The French words ‘nord’ and ‘sud’ look a lot like English ‘north’ and ‘south’.
That’s not a coincidence: it’s because Old French borrowed these words from Old English ‘norþ’ and ‘sūþ’ – along with ‘est’ and ‘ouest’, which come from ‘ēast’ and ‘west’.
My new infographic tells you all about the fascinating theories about the history of ‘north’, ‘south’ and their cognates.
Next time: east and west.
"In Greek, they are χαρταετοί, paper eagles, and the Germans call them Drachen, dragons. [...]
Spanish speakers describe them as comets, cometas; Mandarin remembers when the flying forms were affixed with bamboo flutes, like airborne Aeolian harps — fēngzhēng, “wind zithers”, known elsewhere as “wind psalteries” — while the Japanese kanji 凧 combines a radical connected to wind with an element meaning towel or cloth.
In English, they are simply kites, named for the bird of prey, from the old English cyta — thought to be onomatopoetic imitation of its sharp-edged call."
https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/art-of-kite-flying/
Hello everyone 👋🏼 It’s been a while, but I wanted to let you know that Plexamp development is still very much alive. It’s been quiet for a few reasons, one being that as of 2026 I’m no longer with Plex (as most of you know). But Plexamp has been a labor of love since the start, and that hasn’t changed. I’ve been quietly modernizing the app with all the latest dependencies and requirements (couldn’t even ship new versions on Google Play without that, as it turns out). A new version...
edge & face truncated hypercubic tetracomb ✝️sections🔃🤔 (coloring based on distance to ðe center & closest 2 neybors)
#4d #TilingTuesday #animation #tiling #mathart #creativecoding #geometry
The work you're trying to do hasn't been done yet because you haven't done it. Nobody else will do it for you. The route is through, not around.
In a few hundred years, someone might transcribe your work by hand to understand how it holds together.
That's not a bad goal, actually.
https://www.joanwestenberg.com/how-to-be-inspired-without-copying/
In 1713, Johann Sebastian Bach sat down at his desk in Weimar and began copying out concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. He transcribed them note for note, in his own hand, working through at least nine of the L'estro armonico concertos like a medical student dissecting a cadaver. The work was
A fairly profound photograph of the galaxy we are in, taken by a young Kiwi Tom Rae, from up high in the Southern Alps
Interesting research showing that the toxicity of social media is structural, rather than algorithmic - and filter bubbles can help promote tolerance. Ping @snurb
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/rip-social-media-what-comes-next-is-messy/
Yoïn van Spijk
Stefan Bohacek
Plexamp
꧁ᐊ𰻞ᵕ̣̣̣̣̣̣́́♛ᵕ̣̣̣̣̣̣́́𰻞ᐅ꧂
Weird on Wheels
JA Westenberg
Julian Oliver
Mitchell Whitelaw