Patient readers: This continuing feature started out as a list of links with quotes. That seemed too much like Water Cooler to me, and I already have a Water Cooler, so who needs two? A friend pointed out that Water Cooler was very visual, and so I made “Words of the Day” very textual (weaving in text, texts, and textuality as themes). Suggestions welcome! —lambert P.S. I have been accumulating links since July 2025, so expect to see some of them here. Anyhow, just because something wasn’t published today or yesterday doesn’t mean it’s not dulce et utile!
On this day (1394): Ekiho exorcises an old badger from a Zen temple and its surroundings. From the linked source, this is a lovely image:
but apparently it does not depict a badger. See the commentary on this image from Studio Ghibli.
“Extreme heat in Japan” [Language Log]. “They have words for it. The one that’s taking the online media by storm is kokushobi 酷暑日. That literally means “harsh / cruel + hot days”. I can attest to this characterization of scorching days in Japan. Here we’re talking about 40º C (104º F). Sure, that’s hot, uncomfortably hot, but see below my personal account of a month of 106º F days in Austin, Texas.” • Science on the hottest places on earth (Death Valley lost its crown). 40º is pretty mild, actually.
“Your Name in Landsat” [NASA]. Experiment:
At the site, if you hover over an image, it shows you the location. My “L” is from “Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, 0°12’41.3 N 104°43’38.1 W.” (I tested to make sure that the site has more images than letters of the alphabet; the “L” in “Lucy” is from “Nusantara, Indonesia, 0°58’18.1 S 116°41’58.9 E”). [musical interlude].
Dad Joke of the Day: How do you get a squirrel to like you? Act like a nut!
“”Be the Change.” On the Misattributed Origins of a Popular Slogan” [Literary Hub]. “I was there to meet a fast-moving octogenarian, Arleen Lorrance, known to bound through the complex offering bear hugs and posing the question “What’s the most meaningful thing in your life?” Contemporary researchers credit her, not Mahatma Gandhi, with originating the epoch-defining phrase “Be the change you want to see happen,” which she coined in the early 1970s shortly after a powerful spiritual experience while admiring a flower near Esalen, the iconic Big Sur retreat center. The expression has shown a staying power few New Age-inflected slogans can match, serving as a secular mantra and the defining catchphrase of modern self-help and personal-growth spirituality….” • Woo woo.
“Italy: sovereignty in food – “sovranità alimentare”” [Cultural Property News]. “The December 2025 inclusion of the whole of Italian cuisine as an ‘intangible heritage of humanity’ was a first. Listed by UNESCO, Italian cuisine is redefined as a global cultural asset: not just a collection of recipes, but a “biocultural diversity” of raw materials, artisanal techniques, local knowledge and intergenerational practice. That kind of recognition carries obvious potential upsides, like tourism, branding, and prestige. Yet it also invites politics to the table. If cuisine becomes heritage, the state is tempted to act like a curator drawing borders between authentic and fake, tradition and contamination, legitimate variation and “culinary crime.” One of the most destabilizing facts for gastronationalists is also one of the most historically plausible: Italian cuisine was not only exported by the diaspora; it was partly produced by the diaspora. Migrants carried regional traditions to the United States, adapted them to new ingredients, new tastes and new forms of commercial life, and then those adaptations circulated back.” • Like the tomato itself, which originated in the Andes. Or rice (China). Granted, “originated” is doing a lot of work there. And speaking of globalization—
“Man goes viral after working for four startups at the same time” [NBC]. “Soham Parekh was the perfect software engineering candidate. The problem was that several tech startups thought so…. At least 10 tech company executives have said publicly in recent days that they had recently employed Parekh, sparking a wave of internet discussion about the tech industry’s remote work practices and the relatively recent phenomenon of tech employees’ surreptitiously holding multiple jobs at once…. ‘I’m not proud of what I’ve done,’ Parekh said. ‘That’s not something that I endorse, either. But, you know, financial circumstances, essentially. No one really likes to work 140 hours a week, right? But I had to do this out of necessity. I was in extremely dire financial circumstances.’” • And who among us…
Fortune: “Don’t worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you’ll have to ram them down people’s throats.” — Howard Aiken. NOTE I haven’t authenticated this. The whole “quote of the day” (QOTD) industry is a cesspit of unattributed platitudes optimized for wannabe founders, and was so even before AI. I wish there were a decent QOTD database to draw from. I mean, apparently Lincoln said “I will study and prepare myself, and someday my chance will come” — inspiring! — but I went several pages deep into Google, and then Kagi, with never a source to be found. Life is too short for this!
So gay:
Source: https://t.co/2kAWH5LI8o
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) March 7, 2025
Oddly, or not@NoLieWithBTC sees no contradiction between liberal identity politics and militarism. That said, it seems to me there’s a conservative tendency to think that words have single, precise meanings that are not subject to context. The same thing happened with DOGE and “probationary” employees. The probationers were in fact promoted civll servants, the best of the best, though that’s not the ordinary usage in training sets or in the DOGEbags addled little minds. And I seem to recall, possibly not entirely accurately, Republican voter purge software that, faced with more than one (say) “Juan Garcia” (yes, the Spanish name was important), treated all but one as fraudulent registrations.
“The Blogging Process” (2003) [Salon (via)]. Handy flowchart:
If I’d seen this in time, I would have included it in my introductory post on blogging. And yes, the flowchart gives a a good sense of the scope of the work for blogging (although it leaves out system administration and site managment). It’s accurate for its time (“Check Tecnorati, etc.”, “Contact A-listers”).
Model milestones vs. engineering milestones:
@kporter.stuff The CAD-over-engineering problem becomes structural when the review process, schedule milestones, and gate criteria are all built around model completion rather than engineering decision quality. You can’t fix a systems problem with individual coaching. Fix the gate exit criteria, what has to be true about the engineering before the design advances, and the thinking follows the measurement. That’s the systems-level lever. 🙌🏼⚙️
This is one of my favorite accounts on TikTok. She has a series called “Mechanical Engineering Part of the Day.” I hope some Americans are watching it…..
Word of the Day: Beltane. Beltane refers to the Celtic May Day festival. “”On May 1, we celebrate what began as the ancient Celtic holiday of Beltane. … It started at sundown April 30, when, according to Celtic lore, the evil spirits that had wreaked havoc on humans since Halloween had a last fling before the dawning of May 1 cast them into their annual six-month exile. ” I can think of May Day celebrations where the evil spirits are closer to home.