Astroturf

Astroturf (pronounced as-truh-turf)

(1) A trademarked (as AstroTurf) brand of carpet-like covering made of vinyl and nylon to resemble turf, used for athletic fields, decks, patios and such (initial capital).

(2) The widely used generic term for artificial grass (no initial capital).

(3) To fake the appearance of popular support for something, such as a cause or product, the use based on the idea of faking “grassroots support” from the public the way AstroTurf is a “fake grass” (although some insist it’s really “faux grass” because usually there’s no attempt to claim the artificial product is natural).

1966: The construct was astro- + turf, the product name an allusion to the Astrodome, the baseball stadium in Houston, Texas, where first the product was laid at scale.  The astro- prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἄστρον (ástron) (celestial body), from ἀστήρ (astḗr) (star).  It was used by the astronomers of Antiquity to refer to celestial bodies which they classified as (1) fixed stars & (2) wandering stars (planets) as well as of space generally.  Turf (in the sense of a layer of earth covered with grass was from the Middle English turf & torf, from the Old English turf (turf, sod, soil, piece of grass covered earth, greensward), from the Proto-West Germanic turb, from the Proto-Germanic turbz (turf, lawn), from the primitive Indo-European derbh (tuft, grass).  It was cognate with the Dutch turf (turf), the Middle Low German torf (peat, turf) (from which German gained Torf and German Low German Torf), the Swedish torv (turf), the Norwegian torv (turf), the Icelandic torf (turf), the Russian трава (trava) (grass) and the Sanskrit दर्भ (darbhá) (a kind of grass) & दूर्वा (dū́rvā) (bent grass).  Astroturf & astroturfing are nouns & verbs, astroturfer is a noun and astroturfed is a verb & adjective; the noun plural is astroturfs.  AstroTurf is a registered trademark.

AstroTurf being laid in preparation for the first baseball game to be played in Veterans Stadium, Philadelphia, 1971.  The AstroTurf was in 2001 replaced with NexTurf and the stadium was demolished in 2006.

The use of “Astrodome” as the name for the baseball stadium in Houston, Texas, was an allusion to city's association with the US space program, a link not wholly unrelated to Texan Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969), while vice-president, being appointed by John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) to assume nominal responsibility for the program; Houston became home to NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Space Center).  Built in the early 1960s, the Astrodome was the world’s first multi-purpose, domed sports and even before the new name was unveiled, Houston was already widely known as “Space City” and when the structure was completed in 1965, some had assume it would be called the “Space City Stadium” but most seemed to agree Astrodome was a better choice and the city’s baseball team was the same year renamed the Houston Astros.  Dating from the early sixteenth century, dome was from the Middle French domme & dome (a town-house; a dome, a cupola) (which persists in modern French as dôme), from the Provençal doma, from the Italian duomo (cathedral), from the Medieval Latin domus (ecclesiae; literally “house (of the church)”), a calque of the Ancient Greek οἶκος τῆς ἐκκλησίας (oîkos tês ekklēsías).

Cats are not fooled by AstroTurf but are pragmatic.

AstroTurf is a trademarked brand name for a type of artificial surface which emulates the appearance of grass and to various degrees, also the “feel and behavior”.  When referring to the commercial product, the two upper-case characters should be used but (like Hoover & hoover, Xerox & xerox etc) the word has come frequently to be used as a generic term for any artificial turf and in these instances no initial capital should be used and style guides anyway recommend that to avoid confusion, a term such as “artificial turf” is preferred.  When used of the practice of faking the appearance of popular support for something, no initial capital should appear.  Because Astroturf is “fake grass”, when used in slang, the inference is always negative, especially in relation to politics and unethical marketing.  AstroTurf has changed much in the sixty-odd years of its existence with the green color about the only constant, advances in chemistry and computing meaning the surface now is more durable, cheaper to produce and more “grass-like” in its behaviour.  When first patented in 1965 it was sold as “ChemGrass” which, in retrospect, sounds like a bad choice but in the mid-1960s, as a word-forming element. “chem-” didn’t carry quite the negative connotations which later became so associated.  It was rebranded as AstroTurf in 1966 to tie in with opening of the Houston Astrodome stadium.

The use of “astroturf” as a slang term meaning “to fake the appearance of popular support for something, such as a cause or product” emerged in the last days of the 1990s although the origin of the use of the word in this context has been traced to 1985 when then Senator (Democratic, Texas) Lloyd Bentsen (1921–2006; US Secretary of the Treasury 1993-1994) used the word to distinguish between “real mail from real people” and the “mountain of cards and letters” sent to his office in a campaign organized by the insurance industry: “…a fellow from Texas can tell the difference between grass roots and AstroTurf... this is generated mail.”  Lloyd Bentsen is remembered also for the most memorable retort (which may have been rehearsed) line from the 1988 presidential election in which he was the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president.  In a debate with the Republican’s Dan Quayle (b 1947; vice president of the United States 1989-1993), he responded to Mr Quayle comparing himself to John Kennedy (JFK, 1917–1963; US president 1961-1963) by saying: “Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy.  I knew Jack Kennedy.  Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine.  Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.”  The other coincidental link between the two candidates was that in the 1970 mid-term congressional elections. Bentsen defeated George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993) for a Texas senate seat and it was Dan Quayle Bush choose as a running mate in his successful 1988 presidential campaign.

One of the internet’s more inexplicable juxtapositions; even the poster admitted there was nothing to link Lindsay Lohan with Coca-Cola drink AstroTurf cozies.

The senator’s reference to the “mountain of cards and letters” as early as 1985 is an indication the technique predates the internet and historians have identified examples from Antiquity which suggest the practice is likely as old as politics itself but what the internet did was offer the possibility of scaling campaigns to a global scale at a lower (sometimes marginal or even zero) unit cost.  When done, it called astroturfing those coordinating such things are astroturfer.  Astroturfers are, like scammers in this calling, engaged in a constant arms race against those who detect and expose the tactic and the dramatic rise in the use of AI bots (artificial intelligence (ro)bots) has made the detection process simultaneously both easier (because at this stage it’s still a relatively simple matter for one algorithm to detect another and more challenging because of the extraordinary rise in volume.  It’s not clear how many social media accounts are fake (run by people or bots generally receiving a payment for each post not deleted by the gatekeepers) and certainly it’s not something the platforms seem anxious to discuss although they will sometimes disclose how many have been deleted if some form of astroturfing has been especially blatant or egregious.  More subtle are the “shadow organizations” set up by the usual suspects (fossil fuel companies, extractive miners, big polluters, political parties etc) which can even have bricks & mortar offices and paid staff.  The purpose of these outfits is to engage in controversial debates and attempt to both “nudge” things in the direction sought by those providing the funding and create the impression certain views enjoy wider support than may be the reality.

1996 Daihatsu Midget with custom AstroTurf carpets.

The Daihatsu Midget began life as a single-seater, three wheel mini-truck (1957-1972) powered by a 250cm³ (15 cubic inch) single cylinder, two-stroke engine although some were built also with a 305 cm³ (19 cubic inch) unit which may in the vernacular be thought of as the “big block”.  Produced under licence in several nations in the Far East, it’s still produced in Thailand where its compact dimensions, remarkable load capacity and economy of operation make it uniquely suited to confined urban environments.  Daihatsu revived the Midget name for a four-wheel version which was produced between 1996-2001, manufactured under the “Kei Car” (a clipping of kei-jidōsha (軽自動車 (light automobile)) rules which limit mass, external dimensions and restrict displacement to 660 cm³ (40 cubic inches).  In a sign of the times, these diminutive Midgets (surely an irresistible tautology in the Kei Car business) were available with options like four-wheel drive and air conditioning.

Algorithm

Algorithm (pronounced al-guh-rith-um)

(1) A set of rules for solving a problem in a finite number of steps.

(2) In computing, a finite set of unambiguous instructions performed in a prescribed sequence to achieve a goal, especially a mathematical rule or procedure used to compute a desired result.

(3) In mathematics and formal logic, a recursive procedure whereby an infinite sequence of terms can be generated.

1690s: From the Middle English algorisme & augrym, from the Anglo-Norman algorisme & augrimfrom, from the French algorithme, re-fashioned (under mistaken connection with Greek αριθμός (arithmos) (number)) from the Old French algorisme (the Arabic numeral system) from the Medieval Latin algorismus, a (not untypical) mangled transliteration of the Arabic ⁧الخَوَارِزْمِيّ⁩ (al-ḵawārizmiyy), the nisba (the part of an Arabic name consisting a derivational adjective) of the ninth century Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī and a toponymic name meaning “person from Chorasmia” (native of Khwarazm (modern Khiva in Uzbekistan)).  It was Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī works which introduced to the West some sophisticated mathematics (including algebra). The earlier form in Middle English was the thirteenth century algorism from the Old French and in English, it was first used in about 1230 and then by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (circa 1344-1400) in 1391.  English adopted the French term, but it wasn't until the late nineteenth century that algorithm began to assume its modern sense.  Before that, by 1799, the adjective algorithmic (the construct being algorithm + -ic) was in use and the first use in reference to symbolic rules or language dates from 1881.  The suffix -ic was from the Middle English -ik, from the Old French -ique, from the Latin -icus, from the primitive Indo-European -kos & -ḱos, formed with the i-stem suffix -i- and the adjectival suffix -kos & -ḱos.  The form existed also in the Ancient Greek as -ικός (-ikós), in Sanskrit as -इक (-ika) and the Old Church Slavonic as -ъкъ (-ŭkŭ); A doublet of -y.  In European languages, adding -kos to noun stems carried the meaning "characteristic of, like, typical, pertaining to" while on adjectival stems it acted emphatically; in English it's always been used to form adjectives from nouns with the meaning “of or pertaining to”.  A precise technical use exists in physical chemistry where it's used to denote certain chemical compounds in which a specified chemical element has a higher oxidation number than in the equivalent compound whose name ends in the suffix -ous; (eg sulphuric acid (H₂SO₄) has more oxygen atoms per molecule than sulphurous acid (H₂SO₃).  The noun algorism, from the Old French algorisme was an early alternative form of algorithm; algorismic was a related form.  The meaning broadened to any method of computation and from the mid twentieth century became especially associated with computer programming to the point where, in general use, this link is often thought exclusive.  The spelling algorism has been obsolete since the 1920s.  Algorithm, algorithmist, algorithmizability, algorithmocracy, algorithmization & algorithmics are nouns, algorithmize is a verb, algorithmic & algorithmizable are adjectives and algorithmically is an adverb; the noun plural is algorithms.

Babylonian and later algorithms

An early Babylonian algorithm in clay.

Although there is evidence multiplication algorithms existed in Egypt (circa 1700-2000 BC), a handful of Babylonian clay tablets dating from circa 1800-1600 BC are the oldest yet found and thus the world's first known algorithm.  The calculations described on the tablets are not solutions to specific individual problems but a collection of general procedures for solving whole classes of problems.  Translators consider them best understood as an early form of instruction manual.  When translated, one tablet was found to include the still familiar “This is the procedure”, a phrase the essence of every algorithm.  There must have been many such tablets but there's a low survival rate of stuff from 40 centuries ago not regarded as valuable.

So associated with computer code has the word "algorithm" become that it's likely a goodly number of those hearing it assume this was its origin and any instance of use happens in software.  The use in this context, while frequent, is not exclusive but the general perception might be it's just that.  It remains technically correct that almost any set of procedural instructions can be dubbed an algorithm but given the pattern of use from the mid-twentieth century, to do so would likely mislead or confuse confuse many who might assume they were being asked to write the source code for software.  Of course, the sudden arrival of mass-market generative AI (artificial intelligence) has meant anyone can, in conversational (though hopefully unambiguous) text, ask their tame AI bot to produce an algorithm in the syntax of the desired coding language.  That is passing an algorithm (using the structures of one language) to a machine which interprets the text and converts it to language in another structure, something programmers have for decades been doing for their clients.

A much-distributed general purpose algorithm (really more of a flow-chart) which seems so universal it can be used by mechanics, programmers, lawyers, physicians, plumbers, carpet layers, concreting contractors and just about anyone whose profession is object or task-oriented.   

The AI bots have proved especially adept at such tasks.  While a question such as: "What were the immediate implications for Spain of the formation of the Holy Alliance?" produces varied results from generative AI which seem to range from the workmanlike to the inventive, when asked to produce computer code the results seem usually to be in accord with a literal interpretation of the request.  That shouldn't be unexpected; a discussion of early nineteenth century politics in the Iberian Peninsular is by its nature going to to be discursive while the response to a request for code to locate instances of split infinitives in a text file is likely to vary little between AI models.  Computer languages of course impose a structure where syntax needs exactly to conform to defined parameters (even the most basic of the breed such as that PC/MS-DOS used for batch files was intolerant of a single missing or mis-placed character) whereas something like the instructions to make a cup of tea (which is an algorithm even if not commonly thought of as one) greatly can vary in form even though the steps and end results can be the same.

An example of a "how to make a cup of tea" algorithm.  This is written for a human and thus contains many assumptions of knowledge; one written for a humanoid robot would be much longer and include steps such as "turn cold tap clockwise" and "open refrigerator door".

The so-called “rise of the algorithm” is something that has attracted much comment since social media gained critical mass; prior to that algorithms had been used increasingly in all sorts of places but it was the particular intimacy social media engenders which meant awareness increased and perceptions changed.  The new popularity of the word encouraged the coining of derived forms, some of which were originally (at least to some degree) humorous but beneath the jocularity, many discovered the odd truth.  An algorithmocracy describes a “rule by algorithms”, a critique in political science which discusses the implications of political decisions are being made by algorithms, something which in theory would make representative and responsible government not so much obsolete as unnecessary.  Elements of this have been identified in the machinery of government such as the “Robodebt” scandal in Australia in which one or more algorithms were used to raise and pursue what were alleged to be debts incurred by recipients of government transfer payments.  Despite those in charge of the scheme and relevant cabinet ministers being informed the algorithm was flawed and there had been suicides among those wrongly accused, the politicians did nothing to intervene until forced by various legal actions.  While defending Robodebt, the politicians found it very handy essentially to disavow connection with the processes which were attributed to the algorithm.

The feeds generated by Instagram, Facebook, X (formerly known as Twitter) and such are also sometimes described as algorithmocracies in that it’s the algorithm which determines what content is directed to which user.  Activists have raised concerns about the way the social media algorithms operate, creating “feedback loops” whereby feeds become increasingly narrow and one-sided in focus, acting only to reinforce opinions rather than inform.  In fairness, that wasn’t the purpose of the design which was simply to keep the user engaged, thereby allowing the platform to harvest more the product (the user’s attention) they sell to consumers (the advertisers).  Everything else is an unintended consequence and an industry joke was the word “algorithm” was used by tech company CEOs when they didn’t wish to admit the truth.  A general awareness of that now exists but filter bubbles won’t be going away but what it did produce were the words algorithmophobe (someone unhappy or resentful about the impact of algorithms in their life) and algorithmophile (which technically should mean “a devotee or admirer of algorithms” but is usually applied in the sense of “someone indifferent to or uninterested in the operations of algorithms”, the latter represented by the great mass of consumers digitally bludgeoned into a state of acquiescent insensibility.

Some of the products are fighting back: The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now (2024) by  by Hilke Schellmann, pp 336, Hachette Books (ISBN-13: 978-1805260981).

Among nerds, there are also fine distinctions.  There are subalgorithms (sub-algorithm seems not a thing) which is a (potentially stand-alone) algorithm within a larger one, a concept familiar in many programming languages as a “sub-routine” although distinct from a remote procedure call (RPC) which is a subroutine being executed in a different address space.  The polyalgorithm (again hyphens just not cool) is a set of two or more algorithms (or subalgorithms) with instructions for choosing which in some way integrated.  A very nerdy dispute does exist within mathematics and computer science around whether an algorithm, at the definitional level, really does need to be restricted to a finite number of steps.  The argument can eventually extend to the very possibility of infinity (or types of infinity according to some) so it really is the preserve of nerds.  In real-world application, a program is an algorithm only if (even eventually), it stops; it need not have a middle but must have a beginning and an end.

There is also the mysterious pseudoalgorithm, something les suspicious than it may first appear.  Pseudoalgorithms exist usually for didactic purposes and will usually interpolate (sometime large) fragments of a real algorithm bit it may be in a syntax which is not specific to a particular (or any) programming language, the purpose being illustrative and explanatory.  Intended to be read by humans rather than a machine, all a pseudoalgorithm has to achieve is clarity in imparting information, the algorithmic component there only to illustrate something conceptual rather than be literally executable.  The pseudoalgorithm model is common in universities and textbooks and can be simplified because millions of years of evolution mean humans can do their own error correction on the fly.

Of the algorithmic

The Netflix algorithm in action: Lindsay Lohan (with body-double) during filming of Irish Wish (2024).  The car is a Triumph TR4 (1961-1967), one of the early versions with a live rear axle, a detail probably of no significance in the plot-line.

The adjective algorithmic has also emerged as an encapsulated criticism, applied to everything from restaurant menus, coffee shop décor, choices of typefaces and background music.  An entire ecosystem (Instagram, TikTok etc) has been suggested as the reason for this multi-culture standardization in which a certain “look, sound or feel” becomes “commoditised by acclamation” as the “standard model” of whatever is being discussed.  That critique has by some been dismissed as something reflective of the exclusivity of the pattern of consumption by those who form theories about what seem not very important matters; it’s just they only go to the best coffee shops in the nicest parts of town.  In popular culture though the effect of the algorithmic is widespread, entrenched and well-understood and already the AI bots are using algorithms to write music will be popular, needing (for now) only human performers.  Some algorithms have become well-known such as the “Netflix algorithm” which presumably doesn’t exist as a conventional algorithm might but is understood as the sets of conventions, plotlines, casts and themes which producers know will have the greatest appeal to the platform.  The idea is nothing new; for decades hopeful authors who sent manuscripts to Mills & Boon would receive one of the more gentle rejection slips, telling them their work was very good but “not a Mills & Boon book”.  To help, the letter would include a brochure which was essentially a “how to write a Mills & Boon book” guide and it included a summary of the acceptable plot lines of which there were at one point reputedly some two dozen.  The “Netflix algorithm” was referenced when Falling for Christmas, the first fruits of Lindsay Lohan’s three film deal with the platform was released in 2022.  It was an example of followed a blending of several genres (redemption, Christmas movie, happy ending etc) and the upcoming second film (Irish Wish)  is of the “…always a bridesmaid, never a bride — unless, of course, your best friend gets engaged to the love of your life, you make a spontaneous wish for true love, and then magically wake up as the bride-to-be.” school; plenty of familiar elements there so it’ll be interesting to see if the algorithm was well-tuned.

Math of the elliptic curve: the Cox–Zucker machine can help.

Some algorithms have become famous and others can be said even to have attained a degree of infamy, notably those used by the search engines, social media platforms and such, the Google and TikTok algorithms much debated by those concerned by their consequences.  There is though an algorithm remembered as a footnote in the history of linguistic oddities and that is the Cox–Zucker machine, published in 1979 by Dr David Cox (b 1948) and Dr Steven Zucker (1949–2019).  The Cox–Zucker machine (which may be called the CZM in polite company) is used in arithmetic geometry and provides a solution to one of the many arcane questions which only those in the field understand but the title of the paper in which it first appeared (Intersection numbers of sections of elliptic surfaces) gives something of a hint.  Apparently it wasn’t formerly dubbed the Cox–Zucker machine until 1984 but, impressed by the phonetic possibilities, the pair had been planning joint publication of something as long ago as 1970 and undergraduate humor can’t be blamed because they met as graduate students at Princeton University.  The convention in academic publishing is for authors’ surnames to appear in alphabetical order and the temptation proved irresistible.

Cameo

Cameo (pronounced kam-ee-oh)

(1) A technique of engraving upon a gem or other stone, as onyx, in such a way that an underlying stone of one color is exposed as a background for a low-relief design of another color.

(2) A gem or other stone so engraved; a medallion, as on a brooch or ring, with a profile head carved in relief.

(3) A literary sketch, small dramatic scene, or the like, that effectively presents or depicts its subject.

(4) As "cameo, "cameo role" or "cameo appearance", a minor part played by a prominent performer in a single scene of a production, originally un-credited yet deliberately obvious (a la Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980)).  In modern use, the sense has extended to any brief appearance, credited or not.

(5) In commercial use, a color of creamy neutral ivory, the name an allusion to the hue most associated with the jewelry.

(6) The industry slang for "cameo lighting", a technique used on stage or set usually by restricting the output of a spotlight to a narrower beam and the reverse effect of "silhouette lighting" (a complementary chiaroscuro technique).  

1375–1425: From the Italian cam(m)eo from the Old French camaieu, of uncertain origin; replacing late Middle English camew & cameu both direct borrowings from the Old French.  The ultimate root is held usually to be the Medieval Latin cammaeus (later camaeus), of unknown origin but both the Arabic qamaa'il (flower buds) and the Persian chumahan (agate) have been suggested as the source.  Cameo is a noun & verb and cameoed & cameoing are verbs; the noun plural is cameos or cameoes.

In the early fifteenth century, kaadmaheu, camew, chamehieux and many other spellings, all from the early thirteenth century in Anglo-Latin circulated, all meaning "engraving in relief upon a precious stone with two layers of colors" (such as onyx, agate, or shell and done so as to utilize the effect of the colors).  These fell soon from use as the words derived from the Medieval Latin cammaeus and the Old French camaieu prevailed.  By the nineteenth century, use extended to other raised, carved work on a miniature scale.  The transferred sense of "small character or part that stands out from other minor parts" in a plays etc is from 1928, a derivation from the earlier meaning "short literary sketch or portrait", first noted in 1851, a transferred sense from cameo silhouettes.  A cameotype was a small, vignette daguerreotype mounted in a jeweled setting, the first examples of which were produced in 1864.

Cameo & Silhouette

A classic, simple silhouette (left), a nineteenth century hardstone cameo in 18 karat yellow gold in the mid-nineteenth century Etruscan Revival style (centre) and a  silhouette with the detailing which became popular in the late 1700s (right).

As artistic representations, there's obviously some overlap between a silhouette and a cameo but they are different forms.  A silhouette is inherently a two dimensional rendering of a shape (typically a portrait but they can be of any scene or object) which classically were simple and of a solid colour (usually black) on a contrasting (usually white or cream) background.  Originally, there was no detailing of features but that soon became common.  Silhouette portraits were highly popular in the eighteenth & nineteenth centuries and the form was especially popular with untrained (indeed unskilled) amateurs because of the cheapness and simplicity of the form, a finished work requiring little more than two sheets of paper (black & white), a pair of scissors and a pot of glue.  A cameo differs in that it is three-dimensional, an embossed or raised piece, usually in relief.  The most prized antique cameos are those engraved on semi-precious gemstones, agate, forms of onyx, shells and lava but in modern use synthetic materials are not uncommon and, being small and able to be rendered in a single piece, can be 3D printed although the quality of these doesn’t (yet) match something hand-carved.

Cameo.com

Launched in March 2017, cameo.com is a US-based distribution & content-sharing website, its niche being a platform on which celebrities and others can sell personalized video messages to fans or anyone else prepared to pay, the site claiming more than thirty-thousand sources are available.  The price per clip is said to extend from US$5 to US$3000 and operates as a dynamic supply and demand curve, the price said to rise or fall in response to elasticity in demand, all determined by an AI algorithm which is predictive (able to anticipate a rise in demand and adjust prices accordingly).

For US$400 (or US$20 for a DM), one can receive a personalized video message from Lindsay Lohan.  The service limits the text to two-hundred and fifty (250) characters so economy of language is encouraged.  The client is able to request the theme and possible topics might include relationship counselling, fashion advice, career management & international relations.  In most cases, it seems not necessary to approach this with undue urgency, many of the celebrities available on Cameo.com "for a limited time!" have been listed for some years.

Lindsay Lohan at the Mean Girls (2024) premiere, New York, January 2024.

Lindsay Lohan’s cameo in the 2024 (musical) re-make of Mean Girls (2004) attracted comment for a number of reasons but what most impressed many was the fee, reported by entertainment industry magazine Variety as US$500,000.  While that sum is unverified, what has been confirmed is that her cameo (in the math competition scene) required four hours on set; given the simplicity of the math, Variety didn’t bother printing its calculation of the hourly rate but given the 2004 production was shot over three months for which Ms Lohan was paid a reputed US$1 million, it’s clear inflation alone doesn’t account for the differential.  Still, any commodity is worth only what a buyer is prepared to pay and it’s a specialized supply & demand curve because there’s only one Lindsay Lohan.

Ms Bakalova (standing in mint-green dress, left) and a recumbent Mr Giulianu on the bed (right): Screen grab from Borat 2 (2020).

For better or worse, there’s also only one Rudy Giuliani (b 1944) and the now disbarred lawyer who once was attached to Donald Trump’s (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) legal team (a usually busy institution with a high churn rate) in 2020 made an unexpected (and unwitting) cameo appearance in the mockumentary film Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (clipped usually to Borat 2). Directed by Jason Woliner (b 1980) and starring Sacha Baron Cohen (c 1971) as the intrepid Borat, a television personality from the Republic of Kazakhstan, the film was a sequel to the highly successful Borat! Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006) directed by Larry Charles (b 1956).  In what proved more a “walk-out” than “walk-on” supporting actor role, Mr Giuliani’s brief career as a guest star had the then 76 year old being interviewed in a hotel room with Borat’s supposedly 15 year-old daughter, played by Bulgarian actor Valcheva Bakalova (b 1996 and thus then 24).  While the pair were together in the bedroom, Mr Giuliani was filmed lying on the bed and reaching with his right hand (he is right-handed) into his trousers at which point Borat bursts in, shouting: "She 15!  She too old for you!”  Subsequently, vehemently Mr Giuliani denied he had at any point been “inappropriate”, claiming he was “tucking in [his] shirt after taking off the recording equipment".  There appears no record of the industry every having used “crotch mics” but he was emphatic so that must have been where it was placed.

Racialism

Racialism (pronounced rey-shuh-liz-uhm)

(1) The belief that humans can be categorized as belonging to distinct races, each race being characterized by fixed and heritable traits (obsolete).

(2) In technical use, any system of categorization which uses race (however defined); in technical use, what used to be called scientific racialism (and later race realism) is still practiced but the term is no longer applied except as a critique.

1882: The construct was racial + -ism (the adjective racial dating from 1862).  Race (in this context) was from the French racisme, dating from 1902, from the mid sixteenth century Middle French race from the early fourteenth century Italian razza of uncertain origin.  The word gained the various senses of (1) a group of sentient beings, particularly people, distinguished by common ancestry, heritage or physical characteristics (most notably skin color or tone), (2) an identifiably distinct group of people distinguished from others on some basis (which could be cultural or religious).  Noted first in 1928, use of the word racism became common by the mid-1930s and was widely applied to the legal and social systems in some countries by at least 1940.  The –ial suffix from the Middle English, from the Old French, from the Latin -ālis (the third-declension two-termination suffix (neuter -āle) used to form adjectives of relationship from nouns or numerals) and was used to form adjectives from nouns.  The –ism suffix was from the Ancient Greek ισμός (ismós) & -isma noun suffixes, often directly, sometimes through the Latin –ismus & isma (from where English picked up ize) and sometimes through the French –isme or the German –ismus, all ultimately from the Ancient Greek (where it tended more specifically to express a finished act or thing done).  It appeared in loanwords from Greek, where it was used to form abstract nouns of action, state, condition or doctrine from verbs and on this model, was used as a productive suffix in the formation of nouns denoting action or practice, state or condition, principles, doctrines, a usage or characteristic, devotion or adherence (criticism; barbarism; Darwinism; despotism; plagiarism; realism; witticism etc).  Racialism & racialist are nouns & adjectives and racialistic is an adjective; the noun plural is racialisms.  Racism & racist are nouns and adjectives; the noun plural is racisms.

The word "racialism" was coined in 1882, based on the existing use of "race" as a synonym of "nation, tribe, ethnic group"; the later senses emerged from circa 1890 from the use of "race" for racial categories.  The use in 1882 was essentially neutral and descriptive and referred to “tribalism” but in less than a decade it assumed the meaning “political system advocating superiority and exclusive rights based on race” but that would come later to be replaced by the more overt “racism” & “racist”.  The later attempt to repurpose the word for (allegedly) scientific purpose with a meaning closer to the 1882 original (including as race-realism) was unsuccessful.  In the West, expressions of racism became first unfashionable in polite society and later unacceptable.  This change in attitude unfolded over decades in the twentieth century and progress was socially and geographically varied, the clustering of populations by class, education and ethnic diversity (the formalization as DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) came early in the 2000s) probably the most significant factors accounting for the difference.  Racism does seem to be endemic in the human condition and while it can be suppressed by collective social disapprobation or rendered unlawful, apparently just about everywhere when people with recognizably different features or characteristics (in appearance, linguistically, culturally etc) co-exist, some degree of conflict is likely to ensue.  This can be something so low-level it’s usually imperceptible such as the interactions between the Italian, French, German & Romansh speakers in Switzerland or more violent, as recent events in Sudan and Tunisia demonstrate.  It’s not going to go away and the management of it varies from place to place between the multi-cultural policies in the West and the “ethnic cleansing” (something of a euphemism in that it included mass-murder) associated with the wars in the Balkans in the early 1990s.  The most obvious modern manifestation of racialism is “racial profiling” which ranges from filtering processes which exclude certain applicants from the employment selection process to police selecting for “stop & search” only those perceived to be of a certain ethnicity to persons of Middle-Eastern appearance receiving heightened levels of attention from airport security staff.

Winsor Newton Black Indian Ink.

Racialism and racism are not unrelated concepts, but have different meanings and implications.  Racialism is practiced as a spectrum and explores the existence of differences between racial groups (as defined) and this can be in genetics, specific capabilities, traits, or characteristics.  It can be merely descriptive (even down to the cellular level) bit inevitably comes often to be used to suggest there might be races which are superior or inferior to others based on these differences.  Racism however, takes a belief system (usually of racial superiority) and imposes systemic oppression, discrimination, prejudice, and unequal treatment of individuals or groups based on their race, ethnicity, or nationality.  The most obvious examples involve the exercise of power and privilege by one racial group over others, leading to social, economic, and political disparities.  So seriously corrosive has race come to be seen in the West that some guides now recommend race never be mentioned by white people although there is a convention words & phrases using proscribed terms can be used the those in the group referenced, hence the ongoing popularity of the infamous N-words among sections of the African American community.  That doesn’t however mean it’s now permissible for white people to use the phrase “white trash”, even as a self-descriptor because of its origins which essentially equated whites of the lowest socio-economic status with that of blacks although it does continue to be used both as a term of disparagement and one of group identity.  Helpfully, the guides suggest “Chinese whispers” should become “telephone whispers” and “Indian Ink” is best called “carbon-based ink” although under the original name it remains widely available.  In cricket, the “chinaman” delivery is no longer mention and if one is sent down, it’s correct to call it “left-arm unorthodox spin” or “left-arm wrist spin”, both of which are by comparison a bit of a mouthful but the sport seems to cope with the fielding position known as “deep backward square leg” so most should adapt.  The “French cut” seems to have survived.

Like the once linguistically innocuous but now controversial “niggardly”, “racialism” can still be used but caution is advised and it might be a word best left to experts in instances when the technical context is obvious.  Geneticists for example have determined the only “pure” human beings left are certain black Africans (resident mostly in sub-Saharan Africa) while the rest of the planet’s population carries between 1–2% Neanderthal DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid, the so-called “building blocks” of life) with East Asians tending to slightly higher numbers) as the eventual consequence of Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) interbreeding with early, anatomically modern, Homo sapiens after sapiens migrated out of Africa.  All this is believed to have happened some 50,000–60,000 years ago, mostly in the Near East and Eurasia and those sapien populations were fully modern humans, not transitional forms.  Deliciously, this means all the white supremacists are a Human-Neanderthal mix so, using the term a few of them seem still to like, they can (though the biology is dubious) be thought: “sub-human”.

Sub-Saharan African populations generally have little to no Neanderthal ancestry although there are traces due to later back-migration and in discussing the phenomenon, use of “racialism” can be appropriate although perhaps not on social media.  Also racialist is another discovery from the DNA labs: a genetic mutation found in Africans, possession of which offers some degree of protection from malaria and that would have been a product of natural selection among those who lived in places where the disease was endemic.  Using the available data, it’s believed the interbreeding process is best understood as introgression (movement of a gene from one species to another) resulting from limited, episodic interbreeding, the relatively small genetic contribution retained through selection although many Neanderthal genes would over generations have been purged because they proved maladaptive.  The byword though remains “caution” because of heightened sensitivities in the age of identity politics and terms like “race realism” and “scientific racism” (once seen in the literature of a number of disciplines) have long been proscribed because they became tainted by pseudo-sciences which (unsurprisingly) all supported notions of white superiority.

Article on news.com.au reporting Sydney Sweeney’s (b 1997) photo-shoot for Cosmopolitan magazine’s “Love Issue”.  Remarkably, it was three days before the page was taken down.

In what may be one of the “unexpected consequences” of institutions replacing humans with some implementation of AI (artificial intelligence), on 30 January, 2026, Rupert Murdoch’s (b 1931) site news.com.au ran a story with “Sydney Sweeney strips down in racist photo-shoot yet for Cosmo” appearing both as a headline (in bold type) and in the body of the article.  It would once have been classed a “typo” (a clipping of “typographical error”) and in days gone by a sub-editor wearily would have corrected it with a correct adjectival form (“raciest photo-shoot” or “most racy photo-shoot”), suggesting something a little risqué rather than anything to do with ethnicity.  Flesh and blood sub-editors are however an extinct species and content now is left to the writer, the “cut & paster”, the AI bot or a combination of all three.  So more typos seem now slip through although, presumably, as the AI sub-editors improve, the error rate will be cut.  What is intriguing is the speculation the erroneous use of “racist” (constituting or exhibiting racism) may have been the result of an AI bot making “an assumption” based on what it “learned”.  As constantly we’re reminded: “it’s all in the algorithm” and for very good reason the AI tools used by news organizations are built with both a “frequency bias” and a “recency bias”; in other words, a premium is placed on (1) that which most appears and (2) that which is “the latest”, the imperatives which underpin social media and search engines.

American Eagle's "My jeans are blue" campaign, of which not all approved.

Because AI can learn only from what it has access to in digital form, content which is most frequently encountered and most recent will tend to be prioritized.  The speculation is the AI may have been drawn to use of the word by the recent furore suggesting an advertising campaign in which the tag line was “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans” was “racist”, the usual suspects claiming the implication was someone with her physical characteristics (white) was being positioned as the “ideal of attractiveness”, thereby devaluing all those “not white”.  Because what was being advertised was denim apparel (including jeans), most probably just enjoyed the play on words but in the age of identity politics, those with a grievance rarely will miss an opportunity to be outraged.  As a class of phenomenon, it’s something quite specific in that it would pass without comment for anyone to note Usain Bolt (b 1986; holder of the world records for the 100 & 200 metre sprints) has must have the “great genes” needed to be the greatest sprinter ever and had there been a similar campaign with billboards saying “Usain Bolt has Great Jeans”, it would have won awards.  Of course what appeared on news.com.au might really have been a typo (sometimes, “a typo is just a typo”) but it would be interesting to learn if it appeared as a result of an association by AI and that it appeared twice (headline and in the body of the text) might hint at an element of automation.

An informal video clip posted to Instagram at the time of Syrn’s debut.

Ms Sweeney seems to have been unfazed by the attempt to create a moral outrage about her modelling for a company selling jeans and shortly after Cosmopolitan’s “Love Issue” appeared on the newsstands (they really still exist), she released her underwear line (Syrn, pronounced sye-rin), the publicity for which featuring many images of her showing the scanty garments at their best.  She wore them well.

Emoji

Emoji (pronounced ih-moh-jee)

In digital technology, a small digital picture or pictorial symbol that represents a thing, feeling, concept etc, used in text messages and other electronic communications, now usually as part of a standardized set.  Technically an emoji is a digital graphic icon with a unique code point.

1999: From a creation in Japanese translating literally as “pictograph”, the construct being e- (picture, drawing) + moji (written character or letter).  In the original Japanese it’s 絵文字 (えもじ, emoji), the construct being 絵 (え (e, (picture)) + 文字 (もじ (moji) (character).

Proto emojis: Puck Magazine 1881.

Because of a cross-lingual phonetic coincidence, emoji is often thought related to the word emotion, a natural connection because it’s emotions that emojis are now used to convey.  That was the connection with the emoji’s predecessor, the emoticon, the concept of text-based symbols being used to replace certain instances of formal language.  The first codified form of the emoticon set was released in 1982 and used the standard ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) character set assembled to represent ideas as images ((*_*) being a face, : ( sadness, : (( extreme sadness etc).  The idea wasn’t new, various punctuation marks used for hundreds of years in a similar manner, including in newspapers and books, but there had never been any standardization except that which existed by agreement between regular correspondents although, in 1881, American magazine Puck published four symbols which could be used to convey joy, melancholy, indifference, and astonishment.  Assembled using standard shapes from mechanical type-setting, Puck probably either created or at least legitimized what came to be called typographical art.

The idea of localised conventions would later appeal to a community using a common means of communication with a closed character set: Morse Code operators who devised their own convenient shorthand, a set of numbers transmitted by a short series of dots and dashes, which all understood represented longer strings of text, commonly used messages including:

1- Wait a moment

4- Where shall I go ahead?

6- I am ready

7- Are you ready?

8- Close your key; circuit is busy

12- Do you understand?

13- I understand

24- Repeat this back

27- Priority, very important

29- Private, deliver in sealed envelope.

73- Best regards

88- Love and kisses

92- Deliver promptly

The concept is exactly the same as the part of the algorithm used by data compression programs (ZIP and others) whereby small values are used to represent (and replace) larger ones, hence the ability to compress file-size.  The pragmatic Morse operator's list was mostly business-like, focused on transmitting the most information with the fewest taps but there were a couple more romantic: 73 meant “best regards” and 88 “love and kisses”, both of which would become stalwarts in the world of emoticons and emojis.

Lindsay Lohan Emojis.

The idea of the emoticon, still a disparate thing without standards, began to coalesce in the 1990s, Microsoft bundling the wingdings truetype font with Windows and by the middle of the decade, the first SMS (short message services) products, the protocols for which had evolved as part of the GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standards, were released.  Strange as it may sound in an age when SMS messages number annually in the trillions, the take-up rate was initially slow but growth was soon exponential.  Screen-focused, emoticons were always integral to SMS.

Shigetaka Kurita’s 1999 DoCoMo emoji set.

While not the first emoji set, that being a plain black collection included with the Japanese J-Phone in 1997, it’s Shigetaka Kurita’s (b 1972) release in 1999 which is the first notable landmark.  Interestingly, reflecting the intention to make communication more efficient on NTT DoCoMo's business-oriented cellular platform, apart from some hearts (intact and broken), the 176 in the set didn’t include many to convey emotion, although in the abstract, the one representing a beer glass was often used to suggest “I need a drink”.  The beginnings were modest, reflecting both the hardware and the mobile networks of the time; although bright, each was rendered in a single color and the bitmapped shape was blocky but the range and definition constantly improved to the point where, unlike emoticons, emojis really are pictures rather than typographic approximations and this has influenced the use of the word, "emoji" now sometimes applied to just about any small picture in any digital context.

A splash of vomit emojis.

In the English-speaking world, critical mass in terms of adoption was reached in 2012, the year after Apple added an official set to the iOS keyboard, Android following in 2014 when KitKat was released.  Apple had included emojis in the Japanese releases of iOS since 2008 and may have been tempted to extend availability when it became apparent how many hacks existed to gain the feature on devises using other languages.  What made that viable was emoji, in 2010, being standardized by Unicode (the non-profit consortium which maintains text standards on digital devices globally) which meant emojis could be sent and received by any device, regardless of operating system or platform.  By then, the standard set had grown to almost a thousand.  The Unicode Consortium has been busy ever since, creating an emoji subcommittee which has so much business to transact it meets at least weekly and their output has been prodigious: by September 2021, over 3,600 emojis had been approved, 112 in the last release alone.

Crooked Hillary Clinton emoji.

A character set in the thousands and growing has however changed the nature of the emoji as a language supplement, it once being possible to know them all and rely on many others also knowing most.  With so many, it’s become just another language, a system where every user has their own sub-set and analysis of traffic suggests for most this can be just a handful and even among devotees it’s rare for them regularly to display a vocabulary of more than a few dozen.  While, as a medium of meaning, the emoji does depend on an intuitive understanding of appearance, if some are too weird or mysterious, there is Emojipedia, an on-line emoji reference which documents changes and definitions and EmojiTranslate is a website where the translation of text to emoji (and vice versa) is handled.  Even that isn’t enough to satisfy the evidentiary standards of courts in some jurisdictions, accredited translators now sometimes used to translate the meaning of emojis where material using them is tendered in evidence.  Emoji is just another language and something in one cultural context can mean something else in another, the meaning the sender implied perhaps the opposite of what the receiver inferred.  On the basis of established principles such as “reasonable doubt” or “balance of probabilities”, courts must decide.

The New Yorker, 30 March 2015.

Out in the world of the emoji freaks, books have been written using nothing but emojis, a concept not new.  In the 1990s, one pop-music journalist, displeased at the quality of an interview with a singer he was about to publish, rendered the whole thing in the zaph dingbat font (which in professional typesetting had existed since the 1970s), rendering it an illegible cryptogram to all except those who had memorized the mapping of the font.  Such people do exist but they’re rare and it’s not clear if the writer succeeded in his aim to make more interesting a boring interview.  One magazine to find a novel use was the fine New Yorker which, in 2015, ran a cover featuring Crooked Hillary Clinton emojis when discussing the mail server affair, one of the many scandals attached to her although, they unfortunately resisted the temptation to integrate a delete key into one.  Perhaps inspired, in her presidential campaign, crooked Hillary tried to weaponize the emoji in a tweet aimed at a younger demographic but received quite a backlash for doing something so obviously cynical; inauthentic being the modern term.

The work of the consortium has also been cognizant of forces operating more widely.  In 2014, they began to address the lack of racial and gender DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) in the little images, the population disproportionately male and white, a distortion of reality hardly appropriate in what was to some degree one of the world’s global languages.  In this they were later than some; in 2012, the ever-woke Apple included in iOS 6 several emojis of same-sex couples.  Although all were shown holding hands, they didn’t look any happier than their more traditional predecessors but there are limitations with what can be achieved on such a tiny digital canvas.  In another sign of the times, over the years, guns morphed into less threatening water-pistols.  Perhaps strangely, the pandemic didn’t produce a flood of corona-themed images, Apple’s set still the only of the majors to include something recognizably SARS-Cov-2ish.  Still, there's plenty of time, world emoji day is 17 July and COVID-19, unlike some of us, is expected to be alive and well for many Julys to come.