June linkstack

A new publication, sad naming news, bad AI news, Australian slang, and more.

Greetings from the realm of Karl the Fog and welcome to all my new followers and subscribers. Linkstack is my monthly roundup of news about words, brands, and the language of commerce from Substack and beyond. Here’s last month’s linkstack, which will link you to other installments. And here’s the full archive of my writing here.

Some suggestions: If you’re reading this as an email, tap or click on the headline for a superior experience. If you like what you see, please let me know by tapping the little heart icon. If you’re motivated, let me know in the comments what you’d like to see in next month’s linkstack. Maybe something you yourself have written or created! You can also email me at nancyf@wordworking.com.

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“Paper Airplane” takes flight

After Nick Norlen was laid off by Dictionary.com last year¹ along with most of the editorial staff, he applied for 113 full-time jobs. No luck. So he decided to make lemonade in the form of a brand-new digital magazine, Paper Airplane. His vision: “The grown-up version of the magazines you loved as a kid. Writing, games, comics, photos, art, and activities by a dream team of contributors. No cynicism. No ads. No A.I.”

Paper Airplane is now out in the world, and it’s a total delight. Contributors include Mary Roach, Erin McKean, Kory Stamper, and a bunch of other wildly talented folks. You can preview it here and download the whole issue by making a donation to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, a nongovernmental, not-for-profit international organization dedicated to providing legal, social, and health services in all 50 U.S. states and internationally.

Here’s something I learned from Paper Airplane: Paper airplanes — or “paper darts” — existed before airplanes. Download the issue to see (and print) an 1882 diagram for making your own paper dart!

Will there be more of Paper Airplane? From Nick: “After this issue, which is donation-only, I'm planning to launch a campaign to crowdfund the magazine so I can pay my contributors (and myself).”

Paper Airplane, volume 1. Cover art by Kaitlin Brito.

A serious read

“Understanding third-trimester abortions is the key to understanding all abortion care,” writes Dr. Shelley Sella in Beyond Limits: Stories of Third-Trimester Abortion Care. This is Sella’s first book, after many years as a fearless and compassionate ob-gyn on the front lines of abortion care. She worked in Wichita, Kansas, with Dr. George Tiller until 2009, when he was assassinated in his church by a “pro-life” zealot. She later helped set up a third-trimester abortion practice at Southwestern Women’s Options in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Disclosure: I met Sella more than 20 years ago, when we were teammates on a masters swim team in Berkeley, California, and she was commuting to Kansas and New Mexico to provide abortion services. She retired in 2021.) Beyond Limits is a short, important book that needs to be read by legislators, judges, and — well, everyone. Sella is now on a book-promotion tour; I saw her last week at Clio’s Books in Oakland, and she’ll be in New York City on July 2 in conversation with The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino.

The (depressing) naming news

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordered the Navy to rename the oiler ship USNS Harvey Milk, named for the gay-rights pioneer. An official “said that the timing of the announcement — occurring during Pride month — was intentional.” (Military.com)

The inevitable A.I. section

1.

Etymologist Dave Wilton asked ChatGPT to research some words and phrases. His conclusion: “ChatGPT’s Research AI is worse than useless in the tasks it is being touted for. It is actively misleading.” (Word Origins, “I Asked ChatGPT …”)

2.

“To check the ETA of my bleak future, I asked ChatGPT to write a grammar book in the style of June Casagrande.” You’ll be shocked, I know, to learn that it did not go well. (Grammar Underground, “Chat GPT Can’t Do Me.”)

3.

“In case you don't already know, Betteridge’s Law is ‘Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no’. Not only did AI suggest the incorrect term, it botched the definition of that incorrect term.” (Mike Pope, “AI Versus Anyone Who Knows a Thing.”)

Name-origin story #1

Wendy Lesser, cultural critic and founder of the arts journal The Threepenny Review, launched The Lesser Blog in June 2006 (which happens to be exactly when I began blogging). I’ve been reading Lesser’s writing for years but just recently noticed, or maybe re-noticed, this tiny note in the sidebar:

I struggled to come up with a good title for the blog and at first resisted using my own name, feeling (as those named Lesser are bound to feel) that diminishment is not necessarily a selling point. But then I figured that if people named Grudge or Drudge can use their names on websites, I should certainly not be abashed at calling this The Lesser Blog. So here it is, and I hope you enjoy it.

Lesser’s most recent post, which blends classical-music reviews with an account of her sister’s death, is especially lucid and moving.

Name-origin story #2

Kenny Farquharson

, who writes

The Jaggy Thistle

newsletter, is a more recent discovery. He writes “about Scotland in all its wondrous complexity, and the wider world from a Scottish point of view,” and if you scroll down on his About page, you’ll discover a delightful origin story of his newsletter’s odd name.

English around the world

The OED’s June update includes newly added words from around the English-speaking world, including this surprise (to me): Gunzel is Australian slang for “a person who loves trams or trains.” If the word looks familiar to you, it may be because it has a direct connection to U.S. slang gunsel, which had been borrowed from Yiddish gundzel or gendzl, which originally meant “gosling,” then “catamite,” then “young hoodlum.” What a language, huh?

Workplace words

John Kelly — another former Dictionary.com editorial staffer — has launched a series he calls Workplace Word Origins, about words like negotiate, incentive, and recruit. Read his updates on LinkedIn or on his blog, Mashed Radish.

Soda words

Speaking of LinkedIn — yes, I’m still enjoying it there! — naming consultant John Elliott recently published a lively and surprising history of the word “diet” in soda branding. Did you know that the original “diet sodas” were marketed exclusively to diabetics and other sugar-restricted hospital patients?

Sweary stuff

I collected a shitload of links for Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing. What’s a shitload? Iva Cheung, another Strong Language contributor, investigated in 2015.

The magic of rhythm

Jay Heinrichs

, who writes about rhetoric and the art of persuasion, shares his views on “the most underrated figure of speech”: the paean. “Soldiers used it going into battle. I've used it going into a workout.” And advertisers use it in slogans. Here’s something I learned from Jay’s post: “The original Paean was a Greek god who served as official physician to the immortals on Olympus. He became associated with language that warded off evil or injury.”

1. The layoffs were the sad consequence of an acquisition by IXL Learning — bad initialism alert! — which had previously gobbled up the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com and laid off all freelance contributors, including me.