Things I learned while looking up other things, 2022.12.11
Dear friends,
Welcome to what is now the traditional December edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things! Here again is the link to one of my favorite year-end wrapups, the Said the Gramophone Best Songs of 2022. (Blogs are having a moment again, which only reinforces my belief that if you hold fast to something good, like blogging or wearing penny loafers, every so often your still, steadfast point will align with everyone else's epicycles.)
And here are eleven of the words I saved in 2022 using the hypothes.is annotation tool.
The first day of January was marked by the interment of the remains of Desmond Tutu, which underwent a process known as aquamation: "Aquamation is a water-based process whose scientific name is "alkaline hydrolysis", in which a "combination of gentle water flow, temperature, and alkalinity are used to accelerate the breakdown of organic materials" when a body is laid to rest in soil, according to Bio-Response Solutions, a US company which specializes in the process."
In February I went ahead and saved a citation for wordcel: "Wordcels are people who are good with words." (There's a lot more to unpack there, which I'm not going to do because you should really limit your exposure to that flavor of Internet.)
In March far too many of us were learning Deltacron: "As the portmanteau suggests, Deltacron is a Covid variant that contains elements of Delta and Omicron – in other words, it contains genes from both variants, making it what is known as a recombinant virus."
Welcome to what is now the traditional December edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things! Here again is the link to one of my favorite year-end wrapups, the Said the Gramophone Best Songs of 2022. (Blogs are having a moment again, which only reinforces my belief that if you hold fast to something good, like blogging or wearing penny loafers, every so often your still, steadfast point will align with everyone else's epicycles.)
And here are eleven of the words I saved in 2022 using the hypothes.is annotation tool.
The first day of January was marked by the interment of the remains of Desmond Tutu, which underwent a process known as aquamation: "Aquamation is a water-based process whose scientific name is "alkaline hydrolysis", in which a "combination of gentle water flow, temperature, and alkalinity are used to accelerate the breakdown of organic materials" when a body is laid to rest in soil, according to Bio-Response Solutions, a US company which specializes in the process."
In February I went ahead and saved a citation for wordcel: "Wordcels are people who are good with words." (There's a lot more to unpack there, which I'm not going to do because you should really limit your exposure to that flavor of Internet.)
In March far too many of us were learning Deltacron: "As the portmanteau suggests, Deltacron is a Covid variant that contains elements of Delta and Omicron – in other words, it contains genes from both variants, making it what is known as a recombinant virus."
Although I saved the word in April, I'm still not entirely sure I could reliably identify examples of Neubrutalism: "Neubrutalism, or Neobrutalism as some people call it, is a mix of regular brutalism in web design and more modern typography, illustration and animation standards."
You might remember marmoteer from the May Things Learned, but honestly, it's too good not to link again: "People who study marmots or woodchucks are called marmoteers."
June was the first time I noticed polycrisis: "The ultimate result of these converging and interacting systemic risks could be a global polycrisis—a single, macro-crisis of interconnected, runaway failures of Earth’s vital natural and social systems that irreversibly degrades humanity’s prospects."
Keeping with the apocalyptic theme, July had necrobotics: "In this work, an inanimate spider is repurposed as a ready-to-use actuator requiring only a single facile fabrication step, initiating the area of “necrobotics” in which biotic materials are used as robotic components."
August had pre-bunking: "It’s an approach called “pre-bunking” and it builds on years of research into an idea known as inoculation theory that suggests exposing people to how misinformation works, using harmless, fictional examples, can boost their defenses to false claims."
It's been a while since I saw a good (bad) jeans blend, but September (the fashion month) came through with joots: "Designers have always blurred the lines, but for fall, we saw literal trash handbags on the runway at Balenciaga; leathery ties worn underneath mesh tank tops at Gucci; and low-rise joots (jean boots) at Diesel."
If you missed the whole "linewives" thing in October, good for you, but here I am to thrust it into your consciousness (just when you thought it was safe): "“Linewives” are, as you may have inferred, the wives of the lineworkers who’ve been sent to reconstruct the affected area’s electrical framework."
November turned up childlore: "When children are together, they develop their own rituals, traditions, games, and legends—essentially, their own folklore, or, as researchers call it, “childlore.”"
Last year I said these citations would show up on Wordnik "one day soon!" but now the pipeline has actually made it to the front of the development queue and is actively being worked on! So feel free to join the Wordnik group and save your own citations (instructions here).
Here's hoping the waning days of 2022 are kind to you—
Your friend,
Erin
PS this is likely the last iteration of this newsletter on TinyLetter; I'm hoping to switch to a different provider early next year. So check your spam filters on or around 12 January if you haven't seen the first 2023 installment by then!
You might remember marmoteer from the May Things Learned, but honestly, it's too good not to link again: "People who study marmots or woodchucks are called marmoteers."
June was the first time I noticed polycrisis: "The ultimate result of these converging and interacting systemic risks could be a global polycrisis—a single, macro-crisis of interconnected, runaway failures of Earth’s vital natural and social systems that irreversibly degrades humanity’s prospects."
Keeping with the apocalyptic theme, July had necrobotics: "In this work, an inanimate spider is repurposed as a ready-to-use actuator requiring only a single facile fabrication step, initiating the area of “necrobotics” in which biotic materials are used as robotic components."
August had pre-bunking: "It’s an approach called “pre-bunking” and it builds on years of research into an idea known as inoculation theory that suggests exposing people to how misinformation works, using harmless, fictional examples, can boost their defenses to false claims."
It's been a while since I saw a good (bad) jeans blend, but September (the fashion month) came through with joots: "Designers have always blurred the lines, but for fall, we saw literal trash handbags on the runway at Balenciaga; leathery ties worn underneath mesh tank tops at Gucci; and low-rise joots (jean boots) at Diesel."
If you missed the whole "linewives" thing in October, good for you, but here I am to thrust it into your consciousness (just when you thought it was safe): "“Linewives” are, as you may have inferred, the wives of the lineworkers who’ve been sent to reconstruct the affected area’s electrical framework."
November turned up childlore: "When children are together, they develop their own rituals, traditions, games, and legends—essentially, their own folklore, or, as researchers call it, “childlore.”"
Last year I said these citations would show up on Wordnik "one day soon!" but now the pipeline has actually made it to the front of the development queue and is actively being worked on! So feel free to join the Wordnik group and save your own citations (instructions here).
Here's hoping the waning days of 2022 are kind to you—
Your friend,
Erin
PS this is likely the last iteration of this newsletter on TinyLetter; I'm hoping to switch to a different provider early next year. So check your spam filters on or around 12 January if you haven't seen the first 2023 installment by then!
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