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January 21, 2013
January 10, 2013
![IBM’s Watson Memorized the Entire ‘Urban Dictionary,’ Then His Overlords Had to Delete It
You don’t even want to know, they should have explained.
[Image: Jeopardy/ Alexis C. Madrigal]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/21a2803ca6e4b16cd1f99750ff9fc28d/tumblr_mgf9whQyV11qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
IBM’s Watson Memorized the Entire ‘Urban Dictionary,’ Then His Overlords Had to Delete It
You don’t even want to know, they should have explained.
[Image: Jeopardy/ Alexis C. Madrigal]
September 14, 2012
![Why ‘Diphthong’ is the Best Word Ever
Ted McCagg is a creative director in advertising in Portland, Oregon. In his spare time, for the past five years or so, McCagg has been keeping a blog,”Questionable Skills” — the content of which consists almost entirely of drawings, some of them the bracket-style rankings that are a familiar feature of March Madness.
A few months ago, McCagg began using his blog and his bracket system to answer a question: What is the best word ever? Not the funniest word or the most erudite word or the most whimsical word … but The Best Word, full stop. What if, you know, the scallawag could eke out a thingamajig that would help him select the least milquetoast morsel from our linguistic smorgasbord?
Yesterday, McCagg has answered his question.
Read more. [Image: Ted McCagg]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_macre6Dggf1qcokc4o1_1280.png)
Why ‘Diphthong’ is the Best Word Ever
Ted McCagg is a creative director in advertising in Portland, Oregon. In his spare time, for the past five years or so, McCagg has been keeping a blog,”Questionable Skills” — the content of which consists almost entirely of drawings, some of them the bracket-style rankings that are a familiar feature of March Madness.
A few months ago, McCagg began using his blog and his bracket system to answer a question: What is the best word ever? Not the funniest word or the most erudite word or the most whimsical word … but The Best Word, full stop. What if, you know, the scallawag could eke out a thingamajig that would help him select the least milquetoast morsel from our linguistic smorgasbord?
Yesterday, McCagg has answered his question.
Read more. [Image: Ted McCagg]
September 7, 2012
![Um, Actually, What Your Crutch Word Literally Says About You
Joe Biden said literally quite literally a lot last night in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. […]
Crutch words are those expressions we pepper throughout our language as verbal pauses, and sometimes as written ones, to give us time to think, to accentuate our meaning (even when we do so mistakenly), or just because these are the words that have somehow lodged in our brains and come out on our tongues the most, for whatever reason. Here’s our list of frequently used crutches, and what your crutch of choice has to reveal about you:
Basically. You like to cut to the chase, to synopsize, to bring things down to old bottom line of what’s really, truly important. You are always downsizing, cutting the clutter, throwing out a sweater for every new one you purchase.
Um. You are not very good at giving speeches, and listening to you can be painful, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a very nice person.
Honestly. The frequency with which you deploy this word is inversely related to the frequency with which you are actually honest.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9zr4vpkCp1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
Um, Actually, What Your Crutch Word Literally Says About You
Joe Biden said literally quite literally a lot last night in his speech at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. […]
Crutch words are those expressions we pepper throughout our language as verbal pauses, and sometimes as written ones, to give us time to think, to accentuate our meaning (even when we do so mistakenly), or just because these are the words that have somehow lodged in our brains and come out on our tongues the most, for whatever reason. Here’s our list of frequently used crutches, and what your crutch of choice has to reveal about you:
Basically. You like to cut to the chase, to synopsize, to bring things down to old bottom line of what’s really, truly important. You are always downsizing, cutting the clutter, throwing out a sweater for every new one you purchase.
Um. You are not very good at giving speeches, and listening to you can be painful, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a very nice person.
Honestly. The frequency with which you deploy this word is inversely related to the frequency with which you are actually honest.
Read more. [Image: Reuters]
September 4, 2012
![Words Invented By David Foster Wallace’s Mom
D. T. Max’s highly anticipated Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (public library) is out this week, and though it lacks the captivating prose of a great biography, it has a certain encyclopedic quality that is sure to galvanize DFW fanatics.
I was delighted to find among the Max’s factlets one about words invented by Wallace’s mother, an English professor, which went on to permeate DFW’s own writing:
No one else listened to David as his mother did. She was smart and funny, easy to confide in, and included him in her love of words. Even in later years, and in the midst of his struggle with the legacy of his childhood, he would always speak with affection of the passion for words and grammar she had given him. If there was no word for a thing, Sally Wallace would invent it: ‘greebles’ meant little bits of lint, especially those that feet brought into bed; ‘twanger’ was the word for something whose name you didn’t know or couldn’t remember. She loved the word ‘fantods,’ meaning a feeling of deep fear or repulsion, and talked of ‘the howling fantods,’ this fear intensified. These words, like much of his childhood, would wind up in Wallace’s work.
And, indeed, it did. From Infinite Jest:
Orin’s special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches. There’d been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he’d refused to go to, as a child. Roaches give him the howling fantods.
Read more. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9u9oga61K1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
Words Invented By David Foster Wallace’s Mom
D. T. Max’s highly anticipated Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace (public library) is out this week, and though it lacks the captivating prose of a great biography, it has a certain encyclopedic quality that is sure to galvanize DFW fanatics.
I was delighted to find among the Max’s factlets one about words invented by Wallace’s mother, an English professor, which went on to permeate DFW’s own writing:
No one else listened to David as his mother did. She was smart and funny, easy to confide in, and included him in her love of words. Even in later years, and in the midst of his struggle with the legacy of his childhood, he would always speak with affection of the passion for words and grammar she had given him. If there was no word for a thing, Sally Wallace would invent it: ‘greebles’ meant little bits of lint, especially those that feet brought into bed; ‘twanger’ was the word for something whose name you didn’t know or couldn’t remember. She loved the word ‘fantods,’ meaning a feeling of deep fear or repulsion, and talked of ‘the howling fantods,’ this fear intensified. These words, like much of his childhood, would wind up in Wallace’s work.
And, indeed, it did. From Infinite Jest:
Orin’s special conscious horror, besides heights and the early morning, is roaches. There’d been parts of metro Boston near the Bay he’d refused to go to, as a child. Roaches give him the howling fantods.
Read more. [Image: Wikimedia Commons]
August 3, 2012
![Actually, the Worst Word on the Planet Is ‘Actually’
There is a very important question being tackled again by certain smart people of the Internet, and that question is this: What, exactly, is the worst word on the entire planet? Any time this question or one like it is broached, an opened floodgate of response is ensured, likely to include words like moist, fecund, phlegm, artisanal, or if you work at TheNew Yorker, slacks. We continue to believe that coöperationis öffensive, as is the corresponding word, diaeresis, which remains ever so hard to spell no matter how many times we type it.
On Thursday Sarah Miller made a strong argument on The Awl for literally as our English-speaking community’s worst word. This is not a bad word to choose as the very worst. Flagrant misuses abound, and it’s ever so annoying when people say literally when they actually mean not literally. Literally, in fact, is rarely used when it should be used, which is almost never, and almost always when it shouldn’t. […]
Literally is a word that we should be very, very careful around. But actually I think there’s a word that’s worse.Actually, did you see what I did there? While literally and actually can be used interchangeably, actually has a bad attitude. Literallycan be mocked and laughed at, because literally almost no one uses it correctly. Actually is more sneaky, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Actually is the word that you use when you’re actually saying, “You are wrong, and I am right, and you are at least a little bit of an idiot.”
Read more. [Image: Flickr/sAeroZar]
Actually, this is true.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m86x8cQEWc1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
Actually, the Worst Word on the Planet Is ‘Actually’
There is a very important question being tackled again by certain smart people of the Internet, and that question is this: What, exactly, is the worst word on the entire planet? Any time this question or one like it is broached, an opened floodgate of response is ensured, likely to include words like moist, fecund, phlegm, artisanal, or if you work at TheNew Yorker, slacks. We continue to believe that coöperationis öffensive, as is the corresponding word, diaeresis, which remains ever so hard to spell no matter how many times we type it.
On Thursday Sarah Miller made a strong argument on The Awl for literally as our English-speaking community’s worst word. This is not a bad word to choose as the very worst. Flagrant misuses abound, and it’s ever so annoying when people say literally when they actually mean not literally. Literally, in fact, is rarely used when it should be used, which is almost never, and almost always when it shouldn’t. […]
Literally is a word that we should be very, very careful around. But actually I think there’s a word that’s worse.Actually, did you see what I did there? While literally and actually can be used interchangeably, actually has a bad attitude. Literallycan be mocked and laughed at, because literally almost no one uses it correctly. Actually is more sneaky, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Actually is the word that you use when you’re actually saying, “You are wrong, and I am right, and you are at least a little bit of an idiot.”
Read more. [Image: Flickr/sAeroZar]
Actually, this is true.
August 2, 2012
March 5, 2012
![I Am Gal, Hear Me Roar: It’s Time to Reclaim the Female Version of ‘Guy’
There are countless words you can use to degrade a woman: bitch, slut, whore. The list goes on. But the word that does the most to set us back has nothing to do with outspokenness or sexual choices. It’s a word that’s used openly, in public, shamelessly, to our faces. In fact, it’s the word I—along with most young women I know—use to describe myself.
The worst word to call a woman is girl.
Girls are children. Girls are dependents. Girls can’t make their own decisions. And yet, when we talk about feminine achievement, we talk about girl power. Girls, according to Beyoncé, run the world. The character of Lisbeth Salander, self-sufficient though she may be, is a girl with a dragon tattoo. And, most importantly, in real life, among people I know and respect, female colleagues are “girls from work.” The women with whom we studied for advanced degrees are “girls from school.” A lot’s in a name; although we don’t mean to hurt each other, the word girl diminishes our maturity, our responsibility, our power. But what alternative do we have?
Even though my feminist heart hurts to admit it, woman is no good.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the word. It’s just that to advocate for the use of “woman” rather than “girl” is to ignore the practical truth. If all who identify as female were to go from girl to woman when they turned 18—or 21 or 13 or 16 or at menses or upon graduation or at some other arbitrary milestone—the scales of language would still be unbalanced. At least among English-speaking males, growing up is far more nuanced. A boy doesn’t just instantly become a man: he gets to be a guy.
Read more. [Source image: MGM]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0f2zv5bIA1qcokc4o1_1280.jpg)
I Am Gal, Hear Me Roar: It’s Time to Reclaim the Female Version of ‘Guy’
There are countless words you can use to degrade a woman: bitch, slut, whore. The list goes on. But the word that does the most to set us back has nothing to do with outspokenness or sexual choices. It’s a word that’s used openly, in public, shamelessly, to our faces. In fact, it’s the word I—along with most young women I know—use to describe myself.
The worst word to call a woman is girl.
Girls are children. Girls are dependents. Girls can’t make their own decisions. And yet, when we talk about feminine achievement, we talk about girl power. Girls, according to Beyoncé, run the world. The character of Lisbeth Salander, self-sufficient though she may be, is a girl with a dragon tattoo. And, most importantly, in real life, among people I know and respect, female colleagues are “girls from work.” The women with whom we studied for advanced degrees are “girls from school.” A lot’s in a name; although we don’t mean to hurt each other, the word girl diminishes our maturity, our responsibility, our power. But what alternative do we have?
Even though my feminist heart hurts to admit it, woman is no good.
It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the word. It’s just that to advocate for the use of “woman” rather than “girl” is to ignore the practical truth. If all who identify as female were to go from girl to woman when they turned 18—or 21 or 13 or 16 or at menses or upon graduation or at some other arbitrary milestone—the scales of language would still be unbalanced. At least among English-speaking males, growing up is far more nuanced. A boy doesn’t just instantly become a man: he gets to be a guy.
Read more. [Source image: MGM]
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Why removing the queerness of Gatsby matters
In one of the film’s stupidest choices, Nick ends up in a sanitarium after Gatsby’s death. His pure...
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an autobiography
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Attention All Photography Enthusiasts
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The loss of the Fung Wah bus service between Boston and New York inspired this parody: http://nyr.kr/XGaaWx
Lyrics and performance by Marc...
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Cinemas.
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In Nairobi Slum, Finding Safety In A Public Bathroom
by Julienne Gage“Step into Nairobi’s sprawling Kibera slum and it’s...
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Here’s today’s Daily GIF!
