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Although the German origin “ohne Korrektur”—without correction—is as probably as much of a folk etymology as “Old Kinderhook,” Martin van Buren running for re-election on something snappier than his foreign-sounding name and the term “okay” probably a borrowing from Choctaw, Occitan or Bantu, we did like it as a segue into learning about another term that has metaphorically come to have similar connotations: astrein. Initially a term in the lumber industry, it means “free of knotholes” and the ideal planks for construction and furniture manufacturer would be sourced from parts of the trunk uninterrupted by branches (äste) which leave a hole or a hard bit of unworkable wood. More in common-parlance in the 1980s “Astrein!” came to be synonym for very fine and good.

anecdoche and énouement

Via Open Culture, we are keyed into a revamped and updated mixed-media adaptation of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, a project by John Koenig that crafts neologisms that are just barely removed from our accepted emotional vocabularies (see also) to tease out a relatable feeling and response that we all recognise but could not heretofore name.
Though many of the terms seem at first glance negative and diminishing, they are also an opportunity for reflection and empathy—especially at times when our sympathies and charity might be over-taxed, “sonder” (from the German adjective for special and the French verb to probe) becomes a grounding way to reframe one’s outlook, defined as the sudden shock that each passerby is living an internal and external life as vivid and complex as one’s own. Vermödalen is the humbling experience that while possibly our discoveries aren’t unique and pioneering, there’s something to be said about homage and imitation, and questioning authenticity. The title terms respectively (from anecdote with a little syncedoche and dénouement) refer to a situation where everyone is talking, sharing but no one is really listening and the feeling experienced once arrived, the realisation that the present cannot inform the past. Much more to explore including a series of short filmed vignettes at the link up top.

dead reckoning

On this day in 1969, the luxury ocean liner the Queen Elizabeth 2, in service until 2008 and since last year, a floating hotel in Dubai, began her maiden voyage from the shipyards in Southhampton to New York, and was the first private, commercial vessel to avail itself of the US Navy’s Global Positioning System constellation of artificial satellites, heralding the end of navigation by compass and sextant. Coincidentally, also on this day in 2000, Bill Clinton made accurate and detailed GPS telemetry available to the public for any venture. 

users are losers

Commissioned by the US National Crime Prevention Council as a mascot to raise public awareness on personal safety and security in 1979 and named the following July in a nation-wide contest, McGruff the Crime Dog has waged a on balance a helpful outreach campaign. Though best remembered for his message to prevent kidnapping and taking common-sense precautions to deny crime the chance to occur in the fist place, McGruff was also enlisted to discourage bullying and as on this 1986 gem of an album below, the use of drugs.

macroalgae

Instead of the usual plastic cups or bottles of water offered to parched runners, for this past London Marathon participants were handed out some thirty thousand gulps of a sports drink encapsulated (previously) in a seaweed-based edible container. Among the newest wonder material, designers and the industry are just beginning to appreciate the potential of seaweed as a sustainable bio-plastic which, incorporated dietarily, can also combat the bio-genesis of methane.

walpurisnacht

Our faithful chronicler reminds that on this night, the date shared with many other momentous occasions including the annexation of Hawaii (1900), the fall of Saigon (1975) and the coming out of the tv character of actor and comedian Ellen DeGeneres (1997), Beltane Eve is observed (previously here and here) in the northern hemisphere, coopted locally as the syncretion of the day before the feast day of Saint Walpurga, an abbess and Anglo-Saxon missionary from Devonshire to the Frankish Empire.
Converts were encouraged to pray to her for intercession and protection from witchcraft—though Walpurga’s patronage was restricted to hydrophobia, odd given the witch connection, and sailors in distress. Though there’s a lot of regional variation in the way the holiday is kept across northern Europe, common customs include bonfires—a ceremonial burning and/or celebration of the diabolical and a sort of sealing off the portal, marking the last opportunity that the supernatural can cross over from the nether world, until Halloween.