NTMP 113: Hammertime

Dropping the kids off at chocolate school

New-To-Me Phrases, June 16, 2024

Millennial lifestyle subsidy * Gray Ghosts * Jon Hamm’s linen-pants-clad penis * Watery murder dungeon * Horizontal writing * Dark watchers

Photo by Christoph Nolte on Unsplash

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The Phrases, With Context

This week we have TWO ghostly references, a phrase that gets it wrong, fun clickbait, and more.

Let’s get to it!

1. Millennial lifestyle subsidy

I came across this phrase in an extremely chewy and fascinating discussion thread on

Anne Helen Petersen

‘s Culture Study newsletter. This link to the convo is only available to paid subscribers, which I believe helps keep the comments section one of the best places on the Internet. The topic was about the concept of what “free” means to us in terms of economics, and the comments wove together into a fascinating exploration of the way we live today. If you’re a paid subscriber and missed this one, check it out.

A commenter mentioned that it’s an apt time to discuss what “free” means because we’re coming to the end of the millennial lifestyle subsidy, and I had no idea what that meant.

Here’s what I learned:

A couple of years ago, news outlets like the New York Times and The Atlantic began reporting on the end of the millennial lifestyle subsidy.

Derek Thompson from The Atlantic wrote in 2022:

[I]f you woke up on a Casper mattress, worked out with a Peloton, Ubered to a WeWork, ordered on DoorDash for lunch, took a Lyft home, and ordered dinner through Postmates only to realize your partner had already started on a Blue Apron meal, your household had, in one day, interacted with eight unprofitable companies that collectively lost about $15 billion in one year.

The gist is that urban millennials who relied on conveniences created by thus-far-unprofitable tech companies were about to experience sticker shock as those companies raised their rates in a bid to make bank. Somehow it comes across as a swipe at millennials, which is weird since it should be called something like “the Silicon Valley long con.”

Ed Zitron agrees with me on this:

Millennials are held to this bizarre standard where their habits and actions are heavily analyzed and criticized, where they are called narcissists that are weak and fragile, while also offering them less opportunities to thrive and more opportunities to fail than Boomers or Gen X’ers had. Previous generations that were able to go to college cheaper and buy houses easier, and things cost less, too. Nevertheless we don’t see stories around the Gen X’ers and Boomers that actually hold a level of responsibility - other than being a customer - for these actions, for that analysis wouldn’t be as cute and interesting and shareable for an older generation that has begun to assume that millennials have it as easy (if not easier!) as they did, and thus just aren’t working hard enough. By blaming millennials for something they did, we’re legitimizing previous generations’ condescending, usurious actions, and fueling the ability to continually blame a generation for their elders’ failures.

Bottom line: Reporting on this trend is a couple of years old and seems to have fizzled out. But this phrase still sucks and should be replaced with something more accurate, like the Silicon Valley long con.

2. Gray Ghosts

What a great phrase. You can just picture a gray ghost when reading it, can’t you? It’s creepy and alliterative and evocative, even thought it’s not about ghosts. I can’t recall where I found this phrase but here’s a post by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service about them called Saving the ‘Gray Ghosts, with an unfortunate update at the end.

Gray Ghosts describes a small sub-population of Southern Mountain Caribou that live in the Selkirk Mountains along the U.S.-Canada border in Idaho and British Columbia:

Nicknamed, “Gray Ghosts,” the Southern Mountain Caribou are secretive, shy and rarely observed in these large, high elevation landscapes and are therefore described with phantom-like qualities.

Intermission while we ponder what a great word ‘caribou’ is. It’s fun to say! Plus, who doesn’t enjoy thinking about caribou out in the vast wilds, doing their thing, which I am pretty sure consists of eating lichen and getting it on?

Sadly, the Selkirk Mountain herd is now considered functionally extinct, despite decade-long efforts by a working group consisting of multiple federal and tribal agencies. In 2019, the last remaining Selkirk Mountain caribou was transported north into Canada to join a larger herd. 😔

3. Jon Hamm’s linen-pants-clad penis

You know this reference, right? Even if you’re not as internetty as me and missed it somehow, it is . . . extremely google-able. And Pinterested. And NSFW-sub-Reddited.

Seeing Hamm’s hog so explicitly described by

Josh Gondelman

while writing about Ben Affleck in The Ringer was (ahem) a sheer delight:

With actual sincere apologies to Pete Davidson’s bleary, heartbroken eyes and Jon Hamm’s linen-pants-clad penis, Ben Affleck is the reigning king of male discomfort captured without the subject’s consent.

While reading up on the cultural icon that is Jon Hamm’s penis, I saw nicknames including “the Hammaconda,” “the Hamm knuckle,” and “Little Jon Hamm.”

Of note: while I like this phrase as a pop culture (or internet meme culture) reference, I don’t think the pants in the OG photo were linen, but somehow it makes the phrase more evocative so I’ll allow it.

4. Watery murder dungeon

I found this phrase while reading the exact sort of clickbait I am apt to fall for: A post on Inverse titled “WHICH IS SCARIER: SPACE OR THE OCEAN? EXPERTS FINALLY SETTLE THE SCORE.”

I was surprised to see that more scientists fear the deep than the vast expanse of outer space but I think what really won out was variety. There’s a much longer and varied list of things that can kill you in the ocean vs. doing a big gooey ‘POP!’ once you’re frog marched out the airlock for betraying humanity (a favorite sci fi trope of mine).

Here are a couple of my favorite responses:

“The ocean. Everything in it wants you dead. At least in space you can die in peace.” -Jason Major, Citizen Scientist¹

“Space is passively trying to kill you. The ocean has things in it that are actively trying to kill and eat you.” -Jonathan McDowell, Astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

5. Horizontal writing

My local pal Kelly, who writes

Well Sourced from Kelly Jensen

shared this one with me. Horizontal writing occurs when you take a nap to work through something you're writing about.

Writers: IYKYK, extremely relatable content.

6. Dark watchers

I love a good is-it-or-isn’t-it mystery. In this case, Atlas Obscura explores whether tales of a creepy apparition watching over people are true or just a weather phenomenon?

There are dozens of similar accounts of so-called dark watchers by hikers in the Santa Lucia Mountains near Big Sur, California. The stories often share details: The figure stands seven to 10 feet tall and has a walking stick and hat, for example. No one has ever been able to interact with the looming figures—they always disappear once the hiker acknowledges them.

This sort of phenomenon has been reported for thousands of years, by indigenous inhabitants of the Santa Lucia Mountains and in other mountainous regions like Scotland. Some attribute this to pareidolia (new word alert! 🚨), or the human tendency to find patterns.

Meteorologists have another explanation:

Brocken spectres form when shadows—like that of a mountaineer—are cast against the mist. The sun, especially as it rises or sets, may be behind the hiker. The mist will distort the human’s shadow, making it look huge, while also allowing it to disappear with a slight change in position or a gust of wind.

Broken spectres is also a cool-ass new-to-me phrase!

NTMP Updates!

Once in a while, I get feedback via email or text about an edition of NTMP, or I’ll come across updated info in the wild. Here are a few of those, with links to the original posts they reference.

1. My friend Erin texted me about the chocolate school phrase from a couple of weeks back:

   “Chocolate school could also be where you drop the kids off if you wanted to say you had to poop, like ‘gotta drop the kids off at chocolate school...’”

2. My friend John emailed to remind me that ACHOO Syndrome is a backronym, which I wrote about here a looooong while back in the second edition of NTMP and apparently forgot all about. Thanks for the reminder, John!

3. I read a comment on

   This Week in Birding
   from Jim Frazier, the person who is said to have coined the word fluddle. It turns out it was his wife who came up with it!

   Here’s what he wrote:

   Jim Frazier here. My wife, Kate Frazier, came up with the word. At the time, we were having fun with sniglets. I started using the term when I was doing the DBC hotline. And it just stuck. But Kate deserves credit.

   Man, it’s been an age since I’ve thought about sniglets!

   The origin of the word fluddle isn’t the only bit of news in this update. Bob Dolgan at This Week in Birding made a documentary about them that you can watch here.

That’s it for this week! Remember to keep making it weird and stay furiously curious.

1. Wait; what? Can I just call myself a scientist because I “did my own research”?