I’m generally skeptical of corporate-storytelling advice, but Andy Raskin’s “How to Design Your Company Story” is just wacky enough – its hypothetical company is called FairyGodmothers.com – to win me over.
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An illustrated guide to Republican metaphors for the Affordable Care Act, from goat to puzzle to house of sand.
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There’s going to be a sweary-face emoji. (Hat tip: Ben Zimmer.)
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It’s been a short, strange trip for the slang word fleek, which burst on the scene in a 2014 Vine video, was nominated in 2015 word-of-the-year contests, and was just announced as the name of a new Adobe product. Adobe Fleek, reports TechCrunch, offers marketers “a new way to recruit and manage video influencers for promotional campaigns.”
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From absquatulate to whoremonger: “a microcosm of America’s nineteenth-century colloquialisms and slang, some from the upper class, some from the lower, and much from the strata in between.”
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Cultural critic Terry Teachout remembers the standout TV commercials of the 1960s and 1970s – including Ray Bradbury promoting prunes and Bert Lahr hawking potato chips. (Hat tip: Nancy Nall.)
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The hardest words to define aren’t the long ones, says Merriam-Webster lexicographer Kory Stamper, author of Word by Word, a new book about dictionary-making. Instead, they’re short words like but, do, and take. Read an interview with Kory here: you’ll learn that the first word she defined for M-W was blue plate, as in the special.
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General Mills is investing in a new grain with a trademark-protected name: Kernza. The trademark record calls it “processed grains of Thinopyrum Intermedium (intermediate wheatgrass), and products containing or derived from this grain, namely, flour.” (Hat tip: Braulio Agnese.)
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Opposition to the current U.S. regime has a hashtag – #TheResistance – and now it has a logo, too. According to Len Stein, a PR consultant, “We sought to co-opt the notorious system of Nazi camp badges by using their colored triangles as the foundation for the ‘R’ for [the] Resistance badge logo. In doing so, we want to subconsciously warn people of the dangers of authoritarian rule that we now face and provide an instantly recognizable image that will create a strong emotional reaction.” Those reactions have been decidedly mixed, from “impressively asinine” to “appalling” to “Respectfully, what is wrong with you?”
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From word sleuth John Kelly, six creatures whose scientific names honor celebrities (including the tufty-headed Neopalpa donaldtrumpi.
One of these photos depicts a threatened insect. Via ABC13.
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Fictional explorers, dogs from literature, and aspects of the underworld are among the themes chosen by the International Astronomical Union for naming surface features of Pluto and its moons.
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Never ever ever work for free. And limit how much you work for payment other than cash to 5%, unless it's for charity. https://t.co/yoWTlrkS3E
— Tinu Abayomi-Paul✊ (@Tinu) March 21, 2017
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