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Steel yourselves, language pedants: Dictionary.com has added 300 new words to its online database.

The latest roster additions are a potpourri of portmanteaus, hyphenations and slang terms you feel kind of embarrassed looking up, but do anyway because you are deeply uncool and language is moving into the future without you.

Three hundred words is a lot, so here are the highlights:

420, alt-right,bitchface, cat,caf, cheat day,clicktivist, cold brew, dabbing, dad bod,friendiversary,hangry, K-pop,Kush,lightsaber, man bun,mic drop,petrichor,sext, slay,smackdown, stochastic, terrorism, struggle bus,superfood, teachable moment, uncanny valley

It's rather impressionistic, isn't it? At first, the list reads like a teenager having a hyperactive episode, but when you step back it presents a rather tight portrait of what we're talking about right now, and how we talk about it.

How new words are born

Even though the newfound legitimacy of "bitchface" may amuse you, Dictionary.com lexicographer Jane Solomon tells CNN making the list is serious business. Approving new words is an intense, involved process that comprises different research methods -- all so your sheltered aunt can finally get a solid answer on what "Kush" means.

One way to pinpoint possible new words is through corpus research, which in this case is essentially taking a whole bunch of different texts and sources and combing through them to look for patterns. That's how words and phrases attached to current events, like "burkini" and "Black Lives Matter," bubble to the top.

"We also have lookup data," Solomon says. "We can see what words people have tried to look up on Dictionary.com that haven't led to a definition." Sometimes, people even write in requesting a definition. That's how they decided to add petrichor, "a distinctive scent, usually described as earthy, pleasant, or sweet, produced by rainfall on very dry ground."

"It takes a lot of time and effort and thought, so as a lexicographer we give every word the same amount of respect and attention and care," Solomon says.

No, the language isn't going to pot

Inevitably, whenever a lexicographical authority releases a collection of new words, there are purists ready to grouse about the decline of their precious language. To cop one of the latest entries, Solomon says this is a "teachable moment."

"Many people who have that opinion believe that English stopped changing right before they were born, and that is simply not how the language works. It's continually evolving," she says.

"Is this word or that word too new or too slang? No. There's not just one correct English. Standard English -- the register of English used in school and work, is not the only correct English. As a lexicographer, I do not define how the language is used, the speakers do. And if speakers are using a certain set of words, then that is correct English."

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Hangry, sext, alt-right: Dictionary.com adds 300 new words - WCPO

Nivea pulled this advertisement from its Facebook page on Friday.Photo: Nivea/Facebook

Nivea has pulled an advertisement with the tagline "white is purity" after it was the subject ofa foreseeable backlash, and (because it is 2017) subsequentlybecame a favourite of alt-right social media users.

The skincare brand shared the advertisement, for its "invisible" antiperspirant, to its Facebook page on Friday.

It showed a photographof a woman with dark hair sitting in a white robe, taken from behind.

"Keep it clean, keep it bright. Don't let anything ruin it," the advertisement read, above the tagline: "white is purity".

The brand has since alleged it was only intended to be posted to its "Nivea Middle East" page.

"The recent post regarding Black & White Invisible Deodorant originated from the NIVEA Middle East Facebook page," the brand commented on the Facebook post of a concerned US Facebook user.

"The NIVEA Middle East advertisement was not meant to be racially insensitive. We sincerely apologise. The post has been removed.

"Diversity, tolerance and equal opportunity are fundamental values of NIVEA."

Nivea's Facebook page uses a geoblocker to redirect users to their country's specific brand channel.

The brand has over 19 million Facebook followers globally.

The advertisement was removed the same day, after a number of social media users pointed out the problems with describing whiteness as "pure".

Although it is no longer on the Niveapage, the advertisement was screenshotted and republished by a number of social media users who identify politically as members of the conservative"alt-right".

Go here to read the rest:
Nivea pulls 'white is purity' ad after backlash, alt-right adoption - The Sydney Morning Herald

James Harris Jackson is brought to Manhattan Central Booking on Wednesday, March 22, 2017. He is charged with stabbing a black stranger in Midtown. Photo: Jefferson Siegel/NY Daily News via Getty Images

James Jackson had a plan. Traveling by Bolt Bus from his home in Baltimore to New York City, the 28-year-old Jackson hoped to strike a blow for the beleaguered white race by carrying out a bloody massacre of black men in Times Square, using a two-foot sword hed brought with him for the occasion.

He didnt get that far, turning himself in to NYC police after stalking, stabbing, and killing 66-year-old can collector Timothy Caughman in midtown in a trial run for the planned massacre. In a jailhouse interview, he told the New York Daily News that the murder had been a mistake. He had intended to kill a young thug or a successful older black man out with a blonde, an act he somehow thought would scare white girls away from black men.

Its not hard to see where Jackson picked up at least some of his noxious views. He was, he told the Daily News, a regular reader of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer; on YouTube he subscribes to the channels of a vast assortment of alt-rightists and fellow travelers, from Hitler-worshiping revisionist historians who call themselves things like Esoteric Truth and the Impartial Truth to conspiracy-addled right-wingers like Alex Jones and the resolutely anti-feminist, anti-Muslim YouTube philosopher Stefan Molyneux.

But what is equally disturbing is that Jackson also subscribes to a vast collection of channels promoting the Men Going Their Own Way movement, a more radical and openly hateful version of mens-rights activism, sans even the pretense of activism. MRAs may do precious little actual activism in the real world, but they do have a range of issues that they discuss on a regular basis, some of them legitimate issues they have seized upon largely for propaganda purposes (like male suicide and workplace safety), others generated from their own paranoid fantasies (the supposed epidemic of false rape accusations that leaves every man at risk of being jailed based on nothing more than a womans word).

MGTOWs, as they are known, have largely abandoned these issues to focus almost entirely on the airing of grievances. They claim to proudly reject women, but seem to spend most of their time obsessing over them, spouting endless rants about the alleged evils of women on YouTube and assorted online forums. Jackson subscribes to the channels of popular MGTOWs bar bar, Thinking-Ape, and Sandman, as well as many lesser-known names.

While MGTOWs and alt-rightists regularly spar with one another online, the two movements now appear to be converging, with alt-rightists increasingly spouting anti-feminist, anti-women talking points familiar to anyone who has paid attention to the mens-rights movement; meanwhile, more and more MGTOWs are becoming less shy about expressing their racism, with many openly identifying with the alt-right.

The two movements are drawn together by a shared obsession with, and paranoia about, the sexuality of women.

White supremacists have, of course, long sought to protect their women that is, all white women from the sexuality of black men. In the several heydays of the Klan, southern whites lynched literally thousands of black men based on accusations of rape that were often wholly false, intended to punish those who willingly crossed the sexual color line.

Alt-rightists today remain obsessed with race mixing. The Daily Stormer, in its troll-ish but completely sincere style, rails against miscegenation in posts with titles like Exposing the Race-Mixing Agenda and Tom Hanks Jigaboo Granddaughter Reminds Us Why Race-Mixing Shouldnt Happen. With something close to glee, the site regularly mocks mudsharking white women who end up brutalized by their black boyfriends.

In a post last year, Daily Stormer editor Andrew Anglin declared that racists like him react with a lot of anger to white women who have children with black men because its OUR WOMB thats right, it doesnt belong to her, it belongs to the males in her society that is being used to produce an enemy soldier.

As racists like Anglin see it, when white women become sexually involved with black men they are in effect cuckolding all white men. This insecurity about race cucking is undoubtedly the main reason alt-right men are so fond of calling other men cucks a handy way to project their own anxieties onto others.

Anglin assures his readers that the anger they feel about race mixing is perfectly natural. [W]hen you see women with non-Whites, its a biological response that youre having, he writes. Womens eggs are infinitely more valuable than mens sperm. So there is an inborn drive in men to constantly protect women. And when you see them with non-Whites, you immediately respond negatively.

Tellingly, Anglin feels no such anger about white men in relationships with black women. While gross and wrong, he explains, this weird fetish doesnt trigger the same visceral reaction when you see it, because in terms of the survival of the race, it doesnt make any difference.

It seems fairly clear that the relative values of eggs and sperm have little to do with Anglins reaction. Black men dating white women trigger his sexual insecurities; white men dating black women dont.

MGTOWs are similarly obsessed with women having sex with men other than them. While MRA complaints especially those involving alleged false rape accusations often reek of sexual insecurity and aggrieved sexual entitlement, MGTOWs seem to be motivated by little other than their own sexual anxieties and resentments. In comment sections and YouTube videos they regularly hash and rehash what is perhaps the central MGTOW myth, that of the cock carousel. As MGTOWs see it, women in their prime live in a state of sexual overabundance and endless male affirmation, flitting from alpha male to alpha male in an endless utopia of casual sex riding that so-called carousel.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of men in their teens and early 20s live in a parched sexual desert, scorned by women, who have eyes only for the studly and confident jocks that have become known, at least among the bitter young misogynists of the internet, as Chads, short for Chad Thundercock. Young women consider him far more exciting than the genuine nice guys who remain trapped in an extended period of involuntary celibacy because their shallow female counterparts cant see just how deserving of love and sex they are. MGTOWs see themselves as the innocent victims of a grave sexual injustice, essentially cuckolded by the lucky minority of men who get to enjoy sex with women still in their prime.

All this changes when these young women hit the wall that is, hit the magical age in their late 20s or thereabouts when their youthful allure begins to fade. Deprived of easy sex they had previously enjoyed with an endless succession of Chads, these no-longer-young women, now desperate, do their best to attract the attention of the kind and hardworking beta males theyve been ignoring for years.

On the forums at MGTOW.com, a fellow calling himself Geeves complains of one ex-girlfriend who gave her best years to Chad instead of him.

[S]he was 24-25 when she was with this guy, he grouses. Her prime age of looks and reproductive abilities. He got her in her prime that mother fucker. Then when her clock started ticking and she wanted to settle down and have a family, she meets me. And Im supposed to get a ring, pay for a wedding, honeymoon and be her slave the rest of her life? FUCK THAT!

The fact that the cock carousel myth bears virtually no resemblance to anything that actually happens in the real world does not in any way undercut the fervency of MGTOWs belief in it. Or the anger it helps to nurture within them.

MGTOWs are generally young white men stewing in their own aggrieved entitlement, and Chad is always envisioned as another white guy. But he has a black counterpart a young fellow that the casually racist MGTOWs have labeled Tyrone, basically identical to the young thugs that Jackson, in the real world, planned to kill.

With the alt-right still in the ascendancy, the racism in the MGTOW movement is growing more obvious and more extreme. You can see this clearly in several of the channels Jackson subscribes to on YouTube. The YouTuber who identifies himself as The Angry MGTOW more than lives up to the name, literally shouting out endless half-hour rants. The most popular of these, with hundreds of thousands of views, are diatribes calling out white women for a multitude of sins, including the cardinal sin of dating black men.

YouTuber Xpall Odoc, meanwhile, identifies himself as both a MGTOW and an alt-rightist; he believes white women, too childish to make their own decisions, need to be expressly forbidden from even socializing with black men.

On MGTOW forums like Reddits Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, its similarly obvious that the alt-right is leaking in. In one recent discussion of cuckoldry, a Reddit MGTOW offers some thoughts that would not sound out of place at some drunken Klan after-party.

Even married women who proclaim how pure and innocent they are, will fuck some thug convict or dump whomever she married to chase some jackass, T0000009 complains. Females [dont] give a fuck about culture or society, their family or heritage, they just want some stupid savage to breed them and its the only thing on their tiny mind.

Women Everywhere Forgive Donald Trump for Everything After Watching 40-Second Instagram Video

Hollywood Has Embraced Dascha Polanco. Why Hasnt the Fashion World?

Move over, Matt McGorry.

The GHE20G0TH1K founder is also apart of the Nike RevolutionAir design project.

Its great under clothes, or even just on its own.

The fashion chains Japanese parent company said it would not be able to make really good products in the U.S.

How the Marvel Universe finally mastered style.

Plus: Chlo Grace Moretz, Adwoa Aboah, Lucky Blue Smith.

Hes no longer hiding under a towel.

Lopez was supposed to post about the hoverboards at least once every three months on social media.

Public Advocate Letitia Jamess bill is expected to pass next week.

And new shiny bags too.

Yes, you can buy them whether theyre legit is another question.

Lea Issarni loves cats, French hip-hop, and ham.

A new study finds one surprising shift in young peoples views of gender egalitarianism.

One womans harrowing story.

Marc Jacobs cast her as the new face for his perfume, Daisy.

Two experts reveal whether biotin really does help with hair and nail growth.

2017, New York Media LLC.

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Inside the Dangerous Convergence of Men's-Rights Activists and the Extreme Alt-Right - New York Magazine

Among recent additions to the popular website Dicionary.com is the term alt-right, which catapulted into public consciousness in the last year or so, particularly during the fraught election season.

Scholars, journalists and activists have struggled to pin down exactly what the term means and its origins are even unclear. While white nationalist, or Identitarian, Richard Spencer claims to have invented the term, that is also up for debate.

Now Dictionary.com offers their definition: a political movement originating on social media and online forums, composed of a segment of conservatives who support extreme right-wing ideologies, including white nationalism and anti-Semitism.

Dictionary.com accepts the narrative that Spencer invented the term in 2010.

The dictionary website said that is lexicographers analyze search data to determine interest and demand for terms to add to their database.

Our users turn to us to define the words they see, hear, and readand in todays highly politicized world, we play a necessary role in helping users dissect the meaning of words heard in this period of political discourse, said Liz McMillan, CEO of Dictionary.com, according to a press release.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

Read more from the original source:
It's Official, 'Alt-Right' Is In The Dictionary Now - Forward

Chapman was not the only person to engage in violence during the march. An estimated 70 people showed up to support Trump, while almost three times as many counter-protesters organized to oppose them. According to a police report, people on either side were armed with weapons, shields, pepper spray, portable radios, smoke canisters, etc., wearing protective padding and helmets, and in at least one confirmed case, ballistic armor. Videos show that the event intermittently broke out into outright melees, featuring an abundance of punches, pepper spray, blood, and, of course, Chapmans infamous stick-beating.

Its not hard to see why Chapman was singled out by the alt-right. The photo of him is extremely meme-able; he looks like a medieval cosplay fantasy come to life. It also projects a flattering image. Based Stickman signals that the movement is composed of tough warriors, rather than what Elspeth Reeve succinctly describes at Vice News as a mix of ironic teenage racists, sincere teenage racists, some populists, uptown Klan types, a handful of vain writers impressed by their own intellectual power because few smart people bother to debate them, and a tiny number of actually dangerous people who read the stuff written by the other guys and act on it.

Chapman could be slotted in the last category. But perhaps Chapman is best described as a run-of-the-mill Donald Trump supporter. Chapman told me that his ideology is pretty much in line with what you see coming from the Trump administration. He watches Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and was rooting for Ron Paul in 2008 and 2012. Before this month, Chapman described his social media habits as going on Facebook once a month.

Chapman was completely unprepared for the virality of the Based Stickman meme. (He pronounces it mem.) Ive been on 4chan, like, once, he told me. Chapman had previously quit smoking for three years, but since Based Stickman went viral, hes up to a pack a day.

Still, Chapman is embracingand benefiting fromhis newfound fame. At the March 4 Trump rally, he was arrested on suspicion of felony assault with a deadly weapon, carrying a concealed dirk or dagger, assault with a taser, and assault with pepper spray. But within 72 hours of his arrest, WeSearchr, the crowdfunding site started by the far-right internet troll Chuck Johnson, raised almost $50,000 for Chapmans legal defense. (WeSearchr is also responsible for raising a $5,500 bounty for whoever unmasks the Antifa protester who punched white nationalist Richard Spencer at Trumps inauguration, a popular meme on the left.) As of today, the campaign has raised a total of $83,985 from 1,467 contributors. Pro-Trump internet gremlin Mike Cernovich, who the New Yorker has described as the meme mastermind of the alt-right, personally contributed $2,500. Five-thousand dollars from that fund have already been used to bail Chapman out of jail.

Donald Trumps ascent has been mirrored by a documented rise in organized hate groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Centers annual hate group report, the number of hate groups in the country grew from 784 to 917 between 2014 and 2016. SPLC also recorded over 1,000 bias-related incidents, the largest share being anti-immigrant incidents, in the month after Trumps election. But the report notes that there was a visible drop in extremist-led rallies, wryly stating that there hardly seemed a reason to organize their own rallies when extremists could attend a Trump event filled with just as much anti-establishment vitriol as any extremist rally.

Trump has given cover for people who may have felt hesitant about acting out beforehand. For politically marginal groups you need an opening and a space of tolerance if youre going to start protesting, David S. Meyer, sociology professor at UC Irvine, told the New Republic. What were seeing now is a different contingent of the right-wing that has been legitimated and encouraged by the Trump administration. While Chapman has always considered himself a political person, the March 4 Trump rally was the first time he had ever gotten into a fight for political reasons.

Yvette Felarca, a founding member of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), the militant anti-fascist group that organized the counter-protest at the March 4 Trump rally, told me, I think the danger of the Trump movement is that it isnt just your classic electoral movement thats getting behind a candidate. Its people who see through Trump and his campaign an opportunity to take dangerous and violent action against immigrant, women, Muslim, and LGBT people. Thats the particular danger behind this movement. BAMNs goals are to defend against such attacks and push for equality for these groups.

Militant left-wing Antifa activity has also grown in response to the threat of the Trump administration. An Antifa protester was shot by a Trump supporter at a protest against the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannapolous in Seattle. Antifa activists employed black bloc tactics to protest Trumps inauguration, which gave us the meme of Richard Spencer getting sucker-punched in the face. In Sacramento, ten people were injured at a clash between white nationalists and Antifa activists, and Antifa protesters were responsible for shutting down Yiannopouloss planned speech at UC Berkeley in early February.

The March 4 Trump rally in Berkeley was organized, in part, as a response to the Yiannopoulos Berkeley protests. Rich Black, the events organizer, told ABC News, Funny enough, Im not actually a Trump supporter. He then asserted that he was motivated by enmity towards the anti-Milo protesters. They believe its okay to shut down those aiming to express themselves.

In other words, Trump may embolden these groups, but he himself was an afterthought for the organizer of the March 4 Trump rally. Instead, the right seems to be using Trump as cover to provoke the left. If youre doing it in Berkeley youre doing it to generate provocation, to get a reaction, Meyer said. Its like when the Nazis marched in Skokie. They are seeking to benefit from these instances where anti-fascists have chosen to be violent to get their point across, Ryan Lenz, senior writer for SPLCs Intelligence Project, told me. It bolsters their own sense of war.

Chapman is certainly buying into the warrior schtick. In an interview with right-wing Vice Media co-founder Gavin McInnes (who left Vice in 2008), Chapman talks about the March 4 Trump rallywhich he calls the Battle of Berkeleylike someone who owns the extended Lord of the Rings DVD box set. He recounts how he was able to extract an old man from a bad situation and get him to a safe spot. The overall strategy, according to Chapman, was to get our men up to the front and to shore up our flanks so that Antifa counter-protesters didnt bust through us and get back to the rear where our women, and elderly, and peaceful protesters were.

But, according to Felarca of BAMN, Chapman was much less heroic than he claimed to be: [He] was pretty pathetic. In the end, he just got dragged away.

Each side, of course, has an incentive to spin the post-event narrative in their own favor. In crowded settings like the March 4 Trump rally, it is often hard to identify who threw the first punch or who pepper-sprayed whom. In the confusion, memes like Based Stickman are dangerous in that they help to spread a clear, consistent narrative promoting far-right propaganda. One person posted on the Based Stickman 4chan thread, This guy just laid the smack down on your commie brethren.

As Meyer noted, the idea that Based Stickman is a hero can only work in a context where theyre supporting this master narrative of the left being intolerant and threatening. One downside to militant leftist tactics is that they make it easier for someone like Chapman to justify smashing people in the head. In the far-right echochamber, at least, it looks like it might be working. The Based Stickman videos have been viewed on YouTube hundreds of thousands of times. On his Facebook, Chapman posted a photo this week of three copycats dressed up as Based Stickman with the caption, We are all Based Stickman.

But according to Lenz of the SPLC, the intolerant left narrative is simply not backed up by the facts. Its very much a redirection of reality. The left has not been historically nearly as violent as the right, at least not in the last eight years, he asserted. The right says the left is violent and they need to be prepared for it, but when they turn their head theyre wishing for nothing but violence, death, and destruction, on anyone and anything thats not white.

In a (now-hidden) post on Facebook, Chapman himself was uncomfortable with how far white nationalists were taking the meme. He asked his followers to tone down the violence and racism, stating, Im all about preparation and aggressive defense, not violence. We have to maintain the high ground. Thats how we win the long game. When I asked about the reception to the post, Chapman told me that he received tons of backlash. A lot of these young kids they seem to be sitting in front of their computers too much, theyre angry about things.

But when I asked Chapman if he was concerned that someone inspired by the Based Stickman meme might act in a way he wouldnt condone, he brushed it off. You always have that possibility. Thats one of the reasons I put that post on my Facebook. I pointed out that he had taken the post down. I got tired of it being there and all the comments popping up. I just removed it, he said.

On April 15, under the banner of a Freedom Rally, Kyle Chapman and Rich Black are organizing another march at the same park as the March 4 Trump rally. They are raising funds on WeSearchr. The event has been described as a return to Berkeley, and Based Stickman is being used as a recruiting tool.

Felarca says that BAMN will try to be at the event, as well. When I asked about violent tactics on the left being used to justify violence on the right, she told me that she wasnt worried because abusers always try to paint themselves as victims. As for the idolization of Based Stickman, she scoffed. If thats who theyve got to rally behind, they dont have much.

Read more:
The Unlikely Rise of an Alt-Right Hero - New Republic