February linkstack
Transit branding, alcohol-free branding, Super Bowl ads, groovy packaging, and more.
Happy Leap Day, and welcome to all the new subscribers! If you’re just getting your bearings, you may want to read about the meaning of “fritinancy” (yes, it’s a “real word”). If you’ve arrived here via one of the fashion ’stacks, check out my forays into the world of style: Kim Kardashian’s nipple bra, Phoebe Philo’s phabulous name, Fashion Brand Company, the history and meaning of “plus-size.” If you’re a naming nerd, you may like Naming Briefs, my occasional critiques of names in the news (or newly on my radar).
And what is Linkstack? This: I bookmark interesting links and publish the collection toward the end of each month. (I started doing this years ago on my old Typepad blog.) Here’s January, here’s December 2023. Scroll through the archive to find the rest.
Some shameless self-promotion:
I was honored to be asked to contribute a short essay on quiet quitting for the Among the New Words feature of American Speech, the journal of the American Dialect Society. It’s finally online; you can download the PDF here. I’ve also written for American Speech about TFG, camping, and Big Lie. (My thanks to Ben Zimmer for the invitations.)
I published a couple of stories on Medium this month. I’ve embedded free friend links, but here’s your regular reminder that if you buy a Medium membership and “clap” for my stories, I earn a little stipend.
On Apple’s famous “1984” ad, and why I’ve never been persuaded to buy an Apple product.
On what we mean when we talk about “common sense.” I published the story before I saw this window sign for No Labels, the U.S. political party that claims to represent “the commonsense majority.” The party was founded in 2010 by former U.S. senator (and former Democrat, and former vice presidential candidate) Joe Lieberman, among others.
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More American Dialect Society!
Dialect coach Paul Meier interviewed ADS executive director Betsy Evans about “the latest trends in accents, dialects, and vocabulary of the United States. (In a Manner of Speaking podcast)
And speaking of dialects
I recently listened to the audio version of A Pocketful of Happiness, actor Richard E. Grant’s lovely memoir about his late wife, the British dialect coach Joan Washington. It’s the story of a long and enviably happy marriage, with many anecdotes and insights about the acting life and many terrific accent imitations. I’ve been a Richard E. Grant fan since Withnail and I (and I think he should have won the supporting-actor Oscar for Can You Ever Forgive Me?), and listening to his narration of the book was a delicious treat. Yes, despite the sappy title.
London Overground rebrand
The Overground, the suburban rail network that serves London and environs, announced new names and colors for each of its routes: Lioness, Mildmay, Windrush, Weaver, Sufragette, and Liberty. The names “celebrate historic moments in immigration and woman’s equality, honouring campaigners and workers.” (Guardian)
Brand love
“It wasn’t just that I liked the clothes: I felt like I found a brand that manifested me: I felt understood.” Susan Orlean on falling in love with brands, from Gap to Comme des Garçons to Tibi.
Branding the “zero-proof lifestyle”
Alcohol-free brands with names like Cold Ones, Afterglow, Recess, and Free AF (“the letters can be read as standing for ‘alcohol-free’ or ‘as f***’”) tell consumers that “you don’t need booze to have fun.” (Catchword)
Cocktail lingo
A “bartender’s handshake” is “a shot ordered (or offered) to identify (or acknowledge) a fellow bartender.” A “fruit bat” is “a guest who eats the pieces of fruit on the bar that are intended for garnishing.” From Punch — not the British humor magazine but a newsletter for bartending professionals — a guide to the new vocabulary of cocktails, (Via Language Hat)
Beauty and the Bowl
Every beauty commercial from the Super Bowl, analyzed by Substacker Jessica DeFino of The Unpublishable.
Temu and the Bowl
Why Chinese shopping app Temu “paid tens of millions of dollars to run the same cheap, boring ad five times during the Super Bowl.” (Amanda Mull for The Atlantic — gift link good for 14 days). By the way, I was curious to know what, if anything, “Temu” means, so I investigated. The company website says it means “team up, price down,” but doesn’t specify in which language.
Nice package!
I’m loving Chloe List’s newish Substack, Unbox Inbox, in which List — a New York designer and art director — goes to town on a theme (mustard, beans, butter, salt, toothpaste) with glorious photos of cool packaging and old ads. And those brand names! Did you know there’s a bar soap called Not a Bar Soap? And a peanut butter brand called Mumgry?
So. Many. Magazines.
The Magazine Rack is the Internet Archive’s collection of digitized magazines and online periodicals, searchable by title and genre. Heavy on the computer and video game titles, but I did find some copies of Sunset, “the magazine of Western living.” (Hat tip: Rusty Blazenhoff )
So. Many. Emails.
“On February 2nd, for instance, Trump supporters around the world received an e-mail with the subject line ‘Sick F-Word.’ (The preview text: ‘You won’t believe what Biden just called me.’) When they opened the e-mail, subscribers were greeted with an all-caps sentence, bolded and highlighted in yellow: “BIDEN JUST CALLED ME A SICK F-WORD!” (Naomi Fry on “Donald Trump’s Chaos, Straight to Your In-box,” for The New Yorker)
Liberty for me, but not for thee
Moms for Liberty — whose home page features a quote from John Adams saying that children “should be educated in the principles of freedom” — apparently does not believe that those principles extend to children’s being able to read what they like, or for school libraries to disseminate books as they see fit. One Florida mom for “liberty” pressured her local school district to add clothing to illustrations of nude children (and in one case a nude goblin). ( Popular Information ) A reminder that the puritanical Comstock laws, passed in 1873 in an attempt to control “obscenity,” have never been repealed.
The not-so-good name
Sari Botton thought “Filthy but Fine” would be a swell name for her New York-focused newsletter. “But suddenly, looking at it, it just struck me differently. Filthy…Filthy?…FILTHY?!? Shit, I thought, what have I done? … “I unintentionally (absent-mindedly?) gave it a name that makes it sound like I'm publishing smut.” ( Adventures In "Journalism" by Sari Botton )
Noncommittal AI
On the other hand, here’s the perfect name for an AI chatbot that’s “too ethical to discuss literally anything”: Goody-2. (TechCrunch) Here’s where that name comes from.
How do you say “Varennes”?
Gary Kamiya on the spelling, pronunciation, and origin of a San Francisco street name. It’s quite a story!
And staying local…
The Dolphin Club podcast
The Dolphin Swimming and Boating Club, where I’ve been a member since 1990, is old school in many ways: We row wooden boats, we swim year round in San Francisco Bay without wetsuits. But we’re also pretty au courant for a club that was founded in 1877. Our latest new trick: the “2000 Stories” podcast, named for the approximate number of club members. One of those members, Julie Marcus, took the initiative to create the podcast; listen to her first two interviews, with 89½-year-old Mimi Osborne, the club’s oldest regular bay swimmer; and with Suzie Dods, creator of the 24-hour swim relay. To learn more about the relay, read Pia Hinckle’s first-person account, “The Mad, Mad, Mad 24-Hour Relay Swim.”
thanks for the shoutout, nancy! glad you're enjoying it :)
Congrats on the ADS piece! For, um, joyfully joining that illustrious crew, haha