Monthly Archives: February 2016

WotD: Gaslighting

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Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which information is twisted or spun, selectively omitted to favor the abuser, or false information is presented with the intent of making victims doubt their own memory, perception, and sanity. Instances may range simply from the denial by an abuser that previous abusive incidents ever occurred, up to the staging of bizarre events by the abuser with the intention of disorienting the victim.

The term owes its origin to the 1938 play Gas Light and its film adaptations. The term has been used in clinical and research literature.

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

WotD: Retromingent

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retromingent
[re-troh-min-juh nt]
Spell Syllables
Word Origin
adjective
1.
urinating backward because of bodily configuration:
The lion is a retromingent animal.
noun
2.
an animal that urinates backward.

From: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/retromingent

Five Years of Gas Can Hell!

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Gas Can Hell

Our intrusive federal government has regulated the gas can. In its unbounded wisdom it decided that American citizens to unable to use a vented gas can. Thus we cannot have a gas can that works.

This article explains this and includes the following quote “[The EPA] is always looking for new and innovative ways to spread as much human misery as possible.”

Because a vent is necessary to evenly and reliably pour gas from a can, old, but now-outlawed, vented cans are selling for 2-5x their original cost on Ebay. Or as the article points out, one can just by a 5-gallon, vented, water can, wink-wink.

UPDATE: Here’s another solution

Mundaneum

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Just read about the Mundaneum is a PM article with (the over-blown) title of How the Humble Index Card Foresaw the Internet. It is not about the internet. The Mundenuem, created in 1905, was a databased that organized all knowledge in a card index. You could argue it was a precursor to Google–at least in goal. You could say it was a victim of its own success because it grow to 18 million card in 15 thousand drawers, which was unmanageable.