Is an Eataly ad for truffles offensive to Italians and Italian-Americans? (Chicago Tribune)
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Six-second versions of classic fairy tales. (Adweek)
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Inside the style guide of the Daily Stormer, “a relatively popular neo-Nazi blog.” (Andrew Marantz, New Yorker)
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Greece and Macedonia are fighting over the latter nation’s name: “The term ‘Macedonia’ is a source of such nationalist fervor on both sides that the dispute has left the Balkan country without a universally recognized name and unable to join international institutions such as NATO.” (Snopes)
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A handy guide to airport abbreviations. (XKCD, via Jonathon Owen)
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The oldest trademarks in the world. (Znakitowarowe blog, via Marty Schwimmer)
Czech trademark from 1859. It has been renewed every 10 years and is still in force.
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“Of the many methods we have in English for creating new words (compounding, affixation, derivation, acronyms, blends or portmanteau words, coinage, borrowing, back-formation), what is known as functional shift (sometimes also called ‘conversion’), where a word starts out as one part of speech and then becomes another, evokes the most ire.” (Oxford Dictionaries Blog)
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You know that annual list of “banned words” put out by a midwestern university? Here’s a twist: another midwestern university recommends words we’d do well to revive, including couth, frangible, and picaresque. (Inside Higher Ed, via Lynne Murphy)
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Some etymological musings on milkshake duck, chosen by the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English as the 2017 word of the year. (Mashed Radish)
Image by Mr. Texas.
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Why do cartoon villains speak in foreign accents? (The Atlantic, via Michel DeGraff)
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How corporations use their own histories to create distinction in the marketplace. (Rick Paulas in Pacific Standard)
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The 18 best radio and TV commercial jingles of all time. (American Music Concepts)
#3 on the list.
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A new directory of naming resources includes books, articles, guides, glossaries, and “cautionary tales.” (Onym)
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The best and worst visual branding of 2017. (Brand New)
Redesigned Mozilla logo, from the “best of 2017” list.
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Branding guy Scott Milano reviews the product names at this year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas. Tl; dr: Lots of Xs and Zs, and not a lot of originality. (Tanj)
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“Here’s an only slightly weird sentence that you might hear in Australia: ‘I had an avo sammie in the arvo with my sparky mate Daz at the servo.’” (Atlas Obscura)
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A new ad campaign for dating site Okcupid puts a SFW spin on “DTF.” (Adweek)
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Executive time, front-stabber, alternative facts, and seven other words and phrases we (sigh) owe to Trump. (BBC)
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