Buzzwords of 2025

 IQ of a crayon

And trending topics. 

What are you going to do when you retire? I’m going to train to become a “death doula”. (Takes over from “storyteller”. But a birth doula plays a useful role protecting her client against careless and overworked staff. Perhaps death doulas do the same.)

First week Jan: “learned helplessness” is popular, but nobody quite knows what it means.

Breaking the internet.
And calling me a “retard”. (With the IQ of a crayon. Can I be a nice colour?) 

Narcissist has taken over from bully. Never mind the motivation, look at the behaviour – and stop it.

slop: the productions of AI

Late Jan: Some severe storms, and the usual whingeing about “nannying” risk-to-life warnings. Two men were killed by falling trees during Storm Eowyn. Don't forget insurance companies, which won't pay out if you ignored the announcements.

agency: People talk about it as if it was a thing. Here, have some agency. (While talking as if we were the puppets of our subconscious – or a dysregulated nervous system.)


Early Feb
Spitting fury at the suggestion from Yvette Cooper that knives should be manufactured with rounded ends. What if someone attacks you with a poin-ted stick?

Extremely pious Twitter announcements explaining why you or your organisation has “made the decision to leave Twitter”.

nervous system: for heart, psyche, soul etc. 

Skill issue: You’re single? It’s a skill issue. Prob from gaming. You lost? Skill issue, not unfairness.

bread-crumbing: See Hansel and Gretel.

Anyone you disagree with online is a p@do, a r€tard or gay.

Accusing public figures of having “given a Nazi salute”. You can freeze frame almost anybody and find a moment where it looks as if they might have given a Nazi salute for half a second.

“Some women have penises” popular last week of Feb.

Maine Women’s Lobby is fighting for trans rights: men in women’s sports, changing rooms and toilets. And probably on women’s panels and women-only shortlists.

legacy

First week March DOGE are sacking weather forecasters. They mention global warming, and if it’s true, Americans will have to find alternatives to cars.

March
I missed the Transies last night. Does anyone know who won Best Trans in a Trans? (@SamBarber1910 Mar 3 on the Oscars)

Scientists have created transgender mice! (They’re “transgenic” mice. See also the autonomous nervous system. It's not automatic.)

proctor: I would say it means to oversee or supervise. Because a test proctor watches over students who are taking test tests and make sure that they’re following all the rules. Right? (@mermaidwrites)

Vibes are back!!! From the late 60s.

21 March: “Abundance” is all over the place.

And Hegel has been all over the place for the past year. I suspect he was a dualist. Grok says: "Hegel's philosophy centers on the dialectical unfolding of Absolute Spirit through history, where reality is the self-development of the Idea via thesis, antithesis, and synthesis, culminating in the rational reconciliation of all contradictions in freedom and self-consciousness." He did say "Everything contains its opposite." 
 
April 
You can only know about online indoctrination into misogyny, violence or whatever if you watch Adolescence. A phenomenon is only real if there’s a TV drama about it.

The folks in Austin, Texas are overjoyed because the city has decided to allow the building of medium-sized blocks of flats. 

Truffles are suddenly everywhere.
And tariffs, not to be confused with truffles.

Black chick peas. Black almost anything. See truffles.

In Europe they imprison you for a tweet. We’re better off in the US! (In the UK, this is: Lucy Connolly was imprisoned for "hurty words". In reality, her crime was incitement to violence and murder. She pleaded guilty and was given a prison sentence.) 

People don’t like the em dash they find in text from AI, and assume AI invented it. 

Black and white wings at the corner of the eye. Is there a youtube video?

Oh, no, is “gay” just an insult again? And “retarded” just means “wrong”.

Theatre kids – twice in one morning! 2025-05-02 Who are they? Probably teens who study drama at school and form a tribe. (Passionately involved in drama club, school plays, and especially musical theatre productions, says Grok.) 
 
The UK Supreme Court affirms the original meaning of the Equality Act ("man" means man, and "woman" means woman). Many people and organisations won’t lie down. (At the end of December, Bridget Philipson, Women and Equalities Minister, is sitting on the official guidelines (from the Equality and Human Rights Commission) as she tries to twist logic to allow the Act to allow that "women" includes transwomen. And nobody can keep them out of women's loos, sports, changing rooms, panels, organisations, refuges, shortlists.) 

14 April: high trust, low trust (A “high-trust” society is a “racially homogeneous” society. Or even "monoethnic".)

People are sending drones to picturesque villages and harassing the residents.

People going on about “hoes”. What do they mean? Stopped now mid-June.

People redefining the phrase “born a woman” to mean “looked female at birth” so that they can say Imane Khelif WAS female at birth. Or even “has an F on their birth cert or passport”. They don’t understand the verb to be.

Aura is back, June.
vibe coding: Watch this space.

Longhouse, longhousing: In far-right and alt-right online subcultures, "longhouse" has been repurposed as a slang term to critique modern society. It metaphorically describes a perceived matriarchal, overly egalitarian, or collectivist social structure that some claim suppresses individualism and masculinity. (Grok)

The Kim Reaper (Leadbeater)
sinister ministers
flip the script: turn it on its head

Showers of rose petals are now a Catholic thing. (Through the oculus of the Pantheon – nice.)

Young people think people in the past wore black or very dark lipstick – because that’s what red looks like in black and white.

We’re going through a strange moment with airconditioning. Government says new builds shouldn’t have it, because those who can’t afford it will feel hard-done-by. They don’t put it like that, they waffle about “inequality”. Meanwhile Guardianistas can hardly bring them selves to touch it. Something sinful about being comfortable. And it’s TECHNOLOGY – vulgar, common, you can’t get a unique artisanal one hand-carved out of wood. Everyone gets the same. And it’s American. The British middle classes went through all this over central heating in the 70s. They also won’t take practical steps like fanning yourself with a fan, or even having electric fans. They came with the usual superstitions “Don’t stand right next to it it’ll make you hotter”. Guardianista in mid-rant confesses she has a cheap mobile aircon unit, “But we use it perhaps ten times a year!”. Yes, but I didn’t inhale.

Next year is forecast to be the hotteset on record. 

Showing off is called aura farming now, just keeping you up to date. (@gorangligovic.bsky.social‬)

It’s insane that in 2025 a woman not wanting to get undressed in front of a male work colleague is “hate.” (@angijones)

Seismic popular week of 5 June.

7 July: Lots of “hosting” this week as Lionesses celebrate win and Trump visits to play golf and have off-record chats. 2025-07-27 Couldn’t we “welcome” people? Or “play host to”?

14 August: What can we be passive-aggressive about this week? People playing videos with the sound on. Various pass-ag solutions suggested, from frosty looks to moving seats. Some even suggest “Could you mute?” Meanwhile phone manufacturers no longer supply phone jacks. You have to buy bluetooth headphones and sync them to your device. 

Head of Scottish Libraries has banned The Women who Wouldn’t Wheesht. Many furious exchanges on Twitter: I think my district nurse qualification trumps your SEN! Perhaps it’s class don’t patronise me I’m from MORNINGSIDE!!!! (The book eventually made it to the shelves.)

Everything’s a hub now. It’s taken over from “centre”.
Strange backlash against painter Mark Rothko as “ugly” and “modern”.

Deconstructing the phrase “land bridge”. Is this a land bridge or a country inhabited for hundreds of years? (See “transitional form”.)

Where did I put things that changed our lives? Freezers. Supermarkets. Takeaway coffee cups. Door dash. Wifi. @moseskagan points out that in the 80s and 90s a lot of people did no regular exercise. Had old fashioned methods gone out, to be replaced with nothing? No more squash or Indian clubs? Along came aerobics and Tai Chi and... tennis?  

I just want to be the happiest version of myself. Meaning “I just want to be happy”.

Solo polyamory, self-partnered. What fresh hell is this?

“The” is vanishing. Yookay, Tate, Tatler, Post Office, “Portuguese are holding a national day of mourning”. Americans already talk about “some French” instead of “some French people”.

Gay means uncool and has for years.
R@tarded means wrong, bad or stupid.

Of any beautiful, priceless object with an intriguing aesthetic pedigree: The important thing is the story. (It's part of the drive to turn any subject into a human-interest story.)

lore: fascinating fact

People still going on about “youngsters find it aggressive if you end a tweet with a punctuation mark”. It was never a big thing. (Or "It was never that big of a thing", as they would say.)

18 September Young people shouldn’t have to pay old people’s pensions because we are entirely responsible for immigration.

People are pretending not to know what “far-right” means after a huge rally in London pro Tommy Robinson, pro the flag and presumably pro removing all brown people. Ooh, you can’t call MAY far-right! Reporters report speaking to ordinary people with “legitimate concerns” who “feel they are not being heard”.

Blench is having a slight revival: a portmanteau of blanch and flinch.

Fabians are the new hate figures.

7 Oct: Longhouses popular this week. Looks like they are matriarchies, and “longhouse behaviour” is sneaky oppression and manipulation. By women.

15 Oct§; incuriosity

Neuroplasticity is the new chemical imbalance. (@hanna_pssd)

16 Oct; This week we are all terribly worried about the feminisation of society. (See “longhouse”.)

Misandry – tip of an iceberg which is an attempt to mirror all the grievances of feminism because men are such sensitive souls they can’t bear to be criticised at all, ever, and call it cruelty. Feminisation of public life comes in here somewhere. What repellent, whiny wimps.

Normalise doing X when you mean “Do X”.

dusty: pejorative. You don’t want to be dusty.

Jacobin: No idea.

Transactional Analysis: Eric Berne has been reprinted! And rediscovered.

mog: Me neither.

Kneeling down and presenting a ring to propose to your girlfriend is back!!!! I’m so glad.

Many such instances: And others on this template.

People saying neuro-linguistic programming is pseudoscience. Never thought I’d live to see the day.

People talking about groups “ruling the world”, as if it was a good thing.

Someone else points out that the “work” women are having done to their faces makes them look more like transsexuals. They have “facial feminisation” surgery, and we copy them.

Things are still “hollowed out” and “broken”.
And they’re still banging on about dopamine. (There's a book – just like in the old days.)
SNAP (food stamps in the US) should be abolished. The food all goes to “bums”.
Men with obvious “mummy issues” wanting to take the vote away from women.

Caitlin Moran is sick of certain words: the environment (“Where is the environment? I’m sure I’ve never been there. It’s a corporate way of saying ‘where we live’.”), diversity, mental health, journey.

November
Twitter saying Mrs Mamdani is ugly. She is stunningly beautiful in a dark-eyed, dark-haired way. 

Outliers are popular. They mean nothing. They’re our old friend “the exception proves the rule”.

Have earbuds become airpods? Makes no sense. And it's "Black Friday Week".

There's a police manhunt in Ireland for an Irish teacher that wouldn't use 'preferred pronouns' in school. (@JohnMurphy51)

In London nobody thanks the bus driver. Didn’t we do that one a few years ago? Why don’t you travel on some London buses?

Now that it looks like believing humans can change sex is not so obviously “the right side of history”, people are coming out with strange, individual compromise positions. Because I’m so special I’ve got my own take. Who suggested transwomen could compete in some sports? Could swim in the Hampstead Ladies Pond if they had their own changing room? The "consultation" consisted only of leading questions putting forward various compromises. Meanwhile women who apply to swim in the Men's Pond are given short shrift.

People are objecting to Post Office’s Christmas stamp as “inaccurate”: Mary is wearing pink, and a head-covering, and she and the baby are lightly tanned. Head-coverings are Muslim! Jesus and Mary were white! Oh, the stupidity.

Emotional regulation, dysregulation. Translation: don’t be uncontrolled in the corridor, as we were told at school.

Tourists are paying to attend Indian weddings. 

Per the Times, the middle classes steal from the self checkout and then sell high-end groceries on Facebook.

Has “roll up” taken on a new meaning?

Oliver Sacks had feet of clay. Someone even calls his case histories “twee anecdotes”. 

Unbelievably, apologists for FGM are still publishing (in BMJ Ethics) and influencing: Oh, but it’s their culture! Trying to abolish FGM is colonialist! And it's really not as bad as made out! (What about footbinding and bride-burning? Infanticide?)

All food is “glazed”. That’s not vinaigrette, it’s a “balsamic glaze”.

People talk about consumerism as if it was a sin. Never defined. (Someone tweets that reading 30 books a year is "consumerism". Too many? Too few?)

On Christmas Day, someone posts pix from Mrs Mamdani’s Vogue photo shoot. Response: tons of bricks on Michelle Obama and Mrs Mamdani. And Melania never got the cover of Vogue! (You see Michelle Obama is BLACK, and Mrs Mamdani is OF SYRIAN DESCENT and Melania may be from Slovenia but at least she’s WHITE. God bless us every one!)

Brigitte Bardot: She was "kittenish". (She was directed to act the way middle-aged men think children act.)

Americans are giving each other herb strippers.

And claiming Italians aren't white. 

And there's a lot of this around in 2025: Reminder to everyone: it is still “the Christmas season” for 11 more days. (@KJP. The converse is "Christmas starts earlier every year".)

And Twitter/X is getting more and more racist. Fix it, Elon.

More here, and links to other years.

Hey, Guys, It's Nearly 2026!

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. (Andy Warhol) 

It’s 2025, and people still think skin colour matters. And Jesus and Mary were white.

It's 2025 and people are still referring to computers as "screens".

It’s nearly 2026, and in London we clean pavements by waiting for a heavy shower of rain.

It's nearly 2026 and people are still whingeing about masks and lockdown.

“I’m not a feminist, but...” is back. Feminism is a dirty word again and feminist now means “transphobe”.

It’s 2025 and men on Twitter are discussing the pros and cons of returning ALL women to the home to run the house and homeschool the children. No woman gets a salary. (And what about spinsters? Nobody remembers us, ever.)

It’s 2025 and some men think they should remove the vote from women. But meanwhile, women have the vote and would never vote for such a measure.

It’s 2025 and some want to bring back the death penalty.

It’s 2025, people, not 1725. (Vaccines work, the earth isn’t flat, 5g isn’t mind control, chemtrails don’t exist, climate change is real, man walked on the moon.)

Someone says “If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you”. Riposte: No, you haven’t. You couldn’t even afford a Lego Bridge cupcake. Now Off you [go] with your deranged stupidity, we are busy dealing with real people. PS it’s 2025, the bridge thing, it’s so passé petal, get with it dude. You sound like a museum.

It's nearly 2026, we're are in the future. (@ZeroFoxFX)

It’s nearly 2026 and the fate of women and girls in many countries is worsening. (@AnnaPalindrome)

Can't believe it’s 2025 and there’s still so many people convinced that there is somehow a feminist version of doing beauty pageants. (@oksunflowers)

It’s 2025 and India still doesn’t have waste management and sewage systems. (@mandate2049)

It's 2025 and Windows file explorer is a bloated mess. (@mylife4thehorde. Must be why so many people keep ALL their files on their desktop.)


How is it 2025, and we’re here celebrating female nurses “winning back a female-only changing room”? (@Onjalirauf)

It's 2025 and women have to fight to get their own changing room! The world has gone mad. Well done, Ladies! (@norwegianesc)

C’mon, it’s 2025 we have Google, Bing, Safari and so many other internet browsers and you still believe in lies. (@TheeeDeeee)

It's 2025 and we're still using pencils. (@timmyrichieb. It's nearly 2026 and we're still using screens when pencil and paper works better.)

It’s 2025 and dehatis still consider being Gay an insult. (@England593. The haters?)

ILHOON DI MALANG AOWKAOWKAOWKAOWKAOWKAOWK IT'S 2025 NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE! (@combinatoright)

More here, and links to the rest.

Truly Dreadful Jokes

Time for some dreadful old cracker jokes! Recycle them, it might save the planet.

What’s this piece of music?
A piece of early Handel, before he joined with Hinge and Bracket to form The Doors. (@I_am_KenBarlow)

A man meets an old woman, is making conversation, and asks her where she's lived in her long life. she says, "Well, I was born in Austria-Hungary, then lived in Poland during my childhood, then spent a stint in the Soviet Union and Germany, then spent the bulk of my adult life back in the Soviet Union, and finally retired in Ukraine."
"Wow, you've done a lot of travelling!"
"Nope, never left Lviv."
(@iwsfutcmd)

A man got the job of marking the border between Russia and Poland. So he set out to walk north with a map and a machine for marking tennis courts. He walks for miles, then comes up against a house that sits right on the border. He knocks on the door, explains what he's doing.

"Which side of the border do you want to be on?"
"Poland."

So he marks the border round the east side of the house and off he goes again. After a few miles he stops and wonders "Why did he want to be in Poland, not Russia?" So back he goes. Knock knock.

"I just had to know why you'd rather be in Poland?"
"I can't stand the Russian winters."

On another occasion, Mr Goldberg is in a travel agents, looking for somewhere warm to go on holiday. He twiddles the globe, the travel agent makes suggestions.

"East Turkey is nice."
"The Turks don't like us."
"Bulgaria is popular now? Tunisia? Egypt?"

Mr Goldberg shakes his head at them all. Finally: “You maybe got another globe?”

Jewish telegram: Start worrying. Details to follow.

How many Jewish mothers does it take to change a lightbulb? None – I’ll just sit here and suffer in the dark.

Best “Waitrose” story I know is that I was in ALDI, a woman’s phone rings and she says “I’m just in Waitrose at the moment”. I just looked at her & smiled. (SA)

What’s red and invisible? No tomatoes.

Sorry I haven't posted for a few days I've been opening a packet of sliced ham. (@daveguitarjones)

“See ya later, pollinator!” 
“In a while, dendrophile!” 
(@OldHollowTree)

"Do autistic people take everything literally?" 
"No, you're thinking of kleptomaniacs."
(@scantrahan)

Mr Gandhi, what do you think of Western civilisation?
I think it would be a very good idea.

What would you like to drink?
I’ll just have a chateau neuf du tap!

Man is sprinkling powder around him as he walks.
Onlooker: What’s that?
Man: Elephant powder – it keeps away elephants.
Onlooker: But there aren’t any elephants around here.
Man: You see? It works!

During the storms of 1953 when the sea was about to breach the sea walls, 
the conversation in one house went.

"Should we warn the neighbours?"
Pause.
"No, they didn't warn us when the Vikings came."

A secret servicman is looking for his contact in a Welsh village. Trouble is, everyone is called Jones. He asks a policeman and is offered Jones the Garage, Jones the Shop, Jones the Dig, Jones the Hair. Finally they narrow it down.

Oh, you’re looking for Jones the Spy!

More here, and links to the rest.

Predictions for 2026

Puritan

Journalists will write articles about:

There's a crisis in masculinity we need a new way to be a man. And it’s still women’s fault.

Dopamine. It's too enjoyable and you and your kids shouldn't get ANY.

Society is becoming too feminised, as George Birmingham wrote in 1924. 

Children not learning cursive, and people not writing with Latinate words and complicated syntax. (If only they'd stop.)

Kids today are actually a new species. Their brains have been rewired by [recent technology you don't like but has probably been around for at least 10 years.]

In primary schools 30 years ago, there was nowhere for children to get a drink of cold water. They took to taking water bottles to school. Someone will moan that “kids today” are so soft they can’t be separated from their water bottles. 

Kids today, of course, are soft. We need to make them suffer physically. We should confiscate their water bottles. It’s good for them to be hungry and thirsty. (Since corporal punishment was banned in 2003, adults have to find new ways of torturing children.)

Schools should teach life skills: budget, cook, sew, knit etc.
Schools should teach kids to manage money.

Capitalism forces people to want things they don't need. One of the biggest problems with social media is the way it slices up all of our lives for the consumption of others and leads people to believe they want things they really wouldn't and they don't want things that they would. (@normonics. It used to be “TV ads” that gave us unrealistic expectations, back in the 1960s.)

In 2025, knitting is back thanks to influencer X, see BBC. And crafts are always coming back. 

Animals eat fermenting fruit, haha. (Biologists say these stories are exaggerated or made up, and they are always humiliating for the animals.)

SUVs are becoming more popular in London. Should we curb their use? Every year for the past 40.

Why can’t my intelligent, enthusiastic, attractive 50-year-old friends find partners or husbands? (Every year for the past 50.)

Girls outdo boys in exams! Oh woe, wrings hands, what can we do?????? (Always presented as “boys lag girls in exams”, centring the boys.)

Wild swimming. I was getting worried that The Guardian hadn’t done a wild swimming article for a while but thankfully they’ve started 2024 by rectifying this, I’m sure everyone is v relieved. (@LukeTurnerEsq)

It's a perennial news story: government department commissions bespoke IT system. (These days, couldn't they use something off the shelf?) It is delivered late and over budget. It is out-of-date, slow, clunky and difficult to use, and doesn't do all the tasks required. It is scrapped at huge expense. Backhanders and jobs for the boys somewhere?

Novel-Reading Men, declare yourselves. The NYT is running its regularly-scheduled “male readers don’t exist” piece. (@CoffeewClassics)

The Guardian will write approvingly about polyamory without mentioning the legal and financial aspects.

It’s only January and someone is suggesting bringing back National Service.

Woolworths is coming back to the high street! Sigh, no.

No more stiff upper lip – why we’re now a nation of criers! (Times, Jan 2024. Every year for the past 50.)

They’re talking about ratcatchers being called rodent operatives. (Sunday Politics, Jan 2024.)

These are always “coming back”: rickets, bed bugs, scabies, TB, syphilis.


The following will also happen:

You don't remind your family Mother's Day is coming up. You don't tell them what you'd like them to do on that day. They forget, or do something different. You cry on TikTok. Next year, same thing.

A male part will be taken by a distinguished actress. Shylock, Frankenstein. In a few years they’ll be scraping the bottom of the barrel. A female Poirot! How innovative! Nobody will point to Sarah Bernhardt’s Hamlet.

A severe storm will be predicted by weather men. People will be sarcastic about their bins being blown over. The storm arrives, power goes off, trains are cancelled, trees fall and planes are diverted to Cologne. The year after, the whole thing happens again.

There’ll be a panic about the snow panic in New York and the UK. There’ll be jokes about the country shutting down after a few flakes. Drivers will spend ten hours in their cars in the Pennines. Drivers are advised to take water, food and blankets. (And a good book and a torch.) Next year the same thing will happen again.

On Twitter, people will ask “Are audiobooks reading?” and claim “You’ll find someone when you’re not looking” and "Nobody will love you until you love yourself". 

There will be many noisy, placard-waving protests. It will be suggested that all these actors are in the pay of... Russia, George Soros, the Martians, take your pick.

A child will die tragically, and its parents will then perform some physical feat to raise awareness and money. (Upper middle class parents never do this, still less appear on BBC Breakfast.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Technophobia 14

Save your document every five minutes. Put all the files on your desktop into a folder, and move it to your hard disk. Now you can back up in the Cloud. Bookmark all your tabs and close your tabs. Curate your Facebook feed. Those are not "straight quotes", they are inch and foot marks. Set Word to use curly quotes. Now automate your job out of existence... There'll be a youtube video – or ask @Grok!

PROBLEM BETWEEN CHAIR AND DESK

Someone on Twitter complained about red lines in Word tell him that "color" is wrong. I told him he can select a UK dictionary.

Gen X survived “Microsoft Word has encountered an error and needs to close” as we watched our term papers vanish into thin air at 1 am. (Save every 5 minus.)

Bloody power went out just as I was saving. Lost the whole story. (@Gnerphk. Save every 5 mins. Save in the Cloud.)

In my first sales position, my manager was the Chief Revenue Officer. He didn’t know how to use Powerpoint, barely understood Gmail, and spent most of his day materializing behind other people to ask them what they were doing. (@cartoonshateher. She’s good on jobs where you have a highfalutin’ title but no actual function.)

I don’t think there should be an ‘algorithm.’ People should follow what they want and see what they get. (@FischerKing6. And could we have a chronological timeline?)

@WilshireTony is told about the Following tab: All the time I’ve been using this & I hadn’t cotton on to that…

It’s 2025 and Matt Walsh has just discovered the Mute button in Twitter!
It’s January 2025 and I’ve just told someone how to block words on Twitter.

It’s February 2025 and I’ve just told someone to switch to “Following” if they want to pick what they see and see only that.

Just found the unsubscribe button on emails – changed my life. (@Rylan)
(Many replies saying “Wow! Where is it?”) 

My phone pings all the time so I don’t bother to look at it.
(Turn notifications off. I have turned them off and now people moan that I’m unavailable.)   

Them: But I don’t see the POINT of Twitter. Can you explain it?
Us: [We explain Twitter at great length.]
Them: But I don’t see the POINT of Twitter.

Them: But you can do all that with the mouse!
Me: But it's quicker to use keyboard shortcuts – if you can touchtype.

Someone on Twitter: I’m not seeing anything from people I follow!
Me: Switch to “Following”.
Him: Thanks, I’ll try that.

The wife of a cranky poet who lives in the Midwest contacted me to ask if I would write a letter to her husband since he disdains email. Obviously the wife takes care of everything that is required to live in 2025 while the husband saunters along cheerfully in a bygone era knowing that his spouse will protect him. (@JoyceCarolOates. Another complained that their inlaws never got any kind of computer and now can’t do anything. Somebody has to order their food for them and make their medical appointments.)

Rubio orders State Dept to remove Colibri and revert to Times New Roman. Latter being far more legible and economical, it’s the wisest policy so far by Trump admin. (@leemakiyama)

My recollection at DoD is that the default Word font changed to Calibri around 2021, so everyone just started using that. It wasn’t a conscious choice. (@Brett_327)

[A long thread follows claiming that Times is harder to read than Calibri for dyslexics and the visually impaired. The Republicans just want to be cruel – it’s their entire policy! The font is Calibri, the cigarette lighter Colibri.]

I was sent on a shorthand course in 1993 so guys could dictate their emails for me to type. (@Enilorac999)

Had [a job where I did nothing] for about 3 years and it was heaven until someone on high finally decided to crunch numbers...they just moved me over a department and now I have to maintain a few dashboards and lead a quarterly meeting. Still not a real job but I'll take their money. (@coluim_mael)

It's nearly 2026 and we don't have computers we can communicate with by gesturing in the air.

Someone asked how he could access my blog. The link was after my signature on every email.

If you feel like you're bad at your job and it's making you depressed, just consider that, as the investigation of the recent heist revealed, the password to access the Louvre's videosurveillance system was "Louvre". (@phl43)

The entire Louvre security camera system was protected by the password “Louvre”. The museum was also running software from 2003 that hadn’t received security updates for years. (@visegrad24)

I had a job that was basically filling out seven massive spreadsheets with data that was 85% common between all the spreadsheets. I created a linked spreadsheet and input the data once and cut the job time down to pretty much nothing. I didn't tell anyone and eventually left due to boredom. The person who took the job over went back to the "old way" because they couldn't figure out how to maintain my linked spreadsheet. (@Abe_Froman2)

Yup. I got hired as a 'secretary' by a non profit. The main task was managing the database and sending out membership renewal packages. The lady before me edited the letter, membership card, and sticker for the envelope individually. The first day there I set up a mailing list, set up an export to excel from the database, and had her full-time job down to 1 hour of work a week (stuffing envelopes). AND I saved them money by using envelopes with a window and just formatting the letter so the address field would show. I did that job for 2 years. Pay wasn't great, boss was a jerk, but I was basically doing nothing. Answering the phone was easy, and pretending to work while my boss was in the office. I ended up quitting because the boss had started to blame me for her own screw-ups and it was only a matter of time before she killed a computer and fired me for it. (@Librarycat77)

My friend got hired to work from home for a company that was transitioning from some ancient business software that hadn't been supported in years to a newer system. They had previously been doing this manually, record by record and assumed that she would do the same. They'd send her enough records to keep her busy for a week doing them manually. She did it manually for a couple of weeks, then she automated the process and a week's worth of records was completed in less than 30 seconds on Monday morning with the results uploaded Friday afternoon. She did NOT inform her employer who was super happy with her accurate and timely work. She worked ~2 minutes/week for a full-time salary because she automated her job. (@DLS3141)

I’ve sent three emails in my life, and my wife, Barbara, has typed two of them. (Ringo Starr)

In the past, some managers had all their emails printed, organized and put into binders to read and review. (@fvntsplssvn)

When a publication I worked for acquired Macs instead of terminals, some staff thought they were terminals and didn’t know you could save stuff locally and use them as your own personal computer. And when we got email they “replied all” instead of just “replying” for about a week, creating a terrible tangle of furious miscommunication. 

An innovation joins our lives. Most people pick it up and use it and find it more and more useful. About 10 years in, a group of middle class parents get all guilty about it, and try to reduce their and their children’s screen time, and write jeremiads in the paper and online about how evil it is. Even whole books! And of course it “rewires our children’s brains”.

“TV is evil and destroys your children’s eyesight” has morphed seamlessly into “Peppa Pig gives your children dopamine hits and they get addicted and it’s just passive entertainment”. Like books? I used to get told off for reading all the time.

And if you find spam emails waste time, mark them as spam. Unsubscribe from any firm you've bought anything from – and which now bombards you with marketing emails. If you don't know how to do any of this, you could hire somebody to filter your emails and select the ones you need to see. You could call them a "secretary".

TECHNOLOGY – DONCHA LOVE IT? 
This also comes under "overdigitisation".

Struggled with this wireless mouse for months before it occurred to me to change the tracking speed...

It's nearly 2026 and printers are still requiring the colour cartridges to be available to print in black only. What the hell? (@jaseeey)

I once went to a Chipotle who told me at the register that they could only accept orders via the app, I guess because the register was broken? They could not accept any cash or payment from me in person, I needed to step aside, download the app, then order with it. I just left. (@JasonKPargin)

They had those checkerboard code menus. I’m a 76-year-old man. I’m trying to eat a cheeseburger while I have time left on this earth, not deal with that nonsense.

I once broke a bank receptionist's brain because i showed up for an appointment and couldn't check in for it with the qr code because my phone's camera was shattered. he didn't know what to do. i asked him to just go let the lady know i was there. he said that wasn't possible. (@veanimator)

I consider myself a pretty reasonable person but whoever invented the feature that opens Outlook when you click on an email address in your web browser needs to be sent to mow lawns on the Sun. (@VeryBadLlama)

Afternoon spent as predicted on the phone to Companies House: I finally got through to learn that no, they don't really know how their new software works, they can't get into it, the Post Office probably cocked up our identity verification but they're not sure, and we need to do it again, at a cost of £35 each via a law firm. I phoned a firm in Bristol and they confirmed that they are, in fact, making a small fortune dealing with people who have failed to get through the government's software. (LW)

I have just got a new copy of Word and if I change the view or the type size in ONE document it makes the same change in ALL OF THEM. Every time I open a doc I have to adjust the size and view. Searched for an override, no such luck. (2025. And I can’t “tile” pages, it shows them in a line.)

There was a tipping point where everything was now maximised for phones, not laptops or heaven forbid desktops. Now the thing doesn't work on the laptop – or you have to break off and take a picture of yourself on your phone and transmit it to the app you're not using and... Looking at you, lexulous.com.

Why does my phone's ring tone start quietly? Takes several rings for me to hear it. Then I have to unzip the pocket in my handbag and take the phone out without hanging up by mistake. And then the other party hangs up. Apparently you can deselect Ascending or Crescendo but I can’t see how.

My clock radio does the same. If I set it so I wake up with the news I just hear whisper whisper burble burble Donald Trump mumble...

And another thing about clock radios. Every one I've had. The numbers gradually fade - to black. And I have to turn on the radio to see the time. Grok says that the numbers just age. So you have to throw out a perfectly good working clock just to get one whose numbers you can see.

I now can't read Twitter/X direct messages without inputting a "passcode". Click here if you've forgotten your passcode! How can I remember something I never knew I had?

Q How do you take a screenshot on the new iPhones without home buttons short answer?
A Press the Side button and the Volume Up button at the same time. 

“These are our default settings. You may change them at any time if you spend 400 hours looking through our Baroque menu system.” (@Klassical_Kat)

I have just wandered round St Alban’s in the dark looking for the station. Thank you for the map, Google Maps, but WHERE AM I? It thinks I am a car which is infuriating. (You twiddle a setting NOT IN THE ACTUAL APP but in “Apps”.) 

At the moment, aircon can’t be installed in new buildings because “not everybody can afford it”. (Though they use more pompous language.)

Why is everyone using WhatsApp when Android phones have a perfectly good texting service? Perhaps because in WA they can have group chats.

When Google and other search engines arose, we were promised "Ask it anything in natural language".
To get any meaningful results you had to use Boolean logic. My idea of fun, but not most people's. Now we have Grok - what Google was billed to be 20 or 30 years ago. (And some are convinced Grok is part of a conspiracy to spread fake news.)

The outrage and foot-dragging when people got home answering machines was... typically British. Mine used to say "Please leave your number SLOWLY" and people would enunciate their number and then sneer "Was that slow enough?" Usually: Call me at gabble mumble mumble gabble, drops voice.



More here and links to the rest. 

Inspirational Mantras about Bullying 109

Don't forget, bullies are cowards, just ignore them, they tease you because they like you and violence never solved anything.

It takes a long time to believe something like that’s actually happening to you. You think things’ll change, get better.’... Being with C sort of sapped my will... With my first wife it didn’t matter – she loved me, she gave me confidence, and we had lots of friends, we were fine. I just didn’t know how to cope with someone like C. She isolated us as a couple . . . one by one, stopped me seeing all my friends, everyone I’d known before I met her. It got horribly claustrophobic... She spent her time criticising and getting at me. (A Reconstructed Corpse, Simon Brett)

The insidious nature of domestic abuse also plays its part. “It can build up gradually. It takes a while to acknowledge that you are being abused … because it’s become so normal.” “It’s impossible to work with [child on parent violence] by adjusting your behaviour, filling out a worksheet or trying to lay down boundaries. That sort of thing is not going to work if someone has lived under siege for a couple of years.” (Guardian 2018) 

Many families shrug off unacceptable behaviour with the approach, “Oh, that’s just the way Ethel is,” and the object of the ire is just expected to take it. (Dear Prudie, slate.com)
 
Things changed once I became the successful one. The more I achieved, the worse his behaviour became. (Sydney Morning Herald on domestic abuse)

Emotional abuse leaves life-long scars. (@SilkeMeyer_DFV Some of us bear for ever the imprint of someone's thumb. Nancy Banks-Smith)

What’s at stake isn’t their internal emotional state but how they’re treating your fiancée. (Dear Prudie, slate.com)

Bullies get worse as time goes on. (@TheRoyalButler)

I would say that the college training was very lousy, and I don’t think that people learn by being invalidated...  Acting teachers... seem to think that beating up their students and invalidating them will make them better, which I think is completely wrong. And at that age, you don’t realize that this sick person is really projecting all their neurosis onto you, you think that you’re the one who’s damaged...  AK would not validate and would not allow. I think she had favourites, and you could never figure out why you weren’t a favourite, and it never made any sense. The thing you have to remember is that if a person is making you feel bad about yourself, that person is going to be in his or her own world. They are lost in their own universe. (Karen Black on acting school)

“Bullying is a complex symbiotic relationship” is a posh way of saying it's the victim's fault again.

People make the mistake of assuming that resistance to bad things is produced by being subjected to the badness one is supposed to resist. (WUR)

Marie Antoinette apparently had one shoulder slightly higher than the other – with an emphasis on the apparently, since nobody seems to have noticed it except for her mother, the Habsburg Empress Maria-Theresa, who demanded her daughter be strapped into a corrective corset that she probably did not need, and peppered her letters with bullying commentary on the alleged shoulder incline. (Times) 

Former Boy Scout Mails 500 Pieces Of Garbage To Boy Scout Bullies Among other things, the packages contained old tea leaves, underwear, and dirt. (Atlas Obscura. Revenge only hurts the avenger blah blah.)

You sided with a bully... and that is something I will never forget. So, no, you and I won’t be “coming together” to move forward or whatever. (FB)

The education secretary’s adviser on behaviour has revealed that he was bullied at secondary school. Tom Bennett... said that he had suffered “discreet” bullying for years... “It lasted for years and the teachers never knew a thing. The odd thing was, neither did I. It was perfectly usual to sit in a lesson and be passed notes telling me what a wanker I was... Never was I actually punched in the head or anything. I think that’s why I never spotted the clues. It lasted until late in my school career, when I started to push back.” His experience taught him that adults could be unaware of bullying and that he had been right to react.

A study of twins concludes that bullying has genuine causal effects on mental health. (Who’da thought it, eh?)

Bullying isn’t simply an affective state of a victim. (‏@isacsohn, 2016 You can’t have a victim without a perpetrator.)

"I'm being bullied" is now an early, loud complaint of all bullies. (@WillWiles, 2016)

The view from Oz PM Malcolm Turnbull was that Donald Trump is a bully and to confront a bully, you need to bully back. (What happened to “just ignore them and they’ll go away” or “respond to Trump with calm”?)

Bette Davis took out all of her insecurities, as is often the cliché, on everyone within firing distance. (goodreads.com Oh yes, bullies are just insecure, and “take it out” on others. So that’s OK, then.)

Ridicule is dominance marking behavior. (@RuffyanMe, 2017 Sticks and stones; they tease you because they like you.)

Following years of bullying from my peers for being clumsy, I still struggle to trust people. (Refinery29.uk)

"Grow thick skin" is what abusive men say to get away with their abuse. (@Nouronal)

As I grew taller and older, she ceased bullying me – even attempted some sort of rapprochement. (Falling, Elizabeth Jane Howard) 

As my brothers got bigger, my bullying father then focused on me. (slate.com)

No-one told T that the kid who repeatedly bullied him and tore his clothes 'secretly liked' him (T eventually stuffed his head down a grating, which didn't mean T secretly liked him either). (LW) 

Rather than firing or talking directly with members of staff he didn’t like but had somehow acquired, he froze them out – a slow torture for the victim. (London Review of Books, 2016 on David Astor)

Mom mocks my crying by putting on a demented baby voice. (Dear Prudie, slate.com)
 
My husband was an early bloomer, and hit six feet tall long before other kids his age hit their growth spurts. Some short bully with a Napoleon complex made a project of tormenting him... until one day, in front of class, M just turned around, picked him up, and DROPPED him. Guess who never bugged him again? (@Iron_Spike)

I've often read how horribly director John Ford treated people. I've also often thought that someone should've given him a punch on the nose! (KMB)

More here, and links to the rest.

Inspirational Mantras 108

Comedian Robin Ince, on po-faced academic study of low culture: There is something far more joyous in scrutinising low-brow culture than in examining the high-brow. The incongruous mix of writing about post-Freudian analysis within the context of oedipal mother worship when it concerns Jess Franco’s Bare-Breasted Countess is so much more entertaining than reading another academic analysing TS Eliot’s The Waste Land...  Necronomicon magazine included Deep Throat: Pornography as Primitive Pleasure and Marco Ferreri: Sadean Cinema of Excess. I’d just watch the films if I was you, or read a book about string theory. (From The Bad Book Club.)

Frankly, there are things in Narnia which are nothing to do with religion. They are to do with being out of date. As with Tolkien, there are ideas there which haven't yet faded sufficiently into the past to become valuable antiques. (Guy Kewney)

I never ever ever ever ever want to live in a boarding house -- and by logical extension in one of those stupid hippie commune houses where everyone pools their money from their jobs at the incense store and grows vegetables using refortified, sustainable, organic faeces and then gets into a fist fight about who gets to eat the last Pop Tart because there's no individual property (and because modern 'hippies' are really, really dumb). (Goodreads review)

Hippies in suits are the worst kind of hippies. (@grodaeu)

It is a sort of acknowledgment of God, just in case there happens to be one. (Stanley Green, the "protein man" of Oxford Street, of his nightly prayer.)

There should be nothing easy about scepticism. It’s not about pointing and laughing at people who believe crystals are magic. It’s about challenging ideas that may be deeply embedded in our society and causing real harm to real lives. (@lecanardnoir)

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States... nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge". (Isaac Asimov)

Telling me you’ve done a course doesn’t cut it in the grown-up world. (Simon Myerson KC)

Most family memories do eventually end up for sale in secondhand stores, or moldering in garages, or eventually thrown away. (Danny Lavery, slate.com)

We are the cosmos made conscious and life is the means by which the universe understands itself. (@ProfBrianCox)

In America, amateur costuming is a rite of passage. (William Lee Adams)

A moral injunction can't simultaneously be compulsory and optional. (Philosopher Ben Colburn paraphrasing Tolkein.)

Somehow, strange old shoe-repairers and run-down hardware shops that seem to have almost no customers survive when others go down. I think it likely they are run by visitors from another dimension... (Fin Fahey about the shop on Newington Green)

More here, and links to the rest.

Nice Reviews

Those nice people at the Clothes in Books blog (highly recommended) like my first book, Witch Way Now? (Followed by Witch Way To...?, We Three and The Fourth Door, all available at Amazon.)

Here's what they said:

JanW: Lucy Fisher's Witch Way Now? For me, one of the best books on late 60s teenage girl life.  

Clothes in Books (Moira Redmond): totally agree about Lucy's book, it is marvellous... We met online because I read her review of a book and loved it so much that I contacted her to do a guest blog. (I think it was on Elfrida Vipont's The Lark on the Wing.)

Here's Moira's original review (I did mention clothes a lot). 

Received Ideas in Quotes 40

The Emperor is naked, there is no Santa Claus, I don’t believe in fairies and I loathe Big Brother.

There are no guidelines. It is perfectly ethical to ringfence parts of the discourse. There is no “evidence based” set of current ideas. There’s an official set. You can say anything apart from “human beings can’t change sex”. 

All minorities have a voice, everybody has a voice – apart from them, them and them. This is not contradictory. 

Optimism is official. You can’t say “Well, it never worked for me”, it’s so rude. Whatever group you belong to, you must shut up.

Optimism must not be contradicted because we need to give everybody hope. Ideas are tested on the probable outcomes of believing them. 

And Mark Twain invented the expandable bra strap. (It looks like he did, too.)


Medieval people regularly cleaned their mattresses, they actively combated fleas and were terrified of bad smells so did everything to  avoid them.

They had pillows. Blankets were washed more than once a year.
Livestock didn't live in the same room as the people, they lived behind partitions.
If you survived childhood you had a good chance of living into your 60s, 22 wasn't really middle-aged. Thatched roofs keep rain out very well.
They had curtains, especially around beds.
They had toilets, outhouses, seats over cesspits, not just buckets.
And no, they didn't toss it into the street.
There were strict laws against it and people had noses, they didn't want that filth in their streets.
There's no evidence for 'gardlyloo' till long after the middle ages.
Its not French for watch out below.
Streets weren't really open sewers.
They had gutters that were for liquid waste like grey water only. 
Public latrines were very common.
@fakehistoryhunt


New ideas are in fact a change in the brain. (@tathtrod)

Monet’s Poplars series almost didn’t happen because the trees were about to be cut down. So he purchased them until he finished painting, then sold them back. (@artistmonet. He had the train schedules changed so that he could paint them, too.)

Perhaps only great men have destinies. (Said a philosophy professor to me once.)

I keep saying the Bible not only has books missing but King James rewrote it in several versions for financial gain. The Vatican is responsible for so much of this evil. They just changed things to fit their narrative of dominance over humanity. (@PeggyDodson)

My English teacher in secondary school was Jewish. She told my class that when her dad came to England he didn't speak English very well, all he could day was I am a free man, so they recorded his last name as Freeman. (@Trixie696775)

The Three Wise Men of Gotham were feigning madness to avoid taxes. (Weren't there some long-sought Mafiosi who feigned Alzheimer's to avoid recognition?)

Reminds me of the apocryphal story of Bazalgette building London's sewers. He did all the maths to work out flow rates and required pipe sizes based on population size, then thought "hang on, we only get one chance to dig all this up". So he doubled every single diameter. (@GazTheJourno)

Archaeologists have found a real treasure: a medieval toy production site! Quite touching and another reminder that the old idea of medieval children being treated as adults and not having a childhood is nonsense. (@fakehistoryhunt. That was middle-class, mid 20th century children.)

Many people falsely believe that we all begin life as females, before hormones transform some of us into males. But the past few decades of genetics and embryology have debunked this. (@zaelefty)
 
William Holden, the lad just signed for the coveted lead in 'Golden Boy' (1939), used to be Bill Beadle. And here is how he obtained his new movie tag. On the Columbia lot is an assistant director and scout named Harold Winston. Not long ago he was divorced from the actress, Gloria Holden, but carried the torch after the marital rift. Winston was one of those who discovered the 'Golden Boy' newcomer and who renamed him—in honor of his former spouse! (George Ross of Billboard magazine, according to IMDb/Wikipedia. When it's common knowledge stars have changed their names, the studio's PR department puts out an origin story.)

Jeanette Helen Morrison said on TCM that Van Johnson was responsible for her stage name. While they were filming The Romance of Rosy Ridge (1947), he suggested she shorten her first name to Janet. He also thought that, since the film they were doing was a Civil War drama, Lee would go well as her last name. But then he suggested she spell it Leigh. (Via FB)

I have been told that when standard Lithuanian was formulated in the 19th century they purposely archaized it. (@razibkhan)

Ever immigrant to this country is here at our discretion. They are privileged to be able to live here. They have no right to, and our discretion can be waived whenever we want for whatever reason we want. (@reggiedunlopno4. There is no two-tier citizenship.)

Our local department store used to have ‘men only’ evenings before Christmas & Valentine’s Day when they could go and buy lingerie as gifts for the lady in their lives. One employee told me about 90% of it was returned by said ladies after the day. (@Dearkens.

In Tuvan language, spoken in the Republic of Tuva located northwest of Mongolia, the terms 'songgaar' (going back/future) and 'burungaar' (moving forward/past) suggest a unique perspective: the past is perceived as being ahead of them, while the future is seen as behind. (@FedeItaliano76. This either shows that we are advanced and enlightened now, or that the tribes know a thing or two and we should copy them.)

In schools, history teachers teach that the Catholic Church is bad because it hid the Bible for a long time. (@profSPedro)

Reality is what we make of it, how we interact with others, and how they react to us. There is no one singular way to exist in the world. (@rejserin)

We were talking about age gaps in marriages in the olden days. @Ingold321 has an answer: Rome-focus (their soldiers had huge age gaps because the military forbade marriage while enlisted), aristocracies, and the desire to present our own time as more enlightened in all ways likely extended the reach of the myth.

@ContraireSous adds that we’re looking at Roman society because “that’s the culture that ushered in monogamy”.

Couples have basically always been within 5 years of age. Some people genuinely believe age gaps were all like 15 years until 1970. (@CartoonsHateHer)

Why do judges break their pen after a death sentence? (@ChrisEjiofor5. Others add: Goes back to the Mughal era, “The pen just signed someone’s fate, it can’t be used again.”) 

My in-laws, for their entire lives, believed that if you get sunburnt you should rinse it with HOT water, in order to open your pores and allow the radiation to escape from your skin. They taught their children this. Imagine my husband’s relief when I told him this was insane. (@Katherine111594)

I grew up in a house like this.  Don't use ice in your drink, you'll get a sore throat. Imagine my surprise at how good ice cold water tastes when my husband debunked that myth. (@kellercre8s. It used to be that ice in your drink in the tropics would give you diarrhoea – possibly because the ice cubes were made with unboiled water.)

Ivy-leaved toadflax growing on an Oxford wall. Its 17th century name was ‘Oxford ivy' or 'Oxford weed’ because it was thought to have arrived from Italy via the packaging of a marble statue destined for an Oxford college garden. (@beatricegroves1)

The phrase ‘to wing it’ as in ‘to improvise’ comes from 19th-century theatrical slang where it meant ‘to study a part in the wings having undertaken it at short notice’. (@qikipedia)

For non-southerners, the Southern accent can be perceived as uneducated or “bad” English. Actually the Southern accent comes directly from British Received Pronunciation and aristocratic society. (Lingoda.com. The only thing the two accents have in common is non-rhotacism – posh Brits don't roll their Rs.)

Type was thrown into the Thames by apprentice compositors from the London School of Printing. Too lazy to distribute, or 'dis' the type back into the typecase, it was put in your pocket and dropped in the Thames from the nearest bridge. (Peter Stephens. Wouldn’t they eventually run out of type? Another theory: it was thrown down the drain. In reality, one of the creators of Doves type refused to share it with his partner, and threw it all into the Thames near Chiswick. Mudlarkers have been retrieving it ever since.)

A whelm is a wooden drain pipe, a hollowed out tree, whelmed down or turned with the concavity downwards to form an arched watercourse. It is where the words ‘underwhelmed’ and ‘overwhelmed’ come from. Lara Maiklem (Dictionary says it means "overturned".) 

I think it is more accurate to say a Votes for Women was won despite civil disobedience. The suffragists managed, during the Great War, to win back a lot of support lost by the suffragettes during their 1900s and 1910s campaign. (@WalkerMarcus)

Part brass rags: This expression is explained in W.P. Drury’s short story the Tadpole of an Archangel (1898): When sailors desire to prove the brotherly love... with which each inspires the other, it is their custom to keep their brasswork cleaning rags in a joint ragbag. But should relations become strained, the bag owner casts forth upon the deck his sometime brother’s rags; and with the parting of the brass rags hostilities begin. (19th century nautical slang)

I love this grafter (Lothrop Stoddard). He's the one who made up the whole "Africans have no word for maintenance in any of their 3,000 languages. (@RonBabylon. Stoddard was an influential racist in the early 20th century.) 

Trivia fact: in the Middle Ages women got married in red. When Anne of Brittany married the King of France she wore a white dress because white is the colour of Brittany. It became a trend because France was already the cultural trendsetter for the world.  (@pegobry_en)

I was always told “You are a Ship of Theseus, all your cells get replaced, you are an information pattern wave through matter”. Today I learned that most of your conscious brain is in fact the same set of neurons you were born with, aging with you for life, ditto heart and eyes. (@liron)

Robert Tombs said that Victorian Britain became the world's first urban nation, clearly forgetting that something preposterous like 80% of Early Dynastic Sumer's population lived in cities. (Basedwagnerite)

Freakonomics (2005) talked about baby naming and links to socioeconomics. They described new names like Oranjello and Lemonjello (pronounced le-MON-juh-lo and or-ON-juh-lo), but had to make a correction in subsequent editions because these turned out to be urban legends. (@paulmidler)

Before the invention of the lightning conductor, bell-ringers, including monks, were often struck by lightning while ringing bells in church towers. This happened because churches were the tallest structures in a village and also because the metal bells themselves attracted lightning. There was a widespread belief that ringing church bells could ward off lightning, making bell-ringing a particularly dangerous practice. (Google)

I’ve just been told that underneath San Francisco there’s an underground roller coaster. Apparently it takes 45 minutes to get through security and sets of multiple doors. (@TylerAlterman)

More here, and links to the rest.
 

Syndromes 6: Games People Play

Get simply furious because a group or a person won’t do XYZ spontaneously without being told. At the same time you don't tell them to do the thing, or explain how to do the thing, or draw up a rota, or have a meeting... But then they’d do the thing and there’d be no need for the incandescent fury, which gives you an excuse to be perfectly vile to the group or person.

Annoying neighbour, on the first day of the Iron Age: "Of course we switched from bronze over a year ago, I made DH throw it all in the midden!" (@IanBlandThatsMe)

You’re early for your train so you force your friend to rush across the station, holding a spilling cup of coffee, while you twinkle at station staff to let you through the barrier and catch the previous train. You both make it, but at what cost? You are thrilled because you have beaten the clock and much else, once again. 

You detain a friend, promising to drive her to the station, tell her she'll have plenty of time for her shopping. You don’t even give her five minutes, and she misses her next appointment. 

If she manages to drag you round the shops while she looks for presents for children, resent the time spent, and suggest rather nasty, kitsch objects she might buy.

Drag your friend round the shops and give her no time to look for what SHE wants. Part of this ploy may be that you want to keep her from visiting the wrong shops, which you’re sure she’ll do if you’re not there to stop her. 

Seek out someone who will believe you when you tell them that everything they do and say is wrong. And everything they post or tweet!

“You don’t need to belittle me, let me do that for you and save you the trouble!” Never works. What to do instead? Don’t be self-deprecating. Don’t make excuses, either, or give justifications. Wait for the belittling to pass with a blank expression but a very slight air of impatience? Pretty soon get up and go home.

In a meeting last week I made a joke about someone being like Columbo. In today's meeting my joke was told back to me like it was theirs. I pretended I didn't get it so they had to explain. Turns out they don't know who Columbo is. (@deathofbuckley)

A instructs B to tell a string of lies to C, for no good reason. It’s just a way for A to establish control over B. A gets B to spy on C and report back.

Make them pay, pay and pay again for some minor infringement. Or for a favour you are going to do them – but you never get round to it.

Lean on me so I can step aside and let you fall.

More unspeakable nastiness here, and links to the rest.

Contradictions 14

Jenrick says 'it's not about the colour of people's skin'. It's just that he didn't see a single white face. That's not even logically coherent. (@David__Osland)

Tragic protagonists are funny because you have Oedipus who does everything in his power to avoid the fate which has unfortunately already been written for him but then you also have Orestes who is joining the war on generational curses on the side of the generational curses. (@corduroycleric)

Never forget: women can't know for sure they're women unless they've had their chromosomes checked, but if a man says he's a woman he's definitely a woman and it is highly offensive to mention his chromosomes, which are entirely irrelevant to whether or not a person is a woman. (@jk_rowling)

TRAs: ‘Trans’ women (men) ARE women and no-one can tell the difference you bigot
Also TRAs: You (a woman) look like a ‘trans’ woman (man). HA HA I am insulting you. HA HA. I am very smart. (@WomensSocIre)

When you're young and getting pregnant usually isn't wise, you're always told how easily done it is and how careful you have to be. When you're actively trying and openly doing so, people will remind you how hard it is and that it usually takes time. Which one is it? (@anon_opin)

Traditional men can’t seem to decide whether women are lazy golddiggers for depending on men for money, or good women for not working and letting men provide. (@ulxma)

There’s this huge disconnect of universities which have ‘trigger warnings’ for Shakespeare and yet allow naked antisemitism to thrive. @nicolelampert

It's extremely funny you'd have the gall to talk about personal liberties in a post declaring that from now on any writer that works for you will parrot exactly the opinion you want... (@MattPolProf. Jeff Bezos, Washington Post)

The person talking about words making people feel unsafe then slags white men off for "fragilities"? How odd. (@rosykaren)

 I do not understand Progressives uncritically supporting the Palestinians who deny equal rights for Women and criminalise homosexuality. (@ThomasDierson)

I love how they claim there are only about 10 gender-critical people in the world and/or everyone is a 'Bot' while simultaneously making massive lists of 'transphobes'. (@OslerMarc)

Why, when people who claim a synthetic sex identity want to pee, there is only a handful of them going about their lives who are no threat, yet when anyone speaks about the harms of the ideology, there are vast swaths of them being murdered and oppressed? (@bjportraits)

Creationist: "I am religious and live by faith. Evolution is a religion that requires faith so it's stupid and wrong". (@grenangle)

I find it endlessly curious that the same people who don’t believe in a higher power have decided gender is some invisible ‘essence’. (@femmehonnete1)

A significant contradiction of male supremacy: women are incompetent yet conniving and manipulative. Women are shamed for having sex yet women owe men sex. (@DrProudman)

It always amazes me how the same people who are absolutely convinced of the power of women's words to hurt trans people are also the ones so skeptical of the danger of men in women's spaces. (@helensaxby11)

More here, and links to the rest.

Contradictions 13

Even when unattributed, all encountered in the wild.

Hey you. Be yourself. But also tone it down a little. Read the room. But also speak your mind. Be responsible with your future. But also take risks, life is short. Kindness is everything. But also you'll get nowhere if you're not fighting. Don't sell out. But also grind/hustle. (@PrinceVogel)

We include everybody except people who aren’t inclusive.

I've had fascinating conversations with media people who say they want viewpoint diversity, but "no social conservatives". (@asymmetricinfo)

It’s academics’ job to be critical about everything – but not gender. 

Childhood: punished for being different, punished for thinking you're different.

If women’s rights are anti-trans then trans rights are anti-women.

Men: Women ought to get married and have babies.
Also men: I'm not ready to settle down.

Feminists used to say that looks don’t matter but you should also wear ugly clothes and no makeup. They also claimed that men would be attracted to you anyway. (They weren't.)

Be spontaneous AND be prepared.

I was overwhelmed with information about how tough it was to be a parent at the same time as I was being told it was the most extraordinary, blissful, transformative rite of passage and that there was no other love like it. That I was, in essence, living half a life by not having children of my own while simultaneously being so incredibly lucky to pursue a responsibility-free ... girl about town, career woman existence. (Article in the Times on infertility)

Saw a post that said doctors being so bad at identifying Autism is hilarious when you consider how good children are at figuring out who's Autistic when they're deciding whom to bully. (Via FB)

Sometimes the world goes through enormous changes and people hardly notice or comment. The rest of the time they write articles (or tweets) claiming the world is going thru huge changes thanks to some trivial aspect. They make far more noise about the second case.

There is a third category – where the world goes through enormous changes and large numbers of people choose to be wilfully ignorant of it, because despite vast amounts of evidence to the contrary, they don't want it to be true. (@GhostOfOrwell84)

How did “medieval man” reconcile a deterministic worldview (Fortune with her wheel) with Christianity, which relied on personal responsibility? (He didn’t. The church thought the concept of “Fortune” was Satanic.)

A post on Facebook isn’t going to incite violence whatever it says. Meanwhile, words are violence when it comes to saying “Human beings can’t change sex”.

Terfs must be silenced because words are violence and there may be distant knock-on evil effects. But these guys can wave placards saying "The only good terf is a dead terf." 

Why do we sneer at the previous decade and its awful décor and hairstyles when we were the ones sporting the mullets and installing avocado bathroom suites?

“Does my bum look big in this?”, but bum-enhancing injections are a dangerous underground business.

Be as much like most people as you can. AND stand out.

Accept what you can’t change is a popular American mantra, also “You are responsible for everything that happens to you” and “the solution is in yourself”. How does this not clash with the American dream of hustle your way to the top and tread down the other frogs in the bucket? Go west, young man!

The English simultaneously do not exist and are responsible for all historical injustices.

More here, and links to the rest.

Outdated Slang 6

Don't fall behind! Learn the new jargon, but be sure to drop the old jargon.


@edwest Do people not say Gordon Bennett any more? He appears in the book I'm reading and it suddenly occurred to me I probably haven't heard the expression since 1992.

@robpalkwriter Just saw someone complain about "litter louts" which was pleasantly nostalgic, like "juvenile delinquents" "dolly birds" or "video nasties" (Others add social services, bovver boys, vandals and hooligans. Also teenage tearaways and earth mothers.)

…ville (Noirville, strictly squaresville) Replaced by X City after the many shopping cities etc.
“Quite” for yes.

"We can't have a National Health Service – everybody will be demanding free wigs, teeth and spectacles!" Cue hilarious false-teeth anecdotes. Strangely, people got over their objections.

[Statement statement], yes? (Or, even more annoyingly, [Statement statement], no?)

A chip off the old block
A fair crack of the whip.
A penny for your thoughts, or “a penny for them”.
A raft of measures

Abort, retry, ignore (Dialogue on early computers.)
Absolutely chocker! From chockablock.
According to my lights.
Acid test (Was it laughed out of court, like “explore every avenue”?)

Addressing people as “flower”
aficionado (and misspelling it)
All my eye and Betty Martin!

amenities (popular in the 60s) That’s not a pointless patch of grass nobody can walk on, it’s an amenity!

Americans think Brits say “Smashing!” all the time. We stopped years ago, but they carry on. (It was “awful modern slang” in the 50s.)

anally retentive, very anal (Of someone who is very tidy, or keeps their CDs in alphabetical order.) 

And in that order‼!
And not necessarily in that order.

Any joy? Are we winning? (These both mean “How’s the work going and when can we go home?”) 

At this moment in time…
Banzai!
basically
Be your age!
beats the band

berk, wally, prat, twonk, eejit, nana/narner, you silly narner (From banana? Prat peaked in 2010, oddly. So did berk. Wally peaked in the 80s, with another peak in 2010.)

big-boned (of a large girl)

bivvi bag for sleeping bag (From bivouac, French for temporary camp. But I saw “bivvi tent” the other day.)

bobbins for nonsense (Recent. Gone, fortunately.)
 
Bog Irish (Rose steadily from the 40s and only declined from 2008.)

bonking, stonking (80s)
bottom feeders
brass neck for gall, chutzpah

broken home (Like “juvenile delinquent”, it became a joke.)
buckshee for “free” (From Arabic baksheesh.)

Buggerlugs, or “your friend” for a man whose name you don’t know, can’t remember or can’t be bothered to repeat (Very disparaging.)

But you don’t want to compete with men, dear! You’ll lose your femininity! (Femininity never defined. They might have had a point. If you did too well, the men wouldn’t want to marry you.)

buttinski, kibitzer
by hook or by crook (Peasants were allowed to gather wood in the lord's forest "by hook or by crook" – they weren't permitted to saw bits off.)

Calling all (anthropologists).
Calling planet (name of person sitting next to you who hasn’t heard what you said).

Can you beat it?
Can you believe it?

chatterbox, swankpot etc. Became something-head, something-face. 
cheek by jowl
Cheekyface!

cheesy grin (as if saying “cheese” for a group photo)
chock full, chockablock, absolutely chockers

clock for look at (Clock that!), or clock up for chalk up (Transwomen are now getting “clocked” or not. They try to avoid being “clocky”.)

clubbable
coalface

Colour me unsurprised!
concur
constructive (opposite is “destructive”)
coupled with (Especially in fronted subordinate clauses, frequently dangling.) 80s.

crass
culprit

Denigrating marriage and motherhood as it would “turn you into a cabbage”. 70s. Guess what – they all got married and had children anyway. Girls would say they didn’t want to have children because “I don’t want to become a vegetable”.

designer (designer stubble, that’s really designer etc. Is “curated” the new “designer”?)

Diddums! (Very damning, like referring to children as “Little Johnny” or older women as “Aunt Edith” or “your neighbour Petulia”.)

die-away for somebody wet, limp and soft-spoken
discombobulated (70s)
dishy for attractive
do their stuff rather than do their thing

Do us all a favour and...
Don’t you just love it when… (that happens. Gas advert?)

Dot and go one, or dot and carry one for someone with a limp. It was a way of doing arithmetic – you put a dot under the column when you’d carried a digit?

drag: Don’t be such a drag, what a drag it is getting old. (60s)
dumb animals, “our dumb friends”
dumb cluck (insult)

effectively, respectively (popular in the 80s)
elbow grease
elf’n’safety
Eric Clapton is God.

facilitator (Non-authoritarian, non-hierarchical. Rose from the early 60s to a peak in 2002.)
Fantastic!
Fons et origo, parturient montes and other Latin phrases.
food chain (Useful – now we have no word for it.)
for some unknown reason (parody of Victorian or later melodrama?)

for your safety and comfort. (Just received a product with instructions “for your satisfaction and safety”.)

forward-thinking
free collective bargaining

fruition (come to fruition. Perhaps we were put off by people telling us “It doesn’t mean what you think it means”.

full of the joys of spring (Ironic, old quote?)
give it up as a bad job (40s.)

Grody to the max! (Grody peaked 1960 and again mid-80s, “grody to the max” peaked mid-80s.)
Grouts for coffee grounds at the bottom of your cup

Half a jiff, be with you in a jiff. (Peaked 30s. Jiffy peaked 20s and 40s.)
Hard lines! Hard cheese!
Having fun? In a sarcastic tone when you’re burning the toast etc. (60s)

He was a frightfully big pot. (Meaning rich and influential.)
He’s a lovely mover. (Usually ironic.)
hip to the scene
Home, James, and don’t spare the horses!

How are things? Oh, just bumping along the bottom. (90s)
I grant you.
I haven’t just fallen off the Christmas tree, I’m not so green as I’m cabbage-looking.
I like your style.

I should cocoa! For “I should say so.”
I speak as I find!
I’ll drink to that.
I’ll give you what for! (Id est, “I’ll give you something to cry about”.)

I’ve come over all unnecessary!
If not, why not?
If the cap fits…
If you’re lucky… (Ironically.)

Internet: First there was the text-only Internet, then it became far more widespread with pages and pictures and it became the Web. Inexplicably, it is now the Internet again.

Is there an (anthropologist) in the house?
It doesn’t arise, it doesn’t apply, it doesn’t signify.
It must have been meant. (People are still saying this, but they never say WHO meant it.)
It smelt to high heaven.

It was a great boon. (40s. From an advert about a pen being “a boon and a blessing to men”?)
It’s later than you think. (From a song called Enjoy Yourself.)

Jesus H Christ, Jesus Christ on a bicycle, Christ on a bike!

Junk jewellery (now “faux”)
kayo, kayo’d
Keep yer ’air on!
Knock three times and ask for Gertie.

Lead me to it!
Liaison (Perhaps went out because nobody could spell it.)
Like greased lightning

Look what the tide brought in. Or was it “Look what the cat dragged in”?
lumpen (from “lumpenproletariat”)

macho (And arguing about how to pronounce it. Mako? And arguing about what it means. Men had got away with the behavior for years because we didn’t have a word for it, so we borrowed one from Spanish and struggled with it. What a relief we settled on “sexist” eventually. Sharp rise from the mid-60s.)

made a dead set at (a man) (It always surprised me when my girlfriends did this. Showed an unsuspected side to their character. They were probably the ones who told me “You’ll find somebody when you’re NOT looking”.)

main squeeze
moosh for mate with a northern vowel
More power to your elbow!
motor car for car

mousy for a girl who is timid, dull, plain, badly dressed, shy. (Helen Gurley Brown says she can succeed through hard work and determination, also by being calculatingly nice to everybody PLUS going blonde, wearing red lipstick and shortening her skirts. And probably sleeping with influential people. She could be right.)

Mustn’t grumble! It’s a great life if you don’t weaken!
My good man… (de haut en bas, or else very patronising)

my SO for Significant Other (They probably say “partner” now.)

narrative thrust (now “arc”)

Ne’er mind eh. (With a downward inflection and no comma before the eh. From Kent? It was an 80s thing.)

neurotic, neurosis (What we accused each other of being, instead of trying to help.)

Nice work if you can get it.
No peace for the wicked! (Bible)
Not a word of a lie!
Not all there
Now he tells me! (Yiddish word order.)

Oh my giddy aunt!
Oh, what? You what? (70s, 80s)

Ooops, butterfingers!
Paging (unlikely famous person).
pansy for gay man 

pawky for anybody “Scots” – what on earth did it mean? Skeptical, salty, tough, suspicious, feisty? (Peaked 30s, 40s, sharp decline since.)

Pish tush!
plethora (80s. Started rising to its present peak in the 40s.)

practising homosexual (Like practising Catholic. Presumably it was OK to be a closet homosexual who never actually did anything, like the hero of the film Victim.)

proliferate
pristine (Pedants quibbled about its origins.)

Pronouncing madam as modom. Calling anybody madam.
Pull your socks up.
Put off the evil day. (Bible?)
Put on your best bib and tucker.

queer as a coot, camp as a row of tents
reading matter for books 
responding to bad news with an ironic “Great!”

Result!, ‘ooky gear (and similar awful Cockney imitations)
right, left and centre

rumpy pumpy (Came from nowhere mid-80s, peaked 93, sharp fall), bonking 80s (Bonk peaked 1860, bonking sharp rise from 1980 to 2000.)

ruthless
Same difference!
Say “cheese!” (when taking a group photo)
Say when!
Scusee! (For “excuse me”. From Italian “scusi”?)

Sez you!
Shades of X!
She looked like the back end of a bus.

Sick squid for six quid (and squidlets for pounds)
sits well with 

skimp (Some people used it for “I just skimmed the chapter”.)
slatternly
slaving over a hot stove
smoothiechops (Implies a man with a very close shave.)

snark
soft furnishings (chairs and sofas)
soppy date or sloppy date
Stand by your beds! (From National Service.)

streetwise
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Bible. But often you have to make future plans.)

surly (what people were a lot of the time)
surreptitious
sweetness and light (Goes back to Aesop.)
sylph, sylph-like

Ta muchly!
Tannoy: The announcements came over the Tannoy.
Tell that to the Marines! (Answer: “The Marines knows!”)
Terrible imitations of rustics eg the vly be on the turmut.
Thank you VERY much! (In deeply sarcastic tones. Sometimes attached to the end of a sentence.)

that of (Are writers nervous about where to put the apostrophe? Do they think you can’t end a sentence with a possessive?)

The best of British luck!
the bulk of for most of 
the dog’s bollocks (and arguing about its derivation)

The End of the World as We Know It (TEOTWAWKI)
the hostess with the mostest
the real McCoy (sometimes pronounced McKye)
They didn’t know X from a hole in the road.

They were no respecters of persons. (Paul's Epistles. Implies that they considered everyone equal before the law, or in the sight of God.)

This [thing I don’t like] is a running sore on the body politic. (19th century and earlier)

This I must see! (Yiddish word order.)
This is true for that’s true 

This won’t buy the baby a new bonnet.
thumping lie
titivate (The nuns told us off for “titivating in front of the mirror”.)

To that end, we...
tunny fish for tuna (in case you didn’t know it was fish).
TV reception (now signal)
two-faced

up the wall (for “mad”, or “round the bend”), off the wall for wacky

Upper-class types used to jokily dismiss people, events and subjects with “Well, there you are, my dear”, or “Life’s like that”. They used to put on a silly voice – Lafe’s lake thet. 

used oncers (pound notes)
village maiden, local swain.
wacky (Sharp rise from about 1970.)
Wakey, wakey, rise and shine! 

warpaint for makeup
We’re not getting any forrader.
We’ve all got your number. (Was it a Kenneth Williams catchphrase?)

Weird or what?
Well, I dare say! (Meaning “I don’t believe a word of it”.)
Well, there’s a thing!
wet drip: He's such a wet drip!
What was that supposed to be?
What’s that when it’s at home?

When did explorers become adventurers? 
When did people stop writing “well” after every “may”?
When did rucksacks become backpacks?

When did the royal family stop waving in that peculiar “stirring the air” manner? When did waving become a sideways hand waggle?

Wind your neck in!
wuss
Yerse. (In a dubious voice. Meant “I don’t think!”, like “Ho, yus!” 60s.)

Yes, I dare say. (Implied total disbelief. Also “I dessay”.)
You and me both, cully.
You can’t say I never do anything for you.
You got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning! 
You great steaming nit! (60s.)
You must be out of your tiny mind. (Late 60s.)
You’ve got a dirty mind! (Or “one-track mind”.)

More here, and links to the rest.