The Oort Cloud | Yak polo | London Beer Flood | Senior carnivore campaigner
This week in phraseology
Halloween and a massively consequential election occurring within the same week? I’m not sure which is more terrifying!
We had fewer trick or treaters this year even though this was the warmest Halloween I can remember. I have daisies and coneflowers still trying to bloom during a time when I’m usually wearing long underwear outdoors. But no last-minute grocery store runs to buy more candy were needed this year, and we even have leftover candy. I’m not mad about it.
In this edition of Wordpecker, we have silly clouds, unfunny floods, weird products, weirder sports, and some beaver enticements, as a little treat. Let’s get to it!
1. The Oort Cloud
I enjoy learning about our galaxy and space exploration, but I’m not a huge space nerd who goes deep into reading about it. Real ones will likely have heard of the Oort Cloud, but not me.
Here’s NASA’s definition:
In 1950, astronomer Jan Oort proposed that some comets come from a vast, extremely distant spherical shell of icy bodies surrounding the solar system. This giant swarm of objects, now named the Oort Cloud, occupies space at a distance between 5,000 and 100,000 astronomical units.
NASA describes the Oort Cloud as “jaw-droppingly far away,” the most distant region of our solar system.
I will say that watching The Expanse is making me into more of a space nerd. There are so many cool ships, and the day-to-day tech along with the risks and norms of life in space the show depicts are fascinating. I can’t wait to read the books when I’m done watching.
2. Yak polo
This phrase was an answer in a recent NYT Crossword puzzle and I had to look it up. Yak polo is a relatively new sport, originating in Mongolia in the early 2000s and spreading to Pakistan a few years later. According to this 2014 video from The Guardian, yaks were chosen because horses don’t do as well at altitude.
While researching this entry, I also learned that polo originated in Central Asia during the 6th century, and not in Great Britain as I’d assumed. It’s just the addition of yaks that’s new.
3. The London Beer Flood
I’ll be honest: This idea of a beer flood is funny, but the reality is a real bummer. If you guessed that this is a tale of company negligence that led to improved safety standards, you’d be correct. And even though this was 1814 and not 2026, if you also guessed that the company was not legally compelled to compensate the victims’ families, you’d also be correct.
A brewery worker noticed one of the 22-foot-tall wooden vats of beer was missing one of the metal rings that held it together. Because this had happened in the past with no ill effects, they added it to ye olde to-do list to repair and moved on. Unfortunately, later that day, the vat burst, spilling massive amounts of porter into the neighborhood below and killing eight people, including five who were mourning the death of a child the day before. There’s a universe where a Simpsons version of a beer flood is funny, but we’re not living in it.
The “See also” section of the London Beer Flood Wikipedia page links to a “List of non-water floods," many of which include “mine tailings,” which sounds beyond horrific. The list also includes the Great Molasses Flood previously covered in this very newsletter and the 1991 Wisconsin Butter Flood that included “butter, cheese, and processed meat,” just like a good Midwesterner.
4. Senior Carnivore Campaigner
While reading about recent successful efforts to restore beaver habitat on public and private lands in the Western U.S., I came across a quote from Samantha Miller, senior carnivore campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. Did they not have an herbivore campaigner on staff for a quote?
This is an incredible job title. What a cocktail party icebreaker! I hope this is on her LinkedIn profile. Being serious for five seconds, this role involves rallying support for wild carnivores nationwide; a worthy endeavor.
This cool job is not the only banger the reporter used; conservationists working with a nonprofit are building beaver dam analogs (pun intended???) to entice the chompy semi-aquatic rodents to build dams of their own and show us doughy humans and our opposable thumbs how it’s done.
5. Activated Charcoal Detox Ranch
Since lockdown, my family has enjoyed sampling—or at least making fun of—so many disgusting-looking novelty products. It became a weird comfort-food bonding experience while we were trapped in our house contemplating our collective demise. We still like to try the occasional weird product mashup; ask me about the Liquid Death Pop-Tarts sitting in my cupboard.
This year, Hidden Valley came up with an exclusive SPOOKY Ranch dressing available only at Walmart. The product page makes the dressing look truly black in color; the reality . . . not so much:
Maybe the should’ve gone with black bottles? Also, in a vain attempt to avoid scaring off MAHA moms, who—spoiler alert—are probably not eating Hidden Valley products, the promo page claims it’s “mixed in a cauldron of fruit juice and cocoa with no artificial flavors.”
My son’s boyfriend sent the pic above, captioning it Activated Charcoal Detox Ranch, a brilliant nod to a hopefully-deceased wellness trend from a few years ago.
🌪️ It’s Wordpecker Speed Round time! 🏃🏻♀️
Speed Rounds are an occasional Wordpecker segment for words and phrases that don’t require a lot of explanation but are still novel, delightful, and share-worthy.
Let’s dive in:
Dunkin’ Spice - Spotted on a billboard in October and I can’t find an image of it online. Anyway, props to that marketer.
We saw an adorable, buff-colored French bulldog at the farmers market. When I noted their resemblance to a loaf of bread, one of my kids said, “forbidden baguette.” 🥖
When I commented on the unusual green color of a passing car, that same kid said, “Not the Shrek car!”
My friend Kathleen’s son calls their cat Fatniss Nevercleen.
When I learned the residents of the video game Stardew Valley were vegetarians, I said that nobody wants to see a Stardew Valley slaughterhouse.
My friend Mike mispronounced Amazon as Yamazon, and being a good friend, I could not let that one go. We spent the next five minutes doing a whole bit about shopping at the tuber superstore. 🍠
Got any fun shorties you’d like to share?
That’s it for this edition! Remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious.