Updates

This is a list of content in this section that has been updated, along with the most recent updated annotation.

• Phrenology

  From The Org: The Underlying Logic of the Office, which I am re-reading:

  At age eleven, he was taken to see a doctor of phrenology (a pseudoscience already on the wane by 1920), who assessed Coase’s intellectual prospects based on the shape of his skull.

• Grand Guignol

  In Saturday Night, the author tells of a proposed sketch called “Grand Guignol White House” in which the president kills and eats Jane Fonda. It was not aired.

• High Street

  From Merchants of Culture:

  Books were sold like other commodities in shopping centres and high streets…

• Atavism

  From an article about social media:

  I don’t know what other word describes the feeling I get when, every day I log on to Twitter (now known as X) or Instagram or Substack or whatever and witness an atavism that is ugly, cynical, self-serving, and varying degrees of brutal.

• Dragoon

  From The Coming Wave:

  In 1807, six thousand weavers demonstrated over pay cuts, a protest broken up by saber-wielding dragoons who killed a protester.

  Bizarrely, that quote was also discussing the Luddite Revolution.

• Seconded

  From Internal Communication Strategy:

  For example, if you are trying to build a team, can you have someone in a proposed role as a secondment or temporary opportunity?

• Deep Cut

  On a subreddit devoted to dumb things people did when they were kids, the top post is:

  In 2004 I won a contest to DJ at my very small hometown’s easy-listening radio station. I proceeded to play an hour of Evanescence deep cuts and ruined everyone’s morning commute.

• Cavalier

  A friend who played D&D quite a bit mentioned this:

  Cavalier was a class from Unearthed Arcana in first edition. Same with the Acrobat. You are right, they were not part of the original game.

• Paloma

  I saw it again on a menu – two different drinks. The only thing they seemed to have in common are grapefruit juice and lime.

• BIPOC

  I want to make the connection that BIPOC is represented by black and brown stripes on several variations of the Pride Flag.

• Dotard

  I saw a Reddit thread entitled:

  Hoisted by their own dotard

  This is a play on “hoisted by their own petard.”

• Bon Viveur

  I didn’t note the book, but I have this quote in my notes:

  Tesla was a dapper bon vivant, six and a half feet tall. He spent every cent on the good life. He cultivated rich and famous friends…

• British Royal Eras

  In The Family, when describing Prescott Bush, someone was quoted:

  That’s the kind of man he was. Edwardian, in the best sense of the word.

  I did a little searching, but I couldn’t find any common reference on what it means to describe a person as “Edwardian.” Most everything referred to the Edwardian era (the first decade of the 20th Century), but didn’t note any personal characteristics that would correspond to that era.

• Facile

  From The Family:

  A lifetime of lying to achieve his goals made the President facile in this crisis…

  This was (obviously) about George H.W. or George W. Bush, though I can’t remember which one. Likely, the latter.

  It’s an example of the “simplistic” definition of facile, rather than simple. To be facile means to be out of your depth.

• Pogrom

  A contemporary news article used the term: Last Night’s Pogrom in Amsterdam

  As the Amsterdam Jewish community joined with local officials to commemorate the 86th anniversary of Kristallnacht at the city’s Portuguese-Jewish synagogue – established by Jews who escaped the Inquisition – a pogrom was taking place outside. […] Will a pogrom in 2024 be sufficiently horrific to wake Europe up?

  From the article, these seemed to be spontaneous acts of violence, not an organized persecution.

• Autoland

  In an article about an upcoming automatic takeoff system, I found this:

  In late 1965, at what’s now London Heathrow airport, a commercial flight coming from Paris made history by being the first to land automatically.

  The plane – A Trident 1C operated by BEA, which would later become British Airways – was equipped with a newly developed extension of the autopilot (a system to help guide the plane’s path without manual control) known as “autoland.”

  Today, automatic landing systems are installed on most commercial aircraft and improve the safety of landings in difficult weather or poor visibility.

• 4WD vs AWD

  I saw this in a Facebook comment.

  The difference between 4wd and AWD is not whether you can turn it on or off. The r32 gtr, escort rs, and a few other legendary cars have 4wd that is always on, they are not AWD. The difference is that 4wd does not have a center differential, as in no bias between front and back, front tires and back tires get the same amount of power. AWD has a differential between front and back.

• Brittany

  I asked a friend about the political status of Brittany.

  it’s just like a region – it’s part of France since 1532… but there’s a strong identity including a regional language that was spoken (and not French) until WW1

  The language called Breton is actually a Celtic language, the only one spoken on the European mainland.

• Anthropocene

  I’ve become aware that we are technically in the Holocene epoch of geologic time. The argument is whether or not we should end the Holocene and begin the Anthropocene.

• Interstellar

  I was thinking about the other day, and here are some other “inters,” based on other space scales:

  • Interplanetary, meaning from planet-to-planet. We’ve done this already, sending the Mars rover to that planet. It’s about eight months of travel time. We could actually get to Mercury or Venus much faster (about a month), but they’re far less habitable.

  • Interstellar, meaning from star system to star system. The nearest star system to us is Alpha Centarui, which is 4.3 light years way. This is 25 trillion land miles. This makes it about 180,000x further away than Mars, which means the nearest place we could travel “interstellar-aly,” would take somewhere over 120,000 years to get to.

  • Intergalactic, meaning from galaxy to galaxy. The nearest galaxy to The Milky Way (ours) is Andromeda, which is 2.5 million light years away. The time to travel there using current technology would be millions and millions of years.

  • "Inter-universal”… but there’s no such thing; the universe is the largest construct, and we know of nothing (physical) beyond its boundaries.

  This is why all science fiction shows have “hyperspace” or “warp drive” or “worm holes” (or suspended animation on “generation ships”).

  Beyond interplanetary travel, nothing else is realistic. Even to get the edge of our solar system takes about 35 years (Voyager 1 made it in 2012, having been launched in 1977), and then you’re in “deep space” (technically the Interstellar Medium) with nothing else for another 120,000-ish years (assuming you travel in the right direction and nothing kills you).

• Cryptid

  I found this graphic on Reddit

• Jot And Tittle

  In the NY Times game Connections, there was a group consisting of words for a “dot” (they literally just had a period as the group name). The answers where:

  • Dot
  • Period
  • Point
  • Tittle

  I checked some definitions, and in some cases, it was specifically defined as the dot of a lower-case “i”.

• Mainline vs. Evangelical Protestantism

  I had a text conversation with some friends about my church – Central Church in Sioux Falls, SD, which is a member of the Converge denomination – and where we sit on the spectrum.

  Evangelical. 100%. There are only a couple of Baptist denominations considered mainline.

  Then was was some discussion of how the term “evangelical” is currently perceived in society.

  […] the term evangelical has been hijacked and is now more associated with politics and culture war stuff than with Jesus.

  Some evangelicals have abandoned the term altogether because of the baggage and conflict it creates. It’s a lot simpler to say, “I’m a Christian. I follow Jesus.”

• Masala

  The theme for a NY Times game Connections was “MASALACHAI,” and the answers where:

  • Clove
  • Nutmeg
  • Anise
  • Cinnamon
  • Pepper
  • Nutmeg
  • Cardamon

  Masala Chai is a particular style of tea, but there doesn’t seem to be a canonical recipe.

  (Remember that “masala” really just means “mixture of spices.” It doesn’t specify which spices.)

• Degree of Letters

  I’ve learned about the “Republic of Letters,” which was a long-distance “community” of intellectuals during The Enlightenment. It consisted mainly of intellectuals sending actual letters to one another, in a volume where it constituted a metaphorical “republic” of its own.

• The Greedy Jewish Moneylender Stereotype

  Here’s an extended quote from The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America:

  In the hands of conspiracy theorists, Schiff’s wartime activities – helping to finance the conflict and bankrolling revolutionary propaganda and proselytizing – forms the raw molding clay for a grotesque mythology of the supposedly all-powerful banker. In this version, filled with shards of truth cherry-picked to make believe a portrait filled in with falsehoods and conjecture, Schiff, sometimes identified as an Illuminati member or perhaps a thirty-third degree mason, was the ruthless godfather of the Russian Revolution; he was the secret financial angel of Leon Trotsky and Vladimir Lenin who not only orchestrated the Communist takeover of Russia and personally gave the order for the execution of the Russian royal family, held hostage as the second Russiian Revolution unfolded during World War I. Echoed from decade to decade, the conspiracy’s details vary, but the dangerous lie at its center remained unchanged: a Jewish banker was the secret choreographer of world-altering events.

• Edge Rusher

  I was talking with a friend who knows a lot about football.

  [Edge rushers and defensive ends] are really the same thing. Now, I do think that, over time, edge rusher has kind of come to take on a different kind of meaning. They really just see this guy rushing the quarterback. Whereas a pure defensive end is rushing the quarterback and looking to stop the run. So, think of an edge rusher as someone they bring in on third to get after the quarterback. But honestly, they’re really the same thing.

  I asked a few questions:

  Me: Do some guys just get called in to be an edge rusher for certain plays?

  Him: Yes, they like to rotate them to keep them fresh.

  Me: Do college kids get drafted as “edge rushers”? Like, do they market themselves to teams as that specialty?

  Him: Yes, it is one of the higher paid spots because is so important to get pressure on QB

  Me: So, “edge rusher” is not an actual position, is it? It’s just a … role, for a certain play?

  Him: [thumbs up emoji]

• Palimpsest

  From Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, about a whiteboard that had been well-used:

  After each task was completed, it was erased. About a week before winter break […] the board was empty aside from a hazy pastel palimpsest to remind them of the work they had done.

• Pyrenees

  In February 2024 I was in Barcelona for a conference. I stayed an extra day, rented a car, and drove into the Pyrenees to visit Andorra. I spent a day up there. It was pretty.

• Factotum

  From The Money Kings:

  The Goldmans engaged Glenway Wescott, a young writer who would later win acclaim for his novels and essays, as Henry’s companion and factotum.

• Liminal

  An article about American suburbs provides this explanation:

  Images […] dubbed “liminal spaces,” are pretty popular on the internet. These scenes depict a transitory space: A hallway might be one example, but so is an empty room with an open door on the opposite side – or even a parking lot or empty street. You know you are not meant to linger there; your destination lies somewhere ahead. But these images of familiar spaces are also always denuded of people, and often of other life, or ornamentation in general. They invoke a sense of uncanniness, uncertainty, and isolation.

  […] American suburbs are full of ugly, empty, liminal spaces: spaces you are not meant to linger in or enjoy. They’re the creepy hallways of the built environment, and you can’t feel comfortable traversing them unless you’re zooming past them in a car. Why should we fill our cities and towns with places like this? Would you want to live in a house full of empty hallways? I wouldn’t.

• Humanities

  In The Medici, the word “humanism” is used a lot. In looking into this, I found that it was an alternate term for “the humanities.” To get a “humanist education” is to be educated in the humanities.

• Jayne Hat

  I found this meme:

• Noblesse Oblige

  In The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty, the author – who is quite petty and salacious – quotes someone about the two Bush daughters, Jenna and Barbara:

  “These girls have all the noblesse with none of the oblige.”

• Storm Troopers

  A later episode of Archer used the phrase “Nazi Stormtroopers” many times. I finally posted a question on the History StackExchange about whether or not this was a valid usage of the phrase:

  My understanding is that the “storm troopers” were specialized infantry in World War 1 (not Nazis), and a paramilitary group in the years leading up to World War 2 (yes, very much Nazis).

  In Archer, Season 9, Episode 7, (set in 1938) the term “Nazi stormtrooper” is used over and over to refer to what appeared to be soldiers of the German army (see image below).

  Is this a correct usage for the term?

  Annoyingly, the question was downvoted and eventually closed for being “too basic.” But I did get a couple of answers:

  Infantry were Sturmtruppen (storm troopers), the party thugs were the Sturnabteilung (storm detachment).

  Sturm literally means storm, and in a military context it means assault. This can refer both to troops in a Sturmbatallion or Sturmkompanie and to regular troops employing the tactics of these specialized battalions.

  There are a bunch of other comments that debated the validity of the question itself. They get a little condescending, honestly.

• Dollar Billionaire

  The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade mentioned “peso millionaire/billionaire” in a couple of places.

• Midwest

  Found this on Twitter. No attribution.

• Perdition

  The Medici describes a Papal bull issued in the late 1400s that referred to someone as “a suckling of perdition.”

• Éminence Grise

  From The Battle of Versailles:

  De la Renta settled comfortably into the role of the sometimes grumpy, always charismatic éminence gris.

  (Note that there was no “e” on the end of “gris” in this instance.)

• Rialto

  There was a famous movie theater on Broadway in New York City called The Rialto Theater. In searching for that, I discovered that a lot of theaters across the country are named some form of “Rialto.”

• George Soros

  I read 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America, and Soros was listed at #19. I read the entire entry for him (go read the book review – I skimmed most of the entries).

  The author – who is a conservative – seemed to take issue mainly with Soros implying that some Republicans were Nazi-ish. He quotes Soros from 2004:

  When I hear Bush say, “You’re either with us or against us,” it reminds me of the Germans.

  Soros apparently also used the phrase “supremacist ideology” in reference to the Bush White House.

  Other than that, the author just doesn’t like that Soros is a “Bush-hater,” that he spent $25 million to try to defeat Bush in 2004, and that he started MoveOn.org.

  That book was written in 2005, and it’s kind of funny to see how much offense the author took at Soros making veiled implications against Bush. He actually called it “slander.”

  Fast-forward 20 years to the Trump era, and implying that someone merely resembles a [insert terrible thing here] would be considered a very weak campaign messaging strategy. The most basic tactic in the book these days is to outright state that your opponent is either a “fascist” a “socialist” or a “communist.”

• Anointing With Oil

  While I was in London, I visited the Crown Jewels. One of the items on display was a “Coronation Spoon.” The card read:

  The anointing is the most sacred part of the coronation ceremony. Holy oil is poured from the Ampulla into the Coronation Spoon and used to anoint the monarch.

• Gainsay

  From Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives:

  After the fact, who can gainsay the call handler who says the ambulance hit the target rather than missing it by a second or two?

• Triptych

  From What’s Bred in the Bone:

  The picture was a triptych, of which the central panel was five feet square, and the two flanking panels were of the same height, but only three feet wide.

• Cartesian

  In Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles:

  The 1811 Commissioner’s Plan was a product of the American Enlightenment, Cartesian in its insistence on straight lines.

  I looked up Cartesian Geometry, and found this:

  Usually the Cartesian coordinate system is applied to manipulate equations for planes, straight lines, and circles, often in two and sometimes three dimensions. Geometrically, one studies the Euclidean plane (two dimensions) and Euclidean space. As taught in school books, analytic geometry can be explained more simply: it is concerned with defining and representing geometric shapes in a numerical way and extracting numerical information from shapes’ numerical definitions and representations.

  That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me, but it does tie it into Euclidiean geometry. I don’t know which is which, really.

• Great White Way

  Not surprisingly, the book Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles has an entire chapter entitled “Great White Way” which talks about how New York City’s Broadway got that name, and a period when other cities tried to copy the …vibe, that the Great White Way created for NYC.

• Istria

  From Superspy Science:

  Bond and Tatiana escape the bad guys by hopping into one of their boats, conveniently laden with several large barrels of fuel, more than enough to take them from the Istrian peninsula across the Adriatic Sea to Venice.

• Bolthole

  From Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives:

  No wonder Jerome Wiesner, MIT’s president, felt trapped by the magisterial perfection of his office, and kept a messy bolt-hole in Building 20.

• Pinafore

  From Broadway:

  Broadway’s fourth mile in the 1890s meant endless streaming crowds of…nannies minding chuildren dressed in sailor suits and pinafores.

• Upper Manhattan

  I just finished Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles, which talks quite a bit about Upper Manhattan, as it follows Broadway all the way up the city, from north to south.