I did some digging and the two words have different etymologies. So it’s a coincidence. English has many words that share the same spelling but have different meanings/etymologies as well. “Fan” for example. For “tour”, the “tower” usage comes from the Latin “turrem” which also means “tower”, and the “tour” usage comes from the Latin “tournāre” which means “to turn”.
This is complete speculation, but I wonder if the less common inverted title (eg Lake Michigan, River Thames, etc) comes from English’s French influence. In French they usually invert the title in this way. For example, what we call the Eiffel Tower, they call the Tour Eiffel.
It’s a mixed bag. Having moved to Canada, even modern constitutions can be a shitshow. For example, Canada’s constitution allows premiers (the Canadian provincial version of state governors) to freeze certain rights from Canada’s version of the Bill of Rights (the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) on a whim until the next election. Ontario’s premier, Doug Ford, recently tried to use this technicality to freeze the right to protest to stop a school workers’ strike.
The reason this ability exists is because when Canada first became an independent nation and created its constitution (in the 1980’s), the provinces would only sign onto it if these kinds of exemptions to their Charter of Rights and Freedoms were included. Looking at it from that perspective, the strength of the Bill of Rights actually looks pretty impressive by comparison.
The other factor I think is worth considering is that when it comes to the legitimacy of constitutions and governments, time is everything. When you reach around the age of a century old, the mere fact that your country had made it that long with that constitution starts to lend legitimacy and stability to it. Which is to say that if we had a brand spanking new constitution, everybody would be questioning it. Worst case scenario you get civil wars. Slightly better, but still bad scenario is a lot of disillusioned people that refuse to abide by the new document. America’s constitution is old enough that it gets a lot of respect from even the most fierce of rivals. That’s pretty invaluable, especially in times of political turmoil.
I believe that Trump would have had an easier time trampling over a newer constitution, regardless of how well thought out the document was. Having a constitution steeped in a national mythology and at the center of so many norms and traditions protects us from even some of the worst stress tests. The greater challenge isn’t a crazy stress test like Trump, but the gradual decay of those norms. Which is to say that I really believe our norms have been protecting us even still, after so many things have been thrown out the window lately. Creating a new baby constitution in the midst of this messy era of politics would be one of the worst moves we could make.
My wife described it as having the vibes of quiet morning hangover sadness after a wild night of partying. I just picture a really sad hungover guy looking out a window at a rainy landscape and thinking to himself I was once a party rocker in the house tonight, but what am I now?
I know it’s hard to believe, but bare with me. Puppies are actually lizards. It’s a weight thing. They don’t have enough gravitational pull to keep their own internal heat, so they need to absorb it from the sun. You’re probably wondering why they’re okay indoors, but that’s because the light molecules reach them through the air.
Source: I read a LOT of /r/shittyaskscience back in my day and I remember how this works trust me.
Secondary Source: Scientists.
Tertiary Source: When I say scientists I actually mean the Bible.
Quaternary Source: When I say the Bible, I really mean the voices in my head.
Wait, didn’t you hear? You must be part of the lucky 10,000! Scientists discovered last year that dogs under 35ish pounds are actually classified as birds!
I’ll see your Jay-Z vs Bach and raise you my Hanz Zimmer vs LMFAO.
God, I love song mashups. It’s sometimes shocking how much they slap. My favorite will always be Eye of the Tiger x Fireflies.
Not only that. You no longer exist. As you were at birth, that is. And after some amount of time every so often in your life, you will continue to be unrecognizable to the version of you from x years in the past. Your cells die off and new cells are created until you are literally composed of different matter than you once were. The closest thing to a constant thing tying you together would be the electrical signals in your brain. Memories. Like computer code sent from one PC to another. Also the DNA determining how your body is built.
It’s the classic Ship of Thesseus problem. If you replace a ship’s parts one piece at a time over many years until the old parts of the ship no longer remain, is it still the same ship? And in the same way, are you still the same you? Maybe our lives are full of many different people tied together only by our thoughts, memories, and genetic code.
I’m derailing this showerthought to point out that I think it should be “a unique”, not “an unique”. Say both out loud. Now you might think that doesn’t make sense, because unique starts with a vowel. But not so fast! “Unique” is well… unique… because the “u” is actually pronounced like a “y”. The “a vs an” decision is actually an issue of consonant/vowel sound and not literally whether it’s a vowel or a consonant in the first letter of the following word. Remember the old list of vowels? a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y? This is one of those sometimes moments. Y sometimes behaves like a vowel, but for the “a vs an” decision, it behaves like a consonant. You wouldn’t say “an yellow shirt”. You’d say “a yellow shirt”. And “unique” has the same sound at its start as “yellow” does.
Fuck Intuit and H&R Block, all my homies use FreeTaxUSA.