Peter D. Kramer

Yesterday's formerly accepted word: TELETYPED.

@merriam-webster.com does not accept TELETYPE as a verb, but the OED finds many examples from 1904 to 2007.

& why isn't the OED here on BlueSky?

was in, is out: past tense of an accepted entry

Carthago delenda est - Wikipedia

I'm thinking of Cato the Elder's policy of ending every speech with the demand that Carthage must be destroyed: that kind of consistency.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthag...

I think that this sort of reminder should appear as a drumbeat—an element in all reporting on Trump's various transgressions. Every article should include that reminder: This act also serves to undercut democracy, concentrate power, and move us toward tyranny.

Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook

Authoritarian playbook: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/u...

At last. Today ‪@nytimes.com‬ has an essay describing Trump's routine acts as coming from an authoritarian playbook. That's what's often missing from reporting & opinion both: Reminders that a behavior under discussion not only ruptures norms but also serves in a campaign to undercut democracy.

Glory days. Here's the cover, with an image taken from the office television. I was a college intern, but I had three pieces in the issue & got written up in the house organ, N/W. In the photo, I was more or less in uniform, wearing a seersucker suit with a thin bow tie.

A Peacock’s-Eye View of the Waldorf Remade Waldorf Astoria New York, one of the city’s grandest hotels, closed for renovations in 2017. After almost eight years and billions of dollars, it returns, reborn for the 21st century.

In 1969, when the Waldorf-Astoria had lost much of its glory, it rented rooms to Newsweek for staff who had to work late into the night. I was put up there when writing on the moonshot for the July 28 issue when "Newsweek beat Time" to the newsstand.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

oops. sorry.

Trump's Brazil Tariff Is Blatantly Illegal Shouldn't someone be suing?

Here's a link:
paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-bra...

Not sure why the whole Web isn't saying this. Trump's Brazil tariff is illegal.
Presidents can impose tariffs only for limited economic reasons. Interfering with a prosecution abroad is not a permitted rationale.
The issue is both legislative & constitutional. Only Congress can levy taxes.

Funny, I just wished for a linguist to go to work on "biblical grounds" for divorce. A copy editor will do nicely.

bsky.app/profile/pete...

Wife of Ken Paxton Files for Divorce, Citing ‘Recent Discoveries’

Here's the link: www.nytimes.com/2025/07/10/u...

Not to smile at others' pain, but gotta say I'm a fan of "biblical grounds" for divorce.
Adultery, abandonment, & abuse, I take it.
Still, I want to hear a linguist discuss the usage. @jmcwho.bsky.social?
Are we in David & Bathsheba territory?
Leviticus 20:10? Any strict constructionists out there?

Anna Ornstein, Psychoanalyst Who Survived the Holocaust, Dies at 98

Sad to learn of the death of Anna Ornstein, a yet more influential figure in psychiatry than this obituary suggests—and a sterling person.
Oddly, I just quoted her in a talk I gave in Germany last week.

www.nytimes.com/2025/07/04/h...

SSA BS.

Is this politicization a first? Just got an email from the Social Security Administration patting the President on the back for the budget-busting bill

Irony (one of many) is that the bill changes the taxation of benefits in a way that threatens to deplete the fund a year early.

John Wells, 64, Who Fled New York for the Solitude of the Desert, Dies

Worth the wait.
Belated obit by ‪@greenpnyt.bsky.social‬

www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/s...

CHILBLAIN

The missing pangrams were HABITABLY & HABILITY.

Deciding what to include must often be tough, but this choice creates a problem. Won't someone who sees HABITABLY rejected assume that HABITABILITY is out as well?

HABILITY is more marginal.

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/h...

Today, two missing pangrams, related in different ways to the/an accepted pangram.

The puzzle is a bit strange or frustrating altogether since many rejected words (not pangrams) can be formed on similar lines.

bsky.app/profile/pete...

Rare event.
Two spelling bee puzzles today.
I'd been working on the one with C as the central letter.
Now, I also have one (different pangram/s) with U as the central letter.
Anyone else?

Fun.

Missing pangram: DUARCHY,
arguably with its synomym DYARCHY

www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/d...

New letters today.
Not easy either.

Technical question. Can anyone say why my initial post in this thread appears as a reply? It is not a response to a prior post, and the text contains no URL. What else distinguishes replies? Thanks.

The novel, from 2023, concerns life in the disastrous 2nd term of a buffoonish autocrat. The plot is set in motion by the threatened deportation. It forces the main character, a psychiatrist, to take the autocrat on as a patient.
My friend said that today, no reader would question that plot point.

Yesterday, a friend said that last year, when reading my novel, Death of the Great Man, she had found an important section implausible. The protagonist's daughter-in-law, although married to an American citizen & under consideration for a Green Card, is suddenly slated to be deported to a war zone.

Correction: OyG!

Episode #167 - Jose Ortega - Revolt of the Masses — Philosophize This! Jose Ortega - Revolt of the Masses

Thinking of the current electorate, Trump, & the attacks on universities, the Department of Health, the Department of Education, the courts, libraries, and the Constitution. What comes next, according to OyY is full-blown fascism.

www.philosophizethis.org/podcast/epis...

Listening to a podcast about the Ortega y Gasset's Revolt of the Masses (1929) which, for my sins, I have not read. He warns that in modern democracy, the masses become spoiled children who enact spiritual barbarism based in a lack of awareness of the history of institutions.