May linkstack

A name change for the Boy Scouts, the (possible) end of "DEI," the naughty pontiff, and more.

Dear readers: There are lots of links in this newsletter, which means it may exceed Substack’s email limits. To read the whole thing, use your browser or install the Substack app. (Always a good idea anyway, because I sometimes correct typpos typos after the email is distributed.)

Happy end of May, and greetings to all the new subscribers and followers who’ve signed up since the April linkstack. A quick briefing/refresher:

• This is what “fritinancy” means. (Yes, it’s a “real word.”)

• If you’re a naming nerd, check out Naming Briefs, my occasional critiques of names in the news (or newly on my radar). More Naming Briefs coming soon!

• If you want to know what Sets! My teeth!! On edge!!!, read this. Should I do more of this sort of thing? Maybe I should.

• If you want a quick overview of everything I’ve written here since August 2023, check out the archive.

On to¹ the links!

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If you’re going to San Francisco

A few tips from a near-native for anyone considering a San Francisco visit this summer:

• Bring warm clothes. It will almost certainly be cold, damp, foggy, and windy in June and July, and maybe in August (Fogust) as well. (Not rainy, though.) Daytime temps rarely rise above 70°F/21°C until September. Nights are downright chilly. But travel 20 miles to the north, east, or south and you’ll experience Real Summer, if that’s your jam.

• Don’t rent a car. Instead . . .

• Book a city tour with Reed Kirk Rahlmann’s Small Car Big Time Tours. The small car in question is Reed’s racing-green Mini Cooper, which Reed says is the only commercially licensed Mini convertible in the U.S. It seats two in relative comfort, three if you squeeze. Reed will tailor the tour to your preferences: hippies? beatniks? churches? beaches? And because he’s a font of knowledge and a man of many exotic talents, including improv acting, vaudeville, and name development — we’ve worked together on many naming projects — his tour narrative is guaranteed to be witty and informative. I treated my friend Jane to a Small Car Big Time tour when she visited from Israel in February, and I’m pretty sure I learned as much as she did. (Reed did not pay me to write this endorsement, nor did I get a free tour.)

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Watchlist

I spent a week in Los Angeles recently and took advantage of my brother Michael’s Apple TV+ subscription² to see Steve! (martin): A Documentary in 2 Pieces. Is there any performer who has reinvented himself as frequently and successfully as Steve Martin? I think not. (Partial list: magician, banjo player, standup comic, comic actor, serious actor³, author, composer, beloved co-star of Only Murders in the Building.) The documentary was directed by Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom), and it’s revealing and delightful. Disclaimer: I’ve been a huge Steve Martin fan for decades. Here’s Eric Deggans’s review on NPR.

More Apple-ation

In case you missed it, Apple’s “Crush!” ad was appalling. PR Week says it won’t affect the company. Watch the ad in reverse.

Ken Segall, the man who in 1998 persuaded Steve Jobs to name a new Apple computer iMac instead of the internally developed “and rather dreadful” MacMan, says Apple should stop using the “i” prefix in branding. (Wired)

Be prepared

Boy Scouts of America will change its name to Scouting America in early 2025. “We are an organization for all. It's time our name reflects that,” BSA President Roger Krone said in a virtual news conference. After a series of sex-abuse lawsuits, BSA membership is down from more than 2 million in 2018 to about 1 million today; that number includes 176,234 girls. (NPR)

Is “DEI” DOA?

The once-trendy initialism for “diversity, equity, and inclusion” is disappearing or being rebranded as simply “inclusion” or even “IED,” which in other contexts can mean “improvised explosive device.” More than 5,000 reader comments on this article. (Washington Post gift link)

Capital offense

“Anti-Semitism,” with a hyphen and a capital S, is seen by some writers and editors as pejorative. The spelling was popularized “by bigot Wilhelm Marr in 1879. He claimed that Jews were an alien race and called for their removal from Germany.” The preferred spelling in many publications is “antisemitism.” (Mother Jones) Hat tip: Lane Greene.

What did Pope Francis say?

The Daily Mirror offered “f*****ry” as the bowdlerized translation. James Harbeck investigates on Strong Language, the sweary blog about swearing. (I write for Strong Language, too!)

Pop-culture word quiz

Where did we get “regift” and “embiggen”? What’s the correct definition of “friend zone”? I scored 100 percent on this Merriam-Webster quiz, and I’m not sure whether to be proud or chagrined.

Unexpected eponyms

I hadn’t known that San Francisco’s Main Street, which has never been a main street, was named for a Mr. Charles Main. (Things Unexpectedly Named After People.) Hat tip: Liav Lewitt.

How some healthcare companies got their names

“Augmedix comes from ‘augmenting’ and ‘medics.’ Curally comes from ‘cura’ in Latin, ‘care’ and ‘ally.’ Carna Health takes its name after a Roman goddess, protector of vital organs. Nabla comes from a mathematical symbol commonly used in machine learning. Boulder Care represents the heavy weight of addiction.” (FierceHealthcare) Shocker: The headline is not “What’s in a Name?”

Three Substack discoveries

1. Don't Buy What I'm Selling , by Lu Chekowsky, an Emmy-winning writer and creative director. “Musings on advertising, capitalism, humanity and the robots who know everything about you (from someone who used to live inside the machine).” Her recent post on Ilon Specht complements my own tribute to the late copywriter. (The two posts even share a title.)

2. The Inevitable Substack (nice title!), by best-selling novelist Jennifer Weiner, who shares insights about writing I’ve rarely found elsewhere. Her careful reads of Prince Harry’s Spare and Britney Spears’s The Woman in Me expose the line between author and ghostwriter and the importance of voice in memoir. Also recommended: How should writers respond to bad reviews?

3. Snaxshot , by Andrea Hernández, who scans the food and beverage industry to find what’s interesting, weird, or on the horizon. I recently learned from Snaxshot about Chiaviar™ — chia seeds pretending to be fish roe — which strikes me as a bad idea on several levels. The ™ is because they’re still waiting for U.S. trademark registration and don’t yet qualify for an ®.

On “nostalgia”

Jess Zafarris (Useless Etymology) traces the history of the word from medical diagnosis to “a universal feeling.” I’m interested in that universal feeling myself; see my story on Medium, from December 2020 (gift link).

Skewed nostalgia

“Adults think U.S. society was historically nicest and comfiest — most moral and close-knit, families happiest — whenever they happened to be little kids, and culture (music, movies, TV, fashion, sports, food) best whenever they were adolescents.” - Kurt Andersen on Bluesky citing research by the Washington Post (gift link).

“Nostalgia tends to peak at a single age”: Washington Post chart

Macabre emojis

What’s up with those little skull images beloved by The Youths? Linguist and youth representative Adam Aleksic exhumes their meaning. (Washington Post gift link)

Antique emojis

Some amazing research here: Tracing the history of emojis back to the 1980s — and even earlier. (Matt Sephton, via Kottke)

Disappearing apostrophes

North Yorkshire (UK) Council will remove apostrophes from street signs to avoid “problems with computer systems.” I guess we know who’s (or whos) in charge now. (BBC)

Broccolini protection

After 25 years of declining to enforce its registered trademark for broccolini (whoops, Broccolini®), a hybrid of broccoli and gai lan (“Chinese broccoli”), Del Monte Produce has launched a PR and social-media campaign to remind the public that “our product name cannot be used generically.” No lawsuits yet, but stay tuned. (TechDirt)

Broccolini (Brassica oleracea)

This is bad

Susan B. Glasser in The New Yorker: “ ‘IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!’ —a blunt Trump social-media post from last year cited in the [CREW] report—might as well be the explicit slogan of his 2024 campaign.” It’s not exactly “Ask not what your country can do for you” or even “Keep cool with Coolidge,” is it.

This is better

Bettergoods, the name of Walmart’s new private-label brand, “is deceptively simple — and for anyone familiar with the Target brand [Good & Gather] comes across as derivative — but it works.” (Catchword)

Via Walmart, whose press release calls the brand “an elevated experience,” because everything is elevated now.

Name that logo!

Canadian jet manufacturer Bombardier’s new logo has a nickname: the Mach. Sociologist and design critic James I. Bowie writes that the announcement is in step with a growing trend of logo names, from Nike’s Swoosh to Airbnb’s Bélo. “Naming a logo,” writes Bowie, “imbues the mark itself with an identity, and with it a sense of being ‘bespoke,’ rather than ‘off the rack.’ This sort of naming is, in a funny way, branding for branding.” (Fast Company)

1. Not “onto.” That sets my teeth on edge, too.

2. My own home is still an Apple-free zone.

3. If you’ve never seen Pennies from Heaven (1981), find a way to stream it. One of my all-time favorites. (And yes, I love the BBC series on which it’s based, too.)