Language update for Jan


Professor Polistra brings a large bucket of language shit this month, plus an overused non-verbal 'phrase'. The puzzled shrug has become The Official Picture Of Trump. He is always shown stupidly shrugging.

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Other Colleagues:

Latest substitute for relative, wife, child, husband, etc.

BBC interviewing some idiot "authority" on sanitation who says you're more likely to get diseases from your pets than to get health from your pets.

"You should certainly wash your hands before touching friends or other colleagues in the household."

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Dillusion:

Nice dual-purpose spelling by a Facebook user.

"Someone in a lifted pick up probably thinking they were invincible on these icy roads.... Unfortunately the ice and power poll brought that dillusion down to reality."

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Not Us:

Major theme lately. Especially common on the question of borders, both in EU and in USA STRONG. In EU, the Good Countries like Krautland yell at the Bad Countries like Hungary for attempting to protect their own people from criminals. Protecting your own people from invaders and criminals is NOT US! Not Our Values! Not Europe! ... until next week, when the Good Countries find it necessary to build their own fences. The yelling continues, even after Fences R Us.

Exactly the same with Trump's radical proposal to protect our own people from criminals and invaders. The other candidates yell in unison: NOT US! Not American! Not Our Values!

In a different context, Sanders's campaign got caught pilfering Hillary's playbook from DNC databases. Sanders says: "This is not the type of campaign that we run."

But in fact it IS the type of campaign that you run. It is YOUR campaign, which YOU ARE RUNNING. You pilfered the data. Pilfering R Us.

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Flap dancers:

From an article on Yahoo's persistent self-destruction:

Yahoo faces possibly the biggest crisis in its 21-year history, but for one night Yahoo celebrated as if it were the Roaring Twenties. The troubled Internet company marked the holidays with a Great Gatsby-themed party... In swanky, spacious digs along the water, revelers dressed as flap dancers enjoyed food, booze and a cover band...

This must be the neuter version of flappers. Couldn't go all the way with flapppersons, so settled on flap dancers. Problem: Flappers were girls. There was no such thing as a male flapper. So you're defeating your own purpose of erasing males from the universe. In this case you're erasing females.

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Climate floods:

"Designer babies, climate floods, and AI running your life: what the world could look like in 2030..."

We no longer have plain old floods. They're all Climate Floods now. We don't need to build any levees or dams; we only need to chant magic incantations and shake magic bones to propititate Gaia.

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Wow,

In fake 'conversations' like radio interviews and infomercials, a dull Wow, sounding more like a preposition than an exclamation, has become the default response to avoid dead air when no real answer is needed. A lot like Jap hai.

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Hypocritical to:

From a WashPost article on Trump's strange inexplicable unprecedented unimaginable habit of TELLING THE FUCKING TRUTH:

"I'm the only one who's willing to talk about these problems," he said. He later implied that the former president's past is hypocritical to his wife's current presidential campaign.

The writer is so completely gobsmacked by encountering truth and facts that she can't even write.

Result is an odd mishmash, almost a portmanteau. Bill's past is contrary to Hillary's campaign, and Bill's past is critical to our examination of Hillary's campaign? Something like that.

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Compound:

Radio news about the Oregon ranch protest....

"At the compound the militia members are occupying ..."

It wasn't a compound when it was a Federal Park Service building. It was a building. Now that it's occupied by Infidels, it's deconsecrated. Since it's a compound, Delta Force can locate it and bomb it down to bedrock.

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Plod:

Prof P confesses to complete puzzlement at this word.

From an AP story on yet another commodity dropping in price:

As the price of marijuana continues to drop, Washington pot businesses are struggling to keep up with the changes. ... Since legal marijuana entered the market in July 2014, prices have dropped from $25 to $30 per gram to about $10 a gram now. According to the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board, prices are plummeting as new retailers plod the market. Tax changes are also lowering the wholesale price.

Plod the market? Obviously a typo. Seems to be in the original AP, duplicated in all other refs on the web. What's the correct word? There are a number of good choices ... enter, join, jump into, probe, test ... but none are anywhere near plod. Plot and Prod are phonetically close, but neither makes more sense than plod.

Labels: Language update

  ¶ 4:22 AM