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However, I do alright with tabletop-ish atomic physics, which is literally very cool.

via

AFAICT, the only step missing is where the disembodied voice tells you to key in your account number, and then when you eventually get a live person, they immediately ask you for your account number. Because the squirrels in the pneumatic-tube message delivery system have delayed the information.

Thagomizer

A couple of weeks ago, an apparently totally made-up new word seemed to set the land-speed record for the jump from “early use” to “inclusion in a dictionary.” On May 12, the word malamanteau showed up in the Web comic xkcd, where it was defined as “a neologism for a portmanteau created by incorrectly combining a malapropism with a neologism.”

It’s not the clearest definition ever written, but the idea is that a malamanteau blends one or more not-quite-right words to create a completely new one. Examples include the classic misunderestimated, bewilderness (as in “lost in the bewilderness”), and insinuendos (innuendo + insinuation)

I think the author missed an opportunity by not asking the titular question.

xkcd: Malamanteau