Pet peeve: companies that appropriate a dictionary term for their name, e.g. Apple, Google (& Alphabet), Amazon, Oracle. It's really not too hard to create a new name for your company, e.g. Microsoft, Facebook and Nvidia.
toast0•Jul 25, 2026
Facebook isn't a new name either. Some schools would publish and distribute a book of student photos with names at the beginning of the school year, to help recognize peers; these were called a facebook. Yearbooks are similar, but published at the end of the year and also have a lot of content about what happened that year and organizations and sports.
fhdkweig•Jul 25, 2026
A face book is a generic term for a school directory with photographs. That's why Zuckerberg called it The Facebook to differentiate it from all the other face books.
Microsoft doesn’t belong in this list after they trademarked Windows, Word, Works (remember, Microsoft Works is an oxymoron) and others.
inigyou•Jul 25, 2026
Microsoft Works was such a weird product because it was just half-assed Microsoft Office, but Microsoft Office already existed.
loloquwowndueo•Jul 25, 2026
No. Works predated Office by 3 years at least. The first versions of Works ran under ms-dos.
SoftTalker•Jul 25, 2026
Several other vendors had office "works" suites too. ClarisWorks, AppleWorks, seems like there were some others for the variety of platforms in the 80s/90s but I can't recall them offhand.
loloquwowndueo•Jul 25, 2026
Lotus symphony.
wat10000•Jul 25, 2026
I don’t think Google should be on that list. The word is “googol.”
GaryBluto•Jul 25, 2026
If you count Google as an appropriation of Googol, surely Nvidia appropriates Invidia?
hodgesrm•Jul 25, 2026
> Pet peeve: companies that appropriate a dictionary term for their name, e.g. Apple, Google (& Alphabet), Amazon, Oracle.
Hard disagree. Consider "Oracle," a truly inspired name for a database company. It's an admirable choice. Here's the computer science definition.
> In complexity theory and computability theory, an oracle machine is an abstract machine that can query a black box called an oracle, which is able to give an answer to any instance of a certain problem in a single operation.
There's also the wealth of linkages with classical oracles, e.g., Delphi, Cumae (technically a Sibyl), Dodona, etc. [1] Taken together, it's hard to think of a better name.
I know these things are more complicated than they seem at first, but whenever these stories surface, I immediately go to an idealistic childhood cartoon land where we have a prime directive that tells us to go forth(!) and watch out for each other!
vjvjvjvjghv•Jul 25, 2026
I always wonder how the world would look if the bible had said "Respect the earth and all living beings" instead of “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion…"
nvarsj•Jul 25, 2026
Well no king would ever accept and propagate that religion.
lotsofpulp•Jul 25, 2026
The tribe with the bible that directed to multiply would have conquered the tribe with the bible that directed respect the earth and all living beings because back then, might was proportional to population.
mr_toad•Jul 25, 2026
“ It has not occurred to you that your ancestors were survivors and that the survival itself sometimes involved savage decisions, a kind of wanton brutality which civilized humankind works very hard to suppress. What price will you pay for that suppression? Will you accept your own extinction?”
- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
gambiting•Jul 25, 2026
Which is kinda hilarious given that despite being called a tyrant, Leto II had basically created a post scarcity society that was almost entirely castrated of violence or capacity for it. He kept chastising people for that desire to tame those base instincts but he was doing the exact same thing. It's just a funny thing to quote given the context of his character.
Jensson•Jul 25, 2026
It would look like India.
infogulch•Jul 25, 2026
"be fruitful" and "replenish the earth" is already aligned
As for "subdue", ask anyone maintaining a large garden how much they have to work to keep it from reverting back to a wilderness. Gardening is choosing which species stay and which are forcibly removed and optimizing the environment to enable your chosen species to thrive. If the words "subdue" and "dominion" freak you out, pick your brains up off the floor and go touch grass.
Western civilization has decided that it wants to keep the primate species and is dissatisfied when they become roadkill, so it altered the environment to enable the chosen species to thrive. This article is a gardening success story. Gardening requires dominion. We have dominion over the primates and we have chosen to be benevolent with that dominion.
rbanffy•Jul 25, 2026
> so it altered the environment
The motorway was not a natural occurrence, and neither cars or trucks evolved naturally. Humans went there and installed a limited fix for the destruction they caused in the first place.
harimau777•Jul 25, 2026
A lot of Christians argue that it does say exactly that. In Genesis 2:15, God tells Adam to care for the planet:
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Of course fundamentalists tend not to see it that way.
dmix•Jul 25, 2026
I remember reading that back in the day North America used to have more trees and dense vegetation that squirrels rarely touched the ground since that was more dangerous for them, so they would use the trees like highways.
culi•Jul 25, 2026
Just wanna say, Monga Bay is an incredible publication that doesn't get enough attention. As someone who follows a lot of environmental news, they routinely cover important topics and do original journalism on stories I hear nowhere else. Their YouTube channel is full of extremely high quality videos that often get less than 2k views. I would highly recommend checking them out
How do they tend to clock in on the doomer scale? I'm trying to find alternatives to the regular news that don't feed my doomerism.
diogenescynic•Jul 25, 2026
California would find a much more expensive solution that worked far less well. The Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing cost an estimated $115M--a total waste of tax payer funds. Bravo to this practical and effective solution.
tokai•Jul 25, 2026
This is a solution specifically for arboreal animals, while the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing is explicitly for mountain lions.
megaloblasto•Jul 25, 2026
Whoa that's awesome. I didn't know California had one of those. Keeps animals, humans, and cars safe and looks beautiful too.
bix6•Jul 25, 2026
Ok what’s your solution? I’m seeing more and more wild life bridges and tunnels so clearly the engineers think they work.
nubg•Jul 25, 2026
This is one of the rare headline where Amazon does not refer to the hyperscaler
fragmede•Jul 25, 2026
What? Amazon Canopy is their new Global Anycast Load Balancer product(GALB)!
roughly•Jul 25, 2026
I don't know what the local fauna looks like, but I'm curious if it'd be possible to start training trees or vines across the bridges as a way to gradually replace the ropes with something more durable - I'm thinking something like the Root Bridges in India[1] that last for centuries.
I worry with projects like this that the first version's easy enough to build and show off, but if you don't keep up with the ongoing maintenance you're right back where you started within a decade, and "monkey bridge maintenance" is an easy budgetary line item for the "fiscal conservatives" to go after.
I've been here! It takes a veryyyyy long time to grow them unfortunately and they're not as durable as they seem though. I don't think they last for centuries...
inigyou•Jul 25, 2026
This is the first time Cloudflare has told me I am a bot and can't pass even if I click the box.
codeddesign•Jul 25, 2026
Do the animals actually understand roads or that these are crossing points? Or a hope that a percentage will stumble upon them?
SoftTalker•Jul 25, 2026
They probably see it as an easier crossing than coming down out of the trees to cross the road at ground level. They might feel it's safer too, as being on the open ground is more exposure to predators, which they would instinctively avoid.
acjohnson55•Jul 25, 2026
Apparently, they do
embedding-shape•Jul 25, 2026
It ends up being the path of least resistance. In many places, there are wildlife fencing around motorways, but it always ends up with holes and animals crossing via the holes, mostly because the animals want to get to the other side and don't find another way. I've never seen those kind of "hanging jungle bridges" like the article talks about, but "wildlife bridges" which literally are bridges with just earth/tress/vegetation on top I've encountered a bunch of times. When those exists, the animals who want to cross can then find a path to get to the other side, without resorting to making a hole in the fence and crossing the roads.
10 Comments
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-25-the-m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_book
Hard disagree. Consider "Oracle," a truly inspired name for a database company. It's an admirable choice. Here's the computer science definition.
> In complexity theory and computability theory, an oracle machine is an abstract machine that can query a black box called an oracle, which is able to give an answer to any instance of a certain problem in a single operation.
There's also the wealth of linkages with classical oracles, e.g., Delphi, Cumae (technically a Sibyl), Dodona, etc. [1] Taken together, it's hard to think of a better name.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_machine
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/first-black-bear-u...
I know these things are more complicated than they seem at first, but whenever these stories surface, I immediately go to an idealistic childhood cartoon land where we have a prime directive that tells us to go forth(!) and watch out for each other!
- Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune
As for "subdue", ask anyone maintaining a large garden how much they have to work to keep it from reverting back to a wilderness. Gardening is choosing which species stay and which are forcibly removed and optimizing the environment to enable your chosen species to thrive. If the words "subdue" and "dominion" freak you out, pick your brains up off the floor and go touch grass.
Western civilization has decided that it wants to keep the primate species and is dissatisfied when they become roadkill, so it altered the environment to enable the chosen species to thrive. This article is a gardening success story. Gardening requires dominion. We have dominion over the primates and we have chosen to be benevolent with that dominion.
The motorway was not a natural occurrence, and neither cars or trucks evolved naturally. Humans went there and installed a limited fix for the destruction they caused in the first place.
The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.
Of course fundamentalists tend not to see it that way.
https://www.youtube.com/@MongabayTV/videos
Here's a few of my favorites:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2rfy9HkzSs
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZEkt4Ph41M
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynXNzOUI7Xw
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMeui4P6urY
I worry with projects like this that the first version's easy enough to build and show off, but if you don't keep up with the ongoing maintenance you're right back where you started within a decade, and "monkey bridge maintenance" is an easy budgetary line item for the "fiscal conservatives" to go after.
[1] https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/living-root-bridges-in...