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judgment day
Sep. 12th, 2025 04:04 am![[syndicated profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/feed.png){kind=small}
wordsmithdaily_feednoun: 1. A time when one is evaluated, especially for their actions. 2. In some religious traditions, the day when the world ends and God judges people, sending them to heaven or hell.
wordsmithdaily_feed
flummox
Sep. 12th, 2025 01:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 12, 2025 is:
flummox • \FLUM-uks\ • verb
To flummox someone is to confuse or perplex them.
// The actor was easily flummoxed by last-minute changes to the script.
Examples:
“If Thursday crosswords flummox you, remember that it’s much better for your stress level to do your best and sharpen your skills than to become angry because you aren’t sure what’s going on.” — Deb Amlen, The New York Times, 11 June 2025
Did you know?
When it comes to the origins of flummox, etymologists are, well, flummoxed. No one really knows where the word comes from. The first known print use of the verb flummox appeared in Charles Dickens’ novel The Pickwick Papers in the mid-1830s, while the adjective flummoxed appeared italicized a few years earlier in a Dublin newspaper article about laborers striking against employers who oppose their rights: “Lord Cloncurry is actually flummoxed. The people refuse to work for him.” To be flummoxed by something is to be utterly confused by it—that is, to be baffled, puzzled, bewildered, completely unable to understand. Fortunately, a word can be used even if everyone is flummoxed by its etymology, and by the end of the 19th century, flummox had become quite common in both British and American English.
The Big Idea: Ren Hutchings
Sep. 11th, 2025 05:37 pmscalziwhatever_feed
The word “sonder” refers to the realization that every other person is living their own, whole life outside of what you see. For author Ren Hutchings, she has experienced this with side characters in media, wondering about their lives outside of the story. Expanding on this idea, she ended up writing An Unbreakable World. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how this companion novel focuses on characters who are outside of the spotlight.
REN HUTCHINGS:
I’ve always had an interest in the relationship between history and folklore, a theme which has influenced so much of my speculative writing. I’m most intrigued by a close, individual perspective, viewing the past as a moving tapestry of small lives and stories, rather than a series of big, significant events.
Ever since I was a child, I’ve often found myself invested in a seemingly insignificant side character in a book or movie, that person who only pops up for a brief encounter and says three lines of dialogue. I’d be wondering about where they went next, or if they had a family, or what the rest of their life was like. Because of course they must have had a whole life that existed outside of that one time when they happened to cross paths with the heroes!
And so, when I set out to write a new novel set in the same universe as my debut, Under Fortunate Stars, I found myself pulled toward the stories at the outer edges. The result is a standalone novel that’s in many ways a companion piece to my first book, but in other ways its opposite. Because while Under Fortunate Stars was about a group of unexpected heroes who famously stopped an interstellar war and saved humanity, An Unbreakable World is very much about those folks on the periphery. In a vast galaxy fraught with intrigue and turmoil, this story asks what was going on with the people who didn’t become historical heroes.
The protagonists in this book are people whose names and deeds won’t be remembered in songs or poems. They’re people whose most important choices will never be known to history, whose motivations will never be examined by future biographers. The point-of-view characters are each struggling to find a meaning in their own lives, and looking in all the wrong places for an ever-elusive sense of purpose.
Almost everybody you meet in An Unbreakable World is experiencing deep isolation. Page is a petty thief who woke up from stasis without most of her memories, and while she searches desperately for any shards of her missing past, she closes her mind to the possibilities that the present is offering her. Meanwhile, Maelle has dedicated years of her life to plotting a long-game revenge scheme, and she’s likewise been ignoring every opportunity to take a new path.
On a distant world, Dalya of House Edamaun is an anxious young heiress growing up in a restrictive, sheltered society, on a planet that has intentionally cut itself off from the United Worlds of Humanity. She’s struggling with spiritual and existential questions, crushed by the weight of a responsibility she doesn’t feel ready for… until she comes to realize that she actually has more choices than she thinks. In forging small, intimate connections with others, each character finds the shape of their own story becoming clearer.
Both of the Union Quadrant books touch on themes about storytelling, memory, and the historical record. But the thing I really wanted to explore in An Unbreakable World is the way our search for a bigger meaning often begins with our most personal choices.
Most people will never do any epic deeds, or perform incredible galaxy-changing feats. And some people whose actions do have far-reaching effects won’t even realize it. Indeed, most of us will never know exactly how our lives will affect the fabric of history, or how far the ripples of our decisions travelled. But we can make choices about what’s important to us, about what we want to stand for and believe in. We can choose which things we find meaning in when our future isn’t clear and everything seems hopeless.
Sometimes, the journey to save yourself – and to accept that you’re somebody worth saving – can be just as monumental as a heroic quest to save the galaxy.
An Unbreakable World: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Kobo|Powell’s
Charlie Offers A Carrot
Sep. 11th, 2025 05:36 pmscalziwhatever_feedCharlie knows you might be stressed out right now, and would like to offer you her carrot:
It’s dirty and slobbery, but that’s what makes it so special. She hopes you enjoy her gift to you.
-AMS
parochial
Sep. 11th, 2025 04:33 amwordsmithdaily_feedadjective: 1. Having a narrow outlook or scope. 2. Relating to a parish.
zoomorphic
Sep. 11th, 2025 01:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 11, 2025 is:
zoomorphic • \zoh-uh-MOR-fik\ • adjective
Zoomorphic describes things that have the form of an animal.
// The local bakery is famous for its wide variety of zoomorphic treats, from “hedgehog” dinner rolls to delicate, swan-shaped pastries.
Examples:
“The oldest known ceramics come from a handful of sites in the Czech Republic and date back to about 28,000 B.C.E., roughly 10,000 years after the Neanderthals went extinct. A now iconic figure of a woman and assorted ceramics were found at a Czech site called Dolni Vestonice in 1925. Additional anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figurines were found over the ensuing decades, and in 2002 fingerprints were discovered on many of the objects.” — Jaimie Seaton, Smithsonian Magazine, 2 July 2024
Did you know?
The first-known use of zoomorphic in English is a translation of the French word zoomorphique, used in a mid-19th century book on paleography to describe an ornately designed Greek letter in a manuscript from the Middle Ages: “The text commences with a zoomorphic letter, formed of two winged dragons, united by the tails, the open space being ornamented with elegant arabesques, composed of leaves and flowers …” The zoo in zoomorphique comes from the Greek noun zôion, meaning “animal,” and morphique from morphē, meaning “form.” The translation of zoomorphique to zoomorphic made perfect sense given the the existence of a similarly constructed word, anthropomorphic (“having human form”), which made its debut half a century earlier.
The Big Idea: T. A. Chan
Sep. 10th, 2025 11:42 amscalziwhatever_feed
All is fair in love and war. But what if instead of a bloody battle, wars were games to be played? Author T. A. Chan brings us a near future world in which violent wars are a thing of the past, and games usher in a new strategy of fighting each other. Follow along in the Big Idea for her newest novel, One Last Game, to see how the cards play out.
T. A. CHAN:
Big Idea: Must there be consequences?
My 21st Century Anxiety-induced Roman Empire has consisted of two things the past couple years: 1) Knowing Earth is a ticking time bomb from irreversible climate disaster at the rate things are going and 2) The ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza and other international conflicts.
One Last Game was my attempt of channeling those dreads into a more hopeful future where the climate disaster has been resolved and international conflicts are settled in a non-violent play-by-the-rulebook sort of way. Despite my attempts of creating a grounded utopia, I have somehow ended up with a world that is both so much better (yay for eco-friendly civilization practices!) and also so much worse (nay for lethal board games!) than today’s state of affairs. And it all started with how “ethical warfare” might look like in the future…So welcome, and enjoy the ride!
Why are we so predictable? And I don’t mean “we” as in you and me and them on an individual level, but rather “we” as a collective human society and our habit of settling major conflict via some sort of warfare, whether that be of the economic, psychological, or conventional variety just to name a few. It’s almost like there has to be consequences for anything to be taken seriously.
For the purpose of this Big Idea, let’s focus on conventional warfare.
What makes war bad?
I mean, obviously the list is loooongggg — from destroyed infrastructure to loss of lives, from environmental damage to the trauma imparted on whole generations. And yet even over the course of thousands of years, we haven’t been able to escape using “war” as a way to resolve conflict between tribes/kingdoms/nations/etc when verbal communication fails.
In a perfect world, all global disagreements could be resolved with talking and votes and things of that nature.
But if history is anything like a crystal ball, a war only ends when the cost to continue the engagement can no longer be afforded and/or justified.
But what if we minimize the cost and harm of war?
Imagine this: The year is 2145. Through the desperate will to survive, humanity has painstakingly implemented eco-conscious measures over the course of decades and restored Earth back to its healthy, environmental glory. Having barely escaped extinction of the human species, there’s a very strong consensus that minimizing environmental damage and protecting existing resources is Good.
Thus, bombs are banned, chemical warfare is banned, scorched-earth policy is banned, hell anything that leaves a scratch on a tree is banned. Human-on-human interactions have been tempered as conventional warfare is done away. Debilitating injuries, famine, home displacement, and painful deaths are relics of a bygone era.
The outcomes of international conflicts are settled simply: with a gameboard and players representing their respective countries.
What’s stopping countries from disregarding the outcome of a silly boardgame?
Yeah, I get it. Letting a game of chess determine who gets territorial claim over a highly contested shipping route does seem rather ludicrous.
Even nowadays, international agreements and treatises are broken with the implication–and occasionally, execution–of consequences ranging from economic sanctions to retaliatory acts. See Exhibit A: Paris Accord and Geneva Convention.
And so, herein lies the heart of the Big Idea: Must there be consequences for anything to matter?
I’m inclined to say yes, particularly with a grounded spec-fic set in the near future. And the consequences must be universal enough that it carries weight, no matter what culture or class you come from. In the particular case of One Last Game, this translates to human lives. After all, human conflicts should only affect humans, right? And death is ubiquitous and serious enough that no entity would want to wage needless war when there are less drastic methods of reaching an agreement between states.
Imagine this: It’s the year 2145 and you’re surveying the aftermath of a battlefield that took place in a city. All the skyscrapers gleam under the sunlight, unscathed and standing proud. Verdant leaves unfurl from oak trees in the parks while squirrels argue with pigeons over a slice of cheesy bread that missed the compost bin. It’s quiet, but you know by the end of the week, the streets will once again be bustling with civilians going about their day. On the news broadcast, a reporter discusses how Country A has formally ceded control over shipping routes to Country B after its latest game loss–along with the lives of citizens unlucky enough to be in the randomly selected city.
Their deaths were quick and painless.
Just like falling asleep.
But is it ethical? Is this the best we can do? Must there be consequences?
In conclusion, I don’t have a conclusion to the question of “is there an ethical way to conduct warfare?” But I know we can do better.
Humans are messy and so the solution will be messy. And I have hope that the collective we will strive to understand and recognize an individual’s humanity in all its messy glory, and find a better way forward.
One Last Game: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
I’m Traveling Today, So Here is a New Mountain Goats Song For You
Sep. 10th, 2025 09:49 amscalziwhatever_feedFun fact: John Darnielle, the leader and songwriter of The Mountain Goats, went to high school in the same town I did (different schools, though) and share friends in common with me from that era. However, we did not meet each other in person until about a decade ago, at Nerdcon, run by John and Hank Green. What a strange, small and weird world it is. I am glad to know him now, of course. The above song is from the band’s upcoming album, which you can read about here. Enjoy the song, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.
— JS
sacrificial lamb
Sep. 10th, 2025 05:04 amwordsmithdaily_feednoun: Someone or something blamed or sent to their doom in order to spare others.
griot
Sep. 10th, 2025 01:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 10, 2025 is:
griot • \GREE-oh\ • noun
The term griot refers to any of a class of musician-entertainers of western Africa whose performances include tribal histories and genealogies. The term is also used broadly to refer to a storyteller.
// Tracing her family lineage back to West African griots inspired the singer to focus on storytelling through her music.
Examples:
“Music is both the subject and mechanism of Sinners, which opens with a voiceover history of how some musicians, dating back to the West African griots, have been seen as conduits between this world and the one beyond.” — Paul A. Thompson, Pitchfork, 22 Apr. 2025
Did you know?
In many West African countries, the role of cultural guardian is maintained, as it has been for centuries, by griots. Griot—a borrowing from French—refers to an oral historian, musician, storyteller, and sometimes praise singer. (Griots are called by other names as well: jeli or jali in Mande and gewel in Wolof, for example). Griots preserve the genealogies, historical narratives, and oral traditions of their tribes. Among the instruments traditionally played by griots are two lutes: the long-necked, 21-string kora, and the khalam, thought by some to be the ancestor of the banjo.
The Big Idea: Sharon Shinn
Sep. 9th, 2025 03:51 pmscalziwhatever_feed
It’s never too late to tell a good story. Author Sharon Shinn has returned years later to her Twelve Houses series to bring you a fresh novel in a familiar world. Follow along in her Big Idea for Shifter and Shadow to see how she’s breathed new life into a finished series.
SHARON SHINN:
Sometimes I write a book with a grand theme in mind. I want to explore issues of racism, maybe, or cultural diversity, or colonialism or religion or grief. But sometimes I just want to follow a couple of characters around. I just want to tell their story.
That’s the case with Shifter and Shadow, a new short novel in my Twelve Houses world. I wanted to explain what happened between two characters, Kirra and Donnal, whose relationship had unfolded off the page between the end of the second book and the beginning of the third. During the seventeen years since I had published the last book in the series, many of my readers had asked for their story, and I finally decided to write it.
But the idea was a little daunting. First, I had to come up with a storyline that would be a bit more interesting than a reconciliation and a declaration of love. There was no real suspense involved, because anyone who had read the whole series already knew that Kirra and Donnal ended up together. So what plot could I devise that would slot neatly in the gap between those previous books? What obstacles could I throw in their path, what surprises could I manufacture, what tension could I generate from surrounding circumstances?
Even more difficult, how could I believably bridge the gulf that had always existed between the titled noblewoman and the peasant’s son? What could possibly move Donnal to openly admit his feelings when he had spent, oh, fifteen years trying to conceal them? How could Kirra convince him she returned his love when she had spent the entire second novel involved with another man?
Finally—seventeen years later—how successfully could I recapture the tone and rhythms of the earlier books and the personalities of the main characters? Kirra is one of my more irrepressible heroines and a lot of fun to write, but Donnal is significantly more reserved. Would I be able to tell a story from his point of view?
The questions about this particular book just added complexity to the task of writing a series, which can be challenging at the best of times. Simply keeping track of characters’ names, ages, heights, eye colors, and random personal details can be a monumental chore. (I keep a running file where I add pertinent details as they come up, but if I forget to update the file during the editing process, I end up doing a lot of searching through works-in-progress. “I thought he had two brothers, not one.” “Did she say she’d never been to the royal city?”) I find myself frequently rereading whole books in existing series every time I want to write a new one, hoping not to make a continuity error.
There’s also the ongoing problem of how much background material from previous installments needs to be reprised in the current manuscript. To some extent, an author writing any science fiction or fantasy book has to balance world-building with plotting, avoiding the infamous “info-dump” while still offering enough detail to bring an imaginary place to life. But in a series, it becomes particularly important to remind readers of pertinent events or relevant magic. One of my fellow authors says that there are always certain touchstones that readers expect to see and that the author has to include because they’re what make the books in a particular series familiar and unique.
I knew writing the book would be tricky. But I had characters I loved and a plot that I found intriguing—one that fit nicely around the romance. And anyway, there were already some built-in grand themes, because the Twelve Houses world always incorporates issues of bigotry, persecution, and fear-based hatred. In Shifter and Shadow, many of the secondary characters are forced to examine their own biases—and maybe overcome them, maybe not. They also have to make hard choices, weighing deep personal risks against powerful rewards. What can they live without? What can they never give up?
I’m not an artist, but I’ve always thought that painting a picture must be similar to writing a novel. I might spend a week on one scene, two days on another, but neither scene is meant to stand alone; each one should merely be part of one seamless narrative. Similarly, I imagine that an artist might spend hours getting the folds of a gown just right or capturing the precise way sunlight illuminates an ocean wave. But that particular section of the canvas will ultimately be viewed as part of the overall picture, something that is taken as a whole.
Ideally, I think, the background effort that goes into a creative endeavor should be largely invisible. The artist might be calculating angles and the implementing the rule of thirds; the writer might be strategizing about plot and pacing and strategic disclosures of information. But the hope is that the audience just enjoys the finished work. At least, that’s what I hope when someone is reading one of my books.
I recently saw a meme that first showed the front of a completed piece of embroidery, a beautiful piece of artwork with clean lines and lovely imagery. The caption reads, “What the reader sees.” Beside it is shown the back of the same piece, with all the threads chaotically crisscrossing and all the knots and trailing ends making a glorious mess. This time the caption says, “What the author knows.”
My goal in writing Shifter and Shadow was to keep track of all those threads and balance all those conflicting imperatives in ways that the reader would never notice. All that’s left, I hope, is the story.
Shifter and Shadow: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop|Powell’s
epiphany
Sep. 9th, 2025 04:31 amwordsmithdaily_feednoun: A sudden insight, understanding, or realization.
insinuate
Sep. 9th, 2025 01:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 9, 2025 is:
insinuate • \in-SIN-yuh-wayt\ • verb
To insinuate something (especially something bad or insulting) is to say it in a subtle or indirect way. Insinuate can also mean "to gradually make (oneself) a part of a group, a person's life, etc., often by behaving in a dishonest way."
// When the teacher questioned the students about their identical test answers, they knew she was insinuating that they had cheated.
// They have managed to insinuate themselves into the city's most influential social circles.
Examples:
"... when perennial talk among beachgoers about where to spend those beautiful but fleeting summer days involves rumors that, perhaps Narragansett is, say, uninviting to nonlocals, officials contend that just isn't true. 'When people say that or insinuate that Narragansett Town Beach is unfriendly or unwelcoming to nonresidents, this is absolutely untruthful,' said Parks and Recreation director Michelle Kershaw." — Christopher Gavin, The Boston Globe, 3 Nov. 2024
Did you know?
Insinuating involves a kind of figurative bending or curving around your meaning: you introduce something—an idea, an accusation, a point of view—without saying it directly. The winding path is visible in the word’s etymology: insinuate comes from the Latin verb sinuare, meaning "to bend or curve," which in turn comes from the Latin noun sinus, meaning "curve." The influence of Latin sinus is visible elsewhere too: in the mathematical terms sine and cosine, the adjective sinuous ("having many twists and turns"), and the noun sinus ("any of several spaces in the skull that connect with the nostrils").
A New-Found Enjoyment Of Pickleball
Sep. 8th, 2025 09:53 pmscalziwhatever_feed
There are very few sports I like and even fewer physical activities I enjoy partaking in as exercise. Unfortunately, the older and heavier I get, the more I realize that I really should be doing some kind of movement. The movement of choice has been hard to determine, as I hate running, am not fond of going to an actual gym, and don’t feel like joining a recreational sports team of any kind.
Thankfully, pickleball has revealed its beautiful self to me. Pickleball, a sport known for its popularity amongst senior citizens, has turned out to be perfect for an absolute couch potato like me.
Have you ever wanted to play tennis but are definitely not fit enough to do so? Lo and behold pickleball, tennis’s much less intense and inexpensive cousin. With lighter paddles, whiffle balls instead of tennis balls, and smaller courts than tennis, it’s perfect for anyone who is less athletically inclined, such as myself.
I truly never thought I’d find a physical activity that I deemed “fun.” Going to the gym and lifting weights is not exactly fun. Running on a treadmill is not what I’d consider fun. However, pickleball actually is pretty fun! I am excited to say I like it, and I’m really happy I’ve found something that I don’t hate doing that also gets me up and my heart pumpin’.
I think it’s really helped that my pickleball partner is my mom, and playing with her has been pretty great. She helps hold me accountable on days when I don’t feel like getting up and playing, we play music from a speaker when no one else is there (which is 97% of the time), and sometimes we get Subway afterwards. It’s nice to have some dedicated time together doing a decently fun activity, and I feel much less competitive when it’s just against my mom. Like I don’t get miffed when I lose, which I cannot say about most things (like Fortnite).
While I do still hate being in the sun and despise sweating, I have found that I can tolerate the hour of playing that we do. We usually play a best two out of three, and that’s roughly a good enough amount of time for me to feel like I have accomplished “the exercise.” Like, I actually got up and spent an okay amount of time moving my body, and now I want to shower. That counts as being active in my book.
I hate to say it, like really hate to say it, but I do actually tend to feel better after having played pickleball. It’s almost like… exercise is good for you? Crazy, I know. And trust me, I’ve spent a lot of time avoiding it. But dang, getting older does not feel great on my joints, and my weight isn’t helping in that area, either.
I’m not saying pickleball is my new secret to weight loss and the key to unlock health, but I figure it’s better than absolutely nothing, which is what I was previously doing. It’s fun, anyway, and that’s all that really matters, right? Right.
Have you played pickleball before? What do you think of it? What do you like to do to stay active? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS
evangelical
Sep. 8th, 2025 04:56 amwordsmithdaily_feedadjective: 1. Extremely enthusiastic about a cause. 2. Relating to Christian churches emphasizing the Bible's authority and a personal relationship with Jesus. noun: A member of an evangelical church.
sanguine
Sep. 8th, 2025 01:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 8, 2025 is:
sanguine • \SANG-gwin\ • adjective
Sanguine is a formal word that today almost always describes someone who is confident and hopeful, or something that shows confidence and hopefulness. Sanguine can also describe something that is bloodred in color, something involving or relating to bloodshed, or a person’s reddish complexion.
// The young group of entrepreneurs is sanguine about the future of their business.
Examples:
“[David] Corenswet is remarkably sanguine about a film that has been the subject of immense scrutiny. The trailer is the most watched in the history of either DC or Warner Bros. Though he may not want the burden of Superman’s success or failure on his, yes, broad shoulders, it will land there anyway.” — Eliana Dockterman, Time, 1 Apr. 2025
Did you know?
If you’re the sort of cheery, confident soul who always looks on the bright side no matter what happens, you may be described as sanguine. Sanguine traces back to the Latin noun sanguis, meaning “blood,” and over the centuries the word has had meanings ranging from “bloodthirsty” to “bloodred,” among other things in that (ahem) vein, so how did it also come to mean “hopeful”? During the Middle Ages, health and temperament were believed to be governed by the balance of different liquids, or humors, in one’s body: phlegm, black bile, yellow bile, and blood. Those lucky people who were governed by blood were strong, confident, and even had a healthy reddish glow (all that blood, you know)—they were, in a word, sanguine. In time, the physiological theory behind the humors was displaced by scientific medicine, but the word sanguine is still commonly used to describe those who are cheerfully confident.
behest
Sep. 7th, 2025 01:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 7, 2025 is:
behest • \bih-HEST\ • noun
Behest can refer either to an authoritative order or an urgent prompting.
// The committee met again at the senator’s behest.
// At the behest of her friends, Marcie read the poem aloud.
Examples:
“... Raymond Carver and I were selecting stories for our American Short Story Masterpieces. When Ray and I worked on our selections, we would meet in Manhattan, where I lived, or in Syracuse, New York, where he lived. ... Each morning we’d read and then meet for lunch and talk about what we’d read. After lunch we’d read some more, and at dinner we talked about the afternoon’s reading. Sometimes we’d reread at the other’s behest.” — Tom Jenks, LitHub.com, 2 Aug. 2024
Did you know?
In Return of the Jedi, the villain Darth Vader speaks with an old-timey flair when he asks his boss, the Emperor, for instructions: “What is thy bidding, my master?” If the film’s screenwriters wanted him to sound even more old-timey, however, they could have chosen to have him ask “What is thy behest?” As a word for a command or order, behest predates bidding in English by a couple centuries, dating all the way back—long, long ago, though still in this galaxy—to the 1100s. Its Old English ancestor, the noun behǣs, referred to a promise, a meaning that continued on in Middle English especially in the phrase “the land of behest” but is now obsolete. The “command” sense of behest is still in good use, typically referring to an authoritative order, whether from an emperor or some other high-ranking figure. Behest is now also used with a less forceful meaning; it can refer to an urgent prompting, as in “an anniversary showing of classic films at the behest of the franchise’s fans.”
mollify
Sep. 6th, 2025 01:00 ammerriamwebster_feedMerriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 6, 2025 is:
mollify • \MAH-luh-fye\ • verb
To mollify someone is to make them less angry. Mollify can also mean "to reduce in intensity."
// The celebrity's statement was intended to mollify critics.
// Time mollified her anger.
Examples:
"The philanthropic move is likely meant to mollify angry residents who are protesting against the celebrity-filled spectacle being held in their historic backyard." — Madeleine Marr, The Miami Herald, 25 June 2025
Did you know?
Mollify is particularly well-suited for referring to the action of soothing emotional distress or anger and softening hard feelings: the word comes from the Latin adjective mollis, meaning "soft." Mollis is also the root of the English adjective emollient, used to describe something (such as a hand lotion) that softens or soothes, and the noun mollusk, which refers to any one of a large group of animals (such as snails and clams) that have a soft body without a backbone and that usually live in a shell.
Announcing “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years”
Sep. 5th, 2025 05:16 pmscalziwhatever_feed
This November, you know, after you’ve picked up The Shattering Peace and enjoyed the heck out of it, I’ll have another new thing for you: A short story called “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years,” which will be part of The Time Traveler’s Passport, an anthology of stories about time and/or travel, edited by John Joseph Adams, which in addition to my story will feature stories by R.F. Kuang, Peng Shepard, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake and P. Djèlí Clark. That is a hell of a line-up, if I do say so myself. These stories will also feature audio narration, and they will be for sale individually, but if you are an Amazon Prime member, you’ll get to read them for free, because Amazon is publishing this anthology, and that’s how Amazon do.
And what is “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years” about? Here’s the pitch:
Time travel is real—and used for high-end tourism. Every moment of the past is open to visitors, and no matter what they do then, everything now waits for them, thanks to the sure hand of an experienced time travel technician. Come spend a day behind the controls of the time machine, and discover why, this day of all days, it’s time for this technician to make a change. Because sometimes, time travel is more than just an adventure. Sometimes, it’s a moral imperative.
Oooooh! Moral imperatives!
It’s a very good story, if I do say so myself (as are the other stories in this collection, no surprise given the line-up), and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you all in November. That’s not long now, and worth the wait.
— JS
Being Introduced To Zaynab Issa’s “Third Culture Cooking” By CultFlav
Sep. 5th, 2025 03:45 pmscalziwhatever_feedI have followed CultFlav on Tik Tok for a while now, enjoying their thorough reviews of cooking products as well as cookbooks. For all the reviews of theirs I’ve seen, I’ve never really been tempted to buy anything before. Most of what I have seen are things like pan reviews, a comparison of knives, talking about stand-mixers, basically a bunch of stuff I already have and don’t need to replace any time soon. So while I like their content, I have never felt compelled to buy anything they’ve talked about.
About a month ago, I watched a twenty minute video on Tik Tok where they reviewed Zaynab Issa’s cookbook, Third Culture Cooking. That’s right, I watched an entire twenty minute Tik Tok video. I have never done that before, to be honest. But for this video, I was sat. They had my attention from the start, and kept it all the way through. Here’s the Tik Tok video:
@cultflav 9.2: Third Culture Cooking by @Zaynab Issa cookbook review! This book is special without being fussy. It takes freezer ingredients and takes them from getting food on the table to taking care of yourself. Hope you enjoy the review! Check out our website for Gyoza recipe(s): cultflav.com
CultFlav’s video sold me completely on buying this cookbook. I had to place a special order to get it because I bought it through my local independent bookstore, but it was worth the wait.
I have always had this awful tendency to buy a cookbook and then never cook anything from it. It is a problem that extends into other areas of my life, too, such as buying a ton of video games on Steam and never playing any. I’m sure many of you can relate. Yeah, I see your TBR pile of fantasy novels on your nightstand there, don’t try to hide it, we’re all friends here.
For Third Culture Cooking, I was determined to cook something from it. I had bought it because CultFlav’s video had made me excited about the book, and eager to try the recipes, and by golly I was going to do it.
I decided to follow in CultFlav’s footsteps and sit down and read the whole thing first. I’m glad I did, because Zaynab Issa has some very interesting things to say on “American” food and how being a woman impacts how we view the act of cooking.
All the praise I’m about to give the book are exactly what CultFlav has said in their videos, but I’m going to do it anyway.
I love the look of the book. It’s a really well made, nice looking book that is going to look great on any shelf, or even displayed on a coffee table. It’s well-shot and well-organized. I like the textured lettering on the cover.
I love the accessibility aspect of the ingredients. It can be daunting to try to cook a dish that has ingredients you’ve never used before, or is a very different cuisine than what you’re used to, but Issa makes a point to include tons of substitutions in every single recipe. I find her recipes to be very approachable, and if you read through the recipes as well as her section on “pantry and fridge staples”, you’ll find that once you buy something for one of her recipes, chances are very high that you will use it again in about a dozen others. This is especially true of things like spices. Everyone knows the feeling of buying a whole jar of spice just to use 1/4 tsp of it in a recipe, and then never touch it again. I can guarantee that if you buy a spice she uses in a recipe, you’re going to see it again and again throughout the book.
Issa has a section in the beginning of the book that lists a handful of moods, and then tells you some recipes to cook for that mood. If you’re in the mood for something cozy, she recommends her udon carbonara, or her banana cake with tahini fudge. If you’re in the mood to celebrate, why not try her biryani, or chocolate cake with chai buttercream? I think this is a really unique and fun thing to have in your cookbook.
In the couple weeks of having this book, I’ve made four things from it. French Onion Ramen, Super Savory Chicken Soup, Red Curry Orzotto, and Coffee Cake Muffins. Everything has been really good so far, and has been pretty easy!
For the French Onion Ramen, it mostly consisted of caramelizing onions, adding things like white miso paste and rice vinegar for flavor along with beef broth, and boiling noodles. I loved the inclusion of fresh grated parmesan on top. I even managed to make pretty perfect soft-boiled eggs that were nice and jammy. I couldn’t find ramen noodles at the store, so I used yakisoba noodles instead, and I think it turned out really well. I would like to make it with actual ramen noodles in the future, I think it would be even better that way.
When I made the Super Savory Chicken Soup, it was because my mom was sick, and I wanted to make her a soup that really packed a punch. This soup has tons of garlic and ginger in it that I was sure would help her feel better. The noodles in this dish are also ramen noodles, which I did manage to get ahold of this time. In the recipe, she says to cook the chicken thighs in the broth, but I didn’t have time to actually cook the chicken and shred it and all that, so I used a rotisserie chicken and shredded it up before adding it in, and I think it turned out pretty amazing. It was super flavorful and full of good stuff. I will say, you can’t skimp on the fresh lime juice, it really brightens the soup up and adds some excellent acidity to the hearty broth.
The Red Curry Orzotto is probably my favorite out of all these recipes so far, even though everything else was really good, this dish just turned out so delicious and cozy and I can’t wait to make it a regular in my rotation of dinners. The recipe calls to include mushrooms and peas in it, but also says that if you want to include a protein, she recommends shrimp or chicken. I picked shrimp and I think it was an absolutely amazing addition. I’m kind of biased because shrimp is my favorite protein in general, but honestly the flavors are just perfect together. I used a mild red curry paste for this dish but you could easily use a spicier one for some extra kick.
Lastly, the Coffee Cake Muffins. The dessert section of this book is the one that interests me the most, with recipes like Coconut and Cardamom Cake, Almond Mocha Blondies, Melon Sorbet, and Salted Brown Butter Pecan Shortbread. The Coffee Cake Muffins had a really simple ingredient list and were pretty easy to make, and they tasted really good, but oh my goodness they were so crumbly. The streusel on top was so crumbly you couldn’t eat one of these bad boys without hovering over a plate or the kitchen sink. I felt like I had done something wrong to make them turn out this way, so I actually emailed Issa and asked her if there was something I might’ve done to cause the seemingly-extreme-crumbliness. I was very surprised she actually responded to my email the next day!
Everything I’ve made so far has been pretty great, and nothing yet has been too difficult or daunting! I really like this cookbook, and I like that it has made me genuinely excited to get in the kitchen and cook something yummy. It’s a nice feeling, and I owe it to CultFlav for so very thoroughly reading, testing, and recommending Third Culture Cooking.
If you want to see their full, hour long review over the book, rather than the twenty minute Tik Tok version, here’s the YouTube video:
I will say my one critique of the cookbook is that sometimes (rarely, but honestly once is more than enough) Issa opts to put a photo of an empty plate to accompany the recipe, rather than a photo of the food before it was eaten. The empty plate might have a spoonful or two of remnants of the dish, or smears of sauce here and there, but we don’t get an actual photo of the dish. That is definitely not my favorite, but it happens so sparingly that I can get over it. It was actually that way for the Red Curry Orzotto, where there’s just a little tiny bit of orzo left on a sauce-smeared plate. Wouldn’t be what I do, but, it’s not my cookbook.
Overall, I highly recommend giving this cookbook a shot, it has been so fun to read and look through, and I’m so excited to try more recipes from it. I’m really loving it so far!
Don’t forget to check out Zaynab Issa’s Instagram and Tik Tok, as well as CultFlav’s Instagram and Tik Tok, so you can see tons of awesome cooking-related reviews.
Which dish sounds the most yummy to you? Do you have any cookbooks you’ve been loving lately? Let me know in the comments, and have a great day!
-AMS