October 30, 2025
Linking R and intrusive R are sandhi phenomena (when the form of a word changes as a result of its position in an utterance) wherein a rhotic consonant (r-like sound) is pronounced between two consecutive vowels with the purpose of avoiding a hiatus, that would otherwise occur in the expressions, such as ‘tuner amp,’ although in isolation ‘tuner’ is pronounced the same as ‘tuna’ in non-rhotic varieties of English (those that skip some r sounds).
These phenomena occur in many of these dialects, such as those in most of England and Wales, parts of the United States, and all of the Anglophone societies of the southern hemisphere, with the exception of South Africa. In these varieties, /r/ is pronounced only when it is immediately followed by a vowel.
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October 21, 2025
Tipflation and tip creep are terms to describe the United States’ recent widespread expansion of gratuity to more industries, as opposed to being traditionally only prevalent in full-service restaurants. Occupations which are now widely requesting gratuities include rideshare drivers, food delivery drivers, and baristas. Tipflation’s origins are likely the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021–2023 inflation surge.
Touch-screen digital payment systems run by companies like Clover and Square include gratuity prompts that are often visible to nearby members of the public and the service worker. The social pressure created from such systems is often separately mentioned as guilt-tipping, and tipflation has also been seen as causing tipping fatigue, which is the resentment that American consumers generally feel from tipping culture.
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October 20, 2025
Bob’s your uncle is an idiom commonly used in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries that means ‘and there it is,’ or ‘and there you have it,’ or ‘it’s done.’ Typically, someone says it to conclude a set of simple instructions or when a result is reached. The meaning is similar to that of the French expression et voilà!’
The origins are uncertain, but a common hypothesis is that the expression arose after Conservative Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (Bob), appointed his nephew Arthur Balfour as Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1887, an act of nepotism, which was apparently both surprising and unpopular. Whatever other qualifications Balfour might have had, ‘Bob’s your uncle’ was seen as the conclusive one.
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October 9, 2025
Large language models (LLMs) cannot understand full sentences the way humans do — they need text broken into smaller, consistent chunks called tokens to handle any kind of input systematically and learn patterns that let them predict what comes next.
A glitch token is token that causes unexpected or glitchy outputs when used in a prompt. Such output may include the model misunderstanding meanings of words, refusing to respond or generating repetitive or unrelated text. Prompts that cause this behavior may look completely or mostly normal.
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October 6, 2025
Mar-a-Lago face is a plastic surgery and fashion trend among American conservative and Republican individuals such as excessive makeup, fake tans, fake eyelashes, dark smokey eyes, and full lips.
The trend has been described as a status symbol among Donald Trump’s inner circle, purportedly signaling wealth, privilege, and alignment with Trumpism. Some commentators and surgeons have described the look as engineered and overdone, and have linked it to the aesthetics and aspects of Trump-era politics. One cosmetic surgeon listed facial surgery, fillers, and cosmetic dental work among the procedures constituting the look.
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