fun facts for the next time someone asks

Comic Sans wants you to know it wasn’t ever meant to be taken seriously. Vincent Connare, who was then a typographic engineer working at Microsoft, created the typeface in 1994. Most of us were blissfully offline back then, so Microsoft had devised a program called Microsoft Bob to teach people how to use computers. An animated dog named Rover woul... See more

Compassion Fade : People have more compassion for small groups of victims than larger groups, because the smaller the group the easier it is to identify individual victims.

Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”

There is no formula, scoring system or checklist. One thing to remember is that it is not our intent to honor the dead; we leave the tributes to the eulogists. We seek only to report deaths and to sum up lives, illuminating why, in our judgment, those lives were significant. The justification for the obituary is in the story it tells.

Hedonic Treadmill : Expectations rise with results, so nothing feels as good as you’d imagine for as long as you’d expect.

Weasel Words : Phrases that appear to have meaning but convey nothing tangible. “Growth was solid last quarter,” or “Many people believe.”

One could also be “crushed” — broken down or destroyed — by sadness or stress, for example. Kory Stamper, a senior editor of lexicography at Dictionary.com, said this figurative sense of “crush” developed alongside the literal meaning. “The historical record is full of the crush of melancholy, the crush of despondency, the crush of death,” Ms. Stam... See more

A bibliophagist is a devourer of books.