Things I learned while looking up other things, 2023.01.11
Dear friends,
Welcome to those of you who signed up via Robin Sloan's 'sletter (note, the olive oil is everything he says and more)!
It's at Robin's suggestion that I finally moved this newsletter from TinyLetter to Buttondown; first, because after three years I can probably stop assuming I'll lose interest in writing this newsletter; and second, because I am trying hard to pay for software with actual dollars instead of data or life essence or whatever.
Speaking of paying for things, this newsletter will remain free! If you need to throw me your dollars (since I'm not currently accepting data or siphoning off life essence) you could buy one of my stupid t-shirts or one of my (hopefully less-stupid) books (like this one). Or show Wordnik some love by adopting a word. (Wordnik has t-shirts too).
Now that the housekeeping is done, I have an important question for you: Where do you stand in the Polak Game?
One of my favorite new literary forms (altho I suppose it's just some sub-category of annotation) is the hovertext. This one made me laugh out loud. If your thesis is "Hovertext As/In Literature" (or something similar) please send me a link.
"“Gramatneusiedl” is sometimes used as an expression for a small town in the middle of nowhere." Supposedly an Australian version is "Woop Woop". If this is not enough for you (and why should it be, this is an engrossing subject) here is a list of "Fictional populated places in England", and here is a map.
I think it's a missed opportunity (but probably better from the point of public safety) that Pulaski Day in Chicago doesn't include carrying pulaskis (the tool) around.
"Feed in the base and suffix of a word and it should turn them into grammatically correct words and sentences through a step-by-step process." (This made me want to learn Sanskrit.)
Fist-to-five seems like a great tool for decision-making.
An "amusing New Year's game":
Stay well!
Your friend,
Erin