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Deion Sanders says he’ll intervene if ‘wrong' NFL team tries to draft son Shedeur

Coach Prime tells the "Speak" crew how he plans to handle the NFL draft process with quarterback son, Shedeur, and two-way star Travis Hunter.




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2024 Fantasy football: Top performers in Week 10

Check out which players had the top performances in Week 10 of the fantasy football season.




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Dailyn Swain takes it coast-to-coast for an UNREAL jam to extend Xavier's lead over Jackson State

Dailyn Swain took it coast-to-coast for an UNREAL jam to extend the Xavier Musketeers' lead over Jackson State. 




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UK-to-US Word of the Year 2022: fit

Having let the year run its course, I'm now am ready to declare the Separated by a Common Language Words of the Year for 2022. As ever, there are two categories: US-to-UK and UK-to-US.  To be a SbaCL WoTY, the word just needs to have been noticeable in some way that year in the other country. 

For past WotYs, see here. And now...

The 2022 UK-to-US Word of the Year is: fit

Now, of course the word fit is general English when we use it in contexts like The shoes fit or I'm going to get fit this year. But those fits are not my UK-to-US Word of the Year. The fit I'm talking about is the informal British usage that means 'attractive, sexy'. A close (orig.) AmE synonym is hot

Ben Yagoda, on his Not One-Off Britishisms blog, first noticed this sense of fit in an American context back in 2013, but it seems to have taken hold in the US in the past couple of years. I assume this is due to the international popularity of the British television (BrE) programme/(AmE) show Love Island

Here's a clear example of this sense of fit from another UK reality series, Made in Chelsea.*


I like that video just because it's clearly fit meaning 'hot' rather than 'healthy and/or muscular', but if you'd like to hear it said on Love Island, then you can hear it here at 1:38 (though the YouTube automatic subtitling mishears it as fair).

 

This use of the word is new enough to the US that it's included in glossaries for American Love Island fans, like this one and this one. The Oxford English Dictionary added it in 2001:

  British slang. Sexually attractive, good-looking.

1985   Observer 28 Apr. 45/1   ‘Better 'en that bird you blagged last night.’ ‘F—— off! She was fit.’
1993   V. Headley Excess iv. 21   ‘So wait; dat fit brown girl who live by de church ah nuh your t'ing?!’ he asked eyebrows raised.
1999   FHM June (Best of Bar Room Jokes & True Stories Suppl.) 21/1   My first night there, I got arseholed, hit the jackpot and retired with my fit flatmate to her room.
2000   Gloucester Citizen (Nexis) 14 Feb. 11   I would choose Gillian Anderson from the X-Files, because she's dead fit.

Green's Dictionary of Slang has one 19th-century example, but notes that "(later 20C+ use is chiefly UK black)." 

I can't give statistics on how often this fit is use in the US because (a) the word has many other common meanings, making it very difficult to search for in corpora, and (b) this particular meaning is not likely to make it into print all that often. (Slang is like that.) Ben Yagoda considers fit "still an outlier" in AmE. But Ben's probably not in the right demographic for hearing it. 

An anonymous blog reader nominated it, and it struck me as apt for 2022—the popularity of "Love Island UK" (as it's called in the US) was hard to miss on my visit to the US this summer. I got to hear my brother (whose [AmE] college-student daughter loves the show) imitating the contestants, throwing in words like fit. I can easily find young US people using and discussing 'sexy' fit on social media (though I won't share their examples here because those young people didn't ask for the attention). And it made it onto Saturday Night Live, in a sketch about Love Island. You can hear proper fit at 1:11:




So Happy New Year to you! I wrote this post after watching the fireworks (on tv) at midnight. Now I'm (BrE humorous) off to Bedfordshire, so I'll leave the other WotY for tomorrow. Stay tuned for the US-to-UK WotY! 


*Update: I'm told that the Made in Chelsea video does not play in the US. Here's a quick transcript of the relevant bit:

Scene: Two male cast members on a sofa, commenting on this video shot of a female cast member:

M1: God, she's fit. 

M2: She is so hot.

M1:  So fit.

 




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2022 US-to-UK Word of the Year: homer

Yesterday, I declared the UK-to-US SbaCL Word of the Year. You can read about it here

The US-to-UK one may be as controversial as it was the first time (a)round (in May). But here goes: 

2022's US-to-UK Word of the Year is: homer


Why? 
  • Because it is possibly the most talked-about Americanism in British social media this year.
  • Because if I chose the other finalist,* I'd get too many "that's not a word!" complaints.
  • Because it alludes a huge, wordy phenomenon of 2022.
That phenomenon is Wordle, the word game invented by a Welsh engineer in the US, an added transatlantic bonus. 

Homer was the Wordle solution on the 5th of May, setting off a lot of grumpiness on social media. The cartoonist Stephen Collins provides a good illustration of the depth of feeling on the matter on the part of many committed UK Wordlers:




So, this isn't a Word of the Year because British people have taken on the word to refer to baseball home runs. There is very little need to talk about baseball in Britain. It's US-to-UK Word of the Year because it was an Americanism talking point in Britain, demonstrating how separate our vocabularies can be.

But is it an Americanism? The thing is, British people do say homer for lots of other reasons. In various BrE dialects or jargons, it can be a homing pigeon, a (BrE) match played on the home (BrE) pitch in some sports, or "a job that a skilled worker, such as a house painter or a hairdresser[..], does for a private customer in the customer's home, especially when they do this in addition to their main job and without telling their employer or the tax authorities" (Cambridge Dictionary). It's also the name of an ancient Hebrew measurement. But none of these uses are as common in BrE as homer meaning 'home run' is in AmE, and so the word was definitely perceived as an Americanism by British Wordle players. 

Now, this choice isn't exactly original on my part. Cambridge Dictionary made homer their Word of the Year back in November. It's also been noted as one of the most Googled words of the year. But that's another reason why it feels right as the US-to-UK Word of the Year. It not only spiked high in their look-up statistics on the day, it continued to be looked up in their online dictionary for months after—perhaps because BrE speakers just can't stop talking/tweeting about it. Homer was again showing up in tweets about losing one's Wordle streak on 27 December, when the answer was the tricky HAVOC. (And I imagine it was showing up in the less searchable social media as well.)  It'll be interesting to see if it's still being put to these purposes next year, or if it'll have been forgotten. The chances that it'll be forgiven seem thin.

I do encourage you to have a look at Cambridge's Word of the Year site for more on this word, British–American linguistic relations and how Wordle's been affecting dictionary usage. 




*My other "finalist" was them's the breaks, as spoken by Boris Johnson in his resignation speech outside 10 Downing Street. I was sure in July that that would be my "Word" of the Year, but, two Prime Ministers later, this well and truly feels like ancient news now.




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mean to

Reader Sam* recently wrote to me with the following: 

A usage that surprises me every time I hear it is “meant” in the sense of “supposed” or “should be”.  For example, in a BBC news item today the correspondent said that there were “meant to be elections this year in Pakistan.” The emphasis seems to be on obligation rather than intention.

[...] do you think this is a recent development, or has British English always had this usage?


Intention has always been part of mean's meaning. The oldest sense in the OED is a transitive form that simply means 'to intend [something]'—a sense that is today heard in the phrase I meant no harm. Other  intention-y meanings sprang from that. But this mean+to-infinitive usage that Sam mentions has weakened from the 'intend' meaning to signify something more like 'be expected'. 

In the third edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage (1996), this use is discussed under the heading 'a new passive use'. So, yes, it's new. By 2008 in the Oxford Pocket Fowler's Modern English Usage, second edition, the usage is "so familiar"—at least to British readers:

In the passive, to be meant has for long had the sense ‘to be destined (by providence), to have special significance’:

When I need you, you are here. You must see how meant it all is—Iris Murdoch, 1974.

During the 20c this use was joined by another passive use in which meant followed by a to-infinitive means little more than ‘supposed, thought, intended’:

For today he was meant to be having dinner with Stephanie at the Dear Friends—A. N. Wilson, 1986.

This altered meaning is now so familiar that its relative newness can cause surprise.

By the third edition (2016), the 'supposed/thought' angle is not even discussed, which seems to indicate that it's no longer seen as a potential usage problem in British English:

In the meaning ‘to intend’, mean can be followed by a to-infinitive (when the speaker intends to do something: I meant to go), by an object+to-infinitive (when the speaker intends someone else to do something: I meant you to go) and, more formally, by a that-clause with should (I meant that you should go). Use of mean for +object+to-infinitive (☒ I meant for you to go) is non-standard.

The Oxford English Dictionary (in an entry revised in 2001) has this sense:

In passive, with infinitive clause: to be reputed, considered, said to be something. Cf. suppose v. 9a.
1878   R. Simpson School of Shakspere I. 34  It is confessed that Hawkins and Cobham were meant to be buccaneers, and it is absurd to deny the like of Stucley.
1945   Queen 18 Apr. 17/1   ‘Such and such a play,’ they [my children] will say, ‘is meant to be jolly good.’
1972   Listener 9 Mar. 310/1   America..is meant to be a great melting-pot.
1989   Times 30 Mar. 15/1   It [sc. evening primrose oil] is also meant to be good for arthritis.

None of these (Oxford-published) sources mark these usages as particularly British, but over in America, Ben Yagoda at his Not One-Off Britishisms blog discussed meant to in 2019 as a British usage that is 'on the radar' in American English. 

Mean has many senses that (chiefly AmE) smush (also smoosh) into each other, making it tricky to analy{s/z}e.  Take an example like America is meant to be a great melting-pot (that hyphen is very British, by the way). It probably means 'reputed' (i.e. people say it's a melting pot). But it could mean  'intended' (i.e. the Founding Fathers wanted it to be that). Meant in the rest of the 20th-century OED examples can be replaced by reputed, but reputed doesn't seem like the right synonym for the A. N. Wilson example in Fowler's or the Pakistan election example in Sam's email. 

In the GloWbE corpus (data collected in 2012–13), is meant to usually doesn't look very British. For example, here are the results for "is meant to be [adjective]". As you can see (if you click to enlarge), items like is meant to be fun occur at similar rates in American and British. The results are very similar for is meant to be a (as in is meant to be a melting-pot). 




The bar chart shows that the American examples are fewer overall, but not all that different (the black line is to facilitate comparison). 



There is something interesting going on in that adjective list, though: Americans are using is meant to be with very similar adjectives: fun, funny, humorous, entertaining plus odd-one-out free. The British adjectives are more diverse, which probably signals that this 'supposed to be' meaning is more established in BrE and Americans use it in more limited ways.**

In Sam's example there were meant to be elections, the grammatical subject of be meant to is the existential/dummy subject there. If we look for that, a US/UK divide seems clearer. North Americans don't really say there [be] mean to, which will be why that example stood out for Sam:


There does occur slightly less in the US data overall—about 7% less than in British. So that might be a contributing factor. But, to me, it looks like the is meant to construction just isn't as much at home in AmE as it is in BrE at this point. And that's to be expected, since it's a usage that seems to have started in Britain only after American independence. 

I should probably say something about the usual translation of be meant to: be supposed to as in The weather is supposed to be nice. This is much older than meant in the sense of 'expected/assumed'—the OED's first example is from 1616. The 'ought to' meaning, as in I'm supposed to be in bed by now, comes much later—the OED's first citation is from 1884 in Britain. So, we can't call supposed to "AmE" as opposed to BrE. But since meant to has taken on some of supposed to's jobs, and meant to is more British, it's not surprising to find more supposed to in AmE:





I'm really meant/supposed to be in bed by now. So I shall leave it at that! 

------------

*@LKMcFarlane
@aaj1an  
and possibly others have raised this topic with me years before. Sorry it's taken so long! 

**Note that there's always the risk in GloWbE data that writers represented in a particular column are not really from that country. For instance, this data might include British commenters on American websites and vice versa. So, to be safe, I checked that is meant to is also found in the Corpus of Contemporary American English, which doesn't rely so much on internet English. It is. 











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UK-to-US Word of the Year 2023: if I'm honest

Each year since 2006, this blog has designated Transatlantic Words of the Year (WotY). The twist is that I choose the most 'of the year' borrowings from US-to-UK and from UK-to-US.  The question this year raises is: does 2023 deserve SbaCL Words of the Year?

The eligibility criteria remain:

  • Good candidates for SbaCL WotY are expressions that have lived a good life on one side of the Atlantic but for some reason have made a splash on the other side of the Atlantic this year. 
  • Words coined this year are not really in the running. If they moved from one place to another that quickly, then it's hard to say that they're really "Americanisms" or "Britishisms". They're probably just "internetisms". The one situation in which I could see a newly minted word working as a transatlantic WotY would be if the word/expression referenced something very American/British but was nevertheless taken on in the other country.
  • When I say word of the year, I more technically mean lexical item of the year, which is to say, there can be spaces in nominations. Past space-ful WotYs have included gap year, Black Friday, and go missing. I've also been known to declare a pronunciation the Word of the Year.

The UK > US WotY was nominated by Nancy Friedman and endorsed by Ben Yagoda. It is most definitely a phrase:

if I'm honest

In Ben's post the phrase is associated with Great British Bake-Off (AmE: Great British Baking Show) judge Paul Hollywood. When I looked for it on YouGlish, there were a whole slew of examples from the British (BrE) motoring show Top Gear, on which they review cars. In both program(me)s, the phrase is useful in softening criticisms (which both shows have a lot of) by framing them as a truths expressed with some reservation. If I'm honest marks something as an admission of some sort. It's similar to to be honest, which has long been said in the US (and the UK) for much the same reason. (And then there's honestly, which I'll come back to.)

Here are some recent American uses of the phrase:
  • Ryan Gosling, on being cast as Ken in Barbie:  "I just decided I was going to Ken as hard as I can. I Kenned in the morning; I Kenned at night. If I’m honest, I’m Kenning a little right now.”
  • A Real Housewife of Potomac, on getting divorced: "I've just been a little bit complacent about it, if I'm honest, because there are benefits to being married."
  • A Manhattanite writing about an experiment in sustainable living: "If I’m honest, part of me hoped to find the challenge untenable so I could say the cure was worse than the disease and give up."
  • A Chicago police officer commenting on the city's mayoral race: “If I’m honest, I think Catanzara may have some blame here”

These kinds of phrases are discourse markers. They do not add factual meaning to the sentence they're in, but rather make a comment on the speaker's attitude, or stance, toward(s) what they're saying. 

Is it a British phrase? Yes. Here is if I *m honest (i.e., if I'm honest or if I am honest) in the 2012 data of the Corpus of Global Web-Based English, where it occurs 7.6 times more often in BrE than in AmE. (Click on the images to embiggen them.)


And here it is in British sources in the News on the Web Corpus: 


In the 2012 data, the phrase occurs at a much higher rate in GloWbE than in NOW—the NOW number only reaches GloWbE's rate (1.8 per million words) in 2023—because the types of texts in the two corpora are different—there's more variety and informal language on GloWbE. That's something worth keeping in mind when we look at the US numbers. Speaking of which, here they are:


A few things to notice here:
  • Yes, the phrase is going up in AmE news, from 0.08 per million words to 0.19 over the past 13 years. 
  • But it's still below the 2012 GloWbe number (0.24 pmw). One would imagine that if we had current data that was collected in the same way as GloWbE, we'd see a lot more there. 
  • And it's wayyyyyy below the British numbers.
  • A country music album had the title If I'm Honest in 2016, which helps (to) account for the higher number then.

Here's a view of the Google Books numbers, comparing If I'm honest with To be honest (though keep in mind that to be honest here is not necessarily the discourse marker. It could be in any number of sentences about honesty.)

And a comparison of it with the equivalent if I'm being honest, which is less common, but making a move in AmE.



The pictures (and numbers) tell the story of a British expression that's become more and more common in BrE, and that has raised American exposure to (and use of) it. But note that it's rising far faster in BrE than in AmE. So, does it meet the first of my eligibility criteria? Maybe not. But it's what I've got for this year!


P.S.  Honestly

Honestly, used as a discourse marker in a sentence seems to be more common in AmE. But as a stand-alone expression of exasperation, it seems more common in BrE (Honestly!). It's definitely more common from the BrE speakers in my house than from me, but maybe I'm just more exasperating to live with than they are. Here are searches with punctuation from GloWbE:







Will there be a US-to-UK WotY?  To be honest, it's unclear at this point! 




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US-to-UK Word of the Year: OK

See here for the UK-to-US WotY post.

Time for the 2023 US-to-UK Word of the Year. Before people complain that this word has been in British English too long for it to count as a word of 2023, let me remind you of the criteria for SbaCL WotYs: 

  • Good candidates for SbaCL WotY are expressions that have lived a good life on one side of the Atlantic but for some reason have made a splash on the other side of the Atlantic this year. 
  • Words coined this year are not really in the running. If they moved from one place to another that quickly, then it's hard to say that they're really "Americanisms" or "Britishisms". They're probably just "internetisms". The one situation in which I could see a newly minted word working as a transatlantic WotY would be if the word/expression referenced something very American/British but was nevertheless taken on in the other country.
  • When I say word of the year, I more technically mean lexical item of the year, which is to say, there can be spaces in nominations. 
This word did make something of a splash in the British news this year. Here's a tweet from the Daily Mail:



And what was that American word?  *fanfare* The 2023 US-to-UK Word of the Year is 


OK!

(Also spelled okay, but we'll get to that!)

Though it has appeared in BrE since at least the late 19th century (originating in AmE earlier in that century), OK took a while to make its way into everyday speech in the UK. (Click on images to enlarge them.) Here's its trajectory in books (via Google Books Ngram Viewer). 


OK is underrepresented in earlier years in this graph because it was spelled/spelt O.K. with (BrE) full stops/(AmE) periods until and into the 20th century. As far as I know, there's no way to search for a word with that punctuation in it in Google Ngram Viewer, so I'm a bit stuck in showing more of the historical picture. 

One of American English's great observers/collectors/analysts, Allan Walker Read put significant effort into the study of OK, tracing its origins to a humorous spelling of all correct. Then people forgot about the joke and it went on to become "the English language's most successful export" according to this Merriam-Webster post, about a book by another late, great American English linguist, Allan Metcalf, relating Read's research. 

Getting back to the UK news in 2023, here's the headline of the Daily Mail's story:

Dailymail.co.uk headline.
Not linking to them because they don't need the traffic

That headline came from a particular interpretation of work by Galina B. Bolden, Alexa Hepburn, and Jenny Mandelbaum published in the Journal of Pragmatics on differences in US and UK usage of right, about which they conclude:

[I]n American English, right conveys the speaker's knowing stance and, in certain environments, the speaker's claim of primary knowledge. In contrast, in British English, right registers provided information as previously unknown, informative, and relevant to the current speaker's ongoing project. 

        [...] 

[S]ome UK usages of right—such as registering of potentially consequential information and projecting a transition—are quite similar to US okay in comparable positions [...]. This suggests a possibility that, in US English, okay took over some of the right usages and/or, in UK English, right took over some of the okay usages."

Their research was inspired by this interaction between BrE-speaking "AB" and AmE speaker "GA":


So, essentially, the British use of right in that context leads GA to think that AB is confirming (rather than acknowledging receipt of) the information. If AB had said OK, then GA would have understood it as acknowledgement rather than confirmation.

Even though the researchers note differences in usage between BrE and AmE okay (though keep in mind that their research is about right), it seems like a fitting US-to-UK WotY because (in whichever usages), it's used more than ever in the UK. Here it is in the British section of the News on the Web corpus, where it shows OK and okay climbing in the last couple of years.




Something to notice about the spelling is that in the news corpus, the OK spelling outnumbers the okay spelling, but in the books okay outnumbers OK. I think this tells us something about spelling style in different kinds of publications. I checked whether it also told us something about adjective (an okay/OK word) versus interjection use (OK! Okay!), but did not find a great difference between the spellings in the different uses.

Since this was a year of warning Britons against it, OK is the 2023 Separated by a Common Language US-to-UK Word of the Year! 














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stodgy and claggy


I have been asked many times if I've written about stodgy, and I always think I have, because I wrote a post about other BrE -odgy adjectives. I have no idea why stodgy didn't make it into that post, but I'm here to rectify the stodgelessness of this blog.


I remember (early in my time in England) asking an English friend what she meant when she said she looked forward to a bit of stodge. She meant 'a carbohydrate-heavy meal'. It was new to me, and this chart from the Corpus of Global Web-Based English (GloWbE) lets you know why: most Americans don't talk about stodge:


stodge in the GloWbE corpus

But stodgy is a different matter:

stodgy in the GloWbE corpus

So how could I not figure out from context what stodge meant, if stodgy be a relatively common word in AmE?

Because Americans typically don't use stodgy to mean 'carb-heavy'.  We mostly use it to refer to someone or something that is so conventional or inactive as to be dull. You can see this in the typical nouns following stodgy in the News on the Web corpus. Here are the top 3:

BrE AmE
1 stodgy food    stodgy industry
2 stodgy performance    stodgy incumbents   
3 stodgy comfort food    stodgy reputation   
    

Stodgy performance (in sport[s]) in the BrE column shows that it can also mean 'dull' in the UK. It's a negative thing when it comes to things other than food, and it can be negative regarding food too. You might feel unpleasantly heavy after eating stodgy food. But stodgy food can also be nice, as I know all too well.


Claggy
 reminds me a bit of stodgy, and it came up recently when I baked some banana bread for a gathering then overheard a participant describe it as claggy. This again, is a BrEism, which might have become somewhat familiar in the US due to the popularity of the Great British Bake Off (aka the Great British Baking Show: see this old post about that). It means 'having a tendency to clot'—so when it is used in reference to baked goods, it means something like 'so moist or undercooked as to feel gummy or clumpy'. 

My thought on having my moist banana bread called claggy: Those who come empty-handed shouldn't throw baking insults, [IrE/AmE] bucko!



I reali{s/z}e I haven't given any AmE equivalents. That's because I felt like these words filled a gap in my vocabulary when I learned them. But if any Americans out there have some good words for these things, do let us know in the comments! 


P.S. See the comments re the original 'muddy' sense of claggy. It's also made an appearance in the NYT Spelling Bee: an archive of disallowed BrE words post.

P.P.S. I dealt with this a bit more in my newsletter, including a less-used synonym of claggy, clatty. Related, there is also clarty ('smeared/covered with sticky mud'), which didn't make it into the newsletter, but is discussed in the comments below.








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What’s Wrong With Today’s Society Captured In 20 Brutally Honest Illustrations

This illustrator, John Holcroft, is genius! check out his website for more.

 




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12 Comics That Put Gender Discrimination Into Perspective




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Trump Posts a Photo of Himself Working on His Inaugural Address and it Gives Spark to a New Meme

Yesterday Trump tweeted a photo of himself hard at work on his inauguration speech and the internet has been having a field day with it. 

It started on twitter with people guessing at what The Donald might be drawing. Shortly thereafter it got a small photoshop battle. 

'What's Donald Drawing' definitely has the potential to catch on.

Get More Trump Memes that are simply tremendous, people tell me how amazing these memes are all the time.





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This Bizarre Instagram Account Inserts Donald Trump Into Your Favorite Movies

Trump In Cinema is dedicated to displaying some of movie history's best moments with Donald Trump at the center of them. Some of these photoshops are too perfect. Others as just... troubling.




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The Internet Took the Opportunity to Photoshop Donald Trump With a Blank Sign and Ran With It

Has Trump seen people holding signs on the internet before? It never turns out well.




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The Untouched Picture of Kim Jong-Un Started a Supreme Photoshop Battle

North Korea released a smiling picture of Kim Jong-Un and were VERY specific about pointing out the fact that the image was untouched. Obviously the first thing the internet did when they got a hold of the image was to touch it up a bit. The results were glorious.




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Bill Clinton Cracked a Terrible Dad Joke on Twitter and Nobody Can Handle It

Slick Willy just had to go and crack a dad joke that simultaneously dug on President Trump and kept the pun game strong, didn't he? Naturally, people were highly entertained and vaguely irritated. 





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Top Memes And Reactions To Last Night's Democratic Presidential Debate

Why do politics always make for the best meme material? We'll just let the politicians speak for themselves. 

In case you missed last night's democratic presidential debate, then we'll give you a little run down: Cory Booker accused Joe Biden of being high, Amy Klobuchar claimed she raised a crap-load of money from her ex-boyfriends, and Biden made an, uh, brain-dead comment about domestic violence. 

Scroll down to watch some of the highlights and view some of the internet's reactions!




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Twitter Roasts Pete Buttigieg For His Staged 'Walk Back To Iowa'

Poor Mayor Pete just can't seem to catch a break on the internet. The presidential candidate from South Bend, Indiana tweeted a photo of himself walking down a hallway on Saturday with the caption, "On my way back to Iowa. It's phase 4. Let's do this." The tweet has been catching a fair amount of flack for appearing to be staged. 

Here are some of Twitter's most amusing reaction memes and tweets!




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Roundup Of Democratic Debate Memes That Roast Last Night's Total Freak Show

Last night's democratic debate in Nevada got pretty damn spicy to say the least. So much so that many are calling it the most entertaining debate of the election cycle so far. Pete spoke Spanish, Warren (and every other candidate, for that matter) came out swinging against Bloomberg, and many, many other things that warranted a monumental cringe fest. 

So please enjoy the following roast-y memes from the night and you can watch a more in-depth recap of it here!




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Internet Reacts To Trump's Comments About Injecting Disinfectant To Cure COVID-19

The internet is reacting to comments made by Donald Trump during a COVID-19-related press briefing held yesterday. Trump claimed that the virus could be treated by bringing "light inside the body" or injecting a disinfectant. Thankfully medical professionals were quick to denounce these claims, and people on the internet have since been creating some excellent memes on the matter. 

This should go without saying, but please don't inject yourself with disinfectant, y'all.




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Confused Reporter Interviewing Trump Is Inspiring Some Top-Tier Memeage

On July 28th, Axios reporter Jonathan Swan interviewed President Donald Trump on HBO about several topics including the staggering number of COVID-19 cases in the United States. His reactions to some of Trump's remarks are priceless, and needless to say, the memes have been top-tier. You can watch the interview here and garner your own reactions. Now on with the memes!




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'Today Years Old' Revelations That Might Teach Something New

The saying "you learn something new every day" may not always feel true, but on Twitter, that's definitely the case. People are very eager to share surprising and little-known facts that blow their minds - whether they're political or about something as trivial as the flavor of green Haribo gummy bears. These facts might not be revelatory for everyone, but they definitely aren't common knowledge. And it's nice to make that brain feel a little bigger. 




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Fresh History Memes Sprinkled With Educational Spice

While it's said that history is always doomed to repeat itself, it's definitely anything but boring. These fresh (and spicy) history memes take the stuff of dull classes and actually spin it into something funny. Lord knows you'll probably learn more from these funny pictures than you will from a Zoom class.




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The Best Memes & Tweets About Four Seasons Total Landscaping

If you haven't been living under a rock for the past week, you're probably familiar with the Four Seasons Total Landscaping drama that occurred earlier this week in Philadelphia. On November 7th, President Trump tweeted that a press conference would be held at the Four Seasons in the Pennsylvania capital. Eight minutes later, Trump tweeted an update - that the conference would actually be taking place at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in the same city. 

The tweets led to a great deal of speculation as to whether the administration had intended to book the hotel. The speculation grew when it became clear that the location, between a sex shop and a crematorium, was probably not their first choice. After Rudy Giuliani spoke to crowds about voter fraud, and even used a convicted sex offender as a witness, the occasion was largely seen as a massive blunder. And as expected, the memes began flowing freely. We've put together some of our favorite examples from the last week, but we're willing to bet this press conference will be talked about for quite a while. Here's hoping Four Seasons Total Landscaping is enjoying the free publicity. 




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What employers can learn from Wells Fargo’s failure to recruit and retain Black talent

We’ve all seen the quotes from Wells Fargo’s CEO in a June memo in which he blamed the bank’s failure in reaching diversity goals on a lack of qualified minority talent. “While it might sound like an excuse, the unfortunate reality is that there is a very limited pool of black talent to recruit from,” […]

The post What employers can learn from Wells Fargo’s failure to recruit and retain Black talent appeared first on DiversityJobs.com.




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How employers can address increased gender inequality due to Working From Home

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the nature of work as we know it. Between flexible work arrangements, part-time contracts, and side gigs, it’s been difficult to gauge just how many people are working from home as a result. But according to Stanford’s research, 42% of the U.S. labor force was working from home full time […]

The post How employers can address increased gender inequality due to Working From Home appeared first on DiversityJobs.com.




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Are women really no better off in the workplace after #MeToo?

The #MeToo movement seemed poised to help us create more equitable workplaces — where women thrive as much as men. Unfortunately, we have yet to see this come to fruition in any significant way. And, in some cases, the backlash has made it even more difficult for women to get ahead. The hashtag #MeToo was […]

The post Are women really no better off in the workplace after #MeToo? appeared first on DiversityJobs.com.




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One year after Pulse Nightclub tragedy, new NFPA standard for preparedness and response to active shooter and/or hostile events being developed

As the nation marks the one-year anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando this week, a group of experts on active shooter/hostile incident response will assemble at National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) headquarters to develop NFPA 3000, Standard for Preparedness and Response to Active Shooter and/or Hostile Events. It is expected that the initial standard will be completed by early 2018; then the public will have the opportunity to offer input for immediate review.




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NFPA President Jim Pauley addresses Grenfell Tower fire as evidence of shortfalls in addressing today’s global fire problem

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire in London, where 79 people died or are presumed dead and many more were injured, serious concerns and questions around flammability of exterior cladding, the lack of fire sprinklers and the notion of “shelter in place,” among other subjects, have been brought to the forefront by the news media and the public at large. Jim Pauley, president and CEO of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), addressed these troubling fire safety issues in the upcoming edition of NFPA Journal, the association’s membership publication, which will be officially released next month.




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NFPA and ESFI work to reduce fatalities caused by electric shock drowning in pools and at marinas

With summer in full swing, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and Electrical Safety Foundation International (ESFI) are joining forces to remind people about the potential electrical hazards in swimming pools, hot tubs and spas, on board boats and in the waters surrounding boats, marinas and launch ramps.




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Leave fireworks to the professionals

Independence Day and fireworks go hand in hand, but fireworks shouldn’t go in consumers’ hands. That’s the message the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is reinforcing this Fourth of July. Fireworks annually cause devastating burns, injuries, fires, and even death, making them too dangerous to be used safely by consumers.




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NFPA to develop fire risk assessment tool in response to tragic high-rise fires incidents

In light of a recent series of fires in high-rise buildings with combustible facades, including the Grenfell tower fire, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has initiated a project to develop a fire risk assessment tool for these types of buildings to assist local authorities globally with fire safety in their communities.




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NFPA and The Center for Campus Fire Safety raise student awareness of fire hazards in on- and off-campus housing during September and October

September is Campus Fire Safety Month and this year the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and The Center for Campus Fire Safety (The Center) are working together to promote their national Campus Fire Safety for Students campaign. The campaign raises awareness about the dangers of fires among college-aged students who live in on- and off-campus college housing.




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NFPA launches Policy Institute to support fire and life safety efforts

Citing the need to have an arm’s-length view on policy issues that impact fire, life and electrical safety, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) has announced the launch of the NFPA Fire and Life Safety Policy Institute. The Policy Institute will study a range of issues and provide guidance and information to policymakers on the best approaches governments can take to improve safety for the citizens they serve.




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As today’s homes burn faster than ever, this year’s Fire Prevention Week campaign presents critical home escape planning and practice messages

Knowing that today’s homes burn faster than ever, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) announced “Every Second Counts: Plan Two Ways Out” as the official theme for this year’s Fire Prevention Week campaign, October 8-14, 2017. Experts say you may have as little as two minutes (or even less) to safely escape a typical home fire from the time the smoke alarm sounds.




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Marguerite Sheffer’s playlist for her story collection “The Man in the Banana Trees”

"I’m always on the lookout for songs that include a gear-change moment in them: so useful for figuring out those climactic moments in a short story where a turn happens."




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Heidi Bell’s playlist for her story collection “Signs of the Imminent Apocalypse”

"For this playlist, I’ve strung together some favorite songs that reflect the subject matter and themes of the stories and that serve as fuel for my creative process."




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Megan Staffel’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Causative Factor

"...while I’m writing I need total silence, but even so, the music shares such a similar landscape with the text it’s hard to believe it wasn’t present from the beginning."




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31 Days, 31 Lists: 2018 Fabulous Photography Books for Kids

Every year I try to keep an eye out for any children's book that gives ample attention to photographs in some way. Thanks to advances in technology and printing, it's never been easier to make books with photographic images. Yet despite this, few come out. Today's list is a small one, but I'm grateful that each and every single one of these books exists.



  • 31 Days 31 Lists
  • 31 days 31 lists
  • photography
  • picture book photography

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Fuse 8 n’ Kate: How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

Perhaps my favorite episode of this podcast in a long time. We talk about Thurl Ravenscroft, odd Grinch theories, like the fact that his heart may expand and shrink regularly, if the chimneys are essentially pneumatic tubes, and that the Jim Carrey Grinch film had a key party in it.



  • Fuse 8 n' Kate
  • How the Grinch Stole Christmas

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Moving Institutions Toward Open—Building on 6 Years of the Open GLAM Survey

“Violette Heymann, 1910” by Odilon Redon (French, 1840–1916), The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection ,CC0. Creative Commons’ Open Culture Platform is supporting 25 institutions in opening up access to their collections by the end of 2025. Members of the Platform community will be working together to create a policy template, conduct outreach,…

The post Moving Institutions Toward Open—Building on 6 Years of the Open GLAM Survey appeared first on Creative Commons.




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CC strategic workshop reveals big opportunities for open access to cultural heritage

In May 2024, CC organized a strategic workshop in Lisbon to develop a roadmap for future action to advance our work towards a UNESCO instrument on open cultural heritage. In this blog post, we share the full report and some of its key highlights.

The post CC strategic workshop reveals big opportunities for open access to cultural heritage appeared first on Creative Commons.




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CC Legal Tools Recognized as Digital Public Goods

“Power Grid” by Ram Joshi is licensed via CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. We’re proud to announce Creative Commons’ Legal Tools have been reviewed and accepted into the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA) DPG Registry. The DPGA is a multi-stakeholder initiative, endorsed by the United Nations Secretary-General, that is working to accelerate the attainment of the UN…

The post CC Legal Tools Recognized as Digital Public Goods appeared first on Creative Commons.



  • About CC
  • Licenses & Tools
  • Sustaining the Commons
  • Digital Public Goods
  • DPGA
  • DPGs

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Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage

Creative Commons (CC) is proud to launch the TAROCH Coalition (Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage), a collaborative effort to achieve the adoption of a UNESCO standard-setting instrument to improve open access to cultural heritage. We are grateful to the Arcadia Fund for supporting this initiative. Below we share an overview of TAROCH and…

The post Creative Commons Launches TAROCH Coalition for Open Access to Cultural Heritage appeared first on Creative Commons.