November 16, 2022
A fatberg is a rock-like mass of waste matter in a sewer system formed by the combination of flushed non-biodegradable solids, such as wet wipes, and fat, oil and grease (FOG) deposits. The handling of FOG waste and the buildup of its deposits are a long-standing problem in waste management, with ‘fatberg’ a more recent neologism.
Giant fatbergs have blocked sewers in London, New York, Denver, Valencia, and Melbourne and are becoming more prevalent with the rise in usage of disposable (so-called ‘flushable’) cloths. Several prominent examples were discovered in the 2010s in Great Britain, their formation accelerated by aging Victorian sewers. Fatbergs are costly to remove, and have given rise to public awareness campaigns about flushable waste.
read more »
Posted in Technology, World |
Leave a Comment »
November 6, 2022
The fediverse (a portmanteau of ‘federation’ and ‘universe’) is an ensemble of federated (i.e. interconnected) servers that are used for web publishing (i.e. social networking, microblogging, blogging, or websites) and file hosting, but which, while independently hosted, can communicate with each other.
Their are federated alternatives to many mainstream websites: PeerTube (YouTube); Funkwhale (SoundCloud); Mastodon, Hubzilla, and pump.io (Twitter); Frendica (Facebook); Drupal (WordPress); Pixelfed (Instagram); and Lemmy (Reddit).
read more »
Posted in Technology |
1 Comment »
October 16, 2022
Deflategate was a National Football League (NFL) controversy involving the allegation that New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady ordered the deliberate deflation of footballs used in the Patriots’ victory against the Indianapolis Colts during the 2014 AFC Championship Game on January 18, 2015. The controversy resulted in Brady being suspended for four games, while the team was fined $1 million and forfeited two draft selections in 2016.
Brady appealed but eventually agreed to sit out the first four games of the 2016 season, which concluded with the Patriots winning Super Bowl LI and Brady being named MVP. The season also saw the NFL change the procedure for monitoring football pressure.
read more »
Posted in Games, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
September 15, 2022
A pretendian (portmanteau of pretend and Indian) is a person who has falsely claimed Indigenous identity by claiming to be a citizen of a Native American or Indigenous Canadian tribal nation, or to be descended from Native ancestors. The term is a pejorative colloquialism, and if used without evidence could be considered defamatory.
As a practice, being a pretendian is considered an extreme form of cultural appropriation, especially if that individual then asserts that they can represent, and speak for, communities they do not belong to. It is sometimes also referred to as a form of ethnic fraud or race shifting.
read more »
Posted in Politics, World |
Leave a Comment »
September 1, 2022
A stroad is a pejorative portmanteau of street and road that was coined by urban planner Charles Marohn in 2011 to describe paved traffic structures in the U.S. that are a bad combination of two types of vehicular pathways.
According to Marohn, a stroad is part street—which he describes as a ‘complex environment where life in the city happens,’ with pedestrians, cars, buildings close to the sidewalk for easy accessibility, with many (property) entrances / exits to and from the street, and with spaces for temporary parking and delivery vehicles—and part road, which he describes as a ‘high-speed connection between two places’ with wide lanes, limited entrances and exits, and which are generally straight or have gentle curves.
read more »
Posted in Technology |
1 Comment »
June 1, 2021
In economics, shrinkflation is the process of items shrinking in size or quantity, or even sometimes reformulating or reducing quality while their prices remain the same or increase. The word is a portmanteau of the words shrink and inflation.
Shrinkflation allows companies to increase their operating margin and profitability by reducing costs whilst maintaining sales volume, and is often used as an alternative to raising prices in line with inflation. Consumer protection groups are critical of the practice because it has the effect of reducing product value by ‘stealth.’ The reduction in pack size is sufficiently small as not to be immediately obvious to regular consumers.
read more »
Posted in Money |
Leave a Comment »
October 8, 2020
Copaganda, a portmanteau of ‘cop’ and ‘propaganda,’ is the phenomenon in which news media and other social institutions promote celebratory portrayals of police officers with the intent of swaying public opinion for the benefit of police departments and law enforcement. Copaganda has been defined by cultural critics as ‘media efforts to flatter police officers and spare them from skeptical coverage’ and ‘pieces of media that are so scarily disconnected from the reality of cops that they end up serving as offbeat recruitment ads.’
The term has gained more popularity in the wake of the George Floyd protests as the United States’ media structure publicly reckons with its role in perpetuating overly fawning or unrealistic portrayals of the police, which activists believe has contributed to downplaying the effects of police brutality in the United States.
read more »
Posted in Art, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
April 16, 2020
Tensegrity [ten-seg-ri-tee], tensional integrity or floating compression is a structural principle based on a system of isolated components under compression inside a network of continuous tension, and arranged in such a way that the compressed members (usually bars or struts) do not touch each other while the prestressed tensioned members (usually cables or tendons) delineate the system spatially.
The term was coined by inventor Buckminster Fuller in the 1960s as a portmanteau of ‘tensional integrity.’ The other denomination of tensegrity, floating compression, was used mainly by the constructivist artist Kenneth Snelson. Shorter columns or struts in compression are stronger than longer ones. This in turn led Fuller to make claims that tensegrity structures could be scaled up to cover whole cities.
read more »
Posted in Art, Science, Technology |
Leave a Comment »
January 2, 2019
Pennsyltucky is a slang portmanteau of the state names Pennsylvania and Kentucky. It is used to characterize—usually humorously, but sometimes deprecatingly—the rural part of the U.S. state of Pennsylvania outside the Pittsburgh and Philadelphia metropolitan areas, more specifically applied to the local people and culture of its mountainous central Appalachian region.
The term is used more generally to refer to the Appalachian region, particularly its central core, which runs from Pennsylvania to Kentucky, and its people. An actual connection between the two regions was formed after numbers of Western Pennsylvanians left the state for Kentucky following the Whiskey Rebellion.
read more »
Posted in Humor, Politics |
Leave a Comment »
May 16, 2016
Mukbang is a live online audiovisual broadcast in which a host eats large amounts of foods while interacting with their audience. Usually done through an internet webcast, mukbang became popular in South Korea in the 2010s. Foods ranging from pizza to noodles are consumed in front of a camera for an internet audience (who pay or not, depending on which platform one is watching). The word is a portmanteau of the Korean words for ‘eating’ (‘meokneun’) and ‘broadcast’ (‘bangsong’).
Some mukbangs involve eating large amounts of food rapidly, while others features hosts savoring small meals at a more normal pace. In 2018, the South Korean government announced that it would create and regulate mukbang guidelines by launching the ‘National Obesity Management Comprehensive Measures,’ which was intended to discourage binge eating.
read more »
Posted in Food, Humor, World |
Leave a Comment »
February 2, 2016
Catvertising is the use of cats in advertising. The tongue-in-cheek portmanteau was coined in the late 1990s, and enjoyed a spike in popularity beginning 2011 as a result of a parody of commercialization of cat viral videos by the advertising agency st. john in Toronto.
The video was part of a series of spoofs beginning with ‘Pink Ponies: A Case Study,’ then ‘Catvertising,’ and finally ‘Buyral’ (a blend of ‘buy’ and ‘viral’). A University of Arizona marketing team competes under the name ‘Catvertising.’
Posted in Humor, Money |
Leave a Comment »
March 28, 2015
A Notel, also called Notetel, is a type of portable media player made in China which is popular in North Korea. The device has USB and SD ports, can play DVDs and EVDs (Enhanced Versatile Discs, which are physically identical to DVDs but use a different file format), and contains a radio and TV tuner. The name is a portmanteau of ‘notebook’ and ‘television.’ In China, Notels are no longer popular as of 2015, but sell well in the provinces that border on North Korea, where scarce internet and frequent power outages, as well as their ease of concealment make them very useful.
Notetels have been popular in North Korea since around 2005, significantly facilitating the extension of the ‘Korean Wave’ (‘Hallyu,’ the increase of the popularity of South Korean pop culture) into the communist country. After an earlier crackdown that caused black market prices to drop, the devices were legalized in December 2014 (however, they require a license and the government monitors their use). As of 2015 they are available in some government stores as well as on the black market (Jangmadang ) for around 300 Chinese Yuan (ca. US$ 50), and are present in about half of all households.
Posted in Politics, Technology, World |
Leave a Comment »
The Daily Omnivore 