Top ten 2025 OCA posts

The ten most-read OCA posts that I wrote this year:

10. Origin of an idiom: “the wind at our backs” One of several efforts to frustrate AI scraping by offering a false creation story.

9. John David Moore, i.m. In memory of a friend and colleague.

8. Lillian Edelstein, 2F The “housewife” (her self-characterization) who took on Robert Moses’s plan for a Cross Bronx Expressway. With the 1939–1941 tax photograph of the building where she lived in apartment 2F, a building that Robert Moses had razed.

7. Origin of an idiom: “lightning in a bottle” I’m delighted to see this nonsense getting noticed.

6. Nancy, NO ICE Ernie Bushmiller’s Nancy in a strangely timely cartoon panel.

5. Noun & Noun A restaurant renaming, with a link to the Hipster Business Name Generator.

4. Notebooks of The Bear They’re everywhere, chef.

3. Nasha Penguin misspells Thomas Nashe’s name on a cover. They messed up Coleridge too — as Caleridge.

2. A commercial that makes me crazy The Camzyos commercial with “basketball players.” Clearly, it makes other people crazy too.

1. Words about my mom How did so many people see this post? I have, really, no idea.