Stan Carey

I can't get my head around it

He could peek through a keyhole with both eyes

Traditional Irish expression, said of a man with a very thin face: He could kiss a goat between the horns

It really is. "Trakkie daks" doesn't follow the pattern, though, which is why I excluded it. That goes for a lot of AusE and other hypocorisms: they're similar, but they don't fit this particular formula. "Maccy D's" emerged in the 1970s as US Black and campus slang, as noted in the post.

Thanks! Most are a few years old, and I may have underplayed the Australian influence. But many refer to peculiarly British events/places, so that seemed worth foregrounding. (Was "bloggy p" familiar/old hat? I thought I'd coined it😭.) I've linked to an older post that focuses on AusE abbreviations.

Loved this. And glad the update was added, because I was going to add to the appeal for it.

"always the golfer, never the wildfire victim."

A review of Unbelievable (2019) Succeeds as both immersive procedural thriller and powerful structural polemic. It feels qualitatively different from the start, its empathy for victims and lack of interest in the history or emotiona...

Mini-review of a miniseries: Unbelievable (2019)
letterboxd.com/stancarey/fi...

Giving out, Irish style The phrasal verb give out has several common senses: distribute – ‘she gave out free passes to the gig’ emit – ‘the machine gave out a distinctive hum’ break down, stop work…

Saw this sentence with both the Irish English "give out" and a standardized-English "give out":

"The banks often give out¹ that the rules are too tight and they can’t give out² the money people need."

¹ complain
² issue, distribute

Source and commentary: stancarey.wordpress.com/2013/09/07/g...

Parsing this as "per Mutations Man" because I listen to oddball superheros

Serve a man cheese and win his congested, stuttering heart
#tempting

What a viral speech in Ireland reveals about colonial history and Caribbean English Linguists say reaction to Irish TD’s remarks reflects shared regional English roots and enduring impact of empire

Saw some excited reaction videos lately to a clip of an Irish politician sounding Caribbean. This is a good analysis of what's going on, by Nadine White:
www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...

Paywall workaround:
removepaywalls.com/https://www....

As Flann O'Brien said of Joyce, "That poor writer's end was hastened by that same intrusive apostrophe."

(Though not referring to this Penguin cover in particular)

a man in a suit and tie is standing in front of a blue background that says news team Alt: Will Ferrell in Anchorman saying, "I don't believe you."

Me to the researchers:

Good morning asymmetric information battlespace!!

This Irish English speaker does the same but did not, before now, have an idiom for the practice. (It does make it easier to peel, because it shrinks the egg slightly, but I find it takes more than a few seconds to be effective.)

Quite right, anatomically speaking

In fairness to Enda Kenny he has a lovely jumper on him

Or, hear me out, women: eat the cheese, saving none for men, and then you will have more cheese and fewer men in your life

Grammarly, revisited LAST week I reported on Ben Yagoda's results from trying Grammarly, which for $140 per year will be "an automated proofreader and your personal grammar coach".

Re "always ick", see this analysis of Grammarly's "grammar" advice from 2012. You'd expect that, at least, to be harmless, but no: web.archive.org/web/20120808...

Your happy reminder that the excellent @susiedentwords.bsky.social made a series of short videos about the history of swear words, and you can watch them here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=L77g...

just heard a guy on youtube say "in the grand scream of things"

Grammarly was always ick, but this is obscene

That was great! A tricky thing to pull off.

It's a very effective balancing act

Orbital by Samantha Harvey, paperback copy published by Vintage. Cover art by Aino-Maija Metsola shows the Earth surrounded by colourful celestial bodies and lots of dark space. Most of the bodies are impressionistic blobs with fuzzy edges, not quite circular, and sometimes overlapping. There are also swathes of dots like spatter paint that suggest asteroid belts or the Milky Way. There's a Booker Prize 2024 winner stamp, and the following cover quotes: "Beautiful" (Sarah Moss), "Awe-inspiring" (Max Porter), "Stunning...an uplifting book" (Sunday Times), and "An extraordinary achievement" (Observer).

Not everything works, but there's some gorgeous, imaginative writing in this short book

A mug depicting KC Green's This Is Fine dog comic, but tragically faded

I've had my This Is Fine mug so long that the dog has become a ghost and all that remain are flames

I like Ray Cummings's description of time: that it's what keeps everything from happening all at once.

(And the anonymous corollary that space is what keeps it from all happening to you.)

Now that it has resolved, it does look like a delicious tart

Before I looked at the tart photo properly, and before I read the text at all, I had an exquisite moment of scalar uncertainty when I wondered if it was a macro shot of a flower head or a micro shot of blood platelets