NYT, sheesh

[The New York Times, August 30, 2024.]

From an article in today’s paper. Elaine saw it via someone else who’d seen it. Thanks, Elaine.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Smells

From a novel in the form of a college application essay: “Characterize, in essay form, your high school experience. You may use additional sheets of paper as needed.”

Daniel Pinkwater, The Education of Robert Nifkin (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998).

Young Nifkin is applying to St. Leon’s College, Parnassus on Hudson, New York. Get it? That’s a pseudonym for the college Pinkwater attended.

This passage brings back to me the smell of my elementary school’s basement, a smell still there when I visited the school in 1987 and 1998. As I wrote in a 2018 post, “I always thought of the smell as years of spilled soup.”

I am the only person to have borrowed The Education of Robert Nifkin from my university library — twice in seventeen years. Sigh.

Other Pinkwater posts
“Nice, heavy notebooks” : “Pineapples don’t have sleeves” : The Snark Theater

[The college? Think Bard, Annandale-on-Hudson. President since 1975: Leon Botstein.]

Bushmiller pareidolia

[Nancy, September 12, 1955. Click for a larger view.]

The simplest things bring Sluggo joy: “The city has installed new parking meters — let’s go see them.” And he and Nancy run.

For Bushmiller pareidolia, see also this school.

Yesterday’s Nancy is today’s Nancy.

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MSNBC, sheesh

Earlier this afternoon, a reporter spoke:

“He can also pretty regularly say things that drive a wedge between he and their support.”

Maybe someday a news organization will add a director of grammar and usage to the staff.

Related reading
All OCA sheesh posts (Pinboard)

Word of the day: trig

As found in Sarah Orne Jewett’s Deephaven (1877):

Kate had evidently written to me in an excited state of mind, for her note was not so trig-looking as usual.

I think this definition from the Oxford English Dictionary explains this instance of trig: “Trim or tight in person, shape, or appearance; of a place, Neat, tidy, in good order. Chiefly Scottish and dialect.” Or perhaps this one: “Prim, precise, exact.”

I can hear a hundred compliments: “Your handwriting ... it’s so trig.”

Unwanted political spam texts

From Daring Fireball: What to do with unwanted political spam texts.

Not a joke — genuine advice to make them stop.

Advertisements for myself

This item gives new meaning to Norman Mailer’s phrase “advertisements for myself.” From the August 27 installment of Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

Sam Stein of The Bulwark reported yesterday that the Trump campaign is about to start running ads in the area around Mar-a-Lago. Trump insiders say the campaign has paid almost $50,000 to run ads to make Trump and local donors feel good. On August 14, Kevin Cate, former spokesperson for President Barack Obama, predicted that Trump would spend his first television dollars “in Florida (for his ego and against his team’s advice). And that’s how you’ll know we’re in landslide territory.”

They’d better start running these ads soon. A glance at Donald Trump’s Truth Social posts and reposts suggests that he’s becoming ever more unhinged, if he’s even still hinged at all: God, Q, and military tribunals.

Here’s a link to the Bulwark story.

Got Better Cotton?

Actual label text:

By choosing our cotton products, you’re supporting Walmart’s investment in Better Cotton’s mission.

This product is sourced via a system of mass balance and therefore may not contain Better Cotton.

I’m not surprised to discover a page about Better Cotton and greenwashing. And a page about greenwashing and “mass balance” more generally.

The Blogger comment form

Google has tinkered, unannounced, with the settings for the Blogger comment form. Thanks, Google. Your choices as a Blogger blogger:

~ With “Full page,” it’s impossible to see a post while commenting without switching between tabs.

~ With “Embedded,” comments look (to my eye) godawful. The line spacing is too tight (and, as far as I can tell, cannot be altered), text is awkwardly justified, and clicking on a Comments link takes the reader to the bottom of the comment form. Dumb. “Embedded” does have the advantage of allowing a comment to nest as a reply to a previous comment. But that detail doesn’t offset (for me) the ugliness.

~ “Popup window” provides decent readability and keeps the post in view. That’s what I’ve chosen for Orange Crate Art. [And as I discovered after writing this post, “Popup window,” too, allows a comment to nest as a reply to a previous comment.]

In all three formats, the option to preview a comment before posting is gone. Proofread carfully!

Why not comment today and take “Popup window” for a spin? Watch that window pop.

[“Proofread carfully”: in my teaching days, something I liked to include on pages going out with essay assignments.]

Domestic comedy

“His /ant/ or /ahnt/ was there — I’m not sure which.”

Related reading
All OCA domestic comedy posts (Pinboard)