Happy Caturday

WotD: pedestrian refuge. A protected island in the middle of a street or road where people can safely stop while crossing. On a road with pedestrian refuges, a person crossing has to worry only traffic from one direction at a time.

Happy Caturday, today featuring cats I met in my recent travels

WotD: SKI travel, which stands for "spending kids['] inheritance". Refers to affluent elders who are "choosing to spend on bucket-list trips and one-in-a-lifetime experiences rather than saving wealth for the next generation". www.travelpulse.com/news/feature...

Happy Caturday

WotD: "enough[-]fluencer", someone who's "about celebrating already having enough, and, crucially, feeling happier for it". Related to "deinfluencer". (See linked article) Fun to see -fluencer achieve libfix status. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

Happy Caturday

WotD: stacked water, "a combination of different functional ingredients and juices added to water to enhance the hydration experience" Source: www.vogue.com/article/what...

Happy Caturday

Happy Caturday

WotD: Sloppelgänger, "A.I. slop masquerading as a person". A fun construction that combines "slop" ("low-quality AI-generated content") with a pun on "Doppelgänger" ("double of a living person"). From a NYT article by @juliaangwin.com: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/o...

Happy Caturday

WotD: cleaching. A technical term from baking for the issue where a cake forms a gummy layer at the bottom during baking. www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2026/02...

Happy Caturday

WotD: generative erase. This is (only?) Microsoft's term for what others call Magic Erase — using AI to remove bits of a digital image. It _feels_ like there's something contradictory about combining "generative" and "erase", tho I do get what they mean. blogs.windows.com/windows-insi...

Happy Caturday

Happy Caturday

WotD: leckdown. A portmanteau of "leaves" plus "neckdown", referring to a temporary reduction in street width at an intersection (neckdown) created by fallen leaves (leck). See also: sneckdown (snow + neckdown). Source: www.strongsactown.org/2023/12/29/l...

Happy (?) Caturday

WotD: "mommune" (mom+commune) — "communal housing for women and their children". www.mommune.org

WotD: "skillcation", aka "curiosity leave" ... "in which you swap the beach for knowledge. This could be either professional development, or learning a cool skill or hobby." Another example of the libfixed "-cation". Source: thehustle.co/news/why-chi...

WotD: "functional beverage", drinks that comes with health claims; these include "dairy drinks, sports and performance drinks, energy drinks, ready-to-drink teas, kombucha, "smart" drinks, fortified fruit drinks, plant milks, and enhanced water." (Wikipedia)

Happy Caturday

WotD: "homoglyph attack", where "attackers exploit visually similar characters to deceive users or systems". Example: a link to rnarriott [dot com] instead of marriott [dot com]; the first leads to an exploit. Another homoglyph is 0 (zero) for O. Source: www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...

Happy Caturday

WorD: fawn response. "... it’s a way of merging with the desires of others in order to alleviate a threat. You sort of reshape yourself in the image of what someone else wants as a way of pleasing them, and thereby dissipate whatever menace they pose to you." via Katy Waldman in the NYer

Happy Caturday

Happy Caturday. Today featuring some frens I met in Panama City

I wonder how many lives — American lives, Venezuelan lives — are going to be sacrificed for the oil companies

Happy Caturday

WotD: "immigrant derangement syndrome", which Paul Krugman defines as "blaming brown-skinned people for everything bad". paulkrugman.substack.com/p/immigrant-...

Getting on the "52 Things I Learned this Year" bandwagon. A few fun facts I learned: - My, how pickup trucks have grown - Why some salt is saltier than other salt - English is so vowel-y - Where do Canadians live? ... and 48 more. www.mikepope.com/blog/Display...

WotD: "botsplaining" — using an AI-generated answer to "explain" something to someone who has expertise.

Happy Caturday

WotD: "Twixmas"

Happy Catmas!

Happy Caturday

WotD: "cow cuddling", which is just what it sounds like: "a form of animal-assisted therapy involving hugging cows for healing" (Wikipedia). Also a side hustle for dairy farmers to help with economic uncertainty. thehustle.co/news/save-a-...

Happy Caturday

WotD: "gazump". (Not new, just new to me) Of a seller, to accept a verbal offer to buy but then go with a higher bidder before the lower offer has closed. Found in a story on Semafor about the possible Netflix-Warner deal.

WotD: "polygloom" — " a heterogeneous complex, defying summation by a single causal logic, menacing, a whole that is worse than the sum of the parts." adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-...

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I'm hoping someone has done a study of naming trends for septic-tank cleaning businesses. Feels like an opportunity for the business owner to wax clever. @fritinancy.bsky.social

WotD: "LLeMing", someone who outsources their thinking to AI — "because they are always LLM-ing, but also because their near-constant AI use conjures images of cybernetic lemmings unable to act without guidance." Used by Lila Shroff in The Atlantic, attributed to "a colleague". archive.ph/JvX7Z

Happy Caturday

Happy Caturday

WotD: "second-screen show" — "content optimized for casual viewing, meaning intentionally scripted for distracted viewers." Not new (2022?) but new to me. Also called "ambient TV" (2020 or earlier). theconversation.com/too-distract...

WotY: "vibecession" -- when people feel like the economy is doing worse than the numbers suggest. From Kyla Scanlon www.mercatus.org/macro-musing...

Happy Caturday

Happy Caturday