Fritinancy

November linkfest

Merriam-Webster chooses its words of the year based on the number of dictionary lookups. The 2022 winner, gaslighting, saw a 1740% increase, “with high interest throughout the year.” Runners-up include omicron, oligarch, and queen consort.

Gaslight (1944): “Strange drama of a captive sweetheart!”

 

And bear in mind Benjamin Dreyer’s sage counsel:

If we’re talking about fucking with someone’s sanity, it’s gaslighted. If we’re talking about a Victorian theater, it’s gaslit.

— Benjamin Dreyer (@BCDreyer) May 26, 2019

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Word of the week: Trashion

I’m late to trashion, a portmanteau of trash and fashion that has been cycling around for nearly two decades. It wasn’t until I read the November 11 “Open Thread” newsletter from Vanessa Friedman (no relation), chief fashion critic of the New York Times, that the word, and the phenomenon it describes, finally caught my attention.

 

“Springtime Splendor,” by Margaret Hatcher, winner of the 2021 Trashion Fashion competition at the Sonoma (Califoirnia) Community Center. Not only did this event take place not far from where I live, and not only has the event been held for 12 (!) years, but I happen to know the model, Ligeia Polidora. I’m amazed, and a little embarrassed, that I’m so late to the game. Photo via Sonoma Index-Tribune.

 

From the Wikipedia entry on trashion:

Word of the week: It's giving

Yes, it’s Thanksgiving in the U.S. on November 24. And it’s GivingTuesday—”a global generosity movement unleashing the power of radical generosity”—on November 29. But I haven’t accidentally dropped Thanks or Tuesday. I’m talking instead about “It’s giving [X],” a linguistic happening of its own.

Word of the week: Longtermism

What do we mean when we talk about “the future”? Next year? The next election cycle? The next generation? Or do we stretch our imaginations to conceive of “the next 10,000 years,” as Stewart Brand did when he created the Long Now Foundation in 1996?

Brand’s foundation is dedicated to the principle of longtermism, a philosophy, as the British author Richard Fisher wrote in 2020, that “allows the mind to transcend the stresses of the present, and travel to other times. In times of difficulty, it tells you ‘this will pass’, providing perspective; in times of uncertainty, it can offer a set of secular guiding principles for navigating the world.”

A visualization of “now,” “nowadays,” and “the long now” via the Long Now Foundation.

“Permacrisis”

Let the Word of the Year (WoTY) rumpus begin! Collins Dictionary, based in the UK, has already picked a winner: permacrisis, which I’d been unaware of until I read the announcement last week. (Definition: an extended period of instability and insecurity.) Collins is based in the UK, where the word may have greater currency; the British bias would also explain a couple of runners-up, Carolean (“relating to Charles III of Great Britain and Northern Ireland”) and partygate (a reference to former PM Boris Johnson’s flouting of pandemic restrictions).

Word of the week: Fediverse

Now that new Twitter generalissimo Elon Musk—or “Elmo,” as some people are Voldemorting him—has been, um, disrupting the joint, interest has spiked in alternate social-media platforms that aren’t dominated by egomaniacal billionaires with poor impulse control. Platforms like, for example, Mastodon, which launched in 2016 and which brands itself as “social networking that’s not for sale.”

Mastodon logo. The mastodon is an extinct elephantine mammal elephant; its name comes from Greek words meaning “nipple tooth.”

 

Unlike Twitter, Mastodon isn’t a single platform but “a collection of different, independently-run and self-funded servers,” as Time magazine put it in a November 6 article. This decentralization is a characteristic of the fediverse, a portmanteau of “federated” and “universe.”

No blue birds
No bro bots
No bigots
No billionaire boss
No blue checks

It’s beautiful in the #fediverse in the Mastodon federation of servers https://t.co/wROWW4Go1o

— Jen Didn’t Pay Elon $8 Taub (@jentaub) November 6, 2022

Two more travel stories

And that’s it. Promise.

Bristol (city of graffiti!)

Cardiff (where the Welsh language is alive and well, at least in signage)

The friend links embedded here allow you to bypass the Medium paywall. If you like what you’ve read, why not become a Medium member and read more? If you’re already a member, don’t forget to “clap” for stories you like—up to 50 claps per story.

 

I'm back

Actually, I've been back for a couple of weeks. But Typepad, which hosts this blog and thousands of others, was down for more than a week because of a server-migration snafu. While I waited for service to be restored I posted three stories about my October travels over on Medium.

Check them out! I’m embedding “friend links” so you can bypass the Medium paywall; if you choose to become a Medium member you can have access to hundreds of other authors (including two of my favorites, Susan Orlean and Clive Thompson), and you can help support our writing with your modest annual subscription.

Part 1: SFO to NYC

Part 2: Aboard the Queen Mary 2 (yes, I did that)

Part 3: A weekend in London

Coming soon: Bristol, England, and Cardiff, Wales.

At San Francisco International Airport: “You are your ID”

 

Lots of photos! Lots of stories! And, as you might expect, a focus (but not an exclusive one) on names, brands, and the language of commerce.