Links For July 2026 (Part 2)

[continued from Part 1 here. I haven’t independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]41: Today in etymology, h/t @TheHistoryOfTh2: “don” (as in to don gay apparel) was originally a contraction of do on; “doff” (as in to doff one’s hat) was originally a contraction of do off. Related: the archaic word “nigh”, meaning close, is mostly forgotten except in the phrase “the end is nigh”. But its comparative (nigh-er) survives as “near”, and its superlative (nigh-est) survives as “next”.42: This @St_Rev tweet helped me connect different forms of mystical experience in a productive way:43: There’s a lot of bad criticism of Pangram, but Freddie de Boer’s blow actually lands. He gives some good examples of Pangram’s AI…