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leap-year (paid)

  • Dave Wilton

Dave Wilton

19 Feb 2024 • 3 min read
Calendar for February 2024, including February 29

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Collection of sketches of late 19th-century Black workers harvesting and processing pine-tree sap into turpentine

tarheel / rosin heel

Tarheel is a nickname for a native of North Carolina. The term is preceded by the older rosin heel. Originally an epithet, its early history is mixed up in the racist attitudes of the antebellum South. But tarheel has been ameliorated and is now used proudly by residents of that
07 Jul 2025 7 min read
Photo of a nuclear mushroom cloud
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nuclear option (paid)

07 Jul 2025 3 min read
Photo of an ornate, stone building in the Free Renaissance style

fiscal / procurator-fiscal

One of my favorite TV shows is Shetland, a police procedural set, obviously, on the Shetland Islands. One of the words that keeps popping up is fiscal. The detectives talk of referring matters to the “fiscal” or someone has to fly to Aberdeen to meet with the "fiscal office.
04 Jul 2025 4 min read
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