Okay, the word on the street is...

There are 82 posts tagged: "I, pedant"

Special correspondent: 28 May 2023; The BBC home page announced Katty Kay: A growing case of transatlantic heartburn, which sounds like Katty Kay is the cause of the discomfort. Who on earth is she? And what on earth could she have done to raise tensions so badly?
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Ms or Mr?: 28 May 2023; As India's women wrestlers protest against sexual harassment and abuse at the hands of officials from the nation's wrestling federation, one of the fighting Phogat sisters appears to have taken sexism in sport to heart more than most, and decided to transfer to the men's league.
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A more accurate guess: 10 May 2023; Despite the solemnity of the subject, let's start with a little frivolous piss-taking of the BBC's editorial capabilities.
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Mr or Ms?: 4 May 2023; On the divorce of the late Robert Mugabe's daughter from her husband, Simba Mutsahuni Chikore, comes this insight from the BBC's correspondent in Harare:
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Sì, sì, cìtron: 30 April 2023; Reading of Calabrian farmers' endeavours to protect and sustain the rare citron (Citrus medica) this morning, I was struck by an overpowering sense of déjà vu. For I'd recently read of the lure of this same fruit, less than four months' ago. On the very same site, as it happens, albeit stuffed in a different pigeonhole. It seems that good topics know no bounds.
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Dead or alive: 16 April 2023; It confused me at first, until I mentally added a comma between dead and live. (LOL)
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Stop me if you've heard this one before...: 6 April 2023; There's a slight fallacy, a miscommunication, in Angie Brown's account of murder at an Edinburgh beauty spot.
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London calling: 4 April 2023; London City Airport has become the second in the UK, after Teesside International Airport, to scrap the 100mL limit for carry-on liquids, following the introduction of new scanners. This momentous event is expected to improve the security experience for many tens of travellers.
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Days of future past: 4 April 2023; Stephen Dowling describes the Royal Navy's post-war carrier-borne fighter aircraft, the Westland Wyvern, as having two contra-rotating propellors at the front of the aircraft, each spinning in a different direction. Yep, that's pretty much the definition of contra-rotating: spinning in opposite directions. But what drew my attention to this article in the first place, was the seeming contradiction between BBC Future—there's a clue in the name—and tales of pilots who ejected underwater, past tense.
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PG tips: 21 March 2023; I hadn't read of the deaths of Indonesian children after taking tainted cough syrup before now, but the cause of death being acute kidney injury told me that this was the same issue as reported earlier in The Gambia and Uzbekistan. I wouldn't have noted it here, though, if my pedantry hackles hadn't been raised:
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Name that boy: 13 March 2023; I came across this handy-and-dandy list of one-syllable names for baby boys, compiled by Jacqueline at Parent Portfolio:
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Possession is nine-tenths...: 1 March 2023; The BBC doesn't appear to have too much inclination for possessive terms. Perhaps the concept of ownership is too much for the comrades at the People's Republic of Portland Place. (shrug)
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Written wrongly: 26 February 2023; Who writes this shit? No, not this shit, here, I know who does that. Me.
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Doesn't add up: 15 December 2022; I'm not sure whether the BBC's Australian correspondent, Tiffanie Turnbull, has a problem with the English language or mathematics. Updating a story on a recent fatal ambush shooting of police officers at a remote property in Queensland, she seems to have difficulty in either differentiating between shots sustained and fatalities, or the seemingly complex sum of 2+1=?
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Robocop: 1 December 2022; The San Francisco Police Department is set to deploy robots armed with explosives in the pacification of violent, armed, or dangerous subjects, which could amount to most criminals in the land of the free-to-bear-arms. This is not a new development, however.
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Inactive shooter: 23 November 2022; A gunman has killed no more than 10 people—so, less than eleven then—in a Walmart supermarket in Chesapeake, VA. He then turned the gun on himself, and committed suicide.
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Sicness: 17 November 2022; Lest anyone consider me petty and pedantic for occasionally drawing attention to the BBC's minor editorial oversights—typographical errors, that is, not stealth editing—you're right, I am. But, I'm not alone.
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Grazing grass: 16 November 2022; nu3—or is that nu³? I really don't know (shrug)—claims that their exotically-priced, flavoured protein powder is whey from 100% grass-fed milk.
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Land of haa, or hal: 2 November 2022; A bit of a non-story, about confusion between a footballer and a Swedish coastal region, led the BBC's Tom Gerken—not to be confused with a pickled cucumber—to offer a handy-dandy mnemonic, in an effort to pour oil on troubled waters.
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The eyes have it: 13 October 2022; Thirteen-year-old Lowri Moore is campaigning for better representation for four-eyed gits, firstly in film and now in emojis. She's urging the Unicode Consortium to include options for adding spectacles to the plethora of shit that we have to wade through already.
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Deadlines don't come any tighter: 30 September 2022; Amelia Williams is mixing it up with the boilerplate text here. Like Olivia Madison, her webcomic's inclined to post garbage to the interwebz; but, like Roisin Clarke, she felt my article to be very informative, which is nice. This is the same article that compelled both of those ladies to court my submissions in the fields of oral health and plant science. Clearly, it's more far-reaching and influential than I could ever have imagined. (rolleyes)
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The lady killer: 22 September 2022; María Belén Bernal vanished after visiting her husband at a police training school in the Ecuadorian capital, Quito, where he was an instructor. Her body has been found, and he is on the run as the main suspect in her killing.
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QWERTY or QWERT?: 17 September 2022; Hackers have deleted data from the IHG hotel chain for shitz'n'gigglz. When the vulnerability was traced to the use of a weak password and lax security around the company's password vault, IHG blew smoke.
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Alarming: 24 August 2022; Should you ever need a nine-hour timer, then Online Alarm Kur has got you covered with their 9 Hour Timer. You lucky you, you! (thumbup)
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Allergic advisory: 23 August 2022; I saw this allergen advice on a bar of Jordans' Frusli—blueberry flavour, if you're curious.
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Negative drop: 17 July 2022; I see this quite often, and not just in reference to films tanking in their second week at the box office. A -68% reduction is a 68% increase.
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Developing story: to be stealth updated: 8 July 2022; I have previously noted that the world's most trusted international news broadcaster™ is not adverse to stealth editing its articles after they've been published online. An ethical news outlet would make changes clear to the reader, or find another way to update its articles in light of new information. At the very least they would include a last updated timestamp. But the BBC eschews that transparency nonsense.
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Loosey: 4 July 2022; Waffle is another of those five-letter word games. Six five-letter words are arranged in a 3×3 grid, and you have to move letters to solve the puzzle. One of the words in today's game is loose.
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The King and Them: 27 June 2022; In anticipation of Baz Luhrmann's biopic of Elvis Presley—creatively entitled Elvis—Kaleem Aftab muses over Presley's cultural appropriation of black music.
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Two-faced Charlie: 19 June 2022; As Commonwealth heads of state head to Rwanda for a knees-up, Prince Charles will be representing the Queen as the head of the Commonwealth. This will likely increase his chances of rubbing shoulders with BoJo, of whose Rwandan relocation plan he's not so keen.
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Say cheese: 28 May 2022; In Six unbelievable uses for cheese, BBC Food provides some imaginative, if not flat-out off-the-wall, uses for my favourite dairy product: as car fuel; sporting equipment; sculpture; collateral; a politcal statement; and…crime prevention. Although, in reality, that last one's a bit of a stretch.
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Wild Wild Will: 28 March 2022; Oscars 2022 organisers were hoping for something to liven up the ceremony, and Will Smith delivered when he went onstage and landed one on Chris Rock. Smith then followed up with a couple of F-bombs, shouted from where he was sitting in the audience. That might've been over-and-above the organisers' expectations though, because it wasn't broadcast. (whistling)
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Moving goalposts: 24 March 2022; Just Stop Oil is a youth activist organisation mobilised against the exploitation of all fossil fuels, not just oil, in the UK. Another one.
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Less smart phones: 21 March 2022; As smartphones are taking over more of our lives, some droids are rebelling and breaking free. An increasing number of people are eschewing smartphones for old skool mobile phones, dubbed dumbphones. And bloody good for them, says I.
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Justice for Jussie‽: 11 March 2022; Jussie Smollett has been sentenced to less than six months in jail, of a maximum possible three years on each of five counts, for fabricating a race hate crime. But not everyone believes that Illinois' inmates should have to be more careful with the soap.(jussie)
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Sheep to be fleeced: 1 March 2022; Disney has launched a new Star Wars experience at Disney World, Florida: the Galactic Starcruiser, a Star Wars–themed luxury hotel. It is luxuriously expensive. But, from the early reviews, it appears that the actual experience is not similarly luxurious.
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Holy me (holy): 11 February 2022; Writing as GlobalCare for the Needy, Shorelin exhorts me to LET YOUR CONSCIENCE BE YOUR GUIDE.
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Double-down juries: 11 February 2022; Rebecca Hogue's plight rests on Oklahoma's failure to protect law, which states that a parent who suspects child abuse by another, and fails to report it, is complicit. In the worst case, this can lead to a charge of murder in the first-degree.
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Skating on thin ice: 8 February 2022; Wahey! Weibo's nationalistic shitheads are at it again. The it being brutally castigating their Olympians' performances, when failing to excel at things that they—the nationalistic shitheads, that is—wouldn't have a hope in hell of achieving in the first place. In particular, figure skater Zhu Yi, who fell a lot, leaving Team China out of the medals.
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The Motherland: 2 February 2022; Llívia is a small ~~Spanish~~ Catalan enclave within France. It was created in the seventeenth century, through a stunning act of pedantry on the part of the Spanish.
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Arresting development: 2 February 2022; Mason Greenwood—who I'd never heard of before now, but he's a footballer, so why would I?—was arrested on Sunday. While he was already in police custody, additional charges were brought against him. At least, that's how I understood the situation.
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If you build it...: 31 January 2022; BBC Bitesize is supposedly a learning portal. Which makes it even more egregious when the droid gets it wrong. Even equivocally.
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Full Disclosure: 20 January 2022; I've noted previously how BBC News seems to have lots of little compartments for its reporters. Some of these make sense—business and technology, for example—others less so—technology of business, anyone? And then we have BBC Disclosure. Or do we?
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Da-do-Ron-Ron: 13 January 2022; Reading of the death of Ronnie Spector, I was expecting her ex-husband's criminal conviction to be dragged up. Not that it needed to be included in her obituary; after all, it had nothing to do with her. The couple had divorced three decades prior to Lana Clarkson's murder.
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The (international) shipping forecast: 11 January 2022; It never ceases to amaze me: the parochiality of merkans when it comes to international shipping charges. I guess that it doesn't matter if it's outside the fifty states of the union.
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The great escape: 7 January 2022; The BBC might like to consider pulling their home page text from the same source as their article headlines. That way, they would only have to correct any errors once. Of course, BBC editorial competence being what it is, the downside is that they could have the same error twice.
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Frohes Neues Jahr!: 2 January 2022; While those lovable French set cars alight, the Germans take an altogether more sedate approach to welcoming in the new year. I have it on good authority that they like nothing more than throwing fireworks at each other in the street. Consequently, news that there has only been one death in Germany seems like a stroke of good fortune; except to the victim's family, that is.
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Leper colony: 12 December 2021; In the current dinky butthurt climate, is it no longer acceptable to refer to leprosy sufferers as lepers, and a colony of them as a leper colony? Or is this just the BBC's usual low-intellect shenanigans? (thinking)
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When correct is incorrect: 10 December 2021; BBC Bitesize is a series of purportedly educational learning materials and quizzes for children. Or is it? Educational, that is.
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Tronto: 7 December 2021; Shilling hard for Destination Toronto/TCVA, Lindsey Galloway tells us why Toronto is The Canadian city to visit this winter.
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That's a turnip for the books!: 1 December 2021; BBC News' Maddy Savage explains how Magdalena Andersson became Sweden's first female prime minister, twice! Except she didn't, really.
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The ol' one-two: 1 December 2021; Okay, so I promised to never again question the BBC's disdain for national adjectives, and I think that I've been pretty good of late. That's not to say the BBC's editorial staff haven't transgressed, they have. But I've been the bigger person, looked the other way, and moved on.
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My learned works?: 24 November 2021; I have absolutely no idea why Journal of Corona Virus [sic] has contacted me for my helpful contribution. They may have read my learned works in the field, but I think it's unlikely.
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Social media (bath) bombing: 23 November 2021; Lush, producer of overpriced and overhyped cosmetics and personal care products, has announced that it will deactivate some of its social media accounts, until platforms take steps to provide a safer environment for users. The platforms of concern are Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. (fist) (geddit?)
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Guardians of the future: 28 October 2021; At IMDb, they love themselves a little future-gazing. Here we are, in current year 2021, and they're asking what was—past tense—the title of 2023's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in Hindi. I'll submit my answer to the question in two years' time.
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Parisian: 27 October 2021; While looking up the possessive form of James, I came across this example at GrammarHow.
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Describe in detail: 27 October 2021; Huma Abedin, a former aide to Hilary Clinton, has a book being published next week in which she details sex assault by US senator. Except, she doesn't, really.
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Symbolic stupidity: 16 October 2021; Perhaps it's a slow news day. Or perhaps someone, somewhere feels the need to tap into the zeitgeist. Thames Valley Police have reassured motorists that diversionary road signs at Junction 5 on the M4 will not take them to Squid Game. (rolleyes)
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From India with love?: 4 October 2021; Daizy Priscilla contacted me, inviting me to submit my blahblah to her yadayada. None of it stood out of the ordinary, except she's another lowlife at the gutter publishing house that is Remedy Publications LLC. Daizy must be besties with Alyssa, who works out of the same office address.
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Revealing: 1 October 2021; According to the BBC's home page headline, DNA evidence has revealed a French ex-police officer to be a rapist and murderer. Except, according to the actual article:
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Measure for measure: 21 September 2021; According to the instructions, 850 mL is equivalent to 1½ pints, and 425 mL is approximately ¾ pint.
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Corners of a round thing: 23 August 2021; In 13 juicy facts about mangoes, BBC Radio 4 refers to all corners of the globe.
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Apostrophe apathy: 10 August 2021; My strive to be a better person, and not nit-pick the BBC's grammatical sloppiness did not formally extend to punctuation and the possessive form. Nevertheless, I'll refrain from comment.
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Take me home, racist roads: 10 August 2021; Thus opens Tara McKelvey's report on Biden's unlikely plan to use roads to fight racism. Note the quotes that she uses around the word racist. Could it be that she's using someone else's description, but it's one that she is sceptical about? If so, good for her, she might just be a critical thinker, and therefore a cut above the average BBC News mouth-breather.
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Reporting reporting: 9 August 2021; A story of rats deserting New York state's Governor Andrew Cuomo's sinking ship gives the BBC the opportunity for a little editorial sloppiness.
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Trigger happy: 11 July 2021; Attackers stormed the domestic home of Haiti's president, Jovenel Moïse, assassinating him in what can only have been a moment of overzealousness. For that was not the intent, apparently.
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Sullied deals: 10 July 2021; I feel bad for nit-picking over an issue as serious as Indian muslim women being harassed on social media by bigoted trolls, for their religion and gender. But I'm going to do it anyway.
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A hard habit to brake: 17 June 2021; In my drive to be a better person, by not picking on the BBC's adjectival ineptitude, should I extend that to homophones?
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Is there a doctor in the house?: 10 June 2021; Ooooh, I've found another crackpot on YouTube. Aren't I lucky?
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I give up!: 26 May 2021; The BBC's journalists and editors really do not like national adjectives. Picking apart their linguistic shortcomings is like painting the Forth Bridge; an unending and thankless task. It doesn't achieve anything and, after a while, I'm beginning to sound like a broken record, irritating and boring.
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The colour of law: 26 May 2021; Police in Illinois confiscated an urn containing the ashes of two-year-old Ta'Naja Barnes—or Davis, I'm not sure which—after pulling her father over for traffic offences. They claimed that the urn tested postive in a field test for meth.
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Runners 'n' riders: 23 May 2021; After twenty-one runners died as a result of extreme weather during an ultramarathon in north-west China, the BBC once again demonstrates its poor grasp of the English language.
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Don't learn Scrivener: 21 May 2021; The title says Learn Scrivener in 20 minutes. The video is 18:21.
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See no evil: 20 May 2021; I obviously have a different interpretation of Covid-free to the BBC's. I take it to mean zero cases. Period. Not virtually zero or single-digit, which still indicate the disease's presence.
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The speed of film: 4 March 2021; How fast is a film? I'm sure that's a question you've never thought of before. And neither had I until today, when I read, courtesy of the BBC, that Demon Slayer, an anime:
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Why is 'petty' not pronounced like 'pretty' without an 'r'?: 27 September 2020; It's time to score petty points on the internet at the BBC's expense! Are you ready? Then let's go!
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Missiles, target,...?: 23 August 2020; After initially denying its involvement, Iran has admitted downing a Boeing 737 belonging to Ukraine International Airlines in January.
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Hedging their bets: 31 May 2020; Michael Angelis, beloved Liverpudlian actor, died yesterday. According to Wikipaedia and The Guardian newspaper, he was 68 years old.
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Random whinge: 20 February 2019; Because it's not really a rant.
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Every life counts, but some more than others: 2 March 2017; Opposition to the reintroduction of the death penalty in the Philippines is exemplified by, among other things, this cute little graphic.
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Seeing double: 21 September 2016; Another day, another black man killed by US police. It's so every day that it doesn't bear comment. But I am angry at the abuse of the English language by a woman claiming to be Keith Lamont Scott's sister: He didn't have no gun, and He wasn't messing with nobody.
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No shit, Sherlock: We got braynz: 29 August 2012; According to the BBC, after his assassination Leon Trotsky's brain proved unusually heavy.
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