Turns out there are a lot of Spanish words from extinct Germanic languages. Some took a turn through Italian or French before coming to Spain:

•banquete "banquet" (< Fr banquet < It banchetto "light repast between meals", dim. of banco "bench" < Lombardic *bank, panch < PGmc *bankiz, cf. bench)

Others didn't:
•equipar "to equip" : from Proto-Germanic *skipōną (“to ship, sail, embark”); akin to Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌹𐍀 (skip, “ship”).

Damn languages are as promiscuous as the royals.

Today's random memory: in Patrick O'Brian's "Master and Commander" a Spanish peasant is quoted: "May his bowels gush out." O'Brian never gives the original Spanish, but Google Translate offers:
Que su entrañas broten;
que su entrañas salgan a borbotones (the winner!)
"Broten" is curious, doesn't even sound like Spanish to me -- because it comes from an old Gothic word, for "sprout" -- you remember the Romans appeased the Goths with Spain, as the GQP wants to appease Russia with Ukraine.

The boor who pops up on the scene from somewhere in the hinterland answers questions with an air of utter authority in every field. As a result, though the man may also possess qualities that compel our admiration, the manner in which he displays his high opinion of himself is contemptible.

--"Essays in Idleness: the Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō" (trans. Donald Keene)

Isn't it high time we wrote light bulb jokes about Trump and his fans?

One thing about getting to be this ancient--you have logins old enough to vote, and when you go to back up your data you can't remember what a quarter of that stuff was even about....
There's also the comedy of trying to remember sftp syntax, and wondering how much just using sftp -- or worse, remembering ftp -- marks you as a geezer.

"Without knowing it, I was galloping towards the dénouement of an adventure that had started forty years earlier."
I awoke with this sentence in my head, for no known reason. After a while I remembered its origin: an English translation of a great story from one of Marcel Pagnol's Autobiographical novels.
Still don't know why it was rolling around in my head, but it's a great story.
My copy, which I think must be public domain by now, is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZRyi_n00gV7kgu7vzVxPyLG87lnhCeA4qdrymgGe8qs/edit

Pet peeve: databases that can't deal with names that don't fit the first-middle-last convention. Newsflash: Less than half of all humans follow that convention. Some of us have no middle name, some have two, many put the family name first. It's ignorant and rude to expect everyone to follow the NW European pattern.
When I made databases, I made the name field free-format, do what you want, we're not gonna use it to identify you anyway. And that was 30 years ago; there's no excuse now.

Republicans are embarrassing. I would give equal blame to Democrats, but is there any Democrat as embarrassingly stupid as Cotton, Boebert, Greene ....?

Why I'm learning to play the fiddle at the age of 71
Steve Martin: "People ask me why I'm turning from comedy to something I know nothing about. To them I say: 'Come on, guys, you're my band!'"
#1: I'm not getting any younger. I keep waiting for the day when birthdays to start going backward, but so far no luck.
#2: I get to create beauty right there in my hands, in front of my face. Not all the time, not even most of the time, but sometimes I get lucky.
#3: The more I learn the better it gets.

Brandon gets a clue, stalls construction of new LNG terminals:
“While MAGA Republicans willfully deny the urgency of the climate crisis, condemning the American people to a dangerous future, my Administration will not be complacent. We will not cede to special interests. We will heed the calls of young people and frontline communities who are using their voices to demand action from those with the power to act.”

https://wapo.st/42fPmdb
(No paywall)