Daily Briefing

What's New?

The Politics page has been updated to reflect the candidates on the ballot in the November 2024 general election.

Hey! I read another book! Find out what it was and read my review here.

Downey, Duvall and D'Onofrio. They're just some of the excellent cast featured in The Judge, which is enjoying a second life on Netflix. My review is here.

It's Red October for Phillies fans. The team is back in the playoffs. Will this be the year Bryce gets a ring? Here's the original version of the song that's been their anthem. It's the Song of the Day for October.

October is your final chance to check out this year's Pennsylvania Renaissance Faire near Lancaster.

Word of the Year

A panel of linguists has decided the word that best reflects 2023 is enshittification, or the process by which digital platforms can go from user-friendly to unusable.

The American Dialect Society chose the Word of the Year on January 5, 2024 during a gathering in New York City.

Author Cory Doctorow popularized the term enshittification by using it in a post on his blog Pluralistic. He wrote, "Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification."

"Enshittification is a sadly apt term for how our online lives have become gradually degraded," said Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society New Words Committee. "From the time that it first appeared in Doctorow's posts and articles, the word had all the markings of a successful neologism, being instantly memorable and adaptable to a variety of contexts."

Other nominees for WOTY included (derogatory), used humorously to denote a word that may not normally be considered derogatory; ceasefire, a reference to calls to stop the fighting in the Israel-Hamas conflict; and babygirl, which refers to an older male character or celebrity seen as emotionally damaged or helpless. (derogatory) did come away the winner in the Most Useful/Most Likely To Succeed category.

You can read about these and other winners in the complete news release here.