This month’s book recommendation is Becoming Duchess Goldblatt, by Anonymous. Duchess Goldblatt—Her Grace or DG to her thousands of Twitter followers, myself included—has been an indelible, wholly invented presence on Twitter for some eight years. Her avatar is a 1633 portrait by Frans Hals, and her distinctive voice—firm yet loving, barmy yet authoritative, warm yet tinged with acid—has inspired endless speculation about her “real” identity. You won’t learn that secret from this memoir, but you will learn how the anonymous author (now a woman of perhaps middle age) came to create her, during a terrible period in her life during which she lost her marriage, her house, her job, and most of her friends. The Duchess became her 81-year-old alter ego: an escape from loneliness and an outlet for her considerable writing talent. The book combines memoir with selected DG tweets, and if you choose the audiobook—try your local library system—you’ll enjoy not just the primary narration by Gabra Zackman but also the wonderful actress J. Smith Cameron reading the tweets and singer/songwriter/actor Lyle Lovett reading the Lyle Lovett parts. (Lovett and Her Grace have a mutual admiration society, and if only DG would deign to follow me back on Twitter we could make it a threesome.)
Writers can be a lot of fun at parties, but word to the wise: Keep an eye on your good memories. They’ll strip them down for parts.
— Duchess Goldblatt (@duchessgoldblat) December 5, 2017
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Remember when the owner of that professional football team in Washington, DC, said he would NEVER change the team’s name? “Daniel Snyder surely meant NEVER to mean forever,” writes trademark lawyer Steven Baird in Duets Blog, “but in 2013, he could not have foreseen how quickly the world has changed over the last six weeks.” A thorough review of what led up to Snyder’s promised “thorough review of the offending team name.
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“Long before there was Jamal and Latasha, there was Booker and Perlie.” A brief history of Black names, by Trevon Logan. (The Conversation)
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Technologists use the metaphor “cattle, not pets” to express the distinction between cloud computing and your personal computer. Now that expression—along with other IT terms like “master” and “slave”—is being re-examined. (Mike Pope) For more on revisions to “problematic” IT language, see Kevin Truong’s article for Motherboard.
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“Pushed to action by an email campaign from recent Drake University grad Kennedy Mitchum, Merriam-Webster last month recognized that its definition of racism is out of date.” (Slate, via lexicographer Jesse Sheidlower)
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Several members of the North American Scrabble Players Association have called on the organization to disqualify some 225 slurs and offensive terms from tournament play. (New York Times) You can find lists of slurs—scrambled, of course—on the ScrabblePlayers.org site.
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Click through for the whole thread.
Typefaces of Protest: A Short Survey
— Tom Sutcliffe (@tds153) July 13, 2020
1/ Paranoid Light pic.twitter.com/MSuBYvDvp1
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First there was hardcore, which begat mumblecore, lardcore, couplecore, and normcore. Now 2020 brings us bardcore: medieval-style covers of pop songs. (The Guardian)
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The merger of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot S.A. will result in an entity called Stellantis, and yes, there was mockery. (James Riswick for Autoblog, h/t Jonathon Owen)
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Two good posts from the Namerology blog:
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A modest proposal to rename Amherst, Massachusetts, after one of its most famous residents, Emily Dickinson.
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The shifting meaning of “Karen,” “the world’s fastest-moving insult.”
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Backronym watch https://t.co/KqWUqEXU1i
— Edward Mail-in Ballot Banatt (@ArmaVirumque) July 8, 2020
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“Virginia schools are changing their Confederate names because honoring slavery is no way to teach history.” (Zack Linly for The Root)
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Recent controversies teach us that no institution should ever be named after a person, lest later generations discover that person is a criminal. Name everything after a dog. Instead of Yale University, make it Spot University. A name for the ages.
— Sandra Newman (@sannewman) July 22, 2020
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“Overdistancing: When the guy in front of you in line has a metric understanding of the six in six feet, allowing twenty feet to open up between him and the next person in line, which then allows others to interpret that next person as the end of the line and to cut in front of you.” And other new terms for the COVID era (Jay Martel for The New Yorker).
I can't think of a more consequential dictionary update than changing the definition of "racism."
I'm ashamed to admit I sometimes watch The MotorTrend Channel; (usually) guys restoring, modifying, and building cars. They frequently refer to all old Chrysler models (Plymouth, Dodge, Chrysler) as "Mopar," the auto parts division of Chrysler. I doubt if "Stellantis" will ever be on their radar.
Posted by: Dan Freiberg | July 23, 2020 at 12:41 PM