Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for some of the most interesting words of the week. The latest: more than just a mascot; angry birds; blowing your mind with flavor.

yuru-kyara

“Kumamon is a yuru-kyara, or ‘loose character’, one of the cuddly creatures in Japan that represent everything from towns and cities to airports and prisons.”

Neil Steinberg, “What’s Behind Japan’s Obsession With Cuteness?” Digg, July 19, 2016

Yuru-kyara is sometimes translated as “mascot,” says Digg, but is “significantly different” from the likes of the Philadelphia Phanatic and Mr. Met. For instance, Kumamon, a permanently blushing bear and the yuru-kyara for Kumamoto Prefecture, is “more than a symbol for that region, more than merely a strategy to push its tourism and farm products.” He “is almost regarded as a living entity, a kind of funky ursine household god.”

bley

“The transition from the old grays to the current bluish grays (or ‘bley’) is a hot-button topic for many Lego fans.”

Joel Carron, “67 Years of Lego Sets,” Mode Blog, July 21, 2016

Bley, a blend of blue and grey (or gray), was a point of contention among AFOL, or adult fans of LEGO. The company changed the gray and dark gray colors around 2004, resulting in a more blueish gray — widely disliked because they looked “awful if used together with the existing old grey pieces.”

scolding

“When faced with a person holding a dead crow, other crows will send out a warning call, called ‘scolding.’”

Katherine Ellen Foley, “When a crow dies, other crows investigate,” Quartz, July 20, 2016

Crows practice scolding when encountering a “natural predators,” says Popular Science. Not only that, they never forget a predator’s face. In an experiment conducted at the University of Washington, a professor and students sporting caveman masks captured and tagged seven crows. Later, when they walked past wearing the same masks, the crows gave the experimenters a noisy scolding.

jianbing

“He’s talking about the Chinese crepe called jianbing — bing for short — that’s suddenly turning up all over the country.”

Tasting Table Staff, “This Chinese breakfast food is taking America by storm,” The Week, July 18, 2016

Jianbing translates from Chinese as “pan-fried pancake.” Unlike its Western counterpart, jianbing are savory and “made with any combination of mung bean, wheat, rice, or millet flour,” says The Week, and “filled or topped with egg, scallion, cilantro, chile sauce, and pieces of fried cracker.”

Legend says that jianbing was invented almost 2,000 years ago in Shandong Province when “military strategist Zhuge Liang had his soldiers cook batter on shields held over the fire after their woks were lost.”

strange loop

“When you hit a strange loop like this, it shifts your point of view: Suddenly you aren’t just thinking about what’s happening inside the picture; you’re thinking about the system it represents and your response to it.”

David Chang, “The Secret Code to Unleashing the World’s Most Amazing Flavors,” WIRED, July 19, 2016

A strange loop, says WIRED, is when “mathematical systems or works of art or pieces of music fold back upon themselves.” M.C. Escher’s drawing of two hands drawing each other is an example: “it’s impossible to say where it starts or ends.”

Chef David Wang describes the strange loop of eating something that is both undersalted and oversalted — and therefore perfectly salted — and a stew that is “both totally foreign and deeply familiar.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for some of the most interesting words of the week. The latest: skinjob Cylons, here they come; the hidden order of chicken eyes; never let ‘em see you corn sweat.

word gap

“But these efforts to close the ‘word gap’ often overlook a fundamental problem. In high-poverty neighborhoods, books—the very things that could supply so many of those 30 million-plus words—are hard to come by.”

Alia Wong, “Where Books Are All But Nonexistent,” The Atlantic, July 14, 2016

The term word gap refers to the difference between the number of words “a typical child in a white-collar family will hear” and the number a child in welfare will hear before age 4. According to The Atlantic, the gap is 32 million words.

biohybrid

“Our ray outperformed existing locomotive biohybrid systems in terms of speed, distance traveled, and durability (six days), demonstrating the potential of self-propelled, phototactically activated tissue-engineered robots.”

Lisa Calhoun, “Scientists Create Successful Biohybrid Being Using 3-D Printing and Genetic Engineering,” Inc., July 11, 2016

A biohybrid is something composed of biological and nonbiological components. Inc. describes an artificial stingray made up of “a 3-D-printed rubber body” and skeleton, and rat heart cells adapted so they can “respond to light by contracting.”

hyperuniformity

“Beyond bird eyes, hyperuniformity is found in materials called quasicrystals, as well as in mathematical matrices full of random numbers, the large-scale structure of the universe, quantum ensembles, and soft-matter systems like emulsions and colloids.”

Natalie Wolchover, “A Bird’s-Eye View of Nature’s Hidden Order,” Quanta Magazine, July 12, 2016

The term hyperuniformity was coined in the early 2000s by Salvatore Torquato, a professor of theoretical chemistry at Princeton University. It seems to be a shortening of disordered hyperuniformity, a type of “correlated disorder at large length scales,” and considered another type of matter beyond solids, liquids, gases, and plasma.

bombing

“While bombing, the guys kept one eye on the wall and on scanning for possible undercover cops.”

Ray Mock, “I Went Bombing with Hong Kong’s Biggest Graffiti Writers,” VICE, July 17, 2016

Bombing in graffiti-speak means to cover an area with graffiti. Analogous is yarn bombing, which uses knitted items instead of spray paint or ink.

corn sweat

“Midwest cities such as St. Louis, Kansas City and Minneapolis can get very humid, especially during a summer heat wave. One of your favorite veggies could be partly to blame.”

Jennifer Gray and Dave Hennen, “High temperatures, ‘corn sweat’ form dangerous heat dome over U.S.,” CNN, July 17, 2016

Apparently corn sweats like a human. Its leaves release water, says CNN, which is released into the atmosphere as the wind sweeps across, resulting in higher humidity levels in the surrounding air.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for some of the most interesting words of the week. The latest: Airport City, USA; stealing balls; not a paradise for pork lovers.

aerotropolis

“Drinkard’s vision is for a full-fledged offshore ‘aerotropolis’: a floating structure that, as well as being able to handle medium-sized airliners…[would] host a whole range of economic and research activities, from experimentation with renewable energy technology to aquaculture and yachting.”

Miquel Ros, “Floating airports: Could they finally become a reality?” CNN, July 4, 2016

According to World Wide Words, the term aerotropolis was coined in 2000 by John Kasarda of the University of North Carolina. The word blends aero–, meaning “air, atmosphere; aircraft; gases,” and metropolis.

ballhawking

“Hample, understandably, took issue with my negative characterization of him and the wider ballhawking hobby, of which he is its most visible and most successful member.”

Barry Petchesky, “Against Ballhawking,” Deadspin, July 1, 2016

Ball hawk, says the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is U.S. sports slang for a player who’s skilled at stealing the ball, and specifically in baseball, a talented outfielder. The term originated around 1917. Ball hawk referring to a spectator who “specializes in catching home-run and foul balls” most likely came about later.

emergent gameplay

“When emergent gameplay works, it feels almost as if the player is conversing with the unseen creator, and in the case of Survivor, the producers play off the players to help introduce interesting new twists; some more successful than others.”

Matt Perez, “What Survivor Can Teach Us About Emergent Gameplay,” Kill Screen, July 6, 2016

Emergent gameplay is a design concept that “refers to a style of play not necessarily intended by the creator” and that allows for a robust range of solutions and “possible strategies for success.” In terms of video games, Technopedia says the concept refers to “mechanics that change according to the player’s actions.”

soft-titling

“In the case of what’s called ‘soft-titling,’ the subtitles are timed—sometimes by the translator—to an unsubtitled print of the film as it screens.”

Max Nelson, “To Surprise a Voice,” The Point, July 2016

Soft-titling is a kind of live subtitling in which the subtitles are projected onto the film while it’s being run rather than “burnt in” beforehand.

pork chop island

“A Preferred Concept image, designed by Fehr and Peers Transportation Consultants and obtained by members of Isla Vista’s PTA reveals the removal of street lights, modified turn lanes and the installation of what’s called a ‘pork chop island.’”

Beth Farnsworth, “Concept Design For Isla Vista Intersection Creates Controversy,” KEYT, July 7, 2016

Not a vacation getaway for porkivores, a pork chop island is a type of traffic island named for its shape.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for some of the most interesting words of the week. The latest: what Jupiter sounds like; a ridiculously bloody code; playing the Miss Universe game.

bow shock

“On June 24, Juno crossed what’s known as the ‘bow shock’ separating the part of space dominated by solar wind streaming from the sun into the part of the solar system dominated by Jupiter’s magnetic environment.”

Miriam Kramer, “Listen to this: The sounds of Jupiter,” Mashable, June 30, 2016

Earlier this week NASA’s Juno spacecraft entered Jupiter’s orbit after having traversed the bow shock, which is “is analogous to a sonic boom.”

Obama eight

“There were eight of us granted clemency on that day. They call us the Obama Eight.”

Amy McCarthy and Jason Hernandez, “Life After Life,” Texas Monthly, June 2, 2016

The Obama eight are eight federal inmates who had been sentenced to life without parole for nonviolent offenses — such as drug dealing — and who were granted clemency in late 2013 by President Obama in light of an ACLU report that “detailed the harsh realities” for such prisoners.

bloody code

“Public punishments reached a peak in the United Kingdom in the 18th century under the ‘bloody code,’ which listed over 200 crimes punishable by public execution.”

Jessie Guy-Ryan, “In the UK, It’s Still Legal to Place People in the Stocks,” Atlas Obscura, July 2, 2016

The bloody code was established in 1723 by the Waltham Black Act, making over 200 offenses, many of them petty, punishable by death.

How did such a code come to be? At the time, the ruling class of Britain were landowners, says The National Archives, who “based their power on property-ownership, and saw the law’s main purpose as protecting property.” While crime rate wasn’t high, they feared it would be, between growing populations and lack of police force. The bloody code was established as a threat to deter anyone from committing even the smallest of crimes.

Trump card

“From 2005 until Donald Trump sold the pageant last year, the billionaire quietly handpicked as many as six semifinalists—‘Trump cards,’ they were called—an alleged response to the 2004 snubbing of Miss Ukraine, Oleksandra Nikolayenko, a particular favorite of Mr. Trump.”

Burt Helm, “Mr. Miss Universe: Meet Jeff Lee, Professional Beautiful-Woman Coach,” GQ, June 1, 2016

The original meaning of trump card is “a card in the trump suit, held in reserve for winning a trick.” The trump suit is the suit that outranks all the others for the duration of a hand. Trump card also has the figurative meaning of “a key resource to be used at an opportune moment.”

Besides Trump card, other Miss Universe lingo includes Missólogo, Spanish for “Miss Universe-ologist,” and sash factor, in which “contestants from rich, established franchises like Miss U.S.A. can take out-there risks like being 5’6″,” while “rinky-dink programs like Malaysia’s must play by the rules.”

straw purchase

“Another bill that will now be law is an attempt to limit straw purchasing.”

Taylor Torregano, “Locals respond to the new bills Governor Brown has signed,” KRCR News, July 1, 2016

A straw purchase is an illegal act in which someone who can’t purchase a gun gets someone else to purchase it for them. The term might come from straw man, someone who’s set up as a cover “for a questionable enterprise.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for some of the most interesting words of the week. The latest: regretting a British exit; gambling in video games; yet another unnecessary food portmanteau.

regrexit

“The aftermath of Brexit has also spawned the so-called ‘Regrexit’ phenomenon: Britons who voted for Brexit, but now regret doing so because they feel they were misinformed about the likely consequences, or did not consider them carefully enough.”

Ilya Somin, “Brexit, ‘Regrexit,’ and the impact of political ignorance,” Washington Post, June 26, 2016

Last week was all about the Brexit, Great Britain’s vote to exit the European Union, followed almost immediately by regrexit, regretting the Brexit. Not to be outdone, Texas gave a renewed call for Texit, secession from the United States, while Quartz devised possible names for exits by all EU members, from Beljump to Swedone.

Broomgate

“Dubbed ‘Broomgate,’ much of the fuss centers on a new kind of curling broom called the icePad, manufactured by Hardline Curling.”

Jennifer Ouellette, “Here’s the Physics Behind the ‘Broomgate’ Controversy Rocking the Sport of Curling,” Gizmodo, June 12, 2016

In lesser scandals, the curling world was swept away by Broomgate, named for the little brooms with which team members “madly sweep the ice” in front of the curling stone. Players aren’t opposed to the new icePad curling broom, but are just worried that it and “similar high-tech equipment are altering the fundamentals of the sport in troubling ways by drastically reducing the level of skill required.”

skins gambling

“The lawsuit comes two months after Bloomberg published an investigation into the rise of what’s known as skins gambling, an increasingly prominent part of professional video gaming.”

Joshua Brustein, Eben Novy-Williams, “Valve Faces Lawsuit Over Video Game Gambling,” Bloomberg, June 24, 2016

Skins are decorative virtual weapons used in gaming, and which can “be acquired in the game and sold for real money.” The introduction of skins led to skin gambling in the game CS:GO, in which “people buy skins for cash, then use the skins to place online bets on pro CS:GO matches.”

brunchfast

“Burger Business reports that the chain filed a U.S. trademark registration for the term ‘Brunchfast’ on May 26.”

Virginia Chamlee, “Jack in the Box Trademarks ‘Brunchfast,’” Eater, June 7, 2016

Brunchfast is, as Eater says, a “seemingly unnecessary portmanteau of the words ‘brunch’ and ‘breakfast.” It’s also been trademarked by fast food chain Jack in the Box. Since brunch is a combination of “breakfast” and “lunch” and is generally eaten between or instead of those two meals, we’re guessing that brunchfast would be a slightly later breakfast.

geophagy

“It’s easy to dismiss geophagy as a disgusting habit of children, a wacky pregnancy craving, or an exotic behaviour from far-away lands, but none of these approaches really do it justice.”

Josh Gabbatiss, “The people who can’t stop eating dirt,” BBC, June 16, 2016

Geophagy is “the eating of earthy substances, such as clay or chalk, practiced among various peoples as a custom or for dietary or subsistence reasons.” While “Western medicine has traditionally regarded geophagy as pathological,” says the BBC, it’s not considered taboo in countries like Cameroon and Kenya, where a researcher found that “she could buy packets of earth in a range of flavours, including black pepper and cardamom.”

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for some of the most interesting words of the week. The latest: buddies to help you study (but not cook or clean); a starfish that’ll kill everyone you love; a defense technique from the Greatest.

gaokao nanny

“Professional Gaokao nannies are highly educated students or recent graduates that move in with students to study with them in the run up to the exam.”

Yvette Tan, “Gaokao season: China embarks on dreaded national exams,” BBC, June 7, 2016

The gaokao is a grueling two-day exam, says CNN, taken by many high schoolers in the People’s Republic of China to gain entrance into the country’s most prestigious universities. According to the BBC, failing the gaokao “almost guarantees a lifetime of low-ranking employment, and family disappointment,” hence the hiring of gaokao nannies. However, while gaokao nannies are highly educated, they might be “weak in terms of cooking and cleaning.”

now-or-never bottleneck

“The now-or-never bottleneck has powerful implications for language acquisition, because learning how to process language can only take place ‘in the moment’.”

Linda B. Glaser, “‘Now-or-never bottleneck’ explains language acquisition,” ScienceDaily, June 10, 2016

In a new paper, researchers assert that a phenomenon they’re dubbing the now-or-never bottleneck has a profound effect on language processing, acquisition, and evolution. To overcome “fundamental limitations on sensory and cognitive memory,” the researchers propose “the brain’s language processing system overcomes this bottleneck by processing linguistic input immediately, before it is obliterated by later input and lost forever.”

Ophiohamus georgemartini

“A brittle star, found deep in the South Pacific, has been officially dubbed Ophiohamus georgemartini because of its likeness to the thorny crown found on the cover of book two in the Game of Thrones series, A Clash of Kings.”

Sarah Keartes, “Meet the Game of Thrones Brittle Star: Ophiohamus Georgemartini,” Nerdist, May 31, 2016

Other literary nature names include the Nabokovia, a butterfly named for Vladimir Nabokov; the Livyatan melville, an extinct sperm whale named for Herman Melville; and the Megachile chomskyi, a bee named for Noam Chomsky.

poverty simulation

“The Singapore Island Country Club, for instance, was recently criticized when it planned a poverty simulation for its club members; it costs $21,000 a year to belong to the club.”

Erik Sherman, “Misery Tourists: How the Wealthy Learn What It’s Like to Be Poor,” Fortune, June 1, 2016

Poverty simulation workshops are designed, as Fortune says, for “the privileged try to understand at least a bit of what the poor and refugees face.” Some poverty simulations have been long held without controversy. For instance, the World Economic Forum annual meeting “has held a refugee simulation for the last eight years.”

However, other workshops have been criticized for taking place at luxurious spots like the Ritz Carlton and for helping to make participants into what might be called “misery tourists, collecting experiences and assuaging discomfort by having now done their part.”

rope-a-dope

“Look at that. There’s Apollo [Creed] using my rope-a-dope defense.”

Roger Ebert, “Watching Rocky II with Muhammad Ali,” RogerEbert.com, July 31, 1979

Rope-a-dope refers to a boxing strategy, often attributed to Muhammad Ali, in which one puts oneself in what looks like a losing position — backed up like a “dope on the ropes” — only to take one’s opponent off-guard and ultimately win.

Welcome to Word Buzz Wednesday, your go-to place for some of the most interesting words of the week. The latest: the perils of a bike riding; robots saving on light bulbs; guns without a trace.

bicycle face

“Of all the physical woes attributed to the bicycle as it became popular in the 1890s, the one that most strained credulity was the ‘bicycle face.’”

Margaret Guroff, “Bicycle Face,” The Atlantic, June 2016

The pseudo-syndrome bicycle face was “characterized by wide, wild eyes” and “a grim set to the mouth,” all due to “the stress of incessant balancing,” according to Margaret Guroff in her book, The Mechanical Horse: How the Bicycle Reshaped American Life. The disorder allegedly went as far as to render “children unrecognizable to their own mothers.”

dark factory

“The ultimate goal is what’s known as ‘the dark factory’ – one in which you don’t even need to turn on the lights, because there aren’t any humans to require them.”

Robert Colvile, “Is a robot about to take your job?” The Telegraph, June 6, 2016

A dark factory is a factory that’s almost entirely automated and hence, needs no light for human laborers to work by.

entourage effect

“In the process of what’s called the ‘entourage effect,’ during which different cannabinoids work together to enhance each other’s individual functioning, the cacao- and cannabis-derived cannabinoids cooperatively provide relief.”

Madison Margolin, “Whoopi Goldberg Explains Her Pot-for-PMS Products, Whoopi & Maya,” LA Weekly, June 7, 2016

The term entourage effect was apparently coined by Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam in the late 1990s and describes how the various compounds in the cannabis plant “work better together than in isolation.”

familiar letter

“At the time, there had lately emerged a form of written communication known as the ‘familiar letter,’ which was characterized by informal, from-the-heart prose, rather than displays of intellect, reason, and wit.”

Ella Morton, “Letter-Writing Manuals Were the Self-Help Books of the 18th Century,” Atlas Obscura, June 2, 2016

The practice of writing familiar letters emerged in the 18th century, says Atlas Obscura, and along with it manuals on how best to write such letters.

ghost gun

“To do that, his company, Defense Distributed, offers the sale of two very controversial – and legal – items: the firing mechanism and aluminum spine of what’s called a Ghost Gun, a build-it-at-home way to make your own firearm (without serial numbers), and Ghost Gunners, a milling tool that allows any DIY-er to build lower receivers at home.”

Adam Popescu, “Cody Wilson: the man who wants Americans to print their own 3D guns,” The Guardian, June 6, 2016

Because ghost guns are “homemade,” they’re without serial numbers and are therefore untraceable, which often makes them “completely unknown to law enforcement, unless one turns up at a crime scene,” says The Trace. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) call such weapons unfinished receivers.

In 2013, says WIRED, a mass shooting in Santa Monica was attributed to a ghost gun. In 2015, “California state senator Kevin Deleon introduced a bill to ban ghost guns,” which Governor Jerry Brown vetoed.