Rare snow rollers spotted in field near Marlborough, UK
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
For convenience, here's the Wikipedia link for snow rollers [2].
Firstly, pretty much everybody I know is aware that Marlborough is a city in the UK. There's even a famous historical figure, the Duke of Marlborough, associated with the place.
Secondly it kind of indicates that at some level the writer believes that US states and foreign countries are similar organisational units, when actually countries have greater independence and sovereignty than do US states.
It's certainly illustrative and useful for a wider audience, but... I dunno... it still feels... a bit wrong.
(And yeah, there's probably a Marlborough somewhere in the US so American citizens might get confused, but that's kind of the point too... like when I say “I'm from Milan” and I get “oh, Milan, Texas?” back as a reply. “No ma’am, Milan, Italy.”)
If I say "I'm from Bangor" to an American and they assume I'm American, which one of these would they think I'm referring to?[0] There are two separate Bangor Townships in Michigan alone.
It makes total sense to refer to the country and city/town when you are addressing an international audience.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangor#United_States_of_Americ...
OP here, also non-American (and, incidentally, British!)
It occurred to me that suffixing the name with the country would probably be a helpful annotation considering that the US is "Marlboro Country".
You are correct that it was useful, and I did not wish to detract from the utility of denoting where in the world Marlborough is. I merely took the opportunity to air one of my pet peeves about what could be, by some, in some sense, seen as the adoption of an inherently American norm.
I tend to get rankled by things like that first thing on a Monday morning. I really apologise if it came off more cantankerous than I intended.
The struggle is real!
> The plant was named marimo by the Japanese botanist Takiya Kawakami[b] in 1898. Mari is a bouncy play ball. Mo is a generic term for plants that grow in water. The native names in Ainu are torasampe (lake goblin) and tokarip (lake roller). [2]
The roller comes full circle!
Obviously that just means they beamed back up to the mothership.
”They can be as small as a tennis ball, but they can also be bigger than a car. Most snow rollers are a few inches/centimeters wide”
So, they might be 50 cm, but if so, they would be large examples.