Wednesday 11/29/23
Celebrate:
Customer is Wrong Day
electronic Greeting Card Day
National Chocolates Day
National Lemon Creme Pie Day
National Package Protection Day
National Rice Cake Day
National Square Dance Day
Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree Lighting - it’s from Vestal this year.
Throw Out Your Leftovers Day
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If you have a Google account that you haven't used in a couple years, it could be deleted as soon as Friday if you don't log in and use it (check Gmail, Google something, watch a YouTube video, etc.). Google said in May that inactive accounts have fewer safeguards and are hijacking targets for spam and identity theft.
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Stephen Colbert canceled his Late Show this week to recover from surgery after a burst appendix. Colbert also had to cancel a week of shows last month after catching Covid-19.
He issued a statement saying, quote, "Sorry to say that I have to cancel our shows this week. I'm sure you’re thinking, 'Turkey overdose, Steve? Gravy boat capsize?'
"Actually, I'm recovering from surgery for a ruptured appendix. I'm grateful to my doctors for their care and to Evie and the kids for putting up with me. Going forward, all emails to my appendix will be handled by my pancreas."
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Release the Taylor cut! An extended version of Taylor Swift's "Eras Tour" concert film will be available to rent at home on Dec. 13 in celebration of the pop star's 34th birthday. "Well, so, basically I have a birthday coming up," Swift wrote on Instagram, adding that she thought this would be a "fun way to celebrate the year we've had together."
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The Fad Toy Everyone Was Obsessed With the Year You Were Born.
What was yours? Did you play with it? I didn’t..never had an Easy Bake Oven. The pinnacle of craziness I think was in 1983 when people lost their minds trying to get Cabbage Patch Dolls
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Merriam-Webster is out with their word of the year. and in an age of deepfakes and post-truth, as artificial intelligence rose and Elon Musk turned Twitter into X, the word is “authentic.”
Authentic cuisine. Authentic voice. Authentic self. Authenticity as artifice.
One of the editors says, “Can we trust whether a student wrote this paper? Can we trust whether a politician made this statement? We don't always trust what we see anymore. We sometimes don't believe our own eyes or our own ears. We are now recognizing that authenticity is a performance itself."
Rounding out the company's top words of 2023, in no particular order:
RIZZ: It's slang for “romantic appeal or charm" and seemingly short for charisma. Merriam-Webster added the word to its online dictionary in September and it's been among the top lookups since, Sokolowski said.
KIBBUTZ: There was a massive spike in lookups for “a communal farm or settlement in Israel” after Hamas militants attacked several near the Gaza Strip on Oct. 7. The first kibbutz was founded circa 1909 in what is today Israel.
IMPLODE: The June 18 implosion of the Titan submersible on a commercial expedition to explore the Titanic wreckage sent lookups soaring for this word, meaning “to burst inward.” “It was a story that completely occupied the world,” Sokolowski said.
DEADNAME: Interest was high in what Merriam-Webster defines as “the name that a transgender person was given at birth and no longer uses upon transitioning.” Lookups followed an onslaught of legislation aimed at curtailing LGBTQ+ rights around the country.
DOPPELGANGER: Sokolowski calls this “a word lover's word.” Merriam-Webster defines it as a “double,” an “alter ego” or a “ghostly counterpart.” It derives from German folklore. Interest in the word surrounded Naomi Klein's latest book, “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World,” released this year. She uses her own experience of often being confused with feminist author and conspiracy theorist Naomi Wolf as a springboard into a broader narrative on the crazy times we're all living in.
CORONATION: King Charles III had one on May 6, sending lookups for the word soaring 15,681% over the year before, Sokolowski said. Merriam-Webster defines it as “the act or occasion of crowning.”
DEEPFAKE: The dictionary company's definition is “an image or recording that has been convincingly altered and manipulated to misrepresent someone as doing or saying something that was not actually done or said.” Interest spiked after Musk’s lawyers in a Tesla lawsuit said he is often the subject of deepfake videos and again after the likeness of Ryan Reynolds appeared in a fake, AI-generated Tesla ad.
DYSTOPIAN: Climate chaos brought on interest in the word. So did books, movies and TV fare intended to entertain. “It's unusual to me to see a word that is used in both contexts,” Sokolowski said.
COVENANT: Lookups for the word meaning “a usually formal, solemn, and binding agreement” swelled on March 27, after a deadly mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter was a former student killed by police after killing three students and three adults.
Interest also spiked with this year's release of “Guy Ritchie's The Covenant” and Abraham Verghese's long-awaited new novel, “The Covenant of Water,” which Oprah Winfrey chose as a book club pick.
More recently, soon after U.S. Rep. Mike Johnson ascended to House speaker, a 2022 interview with the Louisiana congressman recirculated. He discussed how his teen son was then his “accountability partner” on Covenant Eyes, software that tracks browser history and sends reports to each partner when porn or other potentially objectionable sites are viewed.
INDICT: Former President Donald Trump has been indicted on felony charges in four criminal cases in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington, D.C., in addition to fighting a lawsuit that threatens his real estate empire.
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There's a new poll on divisive questions, like is a hot dog a sandwich, is Die Hard a Xmas movie, does a straw have one hole or two..but some new one's I haven't seen are.
Which brownie is better, edge piece or middle piece? Another close one. Edge barely wins with 51% of the vote.
Is cereal "soup"? Only 6% said yes.
Is it okay to wear socks with sandals? 57% still don't think it's a good look.
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Today's Useless Fact of the Day - This past Sunday, the Denver Broncos beat the Cleveland Browns 29-12, and that score was a "scorigami," which is a term for a final score that has never happened in NFL history, across more than 17,500 games. Unique scores like this can happen a few times a season.
The most common final score in NFL history is 20-17. That's happened 286 times, most recently on November 5th, when the Washington Commanders beat the New England Patriots by that score.
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