Category: Language

Is 67 Just Brain Rot?

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Image credit: languagejones | YouTube

What do you know about 67? It’s all overTikTok. Dictionary.com chose it as the 2025 Word of the Year. One preschool teacher told us it’s hard now to teach how to count to ten, that students all start shouting when they get to 6 and 7. So it’s popular slang, but do you have any idea what it means? According to some, it has no meaning—and some even call it brain rot. According to linguist Taylor Jones, however, “there’s actually a lot more to it.” In his 2025 video, linguist Taylor Jones traces the origins of 67 and complicates the impulse many “mature folks” have to dismiss its significance. Watch the video to learn how the mysterious origins of 67 is part of a larger pattern in the development of slang and the evolution of language.  

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Ghosts

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Illustration by Jesse Zhang | The Believer

Do you remember a crucial moment or event in your life that you really wanted to write about—maybe to help you understand it more fully? Yet no matter how hard you tried, you just couldn’t find the words? That’s what happened to Vauhini Vara, whose sister was diagnosed with cancer when they were both in high school. Her death four years later left Vara feeling like a ghost, one who was unable to write about her sister’s death. That’s when she, a reporter and editor, turned to a relatively new kid on the technology block: Chat GPT. Read on to see what happened when Vara asked AI to take over and write about her sister’s death for her. Be prepared for more than a few surprises! Vara’s essay was first published in 2021 in The Believer, a quarterly arts and literature magazine.

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A.I. Is Homogenizing Our Thoughts

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Illustration credit: Ariel Davis | The New Yorker

“A vacuous and dangerous echo chamber.” “Best creative booster ever!”  “An existential threat to humanity.” Whether you love it or hate it—or fall somewhere in between—it’s likely that you have used generative AI yourself. But is it a good idea to be doing so? And what will be the consequences of that use? In this June 2025 piece from The New Yorker, staff writer Kyle Chayka, who covers technology and internet culture, reports on recent studies that offer potential answers to these questions! 

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How Country Music Turned the Ford F-150 Into a Luxury Ride

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Image credit: Texas Monthly | Courtesy of Ford

Once upon a time, pickup trucks were strictly utility vehicles, used primarily for picking up and hauling stuff. Not so anymore, says Rose McMackin, a Texas writer whose work focuses on the American West. Nowadays, she says, pickup trucks are “aspirational,” used to project how the drivers want to be seen. So how on earth did that happen? According to McMackin, it’s a change that’s been largely fueled by country music. Read all about it (and listen to it) in an article she wrote for Texas Monthly  in August 2025. 

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A Cartoon: You Guys….

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Image credit: Roz Chast, Instagram

Hey, you guys! Is this an expression you might use to address more than one person? If so, see what cartoonist Roz Chast has to say about that in this cartoon posted on Instagram in November, 2024. Chast is an award-winning cartoonist who is also a fellow of the American Philosophical Society. A philosophical cartoonist? A cartoonist philosopher? You decide!

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Philip Gove and “Our Word”

Closeup view of a large dictionary viewed from the side. The book is open, and the yellowed edges of pages with thumb tabs are visible.
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Image credit: Rosmarie Voegtli (rvoegtli/Flickr)

If we think about dictionaries at all, we mostly tend to think about them in a fairy tale way—that is, they simply appear, whole and complete, in the fullness of their power, delivered by some mythical being, probably one with wings. But where do dictionaries come from? Who writes them? What words are worthy of inclusion? Who knows? Their very authority defies questioning. But that’s silly, isn’t it? Of course humans make dictionaries, and it’s no small task. Like other grand human activities, dictionary-making involves a lot of debate, controversy, and passionate argument. In this November 2023 essay from American Scholar, writer, editor, and language scholar David Skinner shares a dictionary story that is, well, f*ckin’ epic.

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Why Are So Many Cakes Named After Fabric?

In the center of a white table is a 3-layer yellow cake on a rimmed plate, with thick white frosting spread with peaks. The top of the cake is ringed with pecan halves, and several ripe figs adorn the center. Two slices cut from the cake are on plates on the table, along with a few more plates, forks, and a cake server.
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Image credit: Photo by Joseph De Leo, Food Styling by Erika Joyce

Red velvet, black satin, lemon chiffon. We could be talking about fashion here, but we’re not. We’re talking about cake. It turns out (you likely have never noticed) that many classic cakes in the US take their names from fabrics. Curious, right? But once you read the analysis and explanation of food writer and chef Brandon Summers-Miller in this June 2022 Epicurious article, it will all start making sense (and make you hungry, as well).

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This Full Page Ad Was Written Entirely in Chicken

A red chicken stands on a printed page as if reading it; the title on the page, in large letters, is “Bawk bawk ba-kawk bawk.”
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Do chickens talk? What a silly question! Of course they do; ask any child. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to learn that they can read as well. We have the evidence right here: a letter composed in chicken language, signed by the Founder and CEO of Upside Foods (a human), and addressed to all chickens. The letter appeared as a full-page ad in the New York Times in November 2022 (really!). Advertising journalist Tim Nudd gives a full report on it for Muse by Clio, an advertising industry periodical.

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