NTMP 144: Sweepwood Vac
Clean up those catfish Pringles
New-To-Me Phrases, August 24, 2025
Noodling * Colonel Dustard * Everyone Hates Elon * Mankeeping * Hyperbolic paraboloid * The LeBron James of being unlikable * Outsidey * Butterfly trail
The Phrases, With Context
I am writing this to you with the windows of my house open for the first time in months. Leaves on the audacious tree across the street are already changing. Everyone at my place is weary of the tyranny of humidity and ready for fall to start. LFG! 🍁☕️🪵🎃🍂
In this edition, we have the GOAT of unlikeability, redefining the phrase “fishing hole,” tasty shapes and more.
Let’s get to it!
1. Noodling
The U.S. is a big country with many regions and subcultures. In fact, I have a book on my TBR pile called American Nations: A history of the eleven rival regional cultures of North America by Colin Woodard that does a deep dive into this topic. Never were these regionalisms more apparent to me than when I discovered noodling via an online book club. One person—with great affection for her home state—referred to it as Oklahoma’s unofficial sport, lol.
The rough idea I got from that discussion is that people in certain regions of the country willingly reach inside of underwater holes to try and catch catfish.
It gets better. Here’s Wikipedia’s summary, which includes alternative names for noodling:
The noodler places their hand or foot inside a discovered catfish hole in order to catch the fish. Other names for the same activity are used in different regions, primarily in the South and Midwest, and include hogging, dogging, grappling, grabbling, tickling, and catfisting.
There is so much to unpack here.
Hand OR foot? Or FOOT?
Catfisting?!? The way I screamed!!
The map at Wikipedia shows that people in my home state of Illinois also noodle. Are noodlers. Engage in noodling. What in the Abe Lincoln is going on here? I had no idea! Apparently I’ve been living in a catfish hole, waiting for the foot of knowledge to kick start my brain.
Someone from that book club Discord shared this video, which I have not yet watched but was delighted to discover includes Matty Matheson, whom you may know as Neil Fak from The Bear (and probably my favorite character, after Tina):
Matheson is a Canadian celebrity, chef, and musician, further establishing in my mind that Canada is superior to the U.S. in every way. Once again, I had no idea about any of these things. I feel like I just woke up from a coma only to discover we have jetpacks, flying cars, and universal healthcare.
2. Colonel Dustard
Continuing our fondness at NTMP for objects and creatures with punny names, we have Colonel Dustard for a robot vacuum name. h/t to my friend Rebecca for this one.
Screenshot because I refuse to use Threads, the shittiest of the socials:
I am, however, willing to feed off of Threads like a comedy vampire. I love what a drama queen the Colonel is.
I’d love to hear your ideas for a robot vacuum name. Share in comments if you’re into that sort of thing.
3. Everyone Hates Elon
This is the name of a UK political campaign group (actually a friend group with design skills) that’s been trolling the Trump administration and its assorted goonish barnacles for a while now. Examples include London bus stop Tesla ads that read “Goes from 0 to 1939 in 3 seconds” with an image of Musk giving what anyone with a brain and eyes in their heads know was a Nazi salute. They also created an ad featuring Trump and Epstein together and added a sign under an official Trump golf course sign that read “Twinned with Epstein Island.” I enjoy sight gags, good design, and shaming these clowns, so I look forward to seeing what else this group gets up to.
4. Mankeeping
This word comes from a recent New York Times article titled “Why Women Are Weary of the Emotional Labor of ‘Mankeeping.’” The term was coined by Stanford fellow Angelica Puzio Ferrara in a paper describing the issue as part of a “male friendship recession.”
Specifically, mankeeping is defined as the labor that women take on to shore up losses in men’s social networks and reduce the burden of men’s isolation on families, the heterosexual bond, and on men.
Mankeeping is a play on the term kinkeeping, which I cheeikly take to mean “women doing the emotional labor for families.” I know there’s a lot of oxygen devoted to male loneliness in the media these days, and it’s easy to brush it off as their problem. I do believe lonely men need to start stepping up and doing the work of learning how to create their own connections with other humans. I also believe—based anecdotally and on my own experience—that women in their 40s and up are tired. Many of us have been caregiving in one form or another for decades and we want partners, not another person to take care of. I recognize that this entire entry paints in very broad strokes; I have male caregivers with rich friendships in my life and I’m betting you do, too.
I think about this dynamic often because I’ve been reckoning with my own role in taking on a large share of both project management and emotional labor in my own life, for various reasons that I’m still exploring. I don’t have any clear answers or simple solutions here. But speaking only as myself as a Gen X hetero woman, I have found that open, honest conversations create inroads for men to step up and step into taking on some of this work for themselves. This is how progress often happens.
5. Hyperbolic paraboloid
I recently caught up on the latest episodes of the Maintenance Phase podcast, and this phrase came up during their show about ultra-processed foods (transcript at the link). Spoiler: there is no scientific definition for or consensus on what this term means but there’s plenty of moral panic about it from wellness influencers.
In that episode, co-host Aubrey Gordon shared that the shape of Pringles has a name: hyperbolic paraboloid.
Speaking of Pringles, my family will try just about any weird snack edition out there, and a few years ago they released a cheeseburger flavored variety that was surprisingly good.
6. The LeBron James of being unlikeable
Jamelle Bouie is one of the sharpest thinkers and writers of these times.
If you’d like to see this serious man of letters him make himself laugh while insulting JD Vance and Stephen Miller (the unlikeable person in question), here you go:
As my friend Jessica put so aptly when describing Trump-adjacent people like billionaires and his advisors, “Why do they always resemble their souls?”
7. Outsidey
I found this term that describes being outsidey, or outdoors-adjacent, as a play on outdoorsy. Basically glamping vs. backpacking.
This January 2024 Huffington Post article gives a good overview:
As travel content creator Sam Cormier, who goes by @samanthas_suitcase on Instagram, put it, “An ‘outsidey’ person is someone who genuinely enjoys being outside, but without the exertion.”
Cormier says she didn’t coin the term but doesn’t share where she first discovered it. This Instagram post dated November 14, 2023 uses the term. Could this be the origin point? It’s the oldest reference I could find.
I’m definitely outdoorsy but there are ways that chronic pain and injuries have shifted me toward being outsidey. For example, sleeping on the ground is not as easy or fun as it was in my 20s and camping lost much of its appeal once I had kids and realized I was doing all the housework and caregiving I already do . . . but with more dirt and pit toilets.
As far as coining new words goes, this one is playful and fun and I like it.
How do you identify - outdoorsy or outsidey? Why?
8. Butterfly trail
This phrase illustrates how some of the best initiatives are community-led and involve multiple groups across disciplines.
In Missouri, a community group called The Hamilton Alliance is creating a 26-mile butterfly trail traversing 13 counties within the state. The goal is to create habitats for butterflies and raise awareness about conservation. The trail will include gardens, art installations, educational centers, and research facilities, with each county taking ownership for maintaining their portion of the trail.
Project partners include multiple state agencies, private businesses, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Park Service, and the Smithsonian Institute. All of this started with a few community members with nonprofit and fundraising experience. More of this!
That’s it for this week! Remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious.
My sister named her robot vacuum Chessy from the Parent Trap
I have never heard of catfish noodling despite living a 30 min drive away from some world-class catfishing... also I'm definitely outsidey with some dabbling in outdoorsy during vacation day hikes.