Ethan Campbell

Is this the guy whose actual favorite sandwich was the Russ & Daughters Super Heebster, but he thought saying so would make him seem too rich? Because … that’s a good sandwich.

Copy editors have to be responsible for a major share of those stats — I’ve corrected to “whoa” countless times, because that’s how it’s spelled in the dictionary. If @merriam-webster.com decided to make “woah” an “established spelling variant,” its prevalence in published works would shoot up.

My initial thought was "long-dick'd," but 1827 is actually a little too early for that usage -- the OED puts it at 1890. "Long-prick'd" is possible, but it's hard to say, and it might be some regional slang (whatever the region is here). It's clearly vulgar, or it wouldn't be blanked out!

I've been transcribing my grandfather's letters from WW2, and I love the way he blanks out "d--n," "h--l," "son of a b---h," etc. As if it's totally fine to use the words when talking to his mother and fiancée, but their eyes might be too delicate to see them spelled out.

So if baby Jesus’s parents take him across the border illegally, that means *he* has committed a sin?

I guess that does explain her support for detaining children.

Everyone likes to quote the “they could indict a ham sandwich” thing, but I wonder if federal grand juries will become more discerning, more skeptical of prosecutors bringing them evidence. They’re made up of ordinary citizens on jury duty, after all — some of them must read the news.

“Hope you’re well” is the New York version of “Bless your heart.”

Floating the Lazy Rivers of Nebraska’s Spring-Fed Water World

A wonderfully descriptive article by Carson Vaughan, with some great photography, about the part of the world where I grew up.
www.nytimes.com/2025/09/25/t...

The octopus eyeball is my favorite creature in Alien: Earth, and I know I’m not alone. But I wonder how many people would agree that the best actor is Jonathan Ajayi, as Smee. Out of all the people playing children in adult bodies, he’s the most convincing.

Pearl Jam’s “Animal” was the perfect needle-drop for the final scene of Alien: Earth. But I didn’t realize *how* perfect it was until I played the song on my phone … and remembered the cover art for that album was an angry sheep. 😂

Tom Homan walking away with $50,000 doesn’t even crack the top five.

Well, Charlie Kirk amassed a pretty big following among men in college — so yeah, Trumpers do go there. My point is that older people were less likely to know who he was, and if they’re making a big deal of him now, it’s because they’re riding along with the hype.

I've seen so many older people in my Facebook feed say things like, "I didn't know much about him, but from these clips I've seen, he seemed like a good guy." I don't think ordinary Trump voters who haven't been to college in the past ten years even knew who he was.

The Giants went for it on like 4th and 4 because … they don’t have a field goal kicker?

This is a professional football team?

I’m jealous for what you are about to discover.

I would watch a monologue about the rice truck story.

Weirdly, I think it was easier for some people to ignore secret police snatching innocent people off the streets and sending them to concentration camps than it will be to ignore popular late-night comedy shows getting cancelled.

One of my favorite etymologies. It's wild to think that in the 1940s, cartoon viewers might hear Elmer Fudd called a "nimrod" and think, "Hilarious, an ironic reference to the mighty hunter from Genesis!" Just a different world.

They want be cool. And they know it’s never going to happen.

“Or aren’t secular” is such an odd way to phrase an already weird position.

Also, Tolstoy does get pretty pedantic in War & Peace, too 😂 — when it comes to his theory of history, and his argument that Kutuzov was a better leader than Napoleon!

Yes, they preferred the domestic/romantic dramas to the war scenes.

In both novels, Tolstoy sets up nice parallels between conflicts of the drawing room / bedroom and physical violence. In Anna K, it’s not literal war, but the violence of the horse race.

I assume you've read Anna Karenina? My students tended to prefer it, and called it "War and Peace without the war." 😄

(Personally, I like the war scenes, esp. Nikolai on the Danube bridge facing his mortality, and just Tolstoy showing tangibly how battles are chaos, where plans are meaningless.)

One of my fondest memories of teaching at a Christian college was introducing dozens of students to this novel every year. I used to tell them (with perfect honesty) that I was jealous of them, for getting to experience it for the first time.

Mr. Burns from The Simpsons looks in horror at a three-eyed fish that Marge Simpson has served him.

Mr. Burns’s mayoral hopes tanked *overnight* when he spit out that bite of radioactive fish. It was a different world.

I wasn't expecting to see a Pete Ricketts campaign ad on my TV in Brooklyn while watching Nebraska football. That was ... unsettling.

He smiles like an alien with a new human suit. That "Go Big Red" was shudder-inducing.

That ad was ... unsettling.

It's the district that elected Matt Gaetz, so he might have a chance 🤢

He’s running for Congress in Florida!

It gives me no pleasure to tell you.