Sweary links #4

The latest bulletins from Swearsville:

The New Yorker profiles Jony Ive, Apple’s vice president of design

And look what it finds in his office:

Overlapping framed images leaned against the wall: a Banksy print of the Queen with the face of a chimpanzee, and a poster, well known in design circles, that begins, “Believe in your fucking self. Stay up all fucking night,” and ends, many admonitions later, “Think about all the fucking possibilities.”

Image via Business Insider (link via commenter Linda).

“The number of fucks you need to not give”

Language Log weighs in on countable swears.

(See also “How many swears can we give?”)

Anal acronyms #1

“The URL for Chris Christie’s new political action committee has occasioned a certain amount of innocent merriment, because LeadershipMattersForAmerica.org naturally suggests the acronym LMFAO, normally interpreted as ‘laughing my fucking ass off’.” (Language Log, again.)

Anal acronyms #2

“BADASS is an acronym that stands for BEGAL Automated Deployment And Survey System. (It is not clear what ‘BEGAL’ stands for, in turn.)”

From First Look: “Secret ‘BADASS’ Intelligence Program Spied on Smartphones.” 

The craptastic history of “shit show”

“So what exactly is this coprophilic coinage?” Mike Vuolo investigates for Lexicon Valley.

No swearing, please, we’re Canadian

“Any Calgary sports team that plays on city property will have its name reviewed for offensiveness.” (National Post)

No swearing, please, we’re Virginia Beachers

@phylogenomics these are all around Virginia Beach boardwalk pic.twitter.com/9MKlKx0GFe

— Jen D. (@TriGirlJ) February 8, 2015

 

Where did you hear that word? 

Zach Weiner of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal searches for the ur-curser.

Radical editing

i removed the word “cunt” from irvine welsh’s “trainspotting” and it’s now a three-page pamphlet on the dangers of heroin use

— john freiler (@johnfreiler) February 5, 2015