Deane Barker

Explanation: Plenary

Fri, 6 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: complete; in total agreement

From the Latin “plenus,” which means “full.”

Why I Looked It Up

From liberty-amendments:

In fact, other than the limited, specified powers granted to the federal government, the states retained for themselves plenary governing authority.

Mark Levin must like the word, because he used it multiple times in that book.

Explanation: Daguerreotype

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This was the predecessor to the modern photograph. It dated from the 1840s and 1950s, when it was super-ceded by better methods.

Daguerreotypes are the classic “old style” of photograph, which appear to be shot through a sepia or silver filter.

Why I Looked It Up

From uncle-toms-cabin:

It was a daguerreotype, clear and soft as an engraving, representing Eva and her father sitting hand in hand.

Explanation: Queer

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is a generic term for someone in the LGBT community. All it means is “not CIS/straight.” It’s a catch-all way of saying, “everything else.”

I got the definition from a friend at work who is queer and non-binary. They said:

Queer is a big ol blanket term that basically means “part of the LGBTQ+ community”. It’s used flexibly for folks for a number of different reasons.

Some folks use it because they don’t want to label their experience but still identify as LGBTQ, or some folks may be questioning what they are and so go with the blanket term.

For others, the way they identify is complicated and may not be very well known or recognized even in certain LGBTQ circles, so queer is easier and accessible. It can be used as nebulous sexuality or nebulous gender.

Some, like myself, use it to mean that they are a participant in LGBTQ+ culture – or queer culture. Because some folks are LGBT but aren’t active in the community or culture, this distinction gives a sense of how closely folks identify.

It’s also a lot faster to say than most things other than gay.

Why I Looked It Up

Annie and I were watching The Big Brunch and two contestants identified as “queer.” She asked me what it meant. I said, “…I think…gay?”

Explanation: Coolie

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is a (presumably) mildly racist term mean to describe a low-paid member of the working class of a race other than the speaker.

In most cases, the speaker is White, and the worker is either Black or Hispanic.

Wikipedia specifies Asians:

is a term for a low-wage laborer, typically of South Asian or East Asian descent

However, I noticed it in several contexts where the target wouldn’t have been Asian.

Why I Looked It Up

I don’t remember, but I encountered the word multiple times over the course of a year. I believe all references were in “classic” novels or writings (I believe on of them was cannery-row), that would have been penned more than 70-80 years ago. Clearly, the term has fallen out of favor since then.

Explanation: Vassal State

Mon, 26 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is exact opposite of a suzerainty.

A vassal state is the subservient/smaller state in a mutually obligatory political relationship. When a smaller, weaker nation cozies up to a larger, more powerful nation, it’s termed a vassal state, much like vassals were subjects of a kingdom’s power and protection in medieval times.

“Vassal” is literally Old French for “subject, subordinate, servant.”

Why I Looked It Up

In a news article about the invasion of Ukraine –

Ukraine is about the size of Texas, bordered by Russia to the east and a Pro-Putin, Russian vassal state of Belarus to the north.

Explanation: Metabolic Syndrome

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

There are five conditions which are very common among people who are generally unhealthy. They are:

High blood sugar
Low levels of HDL (“good” cholesterol)
High levels of triglycerides
Large amount of abdominal fat
High blood pressure

If you have three of these conditions, that is considered to be “metabolic syndrome.”

It seems to be just shorthand for saying, “You are in poor physical condition and this is a threat to your life.”

I feel like this might just be something created for analytics. I doubt any doctor would tell one of their patients that they have metabolic syndrome, but by classifying them as such gives them some statistics – “3 out of 5 adults have metabolic syndrome,” or something.

Why I Looked It Up

I had heard the term for years, and wasn’t sure if there was a specific definition for it. Still seems vague.

Explanation: Bacchanal

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: a wild and indulgent party

This comes from Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and revelry.

In some context, it has a sexual subtext, used to describe and orgy or indulgent sexual performance.

Humorously, one of the top search results for the word is the Bacchanal Buffet at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.

Why I Looked It Up

In “The Tomb,” a short story by H.P. Lovecraft:

One morning at breakfast I came close to disaster by declaiming in palpably liquorish accents an effusion of eighteenth-century Bacchanalian mirth…

In the story, the main character is slowly being taken over by a spirit during the overnight hours, and apparently speaks with the inflections of that spirit at breakfast the next morning, running the risk of being discovered.

Explanation: NEET

Sun, 25 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

An acronym for “Not in Employment, Education, or Training.” Essentially, someone who is eligible to be employed, but is not.

Why I Looked It Up

In a Hacker News post from someone asking what to do with their life, they said this:

I’m a 43-years-old single guy, NEET for the past decade.

So, this person has been unemployed since they were 33.

Explanation: Facile

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: easy, shallow, or simplistic

It’s often used to mean “overly simplistic.” Someone who has a “facile solution” is not thinking about the problem hard enough.

Why I Looked It Up

I’ve been seeing this word forever. I think that I thought it mean flexible?

I can’t remember exactly where I found it, but I kept the quote, so it much have been an apologetic of some kind:

Faith is too easy, too facile.

Explanation: Forecastle

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the front of a ship’s deck, essentially. If you’re standing on the deck of a ship – meaning, the topmost floor surface not part of a superstructure – then walk towards the front of a ship, you’re on the forecastle. On a sailing ship, it’s considered the area of the desk forward of the forward-most mast.

It’s pronounced “folk-suhl,” and weirdly it’s often abbreviated “fo’c’sle”

Why I Looked It Up

In ninety-percent-of-everything it’s often mentioned by the author (in abbreviated form. which is why I looked it up), in reference to the ship she was traveling on:

I often head for the fo’c’sle. It has become my terrace and my garden. Unescorted, I am free to lean over the bulbous bow and watch it move water.

Explanation: Hard Science Fiction

Fri, 23 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is genre of science fiction that’s concerned with scientific accuracy, with explaining how something might actually work in the real world.

For example, The Martian was hard science fiction. It presented an example of what an astronaut might actually do if stranded on Mars. A lot of Daniel Saurez’s books – like deltav – are hard science fiction as well

The exact opposite phrase – “soft science fiction” – is not as common. Those types of stories are often called “space operas,” because they deal with human emotion and conflict.

Why I Looked It Up

In November 2022, the author Greg Bear died. He was lauded as a seminal author of “hard science fiction.”

Explanation: Cartesian

Wed, 21 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In general, this refers to something that can be linked back to Rene Descartes, the French scientist, famous for uttering the phrase, “I think, therefore I am.”

There are several scientific, mathematical, and philosophical branches that are named for Descartes:

Cartesian geometry
Cartesian philosophy
Cartesian doubt
Cartesian dualism
Cartesian coordinates
Cartesian tree

In fact, there is an entire philosophic and scientific systems called Cartesianism.

Why I Looked It Up

I was reading something that mentioned “Cartesian” and “Descartes” in the same sentence, and I suddenly connected the two. I had mainly known the phrase “Cartesian coordinates.”

Explanation: Is 2 a prime number?

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, it is. It’s the only even number that is prime.

A prime number is any number only divisible by two other numbers. Since every number is automatically divisible by 1 and by itself, then prime numbers are numbers that are not divisible by anything else.

No other even number can be prime, since they’re all divisible by themselves, 1, and 2.

Why I Looked It Up

The reps in a workout at the gym were keyed to whether a dice roll was prime. It had the note:

Prime numbers are 2, 3, 5, 7, etc.

I immediately thought, “Two isn’t prime…” and then I was like.. “…is it?”

Explanation: Bossa Nova

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is a style of music that originated in Brazil in the 1950s. The phrase literally means “new talent” or “new way” in Brazilian Portuguese.

It’s a variation of samba, which is a musical style which originated in Brazil.

Musical styles are hard to explain, but – to me – this feels like a laid back style of jazz, like something that comes from the tropics. It feels like something you’d hear in the background of a hotel lobby or restaurant in the Caribbean. There’s less brass than typical jazz, and more guitars. The tempo is slower.

It’s relaxing – great background music.

Why I Looked It Up

On an episode of Abbot Elementary, one of the characters expresses a love for “bossa nova jazz.”

I did some looking specifically for the jazz connection, but it appears to be informal – I don’t know that “bossa nova jazz” is an actual style. It might have been termed that way because a lot of bossa nova is instrumental and improvisational with the same instruments, so it feels like jazz. In fact, most people, when hearing bossa nova would automatically think, “That’s soft jazz.”

Explanation: Picayune

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is a historic Spanish coin, but most people probably know it as the name of a New Orlean’s newspaper: The Times-Picayune. It paper was so-named because it originally cost one Picayune.

(Though mostly associated with the French, New Orleans was owned by the Spanish in the late 1700s. It was purchased by the United States in 1803 during the Louisiana Purchase, and became a state in 1816. I presume Spanish currency was still accepted for some time after that.)

Why I Looked It Up

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of the characters says the following about why he doesn’t read the Bible:

“Oh, I didn’t need it,” said St. Clare. “I can learn what does me as much good as that from The Picayune, any time, and smoke a cigar besides; which I can’t do, you know, in a church.”

The character said this in New Orleans in 1851. The Picayune merged with the Times-Democrat in 1914 to become the Times-Picayune.

Explanation: Trianon

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: a smaller building on the grounds of a larger estate

The name comes from some structures on the royal grounds in France.

A treaty signed in the Grand Trianon building to end Hungarian involvement in World War I was known as The Treaty of Trianon.

I couldn’t find an raw translation for the word. Google Translate doesn’t believe it’s French, and any etymologies I found just referred to the buildings in France. It might refer to a French hamlet which King Louis purchased to build the original buildings, so they just inherited the name.

Why I Looked It Up

The The Covenant, the homestead on one of the settler farms was called “Trianon.”

Then, in Where’d Your Go, Bernadette, an airstream trailer parked on the grounds of a larger home was jokingly referred to as “Petit Trianon.”

Explanation: Halycon Days

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: a past time period considered to be peaceful, calm, and positive

This idiom is often used when referring to childhood or youth

Halycon is an ancient name for the Kingfisher bird. In ancient times, it was believed the gods had given the bird the power to calm the seas during the time when she laid her eggs.

Shakespeare used the phrase as the contemporary idiom in Henry VI:

Assign’d am I to be the English scourge.
This night the siege assuredly I’ll raise:
Expect Saint Martin’s summer, halcyon days,
Since I have entered into these wars.

Why I Looked It Up

In Where’d You Go, Bernadette, a character writes to another:

Oh, Soo-Lin, just writing this transports me to the halycon days when we were happily collected outrages about Bernadette!

Explanation: Heat Pump

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is basically a device that moves heat around. It’s installed outside your home, like an air conditioner. It takes heat from the air or the ground, and pumps it inside your home.

There are different ways they acquire heat.

Air: heat is extracted from the air (I feel like this would only work when it was warmer outside than inside?)
Ground: heat is extracted from the water heated underground; also called “geothermal”
Exhaust: heat is extracted from air exiting the building
Solar: heat is generated by solar panels
Water: heat is extracted from water taken from a source; also known as an “open-loop ground heat pump”

The key is that it doesn’t actually heat or cool the air. It just moves it around – it takes hotter or colder air from one location, and “pumps” it to another.

That’s an interesting way of looking at it – the desired hot or cold air always exist somewhere, just not in the place you need it.

Why I Looked It Up

I had heard the term often. I was just curious how they worked.

They apparently don’t work well in extreme cold temperatures, so they’re not a great option in Sioux Falls.

Explanation: Alacrity

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: prompt, responsive, cheerful and ready to help

Why I Looked It Up

In Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

This personage had been exerting himself, with great alacrity, in driving all the flock of domestics to the other end of the veranda.

A theme of the book, in fact, is how some slaves in the South exhibited this type of subservience to their oppressors. In fact, the title character – Uncle Tom, himself – was received poorly by some people who claim that his willingness to be subservient, instead of defiant and resistant, was a poor reflection on the state of slavery.

Explanation: Nihilism vs. Fatalism

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Nihilism is the idea that there is no grand control or purpose to anything.

Fatalism is the idea that you should just surrender yourself to what’s inevitably going to happen to you. (Key point: the word doesn’t come from “fatal,” as it’s easy to assume. It comes from “fate.”)

So, in some ways, the words are opposites.

Nihilism says no one is in control.
Fatalism says that your fate is pre-determined by sources outside your control, and there’s no way around it so don’t fight it.

I learned the above from a resource helpfully entitled: The Difference between Nihilism and Fatalism.

Why I Looked It Up

I get really exhausted on long trips. I was trying to describe the feeling, and I couldn’t figure out which word to use.

Turns out, I get fatalistic on long trips. For example, I was returning to Sioux Falls from Auckland, New Zealand, which is just a brutal slog through airports and plane flights. I tend to just go limp, and surrender myself to whatever is going to happen, knowing that there’s nothing I can do about any of it, so why try?

That’s the textbook definition of fatalism.

Explanation: Maxwell's Demon

Sun, 27 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This was a theory that devised a way the Second Law of Thermodynamics might be circumvented. That law sayd that heat energy cannot be created, it can only be transferred.

In 1847, James Clerk Maxwell came up with this idea –

Say you had a box with two side, separated by a gate. A demon would watch over the gate, and when a fast-moving atom would be moving towards it (in a single direction, say left-to-right), he would open the gate to let it through to the right side. When a slower-moving atom was moving from right-to-left, he would let that through to the left side.

Over time, this means that one side of the box (the right side, based on our directions above) would, over time, contain more fast-moving atoms, and the left side would contain more slow-moving atoms. Thus, the right side would be “hotter.”

Essentially, the demon increased order in the universe (reduced entropy) and generated heat energy without actually doing any work. He organized his way to energy.

The significance is that this bridges the gap between physics and information science. In effect, the demon created energy (physics) by increasing organization (information science). One of the criticisms of the theory, in fact, is that determining the speed of the atoms would require the demon to expend energy, which again links the fields of physics and information science.

(And if there’s one thing the scientific community loves, it’s when branches of science come together. This is called “convergence.” I read an entire book about it: Convergence: The Idea at the Heart of Science)

Interestingly, the computing term “daemon” is from Maxwell’s Demon. Maxwell’s version sorted atoms in the background. Computer daemon’s also do information processing in the background, hence the name.

Even more interestingly, Maxwell never used the word “demon.” He first articulated the theory in a 1867 letter to a colleague. There, he referred to the sorter as “a finite being.” The transition to “demon” was added by others after the fact, though sources differ on who changed the word and exactly why they did it.

Why I Looked It Up

I’ve known of this for years, and had a vague understanding of the basic mechanics of it, but never grasped the significance.

Then it was referenced in The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life’s Unending Algorithm in a way that helped me understand. They used a parallel analogy of an animal jumping randomly between steps on a staircase. If you put a wall behind it whenever it jumped up, then it could continue to jump up but not down, and would be forced to climb the staircase.

I found this interesting because I’ve always been curious about the spontaneous order of debris on a house floor. When I’m cleaning, I notice that debris – lint, dust, small objects – tend to congregate in corners or off to the side of walkways. I vaguely wondered where this “order” came from.

It came from something like Maxwell’s Demon. If an object is dropped on the floor, it might be dropped directly in a walkway, where it will be kicked or moved by a human during the normal course of daily activity. It it comes to a rest in another walkway, it will get kicked again and again. Until one time, it gets kicked against a wall, so it’s out of the path of human activity. Nothing will disturb it anymore, so there it remains.

You see the same thing on highways. Debris collects in the medians, because it keeps getting knocked around until some point when it doesn’t. And that point happens to be in the median.

This is spontaneous organization at work. The universe is decreasing entropy in a way – it’s creating order accidentally.

Now, I’m neither a physicist or an information scientist, so my theory there might just be nonsensical rambling from a scientific point-of-view. But I always thought it was interesting, and when the idea of Maxwell’s Demon suddenly clicked, I made the connection.

Explanation: British Royal Eras

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Several time periods in British history are named for the first names of reigning monarchs of those times:

Elizabethan: the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 to 1603
Georgian: the reign of King George I from 1714 to 1837
Victorian: the reign of Queen Victoria from 1837 to 1901
Edwardian: the reign of King Edward VII from 1901 to 1910

Other eras are named for family names:

Tudor: 1485 to 1558
Stuart: 1603 to 1714
Windsor: 1917 to present

The “family eras” seem to be less well-known.

One of the reasons this naming style took place is that the eras corresponding to slow-moving changes in society. For example, the Victorian era is associated with the increasing modernization of the impending Industrial Revolution. The Georgian era is defined by the advancement of science during The Age of Enlightenment.

The current Windsor era has been dominated by the reign of Queen Elizabeth II from 1952 to 2022. If you consider the changes that happened solely during her lifetime, how would you define that era? The rate of societal change has increased so much that it’s hard to correlate it to a single familial reign. Also, it’s unlikely the House of Windsor will be toppled by war or invasion, so it could theoretically remain in power for hundreds of years to come.

Therefore, the current British reign will likely be too big to neatly correspond to societal changes. As such, it may not need a name.

Why I Looked It Up

I was reading a couple classics, and the name of the various eras came up in the introductions. It suddenly occurred to me that the names of eras (“Victorian”) corresponded to first names (“Victoria”) and these were likely the royal rules of those ages.

Explanation: Dormouse

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is just a specific species of mouse. The name comes from the fact that it hibernates (is “dormant”) for half the year.

Why I Looked It Up

I was reading Alice in Wonderland and The Dormouse is one of the characters.

There was a table set out under a tree in front of the house, and the March Hare and the Hatter were having tea at it: a Dormouse was sitting between them, fast asleep, and the other two were using it as a cushion, resting their elbows on it, and talking over its head. “Very uncomfortable for the Dormouse,” thought Alice; “only, as it’s asleep, I suppose it doesn’t mind.”

(This is not to be confused with The Mouse, which is another character entirely.)

I read a book on computing history a couple of years ago called What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry. I have no idea where that title comes from.

Turns out, it’s the title of another book (which I have not read and do not own): What the Dormouse Said: Lessons for Grownups from Children’s Books.

I went back and searched the text of Alice. The phrase “what the dormouse said” doesn’t appear in the book.

Explanation: Turing Complete

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is description or a certification of a programming language. It’s named for Alan Turing, the computer scientist that theorized about it in the 1930s and 40s.

There are two definitions –

A formal definition, which is complicated and involves a hypothetical “Turing Machine” that solves computational problems. This was theorized to be the “universal” computational engine that can solve any problem that can be computed. If your language can do everything a Turing Machine can do, it’s considered “Turing Complete.”

An informal definition, which just means your language is a generally competent programming language.

You would never bother to mention that Java or C# is Turing Complete, because this is just a given – any language designed for general purpose usage is going to have if/then statements, variables, looping, etc. which are required to solve computational problems. Of course they’re Turing Complete – they were designed to be this way.

That would be like saying, “You can drive this car on roads!” Well, of course you can – this is what cars are made for.

There are only two situations when you would make a point of whether something is Turing Complete –

When something interesting has become accidentally Turing Complete. Meaning, it’s a specialized computing environment that has matured to the point where it can be used a general-purpose and has achieved Turing completeness. (Back to the above metaphor: it would be very interesting and worth mentioning that, “I modified this Roomba so you can drive it on roads!”)
To warn people that a particular language or environment is not for general purpose programming, lest they misunderstand. For example, it’s common to explain that HTML and CSS are not Turing Complete, in case someone thinks they can use them for more than just layout and styling. (The companion language of JavaScript, however, is very much Turing Complete. And with all the advancements in CSS, it might be inching towards Turing Completeness at some point – there is considerable debate and discussion on this topic.)

At the bottom of its article on Turing Completeness, Wikipedia lists some environments that have achieved unintentional Turing completeness over time and development, like Excel, PowerPoint, and even Minecraft. This means that you can technically use the logical processing abilities in Minecraft to solve any computational problem, as wildly inefficient as this might be (example: someone “built” an 8-built CPU inside Minecraft).

Turing Tarpit is a phrase meaning a language which is technically Turing Complete but is difficult and useless for most tasks.

Why I Looked It Up

I had a vague idea of what it meant, but I wanted specifics. Unfortunately, the only specifics to be had are an understanding of the Turing Machine theory, which didn’t shed any new light on what I already understand – Turing Complete means something can be used for general purpose computational resolution.

Explanation: Noosphere

Thu, 24 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is the collective state of human reason and knowledge. Everything we know, understand, and can reason about as a species is the noosphere. It is constantly expanding as we learn more and more.

The name comes from the Greek “noos” which means “mind” or “thought.”

The noosphere is an informal term – it’s a theory proposed by several people throughout the 20th century. While the concept of collection human consciousness certainly exists, noosphere is just one name for it.

Why I Looked It Up

The term came up in the book The Ascent of Information: Books, Bits, Genes, Machines, and Life’s Unending Algorithm, but I had heard it before then.

It’s also related to “nootropics” which are drugs or supplements that claim to make you smarter. Discussion of those has been popular on the internet for some time (example: there’s an entire subreddit for them).

Explanation: Farrago

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: an assortment of things

In various definitions, I saw the words: “hodgepodge,” “mish-mash,” “haphazard,” “non-sensical,” etc.

It comes from a Latin word for a mixed grain that was fed to cattle. Any grain that didn’t measure up to human standards, became a “farrago” for cattle.

Why I Looked It Up

From Red Pill Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us:

The problem, of course, is that their version of reality isn’t based in facts, sound evidence, or even logical reasoning, but rather is a complex farrago of conjecture, false facts and evidence, wild-eyed paranoia, and sociopathic authoritarianism.

Explanation: Unctuous

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Definition: excessively ingratiating

This is the definition of someone who “tries too hard”; who is obsessed with wiggling their way into someone’s inner circle.

Why I Looked It Up

When I was researching Bebe Rebozo, I found this description of him:

Small, dark, handsome and unctuous,

Explanation: Svengali

Tue, 1 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

This is someone who dominates another person and manipulates them to achieve gain from their talents.

An example would be a talent manager who latches onto a young star and forcefully guides their career to make themselves rich, ignoring what they actually want to do with their lives.

It comes from the name of a character in a 1894 novel that does exactly this for a young singer.

Why I Looked It Up

I knew the gist of the word, but wanted to know where it came from.

Then in Conspiracy of Fools, Louis Borget is described as:

Enron’s earnings svengali

This is an interesting usage. It implies that Borget dominated and forcefully used Enron to earn money for himself – which is actually pretty accurate to history.

Explanation: Slug

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

In web publishing, a “slug” is often used to refer to the text of an individual segment of a URL.

/a-slug/another-slug/yet-another-slug/

Some systems only use the word to refer to the final segment (“yet-another-slug” in the above example) while others used them to refer to all segments. This is different than a URL – a URL is the combination of slugs.

In publishing, a “slug” is a short name given to a story. It’s a nickname. From a 2014 New York Times article:

Slugs make life easier around the newsroom. Instead of saying, “Would you please shorten that article about President Obama’s immigration announcement by 300 words?” we say things like, “Take 300 out of IMMIG. DIPLO can go a little long. REPUBS is strong.”

This got picked up by content management systems, where they started referring to “slug” as the final segment of a URL that was a key or identifier for the content that was supposed to be delivered by that URL.

From the same NY Times story, here’s the etymology of the word in publishing:

The term slug derives from the days of hot-metal printing, when printers set type by hand in a small form called a stick. Later huge Linotype machines turned molten lead into casts of letters, lines, sentences and paragraphs. A line of lead in both eras was known as a slug.

Why I Looked It Up

I had always wondered. It seems to be accepted in web published, but it’s a odd choice of word, so I figured there had to be a story behind it.

Explanation: Bebe Rebozo

Sun, 16 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Bebe Rebozo was a close friend, confidante, and adviser of Richard Nixon. “Bebe” was a nickname – it’s Spanish for “baby” as he was the youngest of 12 in a Cuban family.

Rebozo was often suspected of criminal activity, but nothing was ever proven, other than a minor tax penalty. Rebozo was also known to broker his access to Nixon. He was briefly investigated for funneling $100,000 to Nixon from Howard Hughes, which was either a bribe or a campaign contribution, depending on who’s telling the story.

Rebozo was rumored to be gay (despite three marriages; two to the same woman, who claims the first one was never consummated). There are opinions that he held romantic feelings for Nixon.

Rebozo died in 1998 at the age of 85.

Why I Looked It Up

On an episode of Veep, President Selina Meyer recollected when her father took her to a Nixon White House dinner as a child:

My father did a lot of [air quotes] “business” with Bebe Rebozo.