Wordpecker 03: Pierogi Counter
Coolest job ever 🥟
Square February \ Kleptoparasitism | Switching costs | Nudifier | Filthy Kevin |Puffin counter
This week in phraseology
Last week, it made it above zero degrees where I live a couple of times. I went for a walk in the sunshine without a coat because it felt balmy and it was . . . twenty five degrees outside. The days are getting longer, the sun is setting later, and I can just feel around the edges of spring. I will take these tiny bits of joy wherever I can get them, and I hope you are, too.
In this edition, we have unkempt men, shapely dates, moody dumplings, and more.
Let’s get to it!
1. Square February
We’re starting with a fun one! People in certain corners of the internet are gaga over the fact that in 2026, the month of February perfectly fills all four rows of a Gregorian calendar. Typically called Perfect February, I thought Square February was pretty funny, even though (“actually” guy voice) on most calendars, it’s a rectangle.
Is this the nerdiest thing I’ve ever written about? Possibly! Also the one good thing from the Midwest’s most miserable month.
2. Kleptoparasitism
It’s bald eagle breeding season, and that means it’s time to obsessively check the Friends of Big Bear Valley YouTube livestream to see what resident eagles Jackie and Shadow are up to.1 In a recent social post, the FOBBV team wrote about juvenile bald eagles showing up to steal food from older eagles’ nests like college kids raiding the fridge on winter break—a behavior known as kleptoparasitism.
If you’ve heard of kleptomania—the compulsive theft of random items—that prefix will look familiar. It’s from the Greek klepto, “to steal.” Parasite’s etymology is kind of interesting; the word was first used in 16th century France, built from older words, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary - the greek para (beside) and sitos (grain, bread, food), a word of unknown origin.
According to Cornell Labs, Benjamin Franklin argued that eagle piracy was sufficient reason to cancel them as a national symbol of the U.S. Franklin argued for the wild turkey, but they do have a bit of a visual branding problem in that they look like they’re still evolving.
Kleptoparasitism isn’t exclusive to eagles, or even birds. Birds raid other nests all the time because they’re dicks it’s hard out there for wildlife.
3. Switching costs
I’m about 3/4 of the way through Cory Doctorow’s book Enshittification, a term he coined that I wrote about three years ago. Doctorow is an engaging and skilled nonfiction writer and this book is so good I want to buy a copy for everyone I know.
As he writes more than once in the book, enshittification happens when companies move value away from customers and give it to shareholders. Companies easily do this nowadays due to a lack of antitrust enforcement (breaking up monopolies), lawmakers’ lack of tech savvy, and the slower pace of regulation compared to innovation. So, it’s not our imagination: everything sucks now. Digital price tags allowing retailers to jack up the price of umbrellas when it rains? Legal. Meta and Google earning billions (not a typo) from their collusion on digital ad sales? A-okay so far! Amazon having a choke-hold monopoly on ebook sales? Nooo problem!
As for switching costs, it’s something I think we’ve all experienced: Everything you have to give up when switching from one platform to another, from convenience to actual digital products like ebooks, games, or music. For example, I’ve wanted to leave Spotify for a while; they pay their artists next to nothing, their CEO is funding an AI-driven war drone startup, etc., but I’m staying for now because switching is a pain in the ass and I don’t currently have bandwidth for it. I will likely leave Substack for Ghost this year, but it will take quite a bit of work and expense to do so.
It’s not always easy to leave a platform or service. It takes time, and effort, and expense, and clarity about what you’re giving up vs. what you’re gaining. There are times when paying switching costs is worth it; I don’t ever regret leaving Twitter, for example. Another problem inherent in this cost-switching calculus is that all of these large companies that have eaten up or crowded out smaller firms are run by amoral selfish pricks (see: the Epstein files and your grocery bill, for starters). If I leave every place engaged in bad practices, the number of options left to work or exist would be minimal. Nothing is simple when everything is enshittified.
4. Nudifier
Here’s a word I really, really wish I didn’t know. But it’s in the lexicon now, so we’re gonna cover it, in the hopes that some mothereffers get a consequence for it.
I recently discovered the Indicator newsletter, an indie news outlet covering the “digital deception” beat—a much-needed resource in the AI age. They wrote about how Meta is allowing ads for “AI nudifiers,” or apps that create images of people—usually women and (barf) children—undressed. In 2025, Meta ran over 25K of these ads. One tiny upside is that a good portion of these ads are scams, so pervs get nothing for their money (ha ha).
In Consequences Corner, Paris prosecutors raided the offices of X (formerly Twitter) because Elon Musk’s Grok AI allows users to create deepfake adult and child pornography images on the app, and X leadership are doing nothing to stop it.
What libertarian “free speech absolutists” like Musk and the men who run Substack don’t seem to understand is that free speech doesn’t function optimally without guardrails, because harmful, abusive speech ends up suppressing marginalized voices or doing heinous, inexcusable shit like this. Absolute free speech is just “free speech for the privileged,” which is all they probably care about anyway.
My hope is that as we elect younger progressives who understand tech, we can see similar criminal legal enforcement in the U.S., because companies and their leaders need to start seeing consequences.
5. Filthy Kevin
Palate cleanser time! This phrase comes from an ancient (2017) Tumblr post and its reblog response, via my oldest kid. Props to Dirty Andy as a solid runner-up. I wonder where this quiz came from—is it an old Buzzfeed regional foods thing? Google image search didn’t find anything.
Apparently this one resonated: check out the stats:
And yet, no rebranding campaign for the sloppy Joe has happened yet. When will the Democrats in Congress act?!?!?
6. Puffin counter
Let’s end on a delightful note. Longtime reader and superfan Deborah sent this as an addition to the Cool Jobs category. Would you like to live for free on a remote island off the coast of Wales? You can, if you’re willing to count endangered puffins as a volunteer for the Wildlife Trust of South and West Wales (WTSWW). If you’re in the UK, they’ll also pay your travel expenses to Skomer Island, a national nature preserve. There are no shops or permanent residents there, but there is a hostel run by the Wildlife Trust. Here are some great images captured on the island last year.
Would you volunteer for this gig?
Bonus Nugget
Not phrases, but still fun.
1. I need an angry pierogi plush. NEED!!!
Saw this post on Bluesky:
And someone posted a link to the shop in the replies and maybe it’s because I’m both Polish and Ukrainian, but I’ve never wanted anything more than this grumpy little guy:
At first I thought this one was a stoner pierogi but I think it’s an alien. Why not both?
2. One of my favorite memes from recent months
That’s it for this edition! Remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious!
Sadly, Jackie and Shadow recently lost their first clutch of eggs, but they may give it another go. I need my emotional support eaglets!
Omg those plush pierogis are amazing!!