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Welcome news for word nerds: the new Fiat Lex (“a podcast about dictionaries by people who write them”), featuring Kory Stamper (author of the immensely entertaining Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries) and Steve Kleinedler, whose book I haven’t read yet. See also: The great American word mapper, which lets you map usage in the US based on a harvest of billions of tweets.
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Doesn’t the legal system’s insistence in the face of any amount of evidence prove the problem? → One Test Could Exonerate Him. Why Won’t California Do It?
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“Of the roughly 230 men who flew mail for the Post Office Department between 1918 and 1927, 32 lost their lives in plane crashes. Six died during the first week of operation alone.” → Delivering the Mail Was Once One of the Riskiest Jobs in America. See also: A Chicago Man Filled Out a Single Postal Change of Address Form and Redirected UPS Corporate Mail to His Apartment. And, just for funsies (via Reader B.), Postal Service Unveils New Line Of Stamps Honoring Americans Who Still Use Postal Service.
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We need more voices like Wil’s. → My name is Wil Wheaton. I live with chronic Depression, and I am not ashamed.
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Chess boxing (yep, it’s a thing) as a path upward for poor Indian girls? You bet. → How an Obscure Sport is Transforming the Lives of Indian Girls. Via Mr. TH.INK, a newsletter everyone in the Katexic Clamor should subscribe to.
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Laughter climax (and conception): the structure of stand-up comedy. See also: Researchers uncovered 2 pages of ‘dirty jokes’ in Anne Frank’s diary.
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The secret languages of flight attendants, plants, ships, handheld fans and babies.
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This bot-written Modern Love column is one of the best and funniest pieces of its kind I’ve ever read. → My Marriage Was Just Dinner
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Think you can explain a hard idea using only the ten hundred most used words? Prove it!
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Today in 1992, the City Council of Chicago votes to ban the sale of spray paint claiming that “mindless ‘taggers'” were turning them into “weapons of terror.” The ban wouldn’t be enforced until 1994, when Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens turned down an emergency request by spray paint manufacturers and sellers to postpone the ban. While the city’s handgun ban was struck down in 2013, spray paint cans remain unavailable for sale in the city’s limits.