light, delicate, and translucent: a diaphanous dress of pale gold

diktat: an order or decree imposed by someone in power without popular consent: a diktat from the Bundestag

dissimulate: conceal or disguise (one's thoughts, feelings, or character): a country gentleman who dissimulates his wealth beneath ragged pullovers

diurnal: of or resulting from the daily rotation of the earth: diurnal aberration

divagate: stray or digress: Yeats divagated into Virgil's territory only once

dyspeptic: having indigestion or a consequent air of irritable bad temper.

eleemosynary: relating to or dependent on charity; charitable

entasis: a slight convex curve in the shaft of a column, introduced to correct the visual illusion of concavity produced by a straight shaft.

effete: affected and overly refined: effete trendies from art college

efflorescence: rapid growth or development: the state is enjoying an incomparable cultural efflorescence

egad: expressing surprise, anger, or affirmation.

elegiac: wistfully mournful: she watched repeat serials, fixed on their moody and elegiac characterization

elision: the process of joining together or merging things, especially abstract ideas: unease at the elision of so many vital questions

encyclical: a papal letter sent to all bishops of the Roman Catholic Church.

enjambement: (in verse) the continuation of a sentence without a pause beyond the end of a line, couplet, or stanza: he uses enjambment less than many poets

ennead: a group or set of nine.

epigram: a pithy saying or remark expressing an idea in a clever and amusing way: a Wildean epigram

epigram: a short poem, especially a satirical one, with a witty or ingenious ending.

ersatz: (of a product) made or used as a substitute, typically an inferior one, for something else: ersatz coffee

eructate: emit stomach gas noisily through the mouth; belch: he frequently eructates without cause

escheat: the reversion of property to the state, or (in feudal law) to a lord, on the owner's dying without legal heirs: the Crown's right of escheat was lost

etiolate: make (a plant) pale through lack of light: the seedling had been etiolated by having been grown in darkness

frustum: the portion of a cone or pyramid which remains after its upper part has been cut off by a plane parallel to its base, or which is intercepted between two such planes.

factotum: an employee who does all kinds of work: he was employed as the general factotum

fettle: condition: Marguerite was in fine fettle

fidus Achates: a faithful friend or devoted follower: accompanied by three guides and his fidus Achates, Bruce set out

fink: an unpleasant or contemptible person.

fink: fail to do something promised or expected: administration officials had finked out

fink: cease to function: your immune system begins finking out and you get sick

floccinaucinihilipilification: the action or habit of estimating something as worthless: my new book is more than just a 400-page exercise in floccinaucinihilipilification.

foley: relating to or concerned with the addition of recorded sound effects after the shooting of a film: a foley artist

fossick: rummage; search: he spent years fossicking through documents

frontispiece: an illustration facing the title page of a book.

funicular: (of a railway, especially one on a mountainside) operating by cable with ascending and descending cars counterbalanced.

funicular: relating to a rope or its tension.

fustian: pompous or pretentious speech or writing: a smokescreen of fustian and fantasy

gasconade: extravagant boasting

gabion: a basket or container filled with earth, stones, or other material and used in civil engineering works or (formerly) fortifications.

garnet: a precious stone consisting of a deep red vitreous silicate mineral: garnet ring

garrulous: excessively talkative, especially on trivial matters: a garrulous cab driver

gelid: icy; extremely cold: the gelid pond

genuflect: lower one's body briefly by bending one knee to the ground, typically in worship or as a sign of respect: she genuflected and crossed herself

gerund: a verb form which functions as a noun, in Latin ending in -ndum (declinable), in English ending in -ing (e.g. asking in do you mind my asking you?).

gestalt: an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.

glissade: slide down a steep slope of snow or ice with the support of an ice axe: we wobbled down the line of ascent, glissading when we could

gloaming: twilight; dusk: hundreds of lights are already shimmering in the gloaming

gofer: a person who runs errands, especially on a film set or in an office; a dogsbody: he had worked his way from a gofer in the front office to general manager

grandiloquence: pompous or extravagant language, style, or manner, especially that intended to impress: he avoided sentimentality and grandiloquence

graticule: a network of lines representing meridians and parallels, on which a map or plan can be represented.

grike: a fissure separating blocks or clints in a limestone pavement.

grimoire: a book of magic spells and invocations.

guardant: (especially of an animal) depicted with the body sideways and the face towards the viewer: three lions passant guardant

gules: red, as a heraldic tincture: sword and long cross gules

heterological: wiktionary, Of a word, not describing itself.

hebdomadal: weekly (used especially of organizations that meet weekly): Oxford University's Hebdomadal Council.

hapax legomenon: a term of which only one instance of use is recorded.

hauteur: proud haughtiness of manner: she swept into the room with formidable hauteur

headword: a word that begins a separate entry in a dictionary or other reference work: the volume has 1,800 pages containing 30,000 headwords

hie: go quickly: I hied down to New Orleans

hirsute: hairy: their hirsute chests

illeism: wikitionary, the practice of (excessively) referring to oneself in the third person.

iliac: relating to the ilium or the nearby regions of the lower body: the iliac artery

imago: an unconscious idealized mental image of someone, especially a parent, which influences a person's behaviour.

impecunious: having little or no money: a titled but impecunious family

impost: the top course of a pillar that supports an arch.

inchoate: just begun and so not fully formed or developed; rudimentary: a still inchoate democracy

inchoate: confused or incoherent: inchoate proletarian protest

incipient: beginning to happen or develop: he could feel incipient anger building up

ineluctable: unable to be resisted or avoided; inescapable: the ineluctable facts of history

ingénue: an innocent or unsophisticated young woman, especially in a play or film: she is not some starry-eyed young ingénue

insoluble: impossible to solve: the problem is not insoluble

insouciant: showing a casual lack of concern: an insouciant shrug

intarsia: a method of knitting with a number of colours, in which a separate length or ball of yarn is used for each area of colour (as opposed to different yarns being carried at the back of the work): an intarsia design

internecine: destructive to both sides in a conflict: the region's history of savage internecine warfare

inveigle: persuade (someone) to do something by means of deception or flattery: we cannot inveigle him into putting pen to paper

jejune: naive, simplistic, and superficial: their entirely predictable and usually jejune opinions.

jejune: (of ideas or writings) dry and uninteresting.

Künstlerroman: wikitionary, a novel whose central character is an artist of any kind, and which shows his or her development from childhood to maturity.

kismet: destiny; fate: what chance did I stand against kismet?

kitsch: considered to be in poor taste but appreciated in an ironic or knowing way: the front room is stuffed with kitsch knick-knacks, little glass and gilt ornaments

legerdemain: wikitionary, Sleight of hand; magic trickery

lucubration: writing or study: after sixteen years' lucubration he produced this account.

lacuna: an unfilled space; a gap: the journal has filled a lacuna in Middle Eastern studies

lacuna: a missing portion in a book or manuscript.

lading: the action of loading a ship with cargo.

lambent: (of light or fire) glowing, gleaming, or flickering with a soft radiance: the magical, lambent light of the north

langued: having the tongue of a specified tincture.

latterly: in the later stages of something, especially of a person's life: he worked on the paper for fifty years, latterly as its political editor

leal: loyal and honest: his leal duty to the King

limpid: (of a liquid) completely clear and transparent: the limpid waters of the Caribbean

limpid: (of a person's eyes) unclouded; clear: the limpid grey eyes gazed trustfully at her

lipogram: a composition from which the writer systematically omits a certain letter or certain letters of the alphabet.

literati: well-educated people who are interested in literature.

littoral: a region lying along a shore: irrigated regions of the Mediterranean littoral

loam: a fertile soil of clay and sand containing humus.

longueur: a tedious passage in a book, piece of music, etc.: its brilliant comedy passages do not cancel out the occasional longueurs

Lothario: a man who behaves selfishly and irresponsibly in his sexual relationships with women: they are seduced by a handsome Lothario who gains control of their financial affairs

lucubration: writing or study: after sixteen years' lucubration he produced this account

lucubration: a learned or pedantic piece of writing: it was natural enough to return the compliment by endorsing his newest lucubrations

lugubrious: looking or sounding sad and dismal: his face looked even more lugubrious than usual

Mamihlapinatapai: wikitionary, a look that without words is shared by two people who want to initiate something, but that neither will start

mono no aware: wikitionary, Japanese, a wistful awareness of the impermanence or transience of things.

machicolation: (in medieval fortifications) an opening between the supporting corbels of a projecting parapet or the vault of a gate, through which stones or burning objects could be dropped on attackers: the castle retains the earliest surviving stone machicolations in Britain

maisonette: a set of rooms for living in, typically on two storeys of a larger building and having a separate entrance.

malapropism: the mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one, often with an amusing effect (e.g. ‘dance a flamingo’ instead of flamenco): he's always been prone to gaffes and malapropisms

malinger: pretend to be ill in order to escape duty or work: while some thought I was malingering, they couldn't see the pain I dealt with

manumit: release from slavery; set free: old Angus had never manumitted a single slave

marmoreal: made of or compared to marble: the marmoreal skin took on the flush of colour

melisma: a group of notes sung to one syllable of text: the melismas of plainchant

mellifluous: (of a sound) pleasingly smooth and musical to hear: her low mellifluous voice

mendicant: of or denoting one of the religious orders that originally relied solely on alms: a mendicant friar

meretricious: apparently attractive but having no real value: meretricious souvenirs for the tourist trade

microfiche: a flat piece of film containing microphotographs of the pages of a newspaper, catalogue, or other document: the journal is available as a microfiche

mien: a person's appearance or manner, especially as an indication of their character or mood: he has a cautious, academic mien

milieu: a person's social environment: Gregory came from the same aristocratic milieu as Sidonius

mondegreen: a misunderstood or misinterpreted word or phrase resulting from a mishearing of the lyrics of a song.

mountebank: a person who deceives others, especially in order to trick them out of their money; a charlatan: he was a mountebank who exploited his followers

munificent: characterized by or displaying great generosity: a munificent bequest

noumenon: (in Kantian philosophy) a thing as it is in itself, as distinct from a thing as it is knowable by the senses through phenomenal attributes.

nugatory: of no value or importance: a nugatory and pointless observation

numinous: having a strong religious or spiritual quality; indicating or suggesting the presence of a divinity: the strange, numinous beauty of this ancient landmark

omphalos: wikitionary, The theological proposition that the world was created with certain indicia of a history which had not actually occurred (such as the humans who had never been connected to umbilical cords being created with navels).

obloquy: disgrace, especially that brought about by public condemnation: conduct to which no more obloquy could reasonably attach

obstreperous: noisy and difficult to control: the boy is cocky and obstreperous

occidental: relating to the countries of the West: modern occidental society

proligerous: wikitionary, Productive, generative; prolific.

pabulum: bland or insipid intellectual matter, entertainment, etc..

propitious: giving or indicating a good chance of success; favourable: the timing for such a meeting seemed propitious.

proliferous: (of a plant) producing buds or side shoots from a flower or other terminal part.

prolepsis: the representation of a thing as existing before it actually does or did so, as in he was a dead man when he entered. Compare with analepsis: the destruction of the Vendôme Column and his part in it are foreshadowed in moments of haunting prolepsis.

palimpsest: a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing.

palimpsest: something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form: Sutton Place is a palimpsest of the taste of successive owners

palter: equivocate or prevaricate in action or speech: if you palter or double in your answers, I will have thee hung alive in an iron chain

panegyrize: speak or write in praise of; eulogize: it has been admired and panegyrized as beautiful, eloquent, grand, and sublime

pareidolia: the perception of apparently significant patterns or recognizable images, especially faces, in random or accidental arrangements of shapes and lines: there could be a mysterious stone coffin on Mars, or, more likely, it's just the latest example of pareidolia

parlous: full of danger or uncertainty; precarious: the parlous state of the economy

parvenu: a person of humble origin who has gained wealth, influence, or celebrity: the political inexperience of a parvenu

passel: a large group of people or things: a passel of journalists

patois: the dialect of a particular region, especially one with low status in relation to the standard language of the country: the nurse talked to me in a patois that even Italians would have had difficulty in understanding

peculate: embezzle or steal (money, especially public funds): the people accused them of having peculated the public money

pellucid: translucently clear: mountains reflected in the pellucid waters

pellucid: easily understood; lucid: he writes, as always, in pellucid prose

pellucid: (of music or other sound) clear and pure in tone: his pellucid singing tone

pennon: a tapering flag on a ship.

percipient: (especially in philosophy or with reference to psychic phenomena) a person who is able to perceive things.

perdition: complete and utter ruin: she used her last banknote to buy herself a square meal before perdition

peregrination: a journey, especially a long or meandering one: she kept Aunt Ilsa company on her peregrinations

personalty: a person's personal property.

perspicacious: having a ready insight into and understanding of things: it offers quite a few facts to the perspicacious reporter

petard: a kind of firework that explodes with a sharp report.

petard: have one's plans to cause trouble for others backfire on one.

phlegmatic: (of a person) having an unemotional and stolidly calm disposition: the phlegmatic British character

pillion: a seat for a passenger behind a motorcyclist.

pleonasm: the use of more words than are necessary to convey meaning (e.g. see with one's eyes), either as a fault of style or for emphasis.

poesy: the art or composition of poetry: the genius of poesy

polygenesis: the hypothetical origination of language or of a surname from a number of independent sources in different places at different times.

poseur: a person who behaves affectedly in order to impress others; a poser.

praxis: practice, as distinguished from theory: modern political praxis is now thoroughly permeated with a productivist ethos

precis: a summary or abstract of a text or speech.

prelapsarian: characteristic of the time before the Fall of Man; innocent and unspoilt: a prelapsarian Eden of astonishing plenitude

prelate: a bishop or other high ecclesiastical dignitary.

prolix: (of speech or writing) using or containing too many words; tediously lengthy: he found the narrative too prolix and discursive

protean: able to do many different things; versatile: protean thinkers who scan the horizons of work and society

pseud: intellectually pretentious or affected: to seek inspiration in literature or folklore is to risk being pilloried as pseud

psithurism: the sound of whispering or rustling: there is the susurration of water in the streams and rivers and the psithurism of the wind in the trees

pugilist: a boxer, especially a professional one.

pugilistic: aggressive or combative: the pugilistic tone he adopted was often reactive

pulchritudinous: beautiful: Dan gazed admiringly at the pulchritudinous brunette

purl: (of a stream or river) flow with a swirling motion and babbling sound: large stones stood blackly in the water, making it purl as it rolled around them

quisling: a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force occupying their country: he had the Quisling owner of the factory arrested

quotidian: ordinary or everyday; mundane: his story is an achingly human one, mired in quotidian details

rabona: an action in which a player strikes the ball with their kicking leg crossed behind the other leg, typically so as to be able to play the ball instantly with their stronger foot or to deceive an opposing player: this game will forever be remembered for Lamela's stupendous rabona

raiment: clothing: ladies clothed in raiment bedecked with jewels

ramekin: a small dish for baking and serving an individual portion of food.

ratiocinate: form judgements by a process of logic; reason: a tendency to ratiocinate in isolation

repêchage: (in rowing and other sports) a contest in which the best-placed of those who failed to win heats compete for a place in the final.

rescission: the revocation, cancellation, or repeal of a law, order, or agreement: the plaintiff agreed to the rescission of the agreement

resile: abandon a position or a course of action: can he resile from the agreement?

revanchism: a policy of seeking to retaliate, especially to recover lost territory: a recipe for deep future resentment, revanchism and renewed conflict.

rime: frost formed on cold objects by the rapid freezing of water vapour in cloud or fog.

ruche: a frill or pleat of fabric as decoration on a garment or soft furnishing: a white mini dress with ruche detailing

saldo: wikitionary, balance (the difference between credit and debit of an account)

spifflicate: treat roughly or severely; destroy: the mosquito was spifflicated.

suborn: bribe or otherwise induce (someone) to commit an unlawful act such as perjury: he was accused of conspiring to suborn witnesses.

suppurate: undergo the formation of pus; fester.

sequelae: a condition which is the consequence of a previous disease or injury: the long-term sequelae of infection.

supererogation: the performance of more work than duty requires: to maximize profits is for management not an optional exercise or a work of supererogation.

sabermetrics: the application of statistical analysis to baseball records, especially in order to evaluate and compare the performance of individual players.

saccade: a rapid movement of the eye between fixation points.

saltire: a diagonal cross as a heraldic ordinary.

sartorial: relating to tailoring, clothes, or style of dress: sartorial elegance

saturnine: (of a person or their manner) gloomy: a saturnine temperament

sedulous: (of a person or action) showing dedication and diligence: he watched himself with the most sedulous care

selvedge: an edge produced on woven fabric during manufacture that prevents it from unravelling.

selvedge: a zone of altered rock, especially volcanic glass, at the edge of a rock mass.

seraglio: a Turkish or Ottoman palace, especially the Sultan's court and government offices at Constantinople.

seriatim: taking one subject after another in regular order; point by point: it is proposed to deal with these matters seriatim

simpatico: (of a person) likeable and easy to get on with: the inspector was a charming man, so simpatico

sinecure: a position requiring little or no work but giving the holder status or financial benefit: political sinecures for the supporters of ministers

solecism: a grammatical mistake in speech or writing.

solecism: a breach of good manners; an instance of incorrect behaviour.

somnambulant: resembling or characteristic of a sleepwalker; sluggish: a somnambulant stroll

speciesism: the assumption of human superiority leading to the exploitation of animals.

statant: (of an animal) standing with all four paws on the ground.

stevedore: a person employed at a dock to load and unload ships.

stultifying: tending to stifle enthusiasm, initiative, or freedom of action: the stultifying conformity of provincial life

suasion: persuasion as opposed to force or compulsion: the clearing banks found the use of both moral suasion and direct controls particularly irksome

surcease: relief or consolation: drugs are taken to provide surcease from intolerable psychic pain

susurration: whispering or rustling: the susurration of the river

svelte: (of a person) slender and elegant: she was svelte and sophisticated

syllepsis: a figure of speech in which a word is applied to two others of which it grammatically suits only one (e.g. neither they nor it is working).

synecdoche: a figure of speech in which a part is made to represent the whole or vice versa, as in England lost by six wickets (meaning ‘the English cricket team’).

tricolon: wikitionary, In rhetoric, a sentence with three clearly defined parts of equal length, usually independent clauses.: I came, I saw, I conquered

tmesis: the separation of parts of a compound word by an intervening word or words, used mainly in informal speech for emphasis: can't find it any-blooming-where

tendentious: expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one: a tendentious reading of history

thole: endure (something) without complaint or resistance; tolerate: if there's one thing I can't thole it's a lie

tipple: drink alcohol, especially habitually: those who liked to tipple and gamble

tipple: rain heavily: it was tippling down with rain

tontine: an annuity shared by subscribers to a loan or common fund, the shares increasing as subscribers die until the last survivor enjoys the whole income.

topiary: the art or practice of clipping shrubs or trees into ornamental shapes: a specialist in topiary art

torse: a wreath.

transom: a strengthening crossbar, in particular one set above a window or door.

transom: offered or sent without prior agreement; unsolicited: the editors receive about ten manuscripts a week over the transom

trenchant: vigorous or incisive in expression or style: the White Paper makes trenchant criticisms of health authorities

trepan: a trephine (hole saw) used by surgeons for perforating the skull.

tribology: the study of friction, wear, lubrication, and the design of bearings; the science of interacting surfaces in relative motion.

ultracrepidarian: a person who expresses opinions on matters outside the scope of their knowledge or expertise: most patients are ultracrepidarians when it comes to medicine.

unctuous: excessively flattering or ingratiating; oily: as I turned away an unctuous salesman appeared

uxorious: having or showing a great or excessive fondness for one's wife: he had always impressed me as home-loving and uxorious

viridescent: greenish or becoming green: viridescent vegetation.

vambrace: a piece of armour for the arm, especially the forearm.

velleity: a wish or inclination not strong enough to lead to action: the notion intrigued me, but remained a velleity

verdigris: a bright bluish-green encrustation or patina formed on copper or brass by atmospheric oxidation, consisting of basic copper carbonate.

vexillology: the study of flags.

vigorish: an excessive rate of interest on a loan, typically one from an illegal moneylender.

viscera: the internal organs in the main cavities of the body, especially those in the abdomen, e.g. the intestines.

vituperative: bitter and abusive: a vituperative outburst

volte-face: an abrupt and complete reversal of attitude, opinion, or position: a remarkable volte-face on taxes

widdershins: in a direction contrary to the sun's course, considered as unlucky; anticlockwise: she danced widdershins around him

wold: (in Britain) a piece of high, open uncultivated land or moor: the Lincolnshire Wolds

wonted: habitual; usual: the place had sunk back into its wonted quiet

zeugma: a figure of speech in which a word applies to two others in different senses (e.g. John and his driving licence expired last week).

Page last updated: 2025-08-17

2025.07.11 Better Python path handling with Pathlib and Git

software-engineering

One of the most frustrating problems in ad-hoc data science projects is broken file paths.

You write a script that loads a model, grabs data, or instantiates a config from your local disk. It works perfectly on your machine, then someone else runs it and… catastrophe: FileNotFoundError: No such file or directory. Uh oh, looks like someone just got bit by hard-coded paths or assumptions about where the script is being run from.

Since I’m normally working inside a git repo, I’ve started writing all my file paths as relative to the repo root, and dynamically finding that path with GitPython. For example, supposing I have the following project structure:

my-project/
├── README.md
├── data
│   └── iris.csv
└── src
    ├── model.py
    └── preprocess.py

and I want to grab data/iris.csv from within preprocess.py (or perhaps, much more heavily nested sub-folders).

Instead of using a relative path (../data/iris.csv) or an absolute path (/Users/yossi/my-project/data/iris.csv), I can do the following:

# /// script
# requires-python = ">=3.11"
# dependencies = [
#     "gitpython",
# ]
# ///

from pathlib import Path
import git

repo_root = Path(
    git.Repo(search_parent_directories=True).git.rev_parse("--show-toplevel")
)

print((repo_root / "data" / "iris.csv").read_text())

Side note: I really love pathlib’s overloading of the / operator to allow syntactic sugar for path augmentation. I’m also a big fan of Path.read_text instead of the standard with open(file_path) as f context handler (in most cases).

Also, if you haven’t seen it before, I’m using Python inline script metadata here to specify the dependencies. You can run this script with uv run --script src/preprocess.py and uv will take care of resolving and installing the dependencies within a venv.

I’m anticipating that this will probably trigger a lot of people:

But now you have an extra dependency on the GitPython package!
What happens if git isn’t installed on the system? (Looking at you, Windows).
What happens if there’s git submodules?

And to all this, I say: “yes, that’s true”. I don’t believe that this is idiomatic or good for production or anything close to it. But for adhoc collaborative projects, littered with *.ipynb notebooks (this, even I cannot stand), it restores some level of sanity amidst the throes of data science passion.

As to the Python module import system? That’s a rant for another day… I’m still scarred by seeing too many bastardised sys.path.append(os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))).

Please let me know what your preferred path-wrangling design pattern is. I’m just trying to find my path here after all…

2025.06.03 This blog has been featured by GitHub!

abstract-nonsense

This blog has been featured by GitHub!*

Well, sort of.

To publish posts to this blog, I’m abusing GitHub’s excellent Issue tracking capability. I have a GitHub Issue Form Template at .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATE/new-blog-post.yml which gives me a nice template to complete with fields like blog title, date, section etc.

The form template automatically labels the issue as a new-blog-post which triggers a GitHub Actions workflow to (very hackily) dump the contents of the Issue into a Markdown file and commit.

The commit triggers a Cloudflare Pages hook that builds my site with Hugo and deploys it to my abstractnonsense.xyz domain.

To parse the issue template, I’m using the excellent issue-ops/parser workflow maintained by Nick Alteen, a GitHub staffer! Nick’s very kindly featured my blog as an example of IssueOps, described as:

the process of interacting with GitHub Issues and Pull Requests to invoke commands. For example, approving requests to access important systems.

The key advantages of this workflow are:

I can publish posts on mobile! In fact, this post was written all on mobile! This was probably the biggest requirement. I wanted to be able to make the writing experience as frictionless as possible and push content from anywhere without having to have my laptop on-hand.
I get rich Markdown rendering support with GitHub Flavoured Markdown
I can sort of abuse GitHub’s user-upload-file-to-Issue CDN for storing media. This is probably sub-optimal, and I should probably migrate to an idiomatic pattern like Cloudflare’s R2 or AWS S3¹ at some point. But for now, it just works 😉.

And yes, this is indeed an obligatory blog post about how I write blog posts. I spend far too much time thinking about blogging, tweaking my blog internals, or blogging about blogging instead of actually blogging. I’m trying to change that, I swear.

Or just plain old git - premature optimisation is the root of all evil, after all. ↩︎

2025.03.23 It's always DNS

I recently moved to the city. As usual, considering the technological ruin that is the NBN, I was fully expecting to go another round against the ISP gods.

I was not disappointed.

My old apartment used HFC, which was … not bad. But since my new apartment supported FTTP, I figured I may as well upgrade my plan.

Oh boy.

First up, the new apartment already had an Optus Ultra Wi-Fi Gen 2 modem-router along with a terrible Optus NBN plan. Since I’m lucky enough to get a 50% discount on More NBN through work, the first step was to switch ISPs.

Small problem: Optus gives you the modem for “free”… if you stay with them for 36 months. Unfortunately for them, I had no intention of staying locked-in for another 24 months. So now we owed Optus ~$200 for the privilege of keeping a terrible modem.

A few escalations, an increasingly tired me, multiple mentions of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman noteISPs really do hate this one simple trick, and the fee was waived. They even let us keep the modem. Success?

Not a chance.

It turns out More NBN is just a reseller of Vocus NBN, which uses PPoE authentication. Unfortunately for me, PPoE isn’t supported by the $306 OPTUS Ultra Wi-Fi Gen 2™️ modem-router.

Yay.

One quick Facebook Marketplace sale later, and I was the proud owner of a Telstra Smart Modem Gen 2 for $40noteI actually like these modems - they’ve got a little 4G chip that activates if the NBN goes down. Amazingly, this also works for free even if you don’t have an active Telstra NBN plan!. Phew. Long day, but problem solved, right?

Well, almost.

I plug in my new modem, authenticate to my More account using the PPoE settings, fuck around with the WAN/LAN cables for a few minutes (as is tradition), hit an obligatory speed test …

Everything looks perfect - a steady 100Mb/s. noteYeah, I know. 100Mb/s isn’t the future. But it was my future, and I was loving every megabit of it.

I open up YouTube … wait a few seconds …
…
…
… and finally my video starts loading.

Hmm. That’s not right.

I try a few other websites and quickly notice: whenever anything buffers, there’s a couple-second lag before the content is received over the network. YouTube, Netflix, Hacker News, Websites on the High Seas …. all the same.

Damn. Maybe it’s DNS?

For those new to networking (that’s me!), DNS (Domain Name System) is essentially the internet’s phone book. When you type youtube.com into your browser, your computer needs to translate that human-friendly domain name into a machine-readable IP address (like 142.250.70.238) before it can load anything.

This translation process works something like this:

Your device asks a DNS resolver, “Hey, what’s the IP address for youtube.com?”
The DNS resolver looks up the answer and replies, “It’s 142.250.70.238”
Your device then connects to that IP address to load the website.

I check the DNS server in my modem’s settings panel - I’m connected to the Telstra Londsale Exchange at 61.9.133.193 by default. But something’s clearly not right…

After some quick digging, I find a simple little shell script called dnsperftest that benchmarks different DNS resolvers.

I add in Vocus’ 111.220.1.1 and get something like the following (where 1000.00 represents a 1-second timeout):

% dnsperftest/dnstest.sh | sort -k 22 -n
                     test1   test2   test3   test4   test5   test6   test7   test8   test9   test10  test11  test12  test13  Average
1.0.0.1              6 ms    5 ms    8 ms    6 ms    7 ms    5 ms    6 ms    6 ms    7 ms    6 ms    6 ms    6 ms    48 ms     9.38
1.1.1.1              8 ms    6 ms    8 ms    6 ms    6 ms    7 ms    6 ms    18 ms   5 ms    6 ms    6 ms    6 ms    29 ms     9.00
vocus                41 ms   14 ms   11 ms   11 ms   9 ms    9 ms    7 ms    8 ms    7 ms    78 ms   7 ms    11 ms   17 ms     17.69
opendns              28 ms   6 ms    9 ms    6 ms    5 ms    20 ms   5 ms    7 ms    5 ms    6 ms    24 ms   6 ms    5 ms      10.15
google               25 ms   5 ms    23 ms   5 ms    6 ms    94 ms   5 ms    7 ms    7 ms    6 ms    92 ms   5 ms    21 ms     23.15
telstra-lonsdale     1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms 1000 ms   1000.00

Damn - turns out it was a DNS issue!

In my case, the Telstra modem was set to use Telstra’s DNS resolver at the Lonsdale Exchange. Based on those timeout results, maybe their DNS was throttled for non-Telstra customers?

This explained the strange lag: whenever I tried to visit a new website or start streaming a video, my computer would send a DNS request and then……

I’m still not sure why this was happening, but manually changing my modem’s DNS to Vocus’ DNS resolver fixed all my latency woes. I actually ended up using Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 on my Mac, and now everything’s buttery smooth!

Moral of the story - it’s not always DNS, but when it is, hopefully this helps?