imbued with poison

The Oxford English Dictionary has announced its selection for word of the year (previously) as toxic.
With etymological roots in the Greek warrior practise of applying poison to arrowheads (though τοξικόν refers instead to the bow), the word has depressingly gained exponentially more cachet in several contexts including toxic masculinity, toxic workplace and toxic relationship and beat out other shortlisted terms such as  gaslighting and neologisms like incel (involuntary celibate), cakeism (having one’s cake and eating it too) techlash and overtourism.

6x6

lysergsäurediethylamid : Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann first synthesised LSD at Sandoz Labs on this day in 1938, taking his first trip four and a half years later

under construction: photographer Peter Steinhauer captures the colourful bamboo scaffolding of Hong Kong

delay, deny and deflect: a look at the devious playbook of a social media giant

omnishambles: continued Brexit chaos

minimals: animated block creatures from Lucas Zanotto

excelsior: celebrating the incredible career of Stan Lee

vanilla, strawberry, knickerbocker glory

Via the always excellent Everlasting Blört, we are introduced to the musical stylings of the band Fujiya & Miyagi, hailing from Brighton-by-the-Sea.
Perhaps not news to anyone else—especially the audience of the Great British Bake-Off—but a knickerbocker glory is a superlative name for a particularly fancy kind of ice cream parfait with alternating strata of ingredients (cream, fruit, jellies) popularised in England in the 1930s—though possibly owing its inspiration to Manhattan soda-jerks after a float they concocted, Knickerbocker being the moniker given to the descendants of Dutch settlers of Old New York as New Amsterdam.

little orphant annie

On this day in 1885, an Indianapolis newspaper printed the eponymous poem by James Whitcomb Riley with spellings that reflected the Hoosier dialect of the region, admonishing children to obey their guardians lest goblins snatch them away, bearing no semblance to the franchise that it would go on to spawn with a comic panel, radio drama, a Broadway musical and two films—not to mention the obligatory school productions though apparently the Addams Family has unseated Annie in recent years—that spanned the century and decades in between.
Though it may seem as if we are living through a time of unprecedented call-backs of properties that are not especially worthy of our nostalgia or fiddling with the original but I suppose we also enjoy the privileged perspective of being told what’s the definitive adaptation and what’s canon through licensing and closely guarded rights and the luxury of forgetting about the plethora of early Titanic movies—for example. Things like the libretto, nonetheless, do seem a bit sacrosanct but I suppose concessions to language are necessary, like in “Hard-Knock Life” original to the updated version:

No one cares for you a smidge
When you’re in an orphanage

No one cares for you a bit
When you’re a foster kid