February linkstack

AI gibberish, AI slop, gulf of names, "Trump take egg," and more.

Thanks to everyone who voted in my reader survey last month and contributed comments! Based on your feedback, I’m going to continue publishing twice a week-ish, and I’m going to keep focusing on words and names. (But expect some retail and travel notes once in a while, too.)

For newcomers: I publish this here linkstravaganza once a month to highlight interesting stuff I’ve read or heard. Here’s the January linkstack, which will lead you to previous installations. Drop a line in the comments, or email me at nancyf@wordworking.com, if you have tips about names, brands, or the language of commerce.

Another take on San Francisco’s downtown

Diana Lind

, the urban strategist who led the San Francisco walking tour I wrote about earlier this week, has published her own take: “The First Step in San Francisco’s Rebound.” As always with Diana’s newsletter, the comments are thoughtful and interesting, too. (Here’s my own story about the tour.)

R.I.P. Donald Shoup

Pour one out for America’s preeminent professor of parking, who died February 6 at age 86. I’ve been a Shoupista for years — see my 2010 blog post — but somehow hadn’t known until I read the obituaries that he was fondly known as “Shoup Dogg.” Read a remembrance by

Henry Grabar

, author of Paved Paradise, a book about, yes, parking that I read and recommended in 2023. And here’s Alissa Walker’s tribute, which includes one of my favorite Shoupisms: “It’s unfair to have cities where parking is free for cars and housing is expensive for people.”

Coffee talk

A lot of Canadians are mightily displeased about the U.S. Sword-Rattler-in-Chief’s mouth-noises about “the 51st state.” One Ottawa coffee shop is showing its displeasure by giving its popular “Americano” drink a new name: “Canadiano.” Joshua J. Friedman (no relation) provides some context:

Gulfy McGulfFace

Of course, the big geographic-naming news is taking place south of the U.S. border, where El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago unilaterally renamed the Gulf Mexico and then punished the Associated Press for not going along with the Newspeak. Washington Post reporter Matt Viser traced the history of “Gulf of America” to a 2010 Stephen Colbert satirical bit: “Even for supporters, it was hard to believe that what had started as a playful gag was now reality.” (Gift link.)

Via Robert Reich

Unlike the AP, Google and Apple complied with the new gulf order. Daring Fireball author John Gruber defends that position in a post titled “Golfo del Gringo Loco”: “It’s not Google’s or Apple’s place to determine and adjudicate the official names on a map; their job is to recognize and display those names.” But also:

The Gulf of Mexico is an international body of water that belongs to no nation, but declaring this new name implies that it heretofore belonged to Mexico, and now belongs to us, which is to say belongs to him, our unquestioned dear leader. That Trump took it from Mexico, without firing a shot — when in fact all he did was order a string to be changed in a government database. Shakespeare would have us believe that a sea by any other name would taste as salty. Trump doesn’t read Shakespeare.

Name that gulf!

It’s easy: Just hop over to Gulf of Mapquest. Rebecca Solnit invited submissions on her Bluesky timeline.

One for my local subscribers, via Real Bay Area Memes

“Trump take egg”

Meme-of-the-year candidate: “Although it may scan as goofy, ‘Trump take egg’ is an organic, free-range rallying cry, holding the president’s feet to the fire for his lapsed pledge to bring down food prices on Day One—as he attempts to shift blame for it again and again.” (Joe Berkowitz for Fast Company)¹

“Trump take egg” stickers via Etsy

The great and not-so-great outdoors

Patagonia’s product names emphasize sustainability. Arc’teryx names “sound like they’re pulled from the hard sciences, or pharmaceuticals, or high-end beauty care.” The North Face “doesn’t seem to have a strategy for its product names.” For his Trail Names newsletter,

Mason Colby

critiques the big outdoor-apparel brands’ approach to product names.

Ain’t too proud

The Proud Boys group, whose leadership included convicted seditionist and Trump pardonee Enrique Tarrio, has lost control of its name to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal church in Washington, DC. A judge ruled that the militant far-right Proud Boys had subjected the church to “a ‘hateful and overtly racist’ attack during the violent final days of Donald Trump’s first presidency.” (The Guardian)

Slinging slang

From mog to manosphere, from skibidi to tradwife: a lexicon of current or recent slang, compiled by John Kelly for Merriam-Webster. “Just want a quick snapshot of what they mean? Gotchu. Want more depth and context? Boom.”

Bee plus

I enjoyed everything about Ali Sell’s post about how the Sacramento Bee newspaper got its name, but I especially liked learning that Walt Disney himself designed the company’s mascots: Scoopy (newspaper), Gaby (radio), Flutey (FM radio), and Teevy (TV). (Zinzin)

1967 story via Sacramento Room Digital Collections

AI-sore

• Ted Gioia
  on “the new aesthetics of slop”: “AI image generation is boring unless the results are stupid. That’s the consensus view. And it’s why AI artists are in a race to make the most abominable Slop they can extract from the bots.” (Read my own post about AI slop.)

• What happens when you ask ChatGPT to name itself? (Russ Somers — VP of marketing at Quantified.ai — via Anthony Shore)

• A new technology developed at a London hackathon allows AI voice assistants to communicate with each other using a special “conversational technology” incomprehensible to humans that the developers have dubbed GibberLink: “In the demo, one AI agent, acting as a customer seeking a hotel room for a wedding, began a conversation in human speech. Midway through the exchange, upon detecting that its conversation partner was also an AI, both agents transitioned to GibberLink mode. The communication then shifted to a series of structured audio tones that efficiently conveyed data without the overhead of generating natural language.” No etymology is given, but I surmise that “GibberLink” is derived from gibberish, “inarticulate chatter; jargon.” (eWeek, with thanks to

  Caitlin Barrett
  )

Poopy trademarks

No, really.

Caitlin Barrett

again!

On the air

How did “ham radio” get its name? Grammar Girl, aka Mignon Fogarty, investigates. (My late father was a ham radio operator, call sign W6ELY, and I regret that I never learned the skill myself.)

City names as brands

Two related pieces by the always-perceptive James I. Bowie:

• Nike’s new Flagstaff Book 1 sneaker is part of a growing trend in companies naming products after U.S. cities and towns. Topping the list: Buffalo, with 763.8 “Buffalo” trademarks per 100,000 residents. (Fast Company)

• The complete list of city-name brands, from Buffalo to North Las Vegas (Emblemetric). See, for example, Reno As Fuck India Pale Ale, which I wrote about in 2023 for the Strong Language blog.

Words and music

I recently finished John Robert Hilburn’s 2024 biography of Randy Newman, A Few Words in Defense of Our Country — the title comes from one of Newman’s songs — and while I can’t say it’s the best-written book I’ve read lately, it certainly got me re-immersed in Newman’s oeuvre, which I’ve admired for decades. I’ll leave you with one of Newman’s most biting and brilliant songs, “That’s Why I Love Mankind,” sung here by Etta James. Listen to Newman’s version here; read the lyrics here.

1. Bluesky user Realitide wrote this mock-review: “‘Trump Take Egg’ derives its devastating rhetorical power from its grammatical austerity, semantic density, and ability to evoke primal emotional responses. Its chthonic quality—rooted in something ancient and fundamental—makes it feel like an elemental truth etched into collective consciousness.”