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.