Month: July 2026
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Nigel on the guillotine
I’ve more time, just, for Nigel Farage than I have for Zack Polanski, but the latter was quite right not to apologize for sharing the post. There is far, far too much apologizing by politicians for things for which they are not the slightest bit responsible, or feel the smallest remorse. The reason is presumably…
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Notebooks out, plagiarists
A teacher at my school thought that everyone does their best work under exam conditions. That’s a stretch, but I should think quite a lot do, more, probably, than believe it of themselves. It’s just you and your opponent at the board and you’re trying to prove something. I’m told that there’s a reluctant return…
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Nice
A man on the radio is yet another who was told by his English teacher not to use the word “nice”, because meaningless, undescriptive, etc. It seems that I was very lucky none of my English teachers told me anything so fucking silly. Like many supple words, it is a bit overused, perhaps.
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Natural low
Once it was “chutzpah” you couldn’t read a newspaper article without encountering. Now it’s “dopamime hit”.
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Bad trip
An opening gambit, from the Italian gambetto = “tripping up”, is not a first shot or an opening bid, but the sacrificing of (usually) a pawn in the hope of some advantage, i.e. it is risky. I don’t think any figures of speech drawn from chess are really usable any longer, and the political commentators…
