Looking it up, I’ve seen several of the films mentioned, but did not know that term. I suspect the Wikipedia article is too broad, pulling in things that don’t really belong.

“Note: please read ‘as’ in an 18th-century sense.”

Apart from here, AC to me is a voice on the radio. And LH and I overlapped for a long while at a big tech company without (so far as I know) ever meeting.

I can understand drawing the line more narrowly -- he does use odd words with a luxurious self-consciousness. Ezersky, though, seems to have drawn it highly arbitrarily. (Maybe there's no Basic-English-like lexicon that would be widely accepted.)

As painted by Robert Ryman

Maybe “the thing that draws sustained media attention to D priorities”?

Clearly these influencers have not read enough Agatha Christie

(effect on the perpetrator, that is)

Take the Dante approach -- create a work that integrates your career resentments into the grand design of the universe

Hope it records just the nice parts /s

Like arguing from a false premise, you can take this in any direction. If I’m that worthless, why lift a finger?

(The answer, in my case, is desire — in the teeth of the headwinds of self-contempt, despite all reasons, there remains a basic desire to make things and communicate.)

This one is at least genuine!

Or does the idiom simply compare all history to a dustbin? “He’s history” — “he’s in the foul rag and bone shop of history now” — etc,

I probably won’t look at Hugh Kenner again, but 40 years ago this gave me an inkling of a more engaged mode of reading.

archive.org/details/coun...

Is the grass really that smooth?

Maybe we could compile a list of things not to do. “First, make sure you understand the claim fully and how to argue it.” “Wait till inspiration strikes.”

This makes sense, and I get your distinction

Also, has this copywriter met men?

You can rest at the office

Different from Bowie?

I mean, I don’t enjoy this music, but I don’t consider that an argument against its cultural status!

The combination sounds OK to me, but that word is terrible, almost outdone by “pillowy”

Looking at Dowd's own posts, he likes quotes -- he has one for Kathy Acker and another for Cynthia Ozick, each with a single-line quote. There do exist lines that crystallize some thought memorably, but it's rare for even authentic ones to capture a person's contribution.

In honor of Darwin's saint's day, a genuine quote.

Agree -- clumsy writing on my part.

A therapist once recommended the book "Atomic Habits". I didn't enjoy reading it, and stopped when I got to a fake Darwin quote (I think this very one). I didn't convince the therapist that using a lie for decoration was bad rhetoric.

Darwin didn’t say that. I don’t want to discourage philosophizing, but fake quotations are filler at best.

Please don’t remember Darwin by quoting things he didn’t say.

www.darwinproject.ac.uk/people/about...

Six things Darwin never said – and one he did Spot the fakes! Darwin is often quoted – and as often misquoted. Here are some sayings regularly attributed to Darwin that never flowed from his pen.

Darwin didn’t say this.

www.darwinproject.ac.uk/people/about...

I assumed at first that "cruise ship" must be something like a cruiser, but no, they seem to mean the giant floating hotels