Nauru is Naoero now.

I'm reading "One of the World’s Smallest Countries Has a New Name/Formerly called Nauru, the island in the South Pacific wants its name to more closely match how it is said in the language spoken by its people" (NYT gift link).

You could say it isn’t really a change at all. People in Naoero speak English, but also the Nauruan native language, in which the country is known as Naoero. The name Nauru came about because some foreigners struggled to pronounce Naoero.... 

How the new name is pronounced depends in part on one’s accent. British, Australian and American English speakers variously pronounce it nah-OO-roo, now-AIR-o or nah-oh-EH-roh.

"Greenland is the largest island in the world, but it has fewer than fifty-seven thousand residents, who are mostly scattered..."

"... among settlements and towns along its western coast. Although it belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark, it lies to the west of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and is part of North America. The latest articulation of the U.S.’s National Security Strategy, published in November, frames Trump’s imperial ambitions as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, the assertion by President James Monroe, in 1823, that any attempt by European powers to further colonize the Americas would be treated as 'dangerous to our peace and safety.' Under Trump’s leadership, the N.S.S. says, “we will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere.'"

Writes Ben Taub, in "Inside the Ludicrous, Deadly Serious Plan to Take Over Greenland/'We want Greenland,' Trump said. Four men sprang into action to make fantasy a reality" (The New Yorker).

Adding tags to this post, I hesitated over whether to use "geography" or "geology" or both. The part about Denmark "owning" or "colonizing" Greenland is obviously geography and not geology, so "geography" is a good tag for this post. But I want to underscore that Greenland is part of the North American continent. To get rid of the politics and human culture and speak of it geologically, Grok pointed me to the Wikipedia article "Laurentia":

"We feel threatened by them. So it would’ve been a total disaster and a cold slap in the face if the pope had been full-on American."

Said Araceli Torres Hallal, 64, "a Catholic entrepreneur in Mexico City," quoted in "World Catholics See the First American Pope as Hardly American/Catholics around the world were skeptical at first about an American pope. But Pope Leo XIV’s multicultural and multilingual identity has put them at ease" (NYT).

We're also told:

Even calling Pope Leo “American” has bothered those Latin Americans who resent the use of the word to describe someone from the United States, because they see it as a form of imperialism. They think “American” should apply to anyone from the entire continent — that is, from North, Central or South America.

Isn't that 2 "continents" — North America and South America? Central America is not a continent. It's part of North America, though I've heard educated Americans deny it. And I mean to say Americans for United Statesians, because we don't say "United Statesians." There's the Esperanto "Usonians." There's "Yankees." These are never going to happen. We don't have another word for saying who we are. Show a little empathy for our plight. Read the Wikipedia article "Demonyms for the United States." It's been a problem all along.

But the NYT writes "the entire continent — that is, from North, Central or South America," and maybe that means it has adopted the theory that the whole landmass — south and north (and central) — is one continent. I don't think the NYT has adopted that nomenclature. And I wonder if Trump would like it. He looks at a map and insists that it's some kind of manifest destiny that Canada should be part of the U.S. And he came up with Gulf of America. And if you want to say it's one continent because we're all here on one tectonic system, remember who's on our plate: Greenland. The Trumpian dinner is served!

Fixing the state borders — not the borders with Mexico and Canada — the state-on-state borders.

They ought to have more to do with mountains and rivers — and give the Upper Peninsula to Wisconsin:

My curiosity about the term "permission structure" pays off.

I'd never noticed it before, but I heard it twice, in rapid succession, in the new NYT "Daily" podcast that I was listening to on my sunrise run:

[This ad] employs this device of the disillusioned Trump voter as a stand-in for the viewer. It's a permission structure for the small sliver of undecided voters who might have voted for Trump before to say: It's okay, there are other people just like you, other people who don't think that Donald Trump is good anymore.... 

Here is a Harris supporting celebrity saying he is disillusioned with what she Harris has said. It's the same permission structure for Harris. You have a white lady saying: You know what? Maybe I can actually vote for Kamala Harris. 

"Permission structure" was used as if it's a standard term, so I wanted to get up to speed. 

I can see that Obama used it back in 2013, but I'm interested in its repeated use in the last few days. I'm seeing it first in Ms. Magazine, on November 1: "New Ad Creates ‘Permission Structure’ for Men to Support Harris":

"For more than 30 years, the world’s largest iceberg was stuck in the Antarctic. Five times the size of New York City’s land area and more than 1,000 feet deep..."

"... the mammoth piece of ice finally became loose in 2020 and began a slow drift toward the Southern Ocean. Now, A23a, as it’s known, is spinning in place. After leaving Antarctic waters, the iceberg got stuck in a vortex over a seamount, or an underwater mountain. Imagine a piece of ice about 1,500 square miles in area and as deep as the Empire State Building spinning slowly but steadily enough to fully rotate it on its head over the course of about 24 days."

The NYT reports.

Haven't used my "vortex" tag in a long time.

Were you aware of the "Southern Ocean"? "The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the world ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica.... The National Geographic Society recognized the ocean officially in June 2021...." 

How do we speak of the ocean/oceans? "The ocean is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of Earth. In English, the term ocean also refers to any of the large bodies of water into which the world ocean is conventionally divided...."

"Four Nigerian stowaways survived a grueling 14-day, 3,500-mile voyage across the Atlantic while perched atop a cargo ship’s rudder, where they survived by drinking ocean water and their own urine."

So says a caption to a photo in the NY Post article, "4 migrants wind up in Brazil after 14 days on ship’s rudder, where they drank own urine after running out of supplies; 2 decide to just go home"

The migrants, who hoped to reach Europe, were shocked to find out they had actually arrived in Brazil after the roughly 3,500-mile journey sailing on the Liberian-flagged vessel.... The four men — who huddled in a tiny space above the giant rudder — said they ran out of food on the 10th day of the voyage and survived by drinking ocean water that splashed around them....

[One of them] said they rigged up a net around the rudder and tied themselves to it with a rope to prevent themselves from falling off when they dozed off.... and that they could see “big fish like whales and sharks” mere feet below them.

I thought drinking ocean water is well known to be worse than drinking no water at all. We can believe their story, that they did drink ocean water, and we know they survived, but you can't leap to the conclusion that they survived by drinking ocean water.

You might guess that going from Nigeria to Brazil is a much longer ride than from Nigeria to Europe, but look it up — it isn't. It's about the same.

"Find the Place You Love. Then Move There. If where you live isn’t truly your home, and you have the resources to make a change, it could do wonders for your happiness."

The Atlantic suggests an article for me — from a couple years ago — that's right in my zone. It's by Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic's happiness expert, who — I'd noticed — has a new article in The Atlantic that I'd seen but chose not to click on: "Think About Your Death and Live Better/Contemplating your mortality might sound morbid, but it’s actually a key to happiness."

Did the Atlantic somehow see that I looked at the death article but decided not to read it and calculate that I might want to contemplate falling in love with someplace other than home and moving there? 

The "Find the Place You Love" essay begins with an anecdote about a man who grew up in Minnesota, moved to Northern California, and then missed Minnesota. When I read the title, I thought the idea was to cast a wide net, consider everywhere, and fall in love with something. But if it's just look back on your life and understand what was your real home, that's a much more restricted set of options. There's a good chance you already live in what is for you the most home-like place, and if you were to leave, thinking you'd found a better place — Northern California is "better" than Minnesota — you'd become vividly aware of the feeling of home. 

"We had a guy pull in the other day towing a big boat. He asked us how to get to the launch ramp to the lake. I don’t think he realised he was looking at a lake of solar panels."

From "How solar farms took over the California desert: 'An oasis has become a dead sea'/ Residents feel trapped and choked by dust, while experts warn environmental damage is 'solving one problem by creating others'" (The Guardian).

What solution is not also a new problem? The question is whether the solution is worse than the problem.

These western deserts are vast and contain few residents. Isn't there plenty of space to go ahead and screw up with seas of solar panels?

A nice, precise 10 for today. Here it is, Althouse-curated TikTok. You can rank them, like that lady ranked the lyrics of "It's Corn."

1. The vacation on TikTok vs. Reality.

2. The price of an overnight stay — with breakfast and a beautiful view — in Kyrgystan.

3. What country is longest, north to south?

4. The lines of "It's Corn" — ranked.

5. Spend $80,000 on a truck....

6. Sometimes a m-f talks nice to your face...

7. The phrase "we love that for you."

8. She believes she is still 70.

9. Ricky Gourmet reads the letter his 12-year-old self wrote him.

10. Trying to read.

Here are 5 TikToks to amuse or challenge you. Let me know what you think.

1. "Don't ever take sides with anyone else over your spouse."

2. That woman who orders the green juice is so annoying.

3. Let Broadway Barbara help you beat the summer heat.

4. How special is a north-flowing river?

5. The 120-year-old water wheel.

Here are 5 TikToks to amuse you tonight. Let me know what you liked best.

1. A short philosophy movie.

2. Passing people on hikes.

3. Elvis, without the music.

4. The amazing geography of Utah — Part 1 and Part 2.

5. Death bed.

"Nothing makes a data journalist’s heart skip a beat quite like the word 'Midwest'... It’s a concrete geographic construct linked to an ephemeral cultural one."

"In Airbnb, we’d stumbled on an ideal data set for drawing that elusive line between culture and geography. More importantly, once we’d looked at more than half a million Airbnb listings and built a database powerful enough to answer 'Where is the Midwest?' we could use it to answer a much more difficult follow-up: 'What is the Midwest?' What cultural touchstones make it different from the rest of the country? .... By this measure, Iowa is the most Midwestern state in the union, followed by Indiana and Wisconsin.... By this measure, the most Midwestern thing on Earth is the walleye, a drab but delicious freshwater fish whose primeval bulging eyes and snaggled teeth would look at home in one of those Nebraska fossil beds.... Two of the next three most-Midwestern words, 'Heartland' and 'Lutheran,' seem like gimmes.... 'Conservatory' and 'orchestra' seem odd, but Google Trends confirms that both are unusually popular in Midwestern states. If you think you know why, let us know! Three others are probably artifacts of the sort of property- and hospitality-focused Midwestern English you’d expect from an Airbnb listing — 'rehabbed' for renovated, 'blacktop' for asphalt and 'supper' for dinner. Several other freshwater fish join walleye on the list, including bluegill and the bass varieties of smallmouth and largemouth...."

From "The most Midwestern things on Earth, according to data/We looked at hundreds of thousands of Airbnb listings to calculate how the heartland describes itself" by Andrew Van Dam (WaPo).

Well... it's an interesting idea — using the words found in Airbnb to figure something out. But the glaring deficiency is that Airbnb is aimed at outsiders:

"The Dutch like to say, 'Acting normal is crazy enough.' And we think that rich people are not acting normal."

"Here in Holland, we don’t believe that everybody can be rich the way people do in America, where the sky is the limit. We think 'Be average.' That’s good enough...”

Said Ellen Verkoelen, "a City Council member and Rotterdam leader of the 50Plus Party, which works on behalf of pensioners," quoted in "The Country That Wants to ‘Be Average’ vs. Jeff Bezos and His $500 Million Yacht/Why did Rotterdam stand between one of the world’s richest men and his boat? The furious response is rooted in Dutch values" (NYT).

“When I was about 11 years old, we had an American boy stay with us for a week, an exchange student,” she recalled. “And my mother told him, just make your own sandwich like you do in America. Instead of putting one sausage on his bread, he put on five. My mother was too polite to say anything to him, but to me she said in Dutch, ‘We will never eat like that in this house.’” 

At school, Ms. Verkoelen learned from friends that the American children in their homes all ate the same way. They were stunned and a little jealous. At the time, it was said in the Netherlands that putting both butter and cheese on your bread was “the devil’s sandwich.”...

"In Tawada’s dreamlike travelogue 'Where Europe Begins'... a young Japanese woman travelling on the Trans-Siberian Railway tries to identify where, exactly, one continent shades into another..."

"... but none of the passengers can agree. Gradually, she descends into a trance brought on by reading Tungus and Samoyed fairy tales, which cut across the journey like a polar wind. The woman learns from an atlas that Japan is, tectonically, a 'child of Siberia that had turned on its mother and was now swimming alone in the Pacific . . . a seahorse, which in Japanese is called Tatsu-no-otoshigo—the lost child of the dragon.' She begins to dread the finality of arrival."

From "The Novelist Yoko Tawada Conjures a World Between Languages/Writing in Japanese and German, Tawada explores borderlands in which people and words have lost their moorings" (The New Yorker).

How many oceans are there — 1, 4, or 5?

Apparently, the worst answer is 4.