Earth's "second moon" isn't quite that, but it's likely a chunk of our Moon

Originally published at: Earth's "second moon" isn't quite that, but it's likely a chunk of our Moon | Boing Boing

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Two moons, bad juju.

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Call me when there’s a chunk blown out of our sun.

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…There was a major solar flare just two weeks ago.

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I’ll go there at night and inspect the damage.

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That’s no moon!

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Was waiting for that haha

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This is less of a moon than the ISS.

Calling this even jokingly a “second moon” of earth is like jokingly calling Venus a second moon of earth.

Or like calling a lake a raincloud.

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Pretty sure it was Todd Ingram

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Obligatory (For Brits):

(PS Also, what does “on the reg” mean?)

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On the regular, ie regularly.

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On the regular?!?!

So very much not a cromulently grammatical formulation.

[Minor grammar-nazi rant alert …]

Regular is not a noun. Saying ‘the regular’ (without a following noun that regular can apply to) is at best confusing or opaque and at worst meaningless.

When Pesco wrote ‘on the reg’ was he trying to be hip and ‘with it’? I had absolutely no idea what he meant. (Especially as ‘reg’, to me, would have been spoken with a soft g - so I parsed it as on the rej.)

Cue a queue of people (some, at least, having difficulty grokking the difference between those two words) arriving to tell me that language changes and common usage is what matters. Is this really common usage? Is Pesco trying to make it so, by spreading such an ugly neologism?

OK - feeling better having got that off my chest, I’m going back to the porch to look for that THIRD moon while keeping an eye on my lawn. Don’t anyone dare even think about it … :wink:

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Got ya regular-is-a-noun right here, Gramps.

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Yep - got me there. :wink: I’ll grant that usage of regular as a de facto noun, as in ‘he was a regular’ - although it is always shorthand for a regular something. It is just that the something is implied.
E.g. he was a regular customer, or he sat on the regular customer.

None of which justifies Pesco’s use of on the reg[ular] in that context. What noun is implied there?

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The implied noun would be something like regular basis, although it is fair to say that otherwise would usually take an indefinite article. The expression is definitely something some people use…if you look for instance there are multiple songs titled that.

I’m not sure why you would assume reg should be pronounced with a j when that’s not how beg, keg, leg, or peg work. Any more, though, and this should probably go in pedantic digressions.

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Exactly - using ‘the’ makes no sense here. It is almost impossible to infer an implied noun with the definite article there.

Nobody I know. (Pesco excepted, now.) I can honestly say I have never heard or read that usage before. I wonder if it is a peculiarly USian thing?

But ‘reg’ is not a word. I probably just came from reading something on El Reg. I’ll admit to spending a second or so trying to figure out if ‘register’ made any sense there and then gave up.

(Happy for it all to be moved to Pedantic Digressions. I know not how.)

Slapping pedantry all over Pesco’s post, this new thing is not the second moon, either. :wink:

Given the vast amount of ridiculous baby talk nonsense the Brits use - ticketty-boo, scrummy (scrumptious), presh (precious), etc, you are not allowed to criticize “on the reg.” tophat-no tophat-biggrin

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Regarding Cruithne in the linked video:

Cruithne is in a normal elliptic orbit around the Sun. Its period of revolution around the Sun, approximately 364 days in the early 21st century, is almost equal to that of Earth. Because of this, Cruithne and Earth appear to “follow” each other in their paths around the Sun. This is why Cruithne is sometimes called “Earth’s second moon”.[11] However, it does not orbit Earth and is not a moon.[12]

ETA: looks like you said so yourself. Ah well, still interesting

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I’ll be seeing our tame astrophysicist tonight; I’ll ask him about this critter and see what he has to say.

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I think the noun you’re looking for is “pedant” - or maybe that’s the noun I’m looking for :wink:

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