Today I Learned

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^ antigram - portmanteau of antonym and anagram

That there are more humans in this world than animals.

^Where did you learn that. I suppose it boils down to your definition of "animals" , e.g. there are more ants than humans.

Never mind, it meant animal species.

un-minding

I would love to learn one thing now from this thread Namely, as everybody knows, there are those two such great horror movies, Rosemary's Baby and Omen and the main characters of those are named respectively Rosemary and Damien. And here comes my question - a question from a Pole who is not a native speaker of English : are those two names associated in the English speaking world ONLY with those horror movies? I mean, if you meet a person named Rosemary or Damien, do you think automatically about them or are they just normal names anyone can have? Like you know, when you meet an Elvis or an Oprah or an Adolf, you think authomatically about Elvis Presley or about Oprah Winfrey or Adolf Hitler (hence the fact that after the war only seven baby boys were named Adolf in Poland from what I heard - and even before the war, Adolf was a rarely given name in Poland, it was never popular in my country) but what about a Rosemary and a Damien? Can anyone answer this question?

I've known two Rosemaries and one was just... Rosemary, the other was more usually called Rose. I didn't make a connection to the movie with either.

I've never met a Damien though, and I think I might briefly think of the movie because it's a relatively uncommon name where I live.

Damien is one of my favourite boys name. Not because of the movie I just like it

I've met a rose but I can't remember anything specific about the meeting

I've seen both movies as well and I didn't like them because I'm a scaredy cat

The trunk of a tree has medullary rays

It's dead good that

Thanks, I wasn't sure if Rosemary and Damien are rare enough to get classified ONLY as the movie names In Poland there is a name Damian which is relatively common (I ever knew just one boy of this name) but a rosemary is just the name of this flower - in Polish it's called just rozmaryn. If Rozmaryn was used as a name, then EVERYBODY would make a connection between the owner of this name and the song "O mój rozmarynie" (a WW1 song), you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wp2x5wuhJhM

I had a boss called Damian

I like that version as well

I don't think Rosemary is a popular name in the UK , I think it's fallen out of favour , I do have an Aunty Rosemary but she is Irish and lives in Ireland. I've known only one Damian in my life.

Talking of the name Damian being linked to the antichrist , it was a running gag in Only Fools And Horses ( A British sitcom) as a newborn was named 'Damian' and his uncle had an obsession he was the antichrist.

I'm not sure that enough people are familiar with Rosemary's Baby' to make the connection between the film's content and the name. Polanski films are very much a minority interest in today's UK. The Omen is a different matter.

Today I learned more about myself

I'm like a little tardis me

There are those who claim that the population of China is between 300 million and 340 million instead of the 1.4 billion or so that they claim.

According to them, the Chinese government has been inflating their population figures for years and years and I suspect that they are probably right. For example, there are a number of believable claims that the numbers are inflated by 100 million.

There are others that claim that the numbers prior to covid were on the order of 750 million people based on analyses by Japan and Russia. I tend to find these claims as needing a lot more evidence before they are believable. Even more unbelievable, though, is that they lost about 400 million more due to covid. Losing half your population from covid is not at all believable.