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A Word, Please: Singular vs. plural? That's the question

A Word, Please: Singular vs. plural? That's the question

A friend emailed recently to ask about the grammar on a T-shirt that read: 'The only minority destroying the country are the billionaires.'
His question: 'Am I wrong or is the grammar on her T-shirt wrong? I've looked it up and checked it online and can't find a definitive answer.'
He didn't mention what the grammar issue was, but in my view, there could be only one: the word 'are,' a plural verb, instead of the singular verb 'is.'
If 'minority' is a singular noun, then you can't use a plural verb with it. That would be the equivalent of saying 'The dog are in the house' or 'Maria are here.' Classic subject-verb agreement problem.
But is it? Like my friend, whom I'll call Richard because that's his name, I looked it up. I must have given Richard good advice in years past, because he apparently is part of the small minority who knows you can find answers to tricky plural-vs.-singular questions in the dictionary.
For example, look up the word 'ethics,' skim a few lines and you'll see the note 'often used in plural, but singular or plural in construction.' So, using Merriam's examples, you can say:
'Ethics is his chosen field of study,' or you can say, 'The ethics of reuse and upcycling were imbued in the creation of all the pieces.' 'Is' in the first example is singular. 'Were' in the second example is plural. Both are correct. And that's the kind of help you can often find in a dictionary. Often, not always.
Merriam's entry for 'minority' doesn't have any helpful notes about whether it's singular or plural. I don't even see them give any examples in which 'minority' is the subject of a verb, so we can't draw a good inference from the dictionary's 'minority' entry.
I looked in my other reference books, too, including the usage guide Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, which usually has the answers I'm looking for. But not this time. No entry for 'minority.'
Checking the issue online, as Richard did, seems like a reasonable approach. You can get some good information that way. You can also get a bucket of nonsense. And you can't know which is which.
Automatically generated AI Overview answers often prove AI isn't as 'I' as it thinks it is. I've seen it give a lot of stupid answers to all kinds of questions. Recently, it told me that a certain disease affects less than 1 in a million Americans, 'which is less than 1%.'
Gee, thanks, Google.
Searching for 'is it minority is or minority are' on the search engine, the first hit is their AI Overview, and the rest of the first page is filled with answers from message forums, where you can expect random users to be right almost as often as AI is.
But I knew from experience that there could be another way to tackle this problem. I have, in the past, written about whether 'majority' takes a singular or plural verb. I found the answer not in a dictionary but in a usage guide, Merriam Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, which says: 'Majority is a singular noun in frequent use as one of those collectives that take either a singular or plural verb depending on the writer's notion of the majority as a unit or as a collection of individuals.'
You can say 'the majority is unified on this issue' or 'the majority are fighting among themselves.' Depending on your meaning, either the singular or the plural interpretation can work.
Can we apply that logic to the word 'minority' and treat it as a singular or plural as we see fit? In the absence of a more knowledgeable source, I'll make the call. Yes, we can.
June Casagrande is the author of 'The Joy of Syntax: A Simple Guide to All the Grammar You Know You Should Know.' She can be reached at JuneTCN@aol.com.
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XX Things On The Brink Of Collapse No One Talks About
XX Things On The Brink Of Collapse No One Talks About

Buzz Feed

time7 hours ago

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XX Things On The Brink Of Collapse No One Talks About

Between the existential chaos around the world and whatever we're all dealing with in our personal lives, it feels like we're collectively acting like everything is fine these days, but that's not really the case. Political turmoil is wreaking havoc across the globe, climate change is getting realer by the second, and the global economy is shifting, for better or for worse. Needless to say, we're in very trying times, and it feels like burnout is now a universal feeling. A recent post on the r/AskReddit sub asked users the following question: "What is currently on the brink of collapse but no one is talking about it?" From collapsing ecosystems to the rise of AI, these 19 responses highlight just how close our dystopian future might be: Note: these responses have been edited and condensed for clarity. "The orca pod known as J-pod, that are residents of the Pudget Sound, are starving as the salmon population is collapsing." "And to be specific, Chinook salmon. Chinook are their main food source because of the fat content, and they're on the brink of collapse. I mean, it's not looking good for all salmon species, but when/if the Chinook go extinct, that's the first big domino to fall in the Salish Sea ecosystem." "Here in the UK, the water table. Already seen a massive drought in the North with unprecedented lack of rainfall this year. Reservoirs and rivers are lower than they've been in decades. On top of leaking pipes that date back to WWII, we could honestly be talking about real drinking water shortages in 5-10 years." "Honestly, I'd say the internet. Everything requires an account, everything collects your information, you can't own anything because you can only get subscriptions to services. There are way too many social media platforms, which are somehow all owned by the same few mega corporations (Meta, Google, Microsoft, etc.) AI is slowly taking over everything and spewing out misinformation left and right." "Lots of collectively-owned private, professional businesses: Private equity has been relentlessly buying up veterinarian practices, CPA firms, and — I'm sure — all kinds of other businesses so they can egregiously increase prices, sell everything that isn't nailed down, cut staff to nothing, then sell the little bit that's left to some naive future buyer at a hugely inflated cost." "Teachers. Not teaching itself, but the whole system around it. So many teachers are underpaid, overworked, and just done. A lot are quitting quietly or switching careers, and schools are struggling to replace them. It's kind of scary how fast it's unraveling, but no one's really screaming about it yet." "Maybe not on the brink, but possibly approaching — The AMOC, or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, is a large system of ocean currents that acts like a conveyor belt, circulating warm and cold water throughout the Atlantic Ocean." "Bridges, railroad lines, power grids, and water pipes. Some of them are decades old and unstable (Germany)." "A bunch of small ecosystems around the world." "The working class. Hopefully, the collapse will wake some folks up, but I don't have a lot of hope when they seem perfectly happy in their caves staring at the shadows." "Critical thinking. Humanity is over-reliant on devices and AI to do their thinking for them instead of using tech to enhance their own thinking." "The movie industry feels that way in Hollywood right now." "The Cascadia Subduction Zone." "The 'enrollment cliff' is starting. This year, the lack of kids born during and after the 2008 recession is starting to graduate from high school. In this population pyramid, you can see that starting at the 15-19 age group, birth rates went down and kept going down. Now, it was already going down on average, but right before the recession, there was a small uptick that could have been a turnaround." "Civilizations decline/collapse over generations — I'd suggest that there is a strong possibility that 'the free liberal West' is in the early stages of a multi-generational decline, not unlike that of the Roman empire. Facebook and Netflix are our bread and circuses while around us, cultures that are not compatible with our (democratic, egalitarian, progressive, liberal) values are rising to challenge and eventually displace us. It won't happen in my lifetime, but it is happening." "The Anthropocene." "Overly complex appliances, cars, TVs, etc." "I think our civilization's ability to write without Generative AI. I believe writing is thinking, and it provides clarity to our thoughts. A vast majority of university students are now relying on services like ChatGPT, which I believe will eventually affect us in the long run. I don't have research backing up my claim, and I hope I'm wrong. Regardless, I'm worried." "Surprised I didn't see many posts about insects. We are in a mass extinction event of something like 60% of their population."

Jim Crow meets ICE at ‘Alligator Alcatraz'
Jim Crow meets ICE at ‘Alligator Alcatraz'

Los Angeles Times

time9 hours ago

  • Los Angeles Times

Jim Crow meets ICE at ‘Alligator Alcatraz'

A few years ago I came across a profoundly unnerving historical photo: A lineup of terrified, naked Black babies cowered over the title 'Alligator Bait.' As it turned out, the idea of Black babies being used as alligator bait was a beloved trope dating back to the antebellum South, though it didn't really take off until after the Civil War. The image I saw was created in 1897, just one year after Plessy vs. Ferguson established 'separate but equal' as the foundational doublespeak of segregation. With formerly enslaved people striking out and settling their own homesteads, the prevailing stereotypes deployed to justify violence against Black people were forced to evolve. We were no longer simple and primitive, in desperate need of the civilizing stewardship of white Christian slave owners. After emancipation, we became dangerous, lazy and worthless. Worth less, in fact, than the chickens more commonly used to bait alligators. White Floridians in particular so fell in love with the concept of alligators hungry for Black babies that it birthed an entire industry. Visitors to the Sunshine State could purchase souvenir postcards featuring illustrations of googly-eyed alligators chasing crying Black children. There was a popular brand of licorice called 'Little African,' with packaging that featured a cartoon alligator tugging playfully at a Black infant's rag diaper. The tagline read: 'A Dainty Morsel.' Anglers could buy fishing lures molded in the shape of a Black baby protruding from an alligator's mouth. You get the idea. When I first learned of all this, naturally, I was unmoored. I was also surprised that I'd never heard of the alligator bait slur. Why doesn't it sit alongside the minstrel, the mammy and the golliwog in our cultural memory of racist archetypes? Did it cross some unspoken line with the vulgarity of its violence? Perhaps this particular dog whistle was a tad too audible? Or was it the plausible deniability? Did people (including historians) wave it away because babies were never 'really' used as alligator bait? It's true that beyond the cultural ephemera — which includes songs (such as the ragtime tune 'Mammy's Little Alligator Bait') and mechanical alligator toys that swallow Black babies whole, over and over again — there are apparently no surviving records of Black babies sacrificed in this way. No autopsy reports, no court records proving that anyone was apprehended and convicted of said crime. But of course, why would there be? The thing I found so unnerving about the alligator bait phenomenon wasn't its literal veracity. There's no question human beings are capable of that and far worse. Without a doubt, 'civilized' people could find satisfaction — or comfort, or justice, or opportunity — in the violent slaughter of babies. Donald Trump's recently posted AI clip 'Trump Gaza,' which suggests the real world annihilation of Palestinians will give way to luxury beachfront resorts, is a shining example. The thing that haunted me about alligator bait was the glee with which the idea was embraced. It was funny. Cute. Harmless. Can't you take a joke? Now here we are, 100 years after 'Mammy's Little Alligator Bait,' and the bigots are once again using cartoon alligators to meme-ify racial violence, this time against immigrants. Just like the title 'Alligator Bait,' the Florida detention center name 'Alligator Alcatraz' serves multiple ends: It provokes sadistic yuks. It mocks. It threatens. But most crucially, it dehumanizes. 'Alligator Bait' suggests that Black people are worthless. By evoking the country's most infamous prison, 'Alligator Alcatraz' frames the conversation as one about keeping Americans safe. It suggests the people imprisoned there are not vulnerable and defenseless men and women; anyone sent to 'Alligator Alcatraz' must be a criminal of the worst sort. Unworthy of basic human rights. Fully deserving of every indignity inflicted upon them. 'Alligator Alcatraz' cloaks cruelty in bureaucratic euphemism. It's doublespeak, masking an agenda to galvanize a bloodthirsty base and make state violence sound reasonable, even necessary. It has nothing to do with keeping Americans safe. Oft-cited studies from Stanford, the Libertarian Cato Institute, the New York Times and others have shown conclusively that immigrants, those here legally and illegally, are significantly less likely to commit violent crimes than their U.S.-born neighbors. If those behind 'Alligator Alcatraz' cared at all about keeping Americans safe, they wouldn't have just pushed a budget bill that obliterates our access to healthcare, environmental protection and food safety. 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The thing I keep wondering is, would this cheekiness even be possible if everyone knew the alligator bait history, the nastiness of which was buried so deep that 'Gator bait' chants echoed through the University of Florida stadium until 2020? Would they still chuckle if they saw the century-old postcards circulated by people who 'just didn't know any better'? My cynical side says: Yeah, probably. But my strategic side reminds me: If history truly didn't matter, it wouldn't be continuously minimized, rewritten, whitewashed. There's truth in the old idiom: Knowledge is power. Anyone trying to keep knowledge from you, whether by banning books, gutting classrooms, denying identities or burying facts, is only trying to disempower you. That's why history, as painful as it often is, matters. Remembering the horror of alligator bait isn't about dwelling on the grotesque. It's about recognizing how cruelty gets coded into culture. 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Jack McAuliffe, who brewed a craft beer revolution, dies at 80
Jack McAuliffe, who brewed a craft beer revolution, dies at 80

Boston Globe

time2 days ago

  • Boston Globe

Jack McAuliffe, who brewed a craft beer revolution, dies at 80

New Albion offered something profoundly different: handmade ales using just water, barley, hops, and yeast. Mr. McAuliffe and his partners, Suzy Denison and Jane Zimmerman, ran the label out of a rundown warehouse in Sonoma, Calif., making just 400 barrels a year, about as much as Coors could produce in a few minutes. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up The very idea of small-batch beer was such an anomaly that Mr. McAuliffe struggled to find equipment and ingredients. Instead, he fashioned much of the production line himself from materials he had scavenged from a junkyard. Advertisement Unable to buy traditional hops in small quantities, he opted for a new variety, cascade, whose notes of fruit and pine didn't appeal to the big breweries -- but which, thanks to Mr. McAuliffe, became a prized part of the craft brewing repertoire. His DIY ethic likewise became a defining characteristic of craft brewing, said Theresa McCulla, a former curator at the National Museum of American History who documented the history of beer in America. Advertisement 'He really showed Americans that if you can build it and sheetrock it, and weld it, then you can brew your own great beer,' she said in an interview. Mr. McAuliffe called his brewery New Albion as an homage to a long-closed predecessor in the Bay Area, as well as to the name Sir Francis Drake gave the region when he sailed along the coast of Northern California in 1579. A drawing of Drake's flagship, the Golden Hind, appeared on New Albion's labels. New Albion was profiled in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and demand for its beers grew rapidly. Still, Mr. McAuliffe was unable to secure bank loans to fund expansion, and the brewery closed in 1982. Though New Albion lasted less than six years, practically every craft pioneer who came along afterward has cited the brewery as an inspiration, among them Ken Grossman of Sierra Nevada, Jim Koch of Sam Adams, and Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head. 'They say that when the Ramones first played in England, members of the Clash were in the audience, members of the Sex Pistols were in the audience, then away they went,' Calagione said in an interview. 'While the Ramones launched a million bands, Jack McAuliffe launched 10,000 American craft breweries.' John Robert McAuliffe was born May 11, 1945, in Caracas, Venezuela, where his father, John James McAuliffe, was a code breaker for the US government. His mother, Margaret (Quigley) McAuliffe, was a teacher. After World War II, Jack's father joined the State Department. The family lived in Medellín, Colombia, and later in Northern Virginia while his father taught at American University in Washington. Advertisement In high school, Jack became enthralled with welding and worked in a shop as an apprentice. He enrolled at Michigan Technological University but quit to join the Navy. He was posted to a base in Scotland, where he repaired submarine antennas. In his free time, he developed a fondness for British ales -- especially full-bodied porters and stouts -- and began brewing his own at home. After he was honorably discharged from a base in the San Francisco Bay Area, Mr. McAuliffe decided to stay. He received an associate degree from the City College of San Francisco and worked for an engineering company in Sunnyvale, Calif., all the while dreaming of making his beloved British-style ales in the United States. Finally, in 1975, he met Denison and Zimmerman, who each put in $1,500 in seed money to start New Albion. Mr. McAuliffe was a demanding brewmaster, and Zimmerman left the company. But Denison stayed on, eventually running most of the daily operations. 'He totally trusted me,' she said in an interview. 'He might go into San Francisco to pick up hops or something and leave me completely in charge.' After the brewery closed, Mr. McAuliffe sold his equipment to a new brewery, the Mendocino Brewing Co., where he worked for a time as a brewmaster. He soon quit, he said, because after being a captain, he couldn't stomach working as a deckhand. But he continued supporting the craft brewing movement, in one instance working with Fritz Maytag, the owner of the Anchor Brewing Co. in San Francisco, on securing legislation to allow brew pubs to serve food. Advertisement Mr. McAuliffe later lived in Nevada and Texas before settling in Arkansas. Along with his daughter, he leaves his sisters, Cathy and Margarita McAuliffe; his brother, Tom; two grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Craft beer did not take off as a national phenomenon until the late 1990s, and many in the new generation of drinkers had never heard of New Albion. That began to change in 2012. Koch, of Sam Adams, contacted Mr. McAuliffe to tell him that not only had he bought the trademark to New Albion, but he also wanted to resurrect the beer as a limited release. After leading a nationwide tour reintroducing New Albion to craft-beer fans, Koch gave the proceeds from the beer and the rights to the New Albion name to Mr. McAuliffe. And in 2019, the National Museum of American History, part of the Smithsonian Institution, featured items related to New Albion in a permanent exhibit on craft brewing, including an original bottle of its ale and a photograph of Mr. McAuliffe. McCulla, who designed the exhibit, interviewed Mr. McAuliffe for an oral history of craft brewing in 2019. She asked him what he thought of his legacy. 'Damnedest thing I ever saw,' he said. 'It's really hard to believe that this happened.' This article originally appeared in

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