I’ve accepted, even embraced the return of “awesome” over the last few years. But I’m seeing signs that “rad” is making a comeback, and I really hope that’s not the case. Some slang is worth preserving and maybe even incorporating into the language over time.
Some…isn’t.
I mean, it’s dudical to the max, daddy-o!
What do people think an “intensive purpose” is? “For all intents and purposes” may be redundant, but it actually makes sense.
Serious stuff (news, usability, history, etc.):
And not so serious:
I’m listening to The Bird and the Bee right now. Every single track on the album is labeled as [Explicit] because of the song called “F——ing Boyfriend,” even though that’s the only song that actually has any explicit lyrics.
Both iTunes and Amazon have two versions of the album. One is marked explicit on every single track. The other has edited the one song, and isn’t marked.
I suppose that might have made sense in the old days when an album was only ever sold as a complete unit (with maybe a single or two)…but in today’s digital market, the base unit isn’t the album. It’s the song. If the song itself isn’t explicit, it shouldn’t be labeled as such. That would be like giving Spider-Man an R rating because Sam Raimi also directed Evil Dead.
Some consequences:
Fanboy Scouts has launched a series of Merit Badges for Geeks including achievements for Speedster, Mt. Doom, Tie Fighter Pilot, Away Team, and more.
The new Kindle looks nice. They’re starting to get to the price/feature/polish point where I’d be tempted. (Well, except for that pesky DRM…) Also, Amazon launched Kindle for Android recently, but I haven’t tried it out. While it will run on Android 1.6, it’s a bit big for my G1 unless I clear out some other apps.
I’ve always wondered how the name of Japan’s currency ended up meaning “craving” or desire in English. It turns out to be coincidence, probably from the Chinese yáhn or yin, “craving.” Word of the Day: yen.
TweetUp acquires Twidroid and changes its name to Twidroyd “to ensure minimal confusion with products from Lucas Films.” Fortunately no one will mistake Lucas Films for Lucasfilm…
Last month, KTLA reported on a 3.3 earthquake in the Inland Empire. “Dozens of residents” in the region felt it. Dozens! Wow!
I have to agree with @rzazueta: Woot’s Amazon buyout report is an instant classic (via @boingboing)
Chart of the Day presents: What people are actually doing with their cellphones (aside from talking) based on a Pew survey on mobile internet use. (via @ThisIsTrue)
I wasn’t aware that the term “will call” was used outside the theater industry, but a quick search on the term indicates that yes, it’s used in other industries to refer to a place where buyers can pick up merchandise.
According to Wikipedia, the term’s origin is in the usage, “I will call on you,” in the sense of physically visiting someone.
Spammers have been using misspellings, synonyms and malapropisms for years now. Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of Viagra/Cialis/etc. spam using the word “pilule” instead of “pill.” At first they’d just find misspellings for the drug name, but I guess some filters are blocking or scoring on “pill,” so they’ve substituted words for that…including the hilariously ironic “soft” as an abbreviation for “soft tabs.” (Comments on this post are going to give Akismet a workout, aren’t they?)
Anyway, I found it odd that so many different spams would use the same obfuscation, particularly since it looked like it was just adding letters. So I looked it up.
It turns out that pilule is a real word. According to Merriam-Webster, it entered the English language from French around 1543. Sadly, it doesn’t refer to a cute magical creature, but to a small pill — which means that (wonder of wonders) the spammers are actually using it correctly!
One question remained: was it simply an obscure word, or an archaic one? I did a search on Google Books and came up with mostly medical texts dating from the 19th century. Just about every match in the first 15 pages was either:
The few cases where I thought I’d found a more recent reference turned out to be reprints of older material.
So it looks like the word died out (in English, anyway) during the 20th century until spammers exhumed its corpse and pressed it into service.
On Friday, I posted the discovery to Twitter on @lol_spam, then retweeted it on KelsonV. Within 15 minutes, lol_spam picked up 45 new followers and KelsonV picked up 40. They were all obviously bots:
I will give them credit for using ordinary-looking snapshots of women with a wide variety of appearances, rather than going for the lingerie, downblouse, outright nude (the spam filters are going to be busy, aren’t they?) and other sexy (or “sexy”) poses that usually show up on these. They actually looked like photos real people might use on their profiles.
Nice try, spambots.
Went to the comic store on a late lunch today. As I got in the car, I saw the clerk locking the door. At 2:00, it seemed a bit early for closing, but then I noticed he had just hung up a sign that said:
AFK BRB
A bit cryptic to the uninitiated*, but probably completely understood by the target audience.
*And for the uninitiated, that’s “Away From Keyboard” and “Be Right Back,” common online abbreviations that have made the transition from IRC chat to modern IM. Though I suppose in this case it could be “Away From Kounter.” Oh, and IRL=”In Real Life.”
