Updated 3 years ago ago
Sit back, finish some of those Thanksgiving leftovers and take a moment to reflect on the past four years.
What They Wanted
What They Got (I made this!)
What We Wanted
What We Got
And now… the aftermath… our current zeigeist… mon pièce de résistance…. if you watch nothing else today, watch this.
News
- Grammarphobia: Blog | Grammarphobia
- languagehat.com
Q: I was discussing well-being this morning and wondered about its antonym. AI says “the opposite of wellbeing is often considered to be illbeing, which refers to a state of poor […]
Q: Where or when did the phrase “cutting corners” show up? A: When the usage first appeared in writing in the early 19th century, it had to do with riders […]
‘Q: I am used to reading older texts that use “my” before consonants (“my love”) and “mine” before vowels (“mine eyes”). But once in a while I see them used […]
Q: News articles often say an issue is “on the table,” meaning being considered. But “tabling” the issue means putting it off. Can you shed light on these opposite meanings? […]
Q: I recently encountered a sentence about the need for “state and local leadership on immigration.” This use of “on” strikes me as lazy and inconsiderate of syntax. It’s probably […]
Q: Why a “meteoric rise”? Meteors crash down on Earth. A: The use of “meteoric” for something that rises may seem counterintuitive, but the adjective has been used that way […]
Q: “Making the cut” is said to originate from golf, but it might equally be said to have its roots in early moviemaking. Which came first? A: The expression “make […]
Q: Over the last decade I’ve been seeing an uptick in the use of “drop” to mean something new being released, like a podcast episode or music album. Where does […]
Q: How can we get everyone to quit using “loose” when they mean “lose”? It’s driving me insane! A: The word “lose” is usually a verb with the sense of […]
Q: How was the definite article that we now see in the faux-archaic names of ye olde shoppes actually pronounced in Old English and Middle English when it was written […]
Q: In a NY Times obituary, a historian refers to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as “arrogant, literate, obdurate, revengeful,” etc. Is it not odd to describe an Islamic scholar as “literate,” […]
Q: Robert Herrick uses “ye” during most of “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” but switches to “you” at the end. Are both ”ye” and “you” in the […]
Q: In Jen Beagin’s 2023 novel Big Swiss, Flavia asks Om, her sex therapist, whether “adult” and “adultery” are related. He says they aren’t. Huh? Could that be right? A: Yes. […]
Q: Having been sucked down many a “rabbit hole” in my reading, I’m wondering how this figurative sense of the phrase developed. Did it appear before Alice in Wonderland was […]
Q: I am wondering how chimera has come to mean both “an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts” and “an unrealizable dream.” A: When “chimera” originally appeared in ancient Greece as […]
Q: I was reading an op-ed that had this quote from Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address: “That is cool.” At first I thought it was satire, but he did indeed […]
Q: Here’s the title of a post on a blog I follow: “More osculation of religion by the NYT and Free Press.” I’m not aware of this figurative use of […]
Q: Can euphemisms turn into dysphemisms and vice versa? If yes, why does it happen? A: Yes, euphemisms can turn into dysphemisms, and vice versa. The change from a euphemism […]
Q: Was it ever normal to rhyme “misery” and “high”? I’m thinking of a couplet (“Make safe the way that leads on high, / And close the path to misery”) […]
Q: I saw this headline over an NPR article: “VP Vance tries to progress Gaza ceasefire.” Is that a permissible use of “progress”? I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen it […]
Beth of the Cassandra Pages is an old friend (my wife and I visited her in Montreal in 2004: 1, 2) and it’s always a pleasure to hear from her; […]
As anyone who has been following LH for any length of time will be aware, I am no fan of “AI,” but this seems like a situation in which large […]
The poet Tony Harrison has come up here before (and I am sad to learn from that Wikipedia article that he died last year); all poets deal in language, of […]
I keep running across the term découpage in learnèd discussions of movies and not knowing what it means, so I decided to find out — doubtless not for the first […]
Courtesy of Stu Clayton, a brief and enjoyable video clip in which two guys try to guess the ten most spoken languages in the world (lumping together first- and second-language […]
Ben Yagoda at Not One-Off Britishisms discusses a phrase I was familiar with but didn’t realize was making inroads over here: I see that only once in the history of […]
One of those silly but enjoyable online quizzes, from Isabella Kwai at the NY Times: “Hey, Bampot! Can You Tell Real British Insults From Fakes in This Quiz?” (archived). The […]
I enjoyed all of Edward Mendelson’s NYRB review (archived) of Zadie Smith’s play The Wife of Willesden (a riff on Chaucer’s Wife of Bath); here I will excerpt a section […]
The Economist reports on a little-known linguistic enclave (archived): Introducing House Bill 561 to the Idaho Legislature, Ted Hill did not expect to stoke international controversy. The law, which originally […]
I’m finally getting around to Richard Tarrant’s Texts, Editors, and Readers: Methods and Problems in Latin Textual Criticism, which bulbul gave me back in 2018, and I thought I’d quote […]
This is the kind of thing that enrages me; Natricia Duncan and Anthony Lugg report in the Guardian: When the Jamaican MP Nekeisha Burchell stood up to give her maiden […]
I was reading about a recent documentary called Nuestra Tierra (apparently translated as both Our Land and Landmarks), which “examines issues of land ownership in Argentina and interrogates the role […]
Boris Dralyuk, an old bloggic friend (dating back to 2012), has an essay in Poetry about looking backward: Pain is at the core of nostalgia, a term that a Swiss […]
Two unrelated things I’ve enjoyed recently that can be shoehorned in here via their relation to language and/or communication: 1) Ildikó Enyedi has been one of my favorite directors ever […]
A NY Times interactive story about “the world’s rarest pasta,” by Matt Goulding, is interesting on a number of counts. Of course if one likes pasta it’s great to see […]
Andrew Keh reports in the NY Times (archived) about a divergence in pronunciation that astounds me as much as if you told me a lot of people pronounced New York […]
Ben Yagoda discusses a niche usage that produces hilarity among a restricted group of English-speakers: In the language wars, I am pretty firmly a descriptivist (rather than a prescriptivist) but […]
Nitsuh Abebe’s latest “On Language” column (archived; see this LH post) features the 21st-century sense of “smart”: The 21st-century tech industry has accomplished a lot of cool things, but among […]
Anatoly Vorobey posted at FB (in Russian) about a novel I’d never heard of; I’ll translate what he wrote: Jo Walton is a contemporary writer of fantasy and science fiction […]
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Cover the latest in politics, tracking the issues and “game-changers” every week.
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His writing and public lectures cover a wide range of topics—neuroscience, moral philosophy, religion, meditation practice, human violence, rationality—but generally focus on how a growing understanding of ourselves and the world is changing our sense of how we should live.
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A no-bullshit conversation about politics hosted by former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Jon Lovett, Dan Pfeiffer and Tommy Vietor. It cuts through the noise to break down the week’s news, and helps people figure out what matters and how they can help. They’re regularly joined by journalists, activists, politicians, entertainers, and world leaders.
The Lawfare Podcast
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The New Abnormal – Molly Jong-Fast & Rick Wilson
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Politics Books
An Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke – 1689
A Modest Proposal – Swift, Jonathan – 1729
Common Sense – Thomas Paine 1776
Leviathan – Thomas Hobbes – 1651
No Logo – Naomi Klein – 2009
On Liberty – John Stuart Mill 1859
Republic – Plato 380 BC
The Federalist Papers, The – Alexander Hamilton & James Madison & John Jay – 1788
The Fire and Fury Inside the Trump White House – Michael Wolff – 2016
The Mass Psychology of Fascism – 1933
The Open Society And Its Enemies – Karl Popper – 1962
The Wealth Of Nations – Adam Smith – 1776
BONUS:
My Political Platform
I thought it would be fun to put it on paper to finally get it out of my system, so here’s my “enlightened libertarian moderate” platform. Basically, it’s a generous welfare state with conscription and dog-eat-dog capitalism.
Call this my 21st Century Moderately Progressive Libertarian platform.
Elect me president and I will..
Militia
– Ask not what your country can do for you
-This is the cornerstone, and would probably require a constitutional amendment. Mandatory 2-year coed military service at age 18, which includes a generous tuition for college or technical training afterward. Let’s call it Militia. You can opt-out with a hefty cash payment, or just not make it past boot camp, but you permanently lose the benefits of citizenship – the right to vote, run for public office, be on juries, and bear arms. If Militia is missed for whatever reason, citizenship could be earned later than age 18, but the financial reward would be eliminated and the length of service would be extended somewhat.
Handicapped people (or asthma, autism, etc) would go though special needs boot camps and work in support/IT.
In peacetime Militia would work in either peacekeeping operations led by the UN or NATO or work in FDR-style federal works programs and law enforcement.
Militia would solve many problems such as unnecessary wars, student debt, and youthful ennui. Also, all immigrants would be required to perform this service, even having spanish (or Cantonese!) only brigades. Quakers and others religious groups can qualify for conscientious objector status (if a nonmilitary support role isn’t peaceful enough for them) but the benefits of citizenship will be denied.
Voting and Electoral
-Eliminate the electoral college
-Massively invest into blockchain open-source election software development
Economy
-Lower corporate taxes and regulation
-Raise personal taxes, keep it progressive, eliminate all deductions
-Eliminate the minimum wage completely
-End all farm and coal subsidies
-Promote a 100% paperless cashless government
-Put reduction of our national debt as a top priority of government policy.
-Return to the gold standard, possibly somehow converting the dollar into a Bitcoin style currency
-Abolishing all corporate welfare, including the Import-Export Bank
-Abolishing all non-environmental regulation of agriculture, including subsidies. Large scale hemp cultivation re-legalized and taxed.
-Support and expand all free trade agreements.
-No corporation is too big to fail. Creative destruction must be embraced.
-Moderate slavery reparations via postgraduate degrees
Environment
-Expand environmental regulation with carbon credits; solar and wind power credits greatly expanded
-Maintain EPA at current levels. Halt Keystone.
Foreign Policy
-Stop being the global policeman – do not take sides in international conflicts, especially in the Middle East. We should have not meddled in Libya, Syria, Grenada, Iraq, Afghanistan or Vietnam – basically every conflict since Korea. This includes Israel, which although is a natural ally and is our friend and a beacon of light democracy and hope in the Middle East, is mighty enough to stand on its own. However, if Israel is ever invaded, help them to the utmost. Update 2022: EXCEPT UKRAINE!
-Push for a free Kurdistan carved from parts of Turkey Syria and Iran as a free economic zone to encourage investment to pay for reparations for surrounding governments.
-Don’t give Putin an inch.
-Be a fire breathing, drone using hawk when it comes to nukes.
-Halt all international aid programs
-Increase special ops and drone technology and expand Obama’s reliance on use of drones and Bin Laden-style assassinations.
-Close Guantanamo
Education
Encourage privatization with school choice and vouchers.
Health & Homefront
-Keep Obamacare, expand to single-payer but limit the spending for those over 65 to manageable levels commensurate to the young.
-Offer free counseling, rehab, and jobs to all drug and alcohol addicts in FDR-style federal work projects.
-Relax FDA restrictions of orphan drugs (i.e. smart drugs, performance-enhancing supplements proven to be safe)
-Legalize and normalize assisted suicide
-Expand abortion rights
-Eliminate private prisons
-Allow handguns and rifles and open carry to remain legal, but ban all assault rifles, increase screening, increase penalties for gun violations, offer buybacks for guns
-Legalize drugs on the federal level but offer funds for state-level enforcement. Take all savings and reinvest into drug treatment programs
Law and Order/Immigration
-Heightened sentences for violent offenders and crime in general, with financial penalties significantly increased
-Legalizing all drugs on the federal level including cocaine, meth, and heroin and immediately releasing all drug prisoners. Tax drugs. States however are free to regulate as they see fit and would play a key role in preventing a return to the Great Binge of the late 1800s.
-Offer free housing to homeless people, it’s cheaper than what we have now. Possibly put them to work with Militia
-Eliminate the death penalty, which while deeply gratifying from a social vengeance perspective has frankly proven to be too costly and sometimes we killed the wrong guy.
-Relaxing gun control laws, but requiring insurance.
-Beefing up federal internet law enforcement, possibly a whole new Federal Internet Crime bureau
-Expand immigration for those with high-tech skills
-Make Militia mandatory for able-bodied immigrants for citizenship. Immigrants who do any crime within 10 years of military service get deported and recorded into an expanded national database.
-Rather than focus on keeping immigrants out, I would focus on making them prefer their own neighboring countries. Militia can help them on public projects, schools hospitals, and crime control.
-Work more with local churches and synagogues in sponsoring persecuted Christians, Jews, Sikhs, Muslims, etc.
I wouldn’t have a chance of winning… “Hi, elect me, I’m gonna put all you Millennials in boot camps.”
Infographics
Memes
