NTMP 108: Celesticles
And they call him Von CoughsAndFarts
New-To-Me Phrases, May 5, 2024
Silent disco * SNOTEL * CamelCase * The Driftless Region * NestWatch * Von ShitzInPantz * Schmerpes
The Phrases, With Context
Hello there! I hope this email finds you in a better timeline. No? You’re stuck here, too? I hope this newsletter proves a delightful distraction, then.
It’s spring here in the Midwest and our town’s farmers market opened this weekend during perfect 70-degree weather. I nabbed greens from my favorite grower and some clarified garlic butter and enjoyed seeing the new vendors and familiar faces. I’m spending the rest of the weekend questioning my life choices, including buying a house on a half-acre lot that’s mostly turf grass and fussy flower beds that need constant weeding. Yes, we’re adding perennials and native plants but that shit takes time and money. But hey, at least we were lucky to find a house on the market back in 2019 when interest rates were still really low. And I planted a ton of flower seeds this winter that will soon be ready to go in the ground to compete with those weeds.
But you came here for phrases, not garden talk. Or maybe both? Either way, welcome and let’s get to it!
But First: Poll Results + The April Fave Phrase Poll
Last week’s tiebreaker for the March Phrase of the Month was Fubacabra, which handily beat Midwestern Spaghetti Void in a showdown. If you voted, thanks for playing along.
Here’s the poll for April:
1. Silent disco
I first heard this phrase related to an event at a community college as part of Autism Awareness Month. It was created as a way of creating an autism-friendly gathering where participants can control the volume. The premise is simple: You dance or stand around awkwardly (or perhaps you prefer to dance around awkwardly) while listening to music via wireless headphones.
While events where people gather to listen to music in this way have been around for a while, the phrase “silent disco” appears to have been coined at the 2005 Bonnaroo music festival. I’m not autistic but I have become more sensitive to loud sounds in recent years. I like this idea because I’m in favor of creating different ways to access culture, employment, and public spaces so everyone can enjoy them.
2. SNOTEL
I was super-bummed to learn this wasn’t a hotel made of snow. Instead, SNOTEL is short for “snow telemetry,” technology used to transmit data on snowfall in the mountains and thereby predict the amount of available water after it melts. I found it on this blog written by Laura and Rob Pilewski, who serve as winter rangers in a rustic cabin near Tuolumne Meadows in Yosemite National Park. They must really like each other.
3. CamelCase
I work in marketing but try to avoid being pulled into social media projects wherever possible.
I worked on a LinkedIn project for a client recently and learned that writing hashtags in CamelCase (also referenced as camel case), or capitalizing the first letter of each word, makes them more readable for people using screen readers to access content.
So: #ElonMuskIsATool, or keep reading to see an even better one.
Sidebar: Do you get the feeling that people are increasingly sick of social media’s shit? Because I do. Not sure how things are going financially for these companies or what marketers who work in this space think. What are your thoughts?
4. The Driftless Region
Katy at The Mindful Librarian recently wrote about the area where she lives in Wisconsin, and I’d never heard of it. The phrase refers to gently rolling Midwestern land that the glaciers didn’t carve into, characterized by “a lack of glacial drift, the deposits of silt, gravel, and rock that retreating glaciers leave behind.” According to a regional tourism board, the region also has the largest concentration of freshwater streams in the world. Sounds beautiful, and as far as place names go, I just really like this one.
5. NestWatch
While reading up on this word, I learned that it’s a form of bicapitalization, which is also known as CamelCase! Long before hashtags existed, this capitalization was used in computer coding, and brands have used it for ages, too.
Bicapitalization is also called embedded caps, InterCaps (for internal capitalization), medial capitals, and midcaps.
Examples of these special snowflake compound words include YouTube, DreamWorks, and GeoCities.
Back to nest talk: NestWatch is a Cornell Lab of Ornithology project where citizen scientists monitor avian nesting activity. It’s easy to sign up to participate and they also offer birdhouse plans so you can encourage feathered friends to nest near your home. Artist and author Austin Kleon often shares pics of his Eastern screech-owl nesting box in his backyard; I wonder if he uses NestWatch. There’s all sorts of cool data you can read up on, and an app to share your own local nesting intel.
Cornell Lab also offers the Merlin Bird ID app, where you can identify birds by physical characteristics or by their calls.
Their other citizen science projects include:
The Cornell Lab of Ornithology does so much incredible work on behalf of birds, and if you weren’t familiar with their work before, I hope this is a good introduction.
If you’d like to read a great bird-related essay, I give you this story about how a flock of turkeys that adopted a quail helped the writer heal while grieving.
6. Von ShitzInPantz
This is the third instance of CamelCase in this post, and it’s entirely coincidental and that’s kind of awesome.
I’m feasting off of Donald Trump having to sit in court every day and listen as people read memes and testimony trashing him and then go home to watch journalists reporting about how he can’t stay awake during proceedings.
According to this week’s testimony, Von ShitzInPantz is one of the nicknames his former attorney, Michael Cohen, used to refer to his ex-client on social media.
And that nickname is now in the court record. Chef’s kiss, no notes.
7. Schmerpes
Ready for an extremely internet phrase? Buckle up, we’re going in!
I love a post that generates a comment section that’s funnier than the original. This satirical TikTok where a woman explains why she named her daughter Clydia led to a great response by savagemom1 on Instagram, where she cracks up while reading the comments. People replied with their own names that sound vaguely like a venereal disease or genitalia.
“I get it. People always smirk at my daughter Schmerpes” is the comment that made this week’s list.
Honorable mention goes to a commenter named Celeste who wrote, “My name is short for Celesticles.” There are more good ones if you watch the video.
That’s it for this week! Remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious.
Your columns are so much fun. AweSome.
Re: CamelCase - when I first came across it in my social media manager days it drove me bonkers. But when I learned it was for screen readers/accessibility I got on board. I dig accessibility stuff!