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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • It looks as though your cousin’s “injuries” are only to his pride—both “in the doghouse” and “throwing someone under the bus” are vivid idioms, not literal events. In everyday English they just mean (1) he’s in trouble or out of favor, and (2) you shifted the blame to him to save yourself. So unless there really was a wayward city-bus careening through a backyard kennel, his bones and fur are perfectly safe—only his feelings might be a bit flattened. Below is a quick crash-course on both expressions, plus a few tips for patching things up.

    1. “In the doghouse”

    Meaning

    To be in the doghouse is to be in disgrace or disfavor with someone whose approval you normally enjoy—most often a partner, family member or boss. It conjures the image of being banished outside with the dog until you earn forgiveness.

    Where it came from

    The first clearly figurative use shows up in U.S. slang dictionaries of the 1920s (“in dog house, in disfavor”) and gained traction through the 1930s press. Popular lore also credits Peter Pan (1911) for spreading the image of Mr Darling sleeping in the kennel after a parenting blunder, giving the phrase extra cultural punch.

    1. “Throw (or toss) someone under the bus”

    Meaning

    To throw someone under the bus is to sacrifice, blame or betray them for self-preservation or advantage, as though pushing them into traffic while you stay safe on the curb.

    Origin snapshot

    The earliest solid print example so far is from 1982 in The Times (London), with wider U.S. political use exploding by the 2008 election cycle. Its exact birthplace is still debated, but all roads lead to late-20th-century journalism and politics.

    1. What this means for your cousin

    2. Tips to get him out of the kennel-zone

    3. Own your part – Admit you “drove” the bus. A candid apology often shortens kennel time.

    4. Repair, don’t excuse – Help fix the original problem rather than focusing on who got blamed.

    5. Set future guardrails – Agree on how you’ll both handle mistakes next time so nobody ends up canine-camping again.

    6. Inject a little humor – Shared laughter about the idioms can defuse tension, reminding everyone the “injuries” were metaphorical.


    Key sources consulted

    Phrases.org.uk: first printed definition of “in the doghouse”

    Wikipedia entry on “Throw under the bus” for meaning & early citations

    English StackExchange & TheIdioms.com for origin discussions

    Paula Reed Nancarrow blog on Peter Pan link to the doghouse image

    Bottom line: your cousin’s ego may need a pat on the head, but his vitals are almost certainly intact. A well-timed apology (and maybe a chew-toy peace offering) should get him back on the porch in no time.





  • I think this is a classic case of “The complainers are way more vocal than the life enjoyers”, combined with modern technology being set up to promote controversial content. When someone’s enjoying this life and being chill, they also don’t usually care about spreading thier message. The complainers are either memetic or often political and seem to enjoy a much greater platform. Also more controversial content generates more negative engagement, and most social media promotes content that has high engagement, because it benefits them to have users engage and stay on the site longer.



  • In the UK you can get on a train without booking a ticket for that specific train, for example an open return or just a day pass. The train company has no idea how many seats will be taken or how many people will get on the train. So say it’s a 10 carriage train. Every seat is taken by someone, reserved or unreserved, and theres not a bit of standing room anywhere (this is very common). Which person sat on a reserved red light indicator seat should you kick out? And how do you know they didn’t reserve that seat specifically before you do that? Or do you kick someone out of a green lit non-reserved seat, with thier proof that the seat is not reserved and they are allowed to sit there, and your proof that you dont even have that seat reserved. It will also be the old people and small children sat down, and you won’t really be popular if you make them stand. Yeah you’re not sitting if you have this ticket. You’ll likely be stood by the entrance door for 3 hours instead. This seat reservation ticket may as well say, “sorry no seat today”, and it’s definitely infuriating to lean that you will be standing for your journey when you’ve payed full price for a seat, maybe £40 depending where.




  • The GMO gene in Golden Rice is patented. It’s just licensed for use for free in developing countries on small hold farms. A monoculture of golden rice would be less diverse than the current wide range of heritage rice varieties, and there could be over reliance on it which could case issues if there was a blight. Theres some concern that spread of the genes could catch unaware farmers with legal issues, but it’s harder for rice genes to spread than most other crops, as they’re usually self-pollinating. The risks dont seem to outweigh the benefits in this case, but it is more complex than it appears on the surface level. Greenpeace doesn’t seem to be able to use scientific research to back its claims here, and is instead just staying true to it’s anti-GMO message.


  • My understanding with phones is that you phone your own provider, who then looks up the provider of the number you’re calling based on country code, provider or area code prefixes. Providers will “peer” with each other to route calls over the most cost efficient path. So the other sides provider is responsible for getting it to the right destination phone within thier own customer network. Theres no authentication from the sending party on a protocol level, this is why scammers can spoof as any phone number.

    I believe that IP routing does something similar, the IP data is handed over to possibly multiple providers until it reaches its destination provider. The blocks of ip addresses are published as linked to an Autonomous System and each autonomous system has an owner/provider. The source is not authenticated at a protocol level which is why we need client and server certificates.

    In DNS you go to the root TLD servers and ask what IP the .com resolver is. The .com resolver has a list of mappings of authoritative name servers to domains. So example.com may have an authoritative NS of 1.2.3.4 who you can go to and ask what IP test.example.com is hosted on. The authoritative name server is the source of truth for that domain and other servers cache it to prevent overloading and increase speed. You may check with the authoritative NS if you want, but it may be slower to respond than your local NS. Again DNS is not authenticated at the protocol level so we need server certificates to prove that the device behind the IP serving you is allowed to serve you test.example.com.