Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.11.11.
Dear friends, I don’t know when I first came across this poem, but every November I remember it again. (Usually the line “No comfortable feel in any...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.10.11
Dear friends, As some of you may know, I live in Portland, Oregon, which, right now, is like living in the middle of a Gell-Mann amnesia effect episode, with...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.09.11
Dear friends, It turns out that I am my own most prolific correspondent—while trying to clean out one of my email mailboxes I realized that the person who is...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.08.11
Dear friends, If you're in NYC in September you can see the world premiere of a new chamber opera about Yiddish linguist Yudel Mark’s unfinished effort to...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.07.11
Dear friends, Usually I try to write these over a few days, or at least early in the morning when there's a light fizz of caffeine burbling through the old...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.06.11
Dear friends, Okay, so this is the kind of thing that is either deeply charming or absolutely unhinged, and you should be really, really sure how it’s going...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.05.11
Dear friends, Wishing you a Happy Mother’s Day today, especially if you’re missing your mother or mothering. (I thought this Bluesky thread was lovely.) The...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.04.11
Dear friends, Welcome new subscribers! Hope this lives up to the hype. This is the kind of Wikipedia page where I’m not sure how I got there but I don’t want...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.03.11
Dear friends, Thanks to an Australian colleague I learned that there is an Australian term for part of a place setting that hasn’t been used (and so can be...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.02.11
Dear friends, I spent nearly all of today on a plane, so this month’s newsletter is me turning my notebook upside-down and shaking it. Cardea was the ancient...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2025.01.11
Dear friends, “Earth’s average temperature climbed more than 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels for the first time in 2024.” Which probably means we...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.12.11
Dear friends, Welcome to what is now the traditional December edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things! Here are eleven of the words I saved...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.11.11
Dear friends, I wish I had a banquet of hope to put before you, eleven links of uplifting joy, ways to channel any rage or hurt or despair into thoughtful...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.10.11
Dear friends, This is a good sentence: “Billy ordered a pair of size 9 bananas.” (Billy is Billy Connolly—in this age of supposedly global fame it can be so...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.09.11
Dear friends, There was a truly epic opal in the Dearest newsletter this week; even if you think you don’t care about jewelry (and I put myself in that...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.08.11
Dear friends, Although I love words, I don’t get excited by etymologies—most of them are fairly dull. And a word’s etymology doesn’t (or shouldn’t!) have...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.07.11
Dear friends, Notes and Queries never fails to bring me new and charmingly hyper-specific terms: “But generally a "kneeler" is "a small mat upon which to...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.06.11
Dear friends, This week I was trying to explain to a much younger person what it used to be like before large search engines and abundant online archives—how...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.05.11
Dear friends, It’s a Saturday, so I did some regular weekend cleaning and tidying today, and the whole time kept thinking about Wages Against Housework. I...
Things I learned while looking up other things, 2024.04.11
Dear friends, I wish I could start this email off with a cheery "hello from Point Nemo!" But I can't, because it's the Oceanic Pole of Inaccessibility and...