Agree, it's a little grating on the ears, but, language change is part of life! There are examples out there of modern nouns that used to be something else, but because the change happened so long ago, we're no longer pained to hear it changing.
For example, "Flirt" used to be a verb that meant to make a brisk, jerky motion. Now it is either a verb, to playfully act attracted to someone one, or a noun, a person who flirts.
Hard to put this succinctly but it has a sense of the sad and exhausted feeling one gets when they're mildly sick and must stay home, and likely stay in bed, to recover but you don't really want to do so.
In other words, Sunday is our only true day to rest, the weekday was busy with work and scattered after-work commitments, and Saturday was devoted to a combination of chores and using every last bit of energy you had in the week to enjoy life and friends. So we may try to mentally force ourselves to take a day of rest and limited exertion, which in turn makes it not restful or fulfilling.
It's sort of like when you know you need to go to bed on time so that you can have full energy for a busy tomorrow, it somehow makes your sleep worse knowing that.
Get some stuff out to do a thing you’ve been meaning to? But you just cleaned the house. If you don’t pick it back up today, it’ll sit out all week. Will you still want to do that next weekend, so it’s not so bad it was cluttering things up? Maybe not, that’s far off. Kids or pets will get into it and mess things up. Better not do that.
Maybe really dig into that math book you started last Sunday. Wait, wtf does any of this mean? Ugh, it’s been too long, you’ll need to backtrack… never mind, this is hopeless.
Pick up that long narrative video game you started last month but haven’t put time into since. Forgot the controls, this part’s too hard now, and you don’t remember what was going on anyway.
TV or reading light fiction and watching the hours ‘till work tick down from the mid-teens, it is. Again.
I'll admit that Discworld is the first place I heard it. It's a perfect example of the sort of idiom authors should think about though, rather than using overly modern terms.
I visited both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland the other week, and it was exactly like this. I was worried at first about delays from going through customs, etc. on the trip between the two. But, I took a train from Dublin to Belfast, and it felt like nothing changed apart from the currency and signage. It was great to see such an open connection between the two countries!
Yeah, this was the major goal of the Irish government post Brexit, and they accomplished it. Unfortunately it's causing issues in NI, but it looks like they may get resolved in the next few months.
Cannot +1 this enough. I learned so much more when I took lessons from an improvisational jazz bass teacher who focused on
(1) Learning as many songs and standards as is reasonable each week
(2) Focusing on improvising along to my teacher playing the melody on piano. He wouldn't stop unless I asked, so I needed to keep time with him. If I made a mistake, and lost my place, he would keep playing and I'd listen to where he was and jump back in when I found it again
I've also been studying with a jazz bass player (I'm on piano) and from the beginning he always emphasized just getting back into the tune. He never interrupts me.
The other big one is singing the lyrics to every song I'm learning, which I really didn't like at first. He told me the story of Ahmad Jamal recalling a time playing with the sax player Ben Webster when Ben just stopped playing a tune: "Why'd you stop Ben?" "I forgot the lyrics!".
Your comment sounds almost Seuss-like somehow. Partly that description and assertion is a slant rhyme, but it also feels like there's some kind of (un)intentional pentameter going on
Thanks for this. It makes clear the series of cyclical complications that follows "I don't have an ID and need one, but I don't have a smartphone or credit card"
1) Don't have an ID, just provide your birth certificate. Oh wait... that wasn't issued to me
2) Well I can try to order my birth certificate mailed to me. Oh wait... I don't have easy internet access, no smartphone or internet at my house.
3) I got online at the library, time to order my birth certificate. Oh wait... I don't have a credit card to pay. Maybe my birth county lets me mail cash (risky), or maybe they require me to show up in person, and potentially spend $100s on travel, in addition to missing work.
4) Okay, I go to apply for a credit card or open a bank account to pay. Oh wait... I need an ID.
This is it. The cycle of ID. To top it off, good luck getting the spelling of your name corrected in your birth certificate if it doesn't match other legal documents, such as school records.
It was easier back before the mass electrification of everything, because if the local sheriff knew who you were they could vouch to the local DMV and you’d be good to go. Now everything is fraud proof and trickier.
And if you lose your birth certificate you may have to start all over again!
There are ways to get an ID via other methods and then build up but it can be tricky and difficult to navigate. And without a stable address it can be nearly impossible.
It is (was?) the case in my large (500k+) city in the 90's at least. If you were lacking all forms of identification to get an ID, you could use a neighbor or family member who had an ID to vouch for you.
I do believe it was the vouch + another form of identification, but I distinctly recall having to do this for a replacement ID when I couldn't find my papers after a move.
You can add “The Doomed City” to the list as well. It's an interesting take on the “aliens pull people from different places and times to conduct a social experiment” trope.
My favorite Soviet/Eastern Bloc scifi novel is The Day Lasts More Than A Hundred Years (1981) by Chingiz Aitmatov.
"Ethnic" writers were accorded more freedom of topic than white Russians, confined to village prose in the Breznev era. Aitmatov's book sweeps the vast steppes of Central Asia and interstellar space, begins from the perspective of a fox, considers traumas of the Great Patriotic War and Stalin's resettlement, thousand-year-old traditions, the quest to give a dead railroad switchman a proper Muslim burial, and an international incident caused in space.
Aitmatov was ethnically Kyrgyz. The book's mostly set on Kazakh steppes.
OP was looking for context on the meat-grinder in Ukraine. He won't find it in the meat-grinder near the end of Roadsite Picnic.
Sienkiewicz (1884), With Fire and Sword, set in 1640s-1650s Khmelnytsky Uprising (Cossacks of Zaporozhian Sich vs Polish-Lithuanian empire) is remarkably good, and geographically contiguous with the current meat grinder in Ukraine. A pre-Soviet book from outside what became USSR (Polish), not scifi, but which clearly inspired Frank Herbert and possibly Tolkein. Scifi and fantasy continued the adventure genre, after all. If you read it, be prepared for Iliad or The Bridge on the Drina-level violence at times.
For more non-scifi lit grounded in war in previous iterations of Ukrainian statehood, see especially Bulgakov's (1925) The White Guard. A love song to Kiev, loving and complex critique of its bourgeoisie that could only have been written by a physician.
Roadside Picnic's a fast-paced philosophical read. Solaris (yes it's Polish, but Tarkovsky painted it in film) has the dreamy, encyclopedic quality of something like Moby-Dick. (Post-Soviet) Metro 2033 is lower quality, more pulpy, feels like it was written to be turned into a series, video game, etc. (it was), but it's an interesting page-turner.
For example, "Flirt" used to be a verb that meant to make a brisk, jerky motion. Now it is either a verb, to playfully act attracted to someone one, or a noun, a person who flirts.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/flirt