This thread! THE WESTERNERS is out in 3 1/2 weeks, and I will be posting about it quite a lot between now and then. Vigorous self-promotion is expected now, and is pretty much a part-time job for all nonfiction authors closing in on pub day. So please like and repost, and help spread the word! 🐝

I've worked with some of these urchins for thirty years.

Ce que les dictionnaires (et le discours sur la langue en général) révèlent de nous comme société... Bonne lecture!

Almost 500 years ago, a group of English writers decided Latin and French loanwords were corrupting the language. They wanted to replace them all with "pure English" alternatives. If they'd won, Hamlet would have wondered "To be or not to be, that is the asking."

It’s actually FEWER Misérables

I reviewed a history of plagiarism for History Today: www.historytoday.com/archive/revi...

Never expected "how to pronounce biopic" to become just as evergreen an argument, with partisans fiercely dug in on both sides, as "how to pronounce GIF."

JOB ALERT 📜📚 Librarian & executive director of Yale’s Lewis Walpole Library (Farmington, CT) •Research center for 18th-century Britain •You’d report to the fabulous Michelle Light careers.yale.edu/us/en/job/13...

A Thing We Are, Or At Least I Am, Not Relitigating Today. Or Tomorrow.

The truth is not the average of a fact and a lie.

I had no idea that Johnny Mercer was reviving old-fashioned slang with his "your huckleberry friend" line in "Moon River." (The song won an Oscar in 1962.)

Will they have to perform a semicolonoscopy?

Hmmm. The young Proust spent a few years translating Ruskin, despite not being able to read English. His mother and a friend made word-for-word translations and he then turned it into beautiful French prose. MumGPT.

Some historians write so beautifully. Others…

my local park is full of hundreds of snow sculptures and someone has been adding museum labels

This week is the centennial of a significant recording date in the history of jazz, "Cornet Chop Suey" & "Heebie Jeebies." There are bigger questions right now, but for me, I can't decide whether to call it: the CORNET CHOP SUNIVERSARY or the HEEBIETENNIAL youtu.be/UX6llYLb_p0?...

Dating app called Whinge where people match based on what pet peeves they have in common.

heads up, western Massachusetts friends

Bar soap is the only good kind of soap to shower with. Fight me.

It would be expensive but "that's not the definition of 'factoid'" would be an appropriate epitaph for me.

This 1943 U.S. Army film warned about fascism in America

The Mellon Foundation and the Jazz Foundation of America (JFA) has announced the second cohort of Jazz Legacies Fellows. The award honors lifetime achievement and gives $100,000 to each member. It’s so great! (see thread)

France launches rewilding project in Dauphiné Alps. It builds on decades of natural species return, aiming to restore herbivores, predators & river systems across mostly forested land, pairing biodiversity recovery with local economic activity & climate resilience buff.ly/jOwrVNc #ShareGoodNewsToo

The Crown S7 is gonna be lit

MiddelEnglisshemaxxinge

some of you are looksmaxxing when you need to be booksmaxxing

It's not just the water; societies that value art create art.

The first mass-market paperback dictionary in the U.S. was the 1947 Merriam-Webster edition. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/b...

The first mass-market paperback dictionary in the U.S. was the 1947 Merriam-Webster edition. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/b...

desert island disc

On our first date, my spouse and I spent like an hour talking about footnotes.

Some people should use more exclamation points, other people should use fewer exclamation points, those are the only two kinds of people

For context, he played lead trumpet when MAYNARD FERGUSON was also on the Kenton band.

Today is the 100th birthday anniversary of jazz trumpeter Buddy Childers. He played lead trumpet for Stan Kenton's band through its most interesting period in the late '40s and early '50s, when Kenton had a cult following. Later he was a studio musician and Sinatra's touring lead trumpet player.

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Louis Armstrong, Paris, c. 1934

I just subscribed to @roncharles.bsky.social Substack because he's the greatest and Jeff Bezos is the worst: roncharles.substack.com?r=bk77n&utm_...

Hee hee. The title is perfect.

Such a fantastic event for the new @merriam-webster.com Twelfth Edition at the UWS @barnesandnoble.com last night. It was packed, and hearing the room fill with knowing laughter at @petersokolowski.bsky.social’s wordy/nerdy jokes and asides was a wonderful reprieve from these dumb times. #booksky

Marbling and thumb notches for the 1890 edition of Merriam-Webster's Unabridged. Thumb notches were introduced with this edition!

TOMORROW!

Today we rang the Bodley Bell in Duke Humfrey’s Library to mark the anniversary of Sir Thomas Bodley’s death in 1613 🔔 Nine rings for the man, and 67 for every year of his life. Rung by Ant Brewerton and Andrew Honey. #ThomasBodley #OnThisDay

Exactly. 'Oeuvre' is from Latin 'opus' (often meaning a "work" of music) and also the root of 'opera.'

New eggcorn alert! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggcorn

For word lovers in NYC (after the storm)!

Geoff Pullum on the false promises and false premises of AI: "People are deluding themselves." youtu.be/68GwFsvcgSs?...

For word lovers in NYC (after the storm)!

No matter how much you listen to John Coltrane, it is impossible to overstate the depth of his art. The beauty is out of control, whether it’s a beloved Rodgers and Hammerstein melody or irrepressible free jazz.

etymology is destiny