Banned words
Lake Superior State University has released its annual Banished Words list. Of the 1,500-plus nominations of words and terms for banishment for misuse, overuse, and uselessness, the winner is GOAT, which stands for
‘greatest of all time’ and is “applied to everyone and everything from athletes to chicken wings”, one critic complained. Also unofficially banned are: inflection point; quiet quitting; gaslighting; moving forward (still?); amazing; does that make sense?; irregardless (not a word); absolutely; it is what it is (infuriating AF).
The future of ablutions
The Kohler Numi 2.0 is the toilet you’ve been waiting for. For a mere $11,500, you can have a toilet that comes equipped with Alexa, which is Amazon’s digital assistant. Command her to fire up your custom music playlist for your special event. But other luxury functions like UV light sanitation, a bidet that can sweep through all of your precious areas, an automatically misting bowl, a heated seat, and an air dryer require a hand-held remote control.
Sign of the times
Bad fiction awards
The annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest calls for entrants to “compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels”. This was a dishonourable mention in the Romance category: “As Bridgett the Discount Dominatrix flicked the length of clothesline she used as a whip, he licked the ball gag, which was really a tennis ball held in place by a length of duct tape, and thought, ‘Dad was right, you really do get what you pay for’.” (Andrew Nance, St. Augustine, FL)