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Mixed Metaphors: Their Use and Abuse
Critics shudder at mixed metaphors like 'that wet blanket is a loose cannon', but admire 'Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player', and all the metaphors packed into Macbeth's 'Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow' speech. How is it that metaphors are sometimes mixed so badly and other times put together so well?
In Mixed Their Use and Abuse , Karen Sullivan employs findings from linguistics and cognitive science to explore how metaphors are combined and why they sometimes mix. Once we understand the ways that metaphoric ideas are put together, we can appreciate why metaphor combinations have such a wide range of effects.
Mixed Their Use and Abuse includes analyses of over a hundred metaphors from politicians, sportspeople, writers and other public figures, and identifies the characteristics that make these metaphors annoying, amusing or astounding.
In Mixed Their Use and Abuse , Karen Sullivan employs findings from linguistics and cognitive science to explore how metaphors are combined and why they sometimes mix. Once we understand the ways that metaphoric ideas are put together, we can appreciate why metaphor combinations have such a wide range of effects.
Mixed Their Use and Abuse includes analyses of over a hundred metaphors from politicians, sportspeople, writers and other public figures, and identifies the characteristics that make these metaphors annoying, amusing or astounding.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published November 29, 2018
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April 22, 2025Mixed Metaphor Corner
I don't know why I didn't start this years ago, but better late than never.
Current Affairs
Asked about the sanctions, Mr Putin said that the EU would not be able to manage without Russian gas. “They badly want to bite us, but their opportunities are limited,” he said. “If they try to punish us by putting us into a corner on our knees like naughty children, they will cut the branch they are sitting on.”
_____________________________
Without wishing to count any chickens before they are hatched, it looks pretty good. My colleague Winston McKenzie said that the Ukip fox is in the Westminster hen-house and it does feel a bit like that.
- Nigel Farage, May 23 2014
_____________________________
An elderly woman who was bitten by a police dog has died in hospital. Cleveland Police, which owns the German shepherd, has expressed its "sincerest condolences" and has referred the matter to the police watchdog.
- The Independent, July 22 2014
_____________________________
Tsipras and his bullish finance minister Yannis Varoufakis are engaged in a terrifying game of chicken with EU leaders.
- The Independent, July 4 2015
_____________________________
The performance of the EU politicians has been disgraceful. They’ve failed to face reality. These issues have been hanging around like weeping carbuncles and they’ve just papered over the cracks.
- The Independent, July 9 2015
_____________________________
It was widely assumed that Mr. Trump’s gift for affronting conventional political opinion would finally swamp his candidacy after he allowed Chris Matthews to hound him into a mousetrap about abortion.
- Conrad Black, April 7 2016
_____________________________
The Syrian conflict has acted like a greenhouse for extremist groups which are now spreading like a cancer, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.
- thelocal.ch, April 10 2016
_____________________________
Hillary is a cauldron-tested globalist who had the spine to give Obama a thumbs-up for taking out Osama Bin Laden.
- Daily News (New York), April 13 2016
_____________________________
What Trump has said about Nato is music to the Kremlin’s ears. If that is what an American thinks of Nato, the bedrock about the transatlantic alliance, which Russia is always trying to divide and split and weaken, well, Trump is handing them a silver platter.
- Judy Dempsey, senior associate at Carnegie Europe, April 29 2016
_____________________________
How might Sanders walk the fine line he needs to—pushing hard for his ideal platform without poisoning the party well?
- Bill Scher, Politico, May 16 2016
_____________________________
Unfortunately for both him and the country, not enough people saw through his smoke screen and he won the poisoned chalice. In his Telegraph column of today, it seems he is reverting to the same undeliverable promise of a land of milk and honey.
- The Guardian, June 17 2016
_____________________________
Convention bounces often fade, and we’re still in a period when we’d expect Clinton’s numbers to be somewhat inflated by her convention. Our best bet: Wait a couple more weeks to see where the dust settles.
- fivethirtyeight.com, Aug 7 2016
_____________________________
"The first debate is pivotal for Clinton if she’s going to arrest this drip and recover,” said Geoffrey Skelley. “If she doesn’t, then this race stays on a knife’s edge."
- The Hill, Sep 15 2016
_____________________________
These mistakes pouring from the top of the ticket were “small potatoes”, Pence later insisted.
- The Guardian, Oct 5 2016
_____________________________
Gingrich: GOP bedwetters have 'egg on their face' after debate
- The Hill, Oct 10 2016
_____________________________
Mr Comey has rocket-fuelled a venomous contest just when Mr Trump was desperate for a lifeline.
- The Guardian, Oct 31 2016
_____________________________
We managed to unleash something; it was like throwing stones into a bees’ nest. And now, it is one of the biggest screw-ups of all time.
- Donald Trump, Jan 15 2017
_____________________________
“What [Nunes] did was basically to go to the president, who’s being investigated by the FBI and others, and by the intelligence committee, to give them information,” Cummings told CNN. “Basically, what he has done is he has scuttled and put a cloud over his own investigation."
- CNN, Mar 23 2017
_____________________________
The dinosaur studios are facing heavy competition from upstarts such as DC Comics and Marvel, whose libraries are awash with tentpole blockbuster material.
- The Guardian, Mar 27 2017
_____________________________
Now the FBI is under a dark cloud. If the new director finds nothing on Russia, he will surely be suspected of a whitewash.
- The Guardian, May 10 2017
_____________________________
President Trump is besieged by internal leaks as he tries to weather the fallout from his firing of FBI director James Comey.
- The Hill, May 12 2017
_____________________________
A statement to parliament on Thursday that the UK has financial “obligations” from its EU membership helped defuse a potentially toxic row that was brewing.
- The Guardian, Jul 19 2017
_____________________________
An increasingly desperate Theresa May will try to shore up her flagging premiership with a raft of new policies.
- The Guardian, Oct 1 2017
_____________________________
The former FBI director has played his cards carefully since his appointment in May. He’s clearly turning over every rock to see what crawls out from underneath.
- The Daily 202, Oct 31 2017
_____________________________
The White House, now grappling with the fallout from the departure of a senior aide after spousal abuse allegations, may not have an easy time navigating a massive infrastructure plan through a polarized Congress.
- The Guardian, Feb 12 2018
_____________________________
The driving factor he frequently cites for the top-heavy market is that the Fed’s quantitative easing has inflated valuations to unsustainable levels, and as the free money goes away, the bottom will fall out, leaving a trail of blown-up investors.
- Market Watch, Apr 11 2018
_____________________________
A buttoned-up justice with somewhat opaque views on hot-button issues might be more palatable to Murkowski and Collins, Cornyn suggested.
- Politico, June 29 2018
_____________________________
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns said she would “100%” submit a letter to the backbench 1922 committee to trigger a contest. “I’d put the letter in if these red lines were severely watered down and we had one foot in, one foot out,” she said.
- The Guardian, Jul 10 2018
_____________________________
But when Manafort’s “golden goose” client, the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, fell from power in 2014, the money dried up and Manafort’s web of deceit expanded to compensate.
- The Guardian, Aug 1 2018
_____________________________
Once a nominee is wounded, his or her confirmation hopes can quickly splinter as political support fractures, so Kavanaugh can ill afford any roadblocks.
- CNN, Sep 17 2018
_____________________________
Several sources have rubbished claims that the German chancellor Angela Merkel will ride to the rescue of the British by watering down the EU position.
- The Guardian, Oct 31 2018
_____________________________
But they decided it would likely be too tough of a haul with all the GOP members who have decided not to show up for the lame-duck session, and that the bill would just further bring them down a rabbit hole.
- Huffington post, Dec 18 2018
_____________________________
By any measure, Trump’s fixation with a wall has boxed him into a corner.
- The Guardian, Jan 6 2019
_____________________________
This political jam is the reason that the President now faces a crossroads that could fundamentally alter the character of his presidency and change the foundation of a political crusade that is based on scorched earth immigration rhetoric.
- CNN, Jan 28 2019
_____________________________
But this high-wire decision is unlikely to be pre-cooked.
- The Guardian, Mar 15 2019
_____________________________
He told Sky News the leak inquiry, overseen by cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, had been “a witch hunt from the start” and had taken place “in a kangaroo court".
- The Guardian, May 2 2019
_____________________________
Boris Johnson appears willing to drive Britain off this cliff come hell or high water.
- The Guardian, Aug 20 2019
_____________________________
At times, as his simmering fury bursts open in meetings or on Twitter, and as new political conflagrations take hold, it looks like Trump's presidency is unraveling.
- CNN, Oct 21 2019
_____________________________
In Norse mythology, a lot of the deities end up doing for each other, so there is vague precedent to Apple’s iPhone or whatever being Bezos’s achilles heel.
- The Guardian, Jan 24 2020
_____________________________
While a completely valid viewpoint, glass-half-empty investors will see the flip-side to this reasoning.
- CNN, Mar 18 2020
_____________________________
It’s a supply chain which has multiple dynamically shifting bottlenecks and the administration is trying to overcome them one at a time, as they pop up.
- The Guardian, Mar 25 2020
_____________________________
“If you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re gonna set yourself back,” Fauci said. “So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it’s going to backfire. That’s the problem.”
- The Guardian, Apr 21 2020
_____________________________
There is an enormous amount of ‘mopping up’ to do to make sure that all potential transmission chains have been extinguished.
- The Guardian, Jun 17 2020
_____________________________
If the mud that is being thrown at the wall isn’t sticking in the same way as it did then, it is possible that the underhand tactics will backfire.
- The Guardian, Oct 24 2020
_____________________________
Trump’s stolen election lie lingers in America like a slow-burning infection, a political poison pill undermining the stability and security of the nation.
- medium.com, Jun 7 2021
_____________________________
He told reporters: "Be under no illusion, the prime minister has only done this U-turn because his back was against the wall."
- bbc.com. Nov 17 2021
_____________________________
In the age of social media and a 1,000mph news cycle, actions or images that are full of the worst kind of symbolism instantly balloon into huge, multifaceted stories that can sink even people used to impunity.
- The Guardian, Apr 11 2022
_____________________________
Raab said he did not believe there would be a vote of no confidence against Boris Johnson next week. He told Sky News: “I just don’t see that. I think the Westminster bubble and village whips this stuff up.
- The Guardian, Jun 1 2022
_____________________________
Speaking in Wakefield, Nandy said the government was rotten to the core and that the rot started at the top.
- The Guardian, Jun 1 2022
_____________________________
I understand that we need to rocket-booster growth, but you don’t do that by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- Nadine Dorries, Oct 5 2022
_____________________________
Liz Truss’s dash for growth is already limping badly after she made a pig’s ear of presenting her ambitious mini-Budget and was forced into humiliating U-turns.
- Daily Mail, Oct 13 2022
_____________________________
“People have drawn the conclusion that the whole project of net zero needs to be delayed, mothballed, and put on ice,” Johnson said.
- The Guardian, Nov 8 2022
_____________________________
“I think it would be very wrong to tar the entire industry, by this one bad apple, which happened to be a very big apple,” said Tim Grant.
- The Guardian, Nov 15 2022
_____________________________
The ex-president is entering the race bogged down with legal baggage that could derail his campaign.
- The Guardian, Nov 16 2022
_____________________________
For Trump, who has long defied political gravity, the fallout remains uncertain.
- The Guardian, Dec 10 2022
_____________________________
Most Republicans think this helps Trump in the short run – and could even provide a glide path to the Republican nomination. This freezes the race at a time when Trump holds a huge lead in Republican polls. That’s likely to grow with the saturation coverage ahead.
Indictment-themed Republican fundraising texts and emails started instantly, with Trump as a martyr [and] with Trump taking up all that oxygen, it’ll be even harder for Florida Gov Ron DeSantis – or any Trump rival – to gain traction.
- The Guardian, Mar 31 2023
_____________________________
The “Florida blueprint” that is DeSantis’s vision for the future of the US is, they say, a culture-war Bible peppered with extremist policies
- The Guardian, May 25 2023
_____________________________
The Middle East is akin to a tinderbox, where even a small scratch can swiftly unravel the situation.
- Medium, Apr 23 2024
_____________________________
Can Anthony Albanese catch the dragon’s tail to defrost and reboot Australia-China relations?
- The Guardian, Nov 4 2023
_____________________________
As a piece of imagery, the glass ceiling got very old very quickly, so that even by the time Clinton had it on heavy rotation, it was already emptied of meaning.
- The Guardian, Sep 5 2024
_____________________________
Every time he comes out, he moves the goalposts. So that’s concerning, but we’re going to throw everything and the kitchen sink at this.
- The Guardian, Jan 12 2025
_____________________________
Trump is a lame duck and party elites will constantly be jockeying to be viewed as the heir apparent, and his den of vipers may just consume itself.
- The Guardian, Jan 18 2025
A foreign policy veteran in Washington told me that the state department was stuck in the past, unable to pivot and finesse its new role in the world, and compared its frozen nostalgia to “watching old cowboy movies on repeat”.
- The Guardian, Feb 10 2025
Taking the axe to government should be an informed choice. With Trump’s America currently disembowelling itself, at least we are getting a glimpse of the costs before we potentially embark on our own cycle of self-flagellation.
- The Guardian, Feb 18 2025
Boomeranging US tariffs – which are to American prosperity what the Titanic was to ocean travel – are the tip of the unintended consequences iceberg.
- The Guardian, Mar 16 2025
With President Trump ramping up public pressure on Powell to slash rates “now,” we’re not just flirting with jawboning—we’re staring down the barrel of a credibility unwind.
Let’s be clear: US dollar weakness isn’t just about economic cracks forming. This is a broader confidence bleed.
Stephen Innes, SPI Asset Management, Apr 22 2025
Fiction
"I'd been broken beyond repair.
But I needed Jacob now, needed him like a drug. I'd used him as a crutch for too long, and I was in deeper than I'd planned to go with anyone again."
- Stephenie Meyer, New Moon
_____________________________
"He smiled, and Liz found herself feeling immensely sorry for him. The strong, confident man she knew was faltering, walking on eggshells because he knew his daughter held all the cards."
- Stella Rimington, The Geneva Trap
_____________________________
"Fearful he would do the same, and impressed by his talents and his diligence, the military had promoted Park Woo-jin rapidly, and he was cherry-picked after only five years' experience for a plum secondment to the Pentagon."
- Stella Rimington, The Geneva Trap
Pop Science
Hubble's reluctance to blow his own trumpet wasn't due to his stiff upper lip. He was no shrinking violet, and liked to be center stage.
- Brian Clegg, Before the Big Bang
Many cognitive scientists now believe that instead of being AI's fruit fly, chess was actually a red herring, leading researchers into a blind alley for decades.
- Wendell Wallach and Collin Allen, Moral Machines
Those were the first seeds of the unravelling of Pluto's full-blooded planetary status.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson, Welcome to the Universe
The high ground of materialism deflates when followed to its quantum mechanical roots.
- Adam Frank, article in Aeon
"I want us to do something that will really shake things up. Let's go out on a limb and say something very bold that will really get their attention. I think the three of us should gather up the loose strands of our half-baked idea and, even if we can't prove it, try to make it more precise."
- Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War
Philosophy
Great frameworks of 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' have been imposed on humanity in a variety of ways and forms, often cutting right across the grain of human nature, constraining and limiting it, and therefore causing the stresses that burst out into problems. It is like a chain reaction: because sexual relations were corralled by the church into monogamous marriage, the resulting problems either followed or were exacerbated.
- A.C. Grayling, The God Argument
Manangementspeak
Any future efforts to drill down on particular manifestations of fragmentation and nail down their incidence and costs to different actors or society more generally would thus face challenges.
- World Economic Forum white paper, January 2016
Sport
There is a window here. A tiny crack of light for England to dig towards.
- ABC News, Jan 7 2022
England’s Ashes hopes hanging by a thread after Australia turn the screw
- The Guardian, Nov 17 2022
Sam Kerr bombshell sucks life out of Australia
- The Guardian, Jul 21 2023
Music
It strums the pain of her listenership with its fingers, grappling with a muse that is sometimes more albatross than ally.
- The Guardian, Nov 17 2022
I don't know why I didn't start this years ago, but better late than never.
Current Affairs
Asked about the sanctions, Mr Putin said that the EU would not be able to manage without Russian gas. “They badly want to bite us, but their opportunities are limited,” he said. “If they try to punish us by putting us into a corner on our knees like naughty children, they will cut the branch they are sitting on.”
_____________________________
Without wishing to count any chickens before they are hatched, it looks pretty good. My colleague Winston McKenzie said that the Ukip fox is in the Westminster hen-house and it does feel a bit like that.
- Nigel Farage, May 23 2014
_____________________________
An elderly woman who was bitten by a police dog has died in hospital. Cleveland Police, which owns the German shepherd, has expressed its "sincerest condolences" and has referred the matter to the police watchdog.
- The Independent, July 22 2014
_____________________________
Tsipras and his bullish finance minister Yannis Varoufakis are engaged in a terrifying game of chicken with EU leaders.
- The Independent, July 4 2015
_____________________________
The performance of the EU politicians has been disgraceful. They’ve failed to face reality. These issues have been hanging around like weeping carbuncles and they’ve just papered over the cracks.
- The Independent, July 9 2015
_____________________________
It was widely assumed that Mr. Trump’s gift for affronting conventional political opinion would finally swamp his candidacy after he allowed Chris Matthews to hound him into a mousetrap about abortion.
- Conrad Black, April 7 2016
_____________________________
The Syrian conflict has acted like a greenhouse for extremist groups which are now spreading like a cancer, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on Friday.
- thelocal.ch, April 10 2016
_____________________________
Hillary is a cauldron-tested globalist who had the spine to give Obama a thumbs-up for taking out Osama Bin Laden.
- Daily News (New York), April 13 2016
_____________________________
What Trump has said about Nato is music to the Kremlin’s ears. If that is what an American thinks of Nato, the bedrock about the transatlantic alliance, which Russia is always trying to divide and split and weaken, well, Trump is handing them a silver platter.
- Judy Dempsey, senior associate at Carnegie Europe, April 29 2016
_____________________________
How might Sanders walk the fine line he needs to—pushing hard for his ideal platform without poisoning the party well?
- Bill Scher, Politico, May 16 2016
_____________________________
Unfortunately for both him and the country, not enough people saw through his smoke screen and he won the poisoned chalice. In his Telegraph column of today, it seems he is reverting to the same undeliverable promise of a land of milk and honey.
- The Guardian, June 17 2016
_____________________________
Convention bounces often fade, and we’re still in a period when we’d expect Clinton’s numbers to be somewhat inflated by her convention. Our best bet: Wait a couple more weeks to see where the dust settles.
- fivethirtyeight.com, Aug 7 2016
_____________________________
"The first debate is pivotal for Clinton if she’s going to arrest this drip and recover,” said Geoffrey Skelley. “If she doesn’t, then this race stays on a knife’s edge."
- The Hill, Sep 15 2016
_____________________________
These mistakes pouring from the top of the ticket were “small potatoes”, Pence later insisted.
- The Guardian, Oct 5 2016
_____________________________
Gingrich: GOP bedwetters have 'egg on their face' after debate
- The Hill, Oct 10 2016
_____________________________
Mr Comey has rocket-fuelled a venomous contest just when Mr Trump was desperate for a lifeline.
- The Guardian, Oct 31 2016
_____________________________
We managed to unleash something; it was like throwing stones into a bees’ nest. And now, it is one of the biggest screw-ups of all time.
- Donald Trump, Jan 15 2017
_____________________________
“What [Nunes] did was basically to go to the president, who’s being investigated by the FBI and others, and by the intelligence committee, to give them information,” Cummings told CNN. “Basically, what he has done is he has scuttled and put a cloud over his own investigation."
- CNN, Mar 23 2017
_____________________________
The dinosaur studios are facing heavy competition from upstarts such as DC Comics and Marvel, whose libraries are awash with tentpole blockbuster material.
- The Guardian, Mar 27 2017
_____________________________
Now the FBI is under a dark cloud. If the new director finds nothing on Russia, he will surely be suspected of a whitewash.
- The Guardian, May 10 2017
_____________________________
President Trump is besieged by internal leaks as he tries to weather the fallout from his firing of FBI director James Comey.
- The Hill, May 12 2017
_____________________________
A statement to parliament on Thursday that the UK has financial “obligations” from its EU membership helped defuse a potentially toxic row that was brewing.
- The Guardian, Jul 19 2017
_____________________________
An increasingly desperate Theresa May will try to shore up her flagging premiership with a raft of new policies.
- The Guardian, Oct 1 2017
_____________________________
The former FBI director has played his cards carefully since his appointment in May. He’s clearly turning over every rock to see what crawls out from underneath.
- The Daily 202, Oct 31 2017
_____________________________
The White House, now grappling with the fallout from the departure of a senior aide after spousal abuse allegations, may not have an easy time navigating a massive infrastructure plan through a polarized Congress.
- The Guardian, Feb 12 2018
_____________________________
The driving factor he frequently cites for the top-heavy market is that the Fed’s quantitative easing has inflated valuations to unsustainable levels, and as the free money goes away, the bottom will fall out, leaving a trail of blown-up investors.
- Market Watch, Apr 11 2018
_____________________________
A buttoned-up justice with somewhat opaque views on hot-button issues might be more palatable to Murkowski and Collins, Cornyn suggested.
- Politico, June 29 2018
_____________________________
Tory MP Andrea Jenkyns said she would “100%” submit a letter to the backbench 1922 committee to trigger a contest. “I’d put the letter in if these red lines were severely watered down and we had one foot in, one foot out,” she said.
- The Guardian, Jul 10 2018
_____________________________
But when Manafort’s “golden goose” client, the former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, fell from power in 2014, the money dried up and Manafort’s web of deceit expanded to compensate.
- The Guardian, Aug 1 2018
_____________________________
Once a nominee is wounded, his or her confirmation hopes can quickly splinter as political support fractures, so Kavanaugh can ill afford any roadblocks.
- CNN, Sep 17 2018
_____________________________
Several sources have rubbished claims that the German chancellor Angela Merkel will ride to the rescue of the British by watering down the EU position.
- The Guardian, Oct 31 2018
_____________________________
But they decided it would likely be too tough of a haul with all the GOP members who have decided not to show up for the lame-duck session, and that the bill would just further bring them down a rabbit hole.
- Huffington post, Dec 18 2018
_____________________________
By any measure, Trump’s fixation with a wall has boxed him into a corner.
- The Guardian, Jan 6 2019
_____________________________
This political jam is the reason that the President now faces a crossroads that could fundamentally alter the character of his presidency and change the foundation of a political crusade that is based on scorched earth immigration rhetoric.
- CNN, Jan 28 2019
_____________________________
But this high-wire decision is unlikely to be pre-cooked.
- The Guardian, Mar 15 2019
_____________________________
He told Sky News the leak inquiry, overseen by cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill, had been “a witch hunt from the start” and had taken place “in a kangaroo court".
- The Guardian, May 2 2019
_____________________________
Boris Johnson appears willing to drive Britain off this cliff come hell or high water.
- The Guardian, Aug 20 2019
_____________________________
At times, as his simmering fury bursts open in meetings or on Twitter, and as new political conflagrations take hold, it looks like Trump's presidency is unraveling.
- CNN, Oct 21 2019
_____________________________
In Norse mythology, a lot of the deities end up doing for each other, so there is vague precedent to Apple’s iPhone or whatever being Bezos’s achilles heel.
- The Guardian, Jan 24 2020
_____________________________
While a completely valid viewpoint, glass-half-empty investors will see the flip-side to this reasoning.
- CNN, Mar 18 2020
_____________________________
It’s a supply chain which has multiple dynamically shifting bottlenecks and the administration is trying to overcome them one at a time, as they pop up.
- The Guardian, Mar 25 2020
_____________________________
“If you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re gonna set yourself back,” Fauci said. “So as painful as it is to go by the careful guidelines of gradually phasing into a reopening, it’s going to backfire. That’s the problem.”
- The Guardian, Apr 21 2020
_____________________________
There is an enormous amount of ‘mopping up’ to do to make sure that all potential transmission chains have been extinguished.
- The Guardian, Jun 17 2020
_____________________________
If the mud that is being thrown at the wall isn’t sticking in the same way as it did then, it is possible that the underhand tactics will backfire.
- The Guardian, Oct 24 2020
_____________________________
Trump’s stolen election lie lingers in America like a slow-burning infection, a political poison pill undermining the stability and security of the nation.
- medium.com, Jun 7 2021
_____________________________
He told reporters: "Be under no illusion, the prime minister has only done this U-turn because his back was against the wall."
- bbc.com. Nov 17 2021
_____________________________
In the age of social media and a 1,000mph news cycle, actions or images that are full of the worst kind of symbolism instantly balloon into huge, multifaceted stories that can sink even people used to impunity.
- The Guardian, Apr 11 2022
_____________________________
Raab said he did not believe there would be a vote of no confidence against Boris Johnson next week. He told Sky News: “I just don’t see that. I think the Westminster bubble and village whips this stuff up.
- The Guardian, Jun 1 2022
_____________________________
Speaking in Wakefield, Nandy said the government was rotten to the core and that the rot started at the top.
- The Guardian, Jun 1 2022
_____________________________
I understand that we need to rocket-booster growth, but you don’t do that by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- Nadine Dorries, Oct 5 2022
_____________________________
Liz Truss’s dash for growth is already limping badly after she made a pig’s ear of presenting her ambitious mini-Budget and was forced into humiliating U-turns.
- Daily Mail, Oct 13 2022
_____________________________
“People have drawn the conclusion that the whole project of net zero needs to be delayed, mothballed, and put on ice,” Johnson said.
- The Guardian, Nov 8 2022
_____________________________
“I think it would be very wrong to tar the entire industry, by this one bad apple, which happened to be a very big apple,” said Tim Grant.
- The Guardian, Nov 15 2022
_____________________________
The ex-president is entering the race bogged down with legal baggage that could derail his campaign.
- The Guardian, Nov 16 2022
_____________________________
For Trump, who has long defied political gravity, the fallout remains uncertain.
- The Guardian, Dec 10 2022
_____________________________
Most Republicans think this helps Trump in the short run – and could even provide a glide path to the Republican nomination. This freezes the race at a time when Trump holds a huge lead in Republican polls. That’s likely to grow with the saturation coverage ahead.
Indictment-themed Republican fundraising texts and emails started instantly, with Trump as a martyr [and] with Trump taking up all that oxygen, it’ll be even harder for Florida Gov Ron DeSantis – or any Trump rival – to gain traction.
- The Guardian, Mar 31 2023
_____________________________
The “Florida blueprint” that is DeSantis’s vision for the future of the US is, they say, a culture-war Bible peppered with extremist policies
- The Guardian, May 25 2023
_____________________________
The Middle East is akin to a tinderbox, where even a small scratch can swiftly unravel the situation.
- Medium, Apr 23 2024
_____________________________
Can Anthony Albanese catch the dragon’s tail to defrost and reboot Australia-China relations?
- The Guardian, Nov 4 2023
_____________________________
As a piece of imagery, the glass ceiling got very old very quickly, so that even by the time Clinton had it on heavy rotation, it was already emptied of meaning.
- The Guardian, Sep 5 2024
_____________________________
Every time he comes out, he moves the goalposts. So that’s concerning, but we’re going to throw everything and the kitchen sink at this.
- The Guardian, Jan 12 2025
_____________________________
Trump is a lame duck and party elites will constantly be jockeying to be viewed as the heir apparent, and his den of vipers may just consume itself.
- The Guardian, Jan 18 2025
A foreign policy veteran in Washington told me that the state department was stuck in the past, unable to pivot and finesse its new role in the world, and compared its frozen nostalgia to “watching old cowboy movies on repeat”.
- The Guardian, Feb 10 2025
Taking the axe to government should be an informed choice. With Trump’s America currently disembowelling itself, at least we are getting a glimpse of the costs before we potentially embark on our own cycle of self-flagellation.
- The Guardian, Feb 18 2025
Boomeranging US tariffs – which are to American prosperity what the Titanic was to ocean travel – are the tip of the unintended consequences iceberg.
- The Guardian, Mar 16 2025
With President Trump ramping up public pressure on Powell to slash rates “now,” we’re not just flirting with jawboning—we’re staring down the barrel of a credibility unwind.
Let’s be clear: US dollar weakness isn’t just about economic cracks forming. This is a broader confidence bleed.
Stephen Innes, SPI Asset Management, Apr 22 2025
Fiction
"I'd been broken beyond repair.
But I needed Jacob now, needed him like a drug. I'd used him as a crutch for too long, and I was in deeper than I'd planned to go with anyone again."
- Stephenie Meyer, New Moon
_____________________________
"He smiled, and Liz found herself feeling immensely sorry for him. The strong, confident man she knew was faltering, walking on eggshells because he knew his daughter held all the cards."
- Stella Rimington, The Geneva Trap
_____________________________
"Fearful he would do the same, and impressed by his talents and his diligence, the military had promoted Park Woo-jin rapidly, and he was cherry-picked after only five years' experience for a plum secondment to the Pentagon."
- Stella Rimington, The Geneva Trap
Pop Science
Hubble's reluctance to blow his own trumpet wasn't due to his stiff upper lip. He was no shrinking violet, and liked to be center stage.
- Brian Clegg, Before the Big Bang
Many cognitive scientists now believe that instead of being AI's fruit fly, chess was actually a red herring, leading researchers into a blind alley for decades.
- Wendell Wallach and Collin Allen, Moral Machines
Those were the first seeds of the unravelling of Pluto's full-blooded planetary status.
- Neil deGrasse Tyson, Welcome to the Universe
The high ground of materialism deflates when followed to its quantum mechanical roots.
- Adam Frank, article in Aeon
"I want us to do something that will really shake things up. Let's go out on a limb and say something very bold that will really get their attention. I think the three of us should gather up the loose strands of our half-baked idea and, even if we can't prove it, try to make it more precise."
- Leonard Susskind, The Black Hole War
Philosophy
Great frameworks of 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not' have been imposed on humanity in a variety of ways and forms, often cutting right across the grain of human nature, constraining and limiting it, and therefore causing the stresses that burst out into problems. It is like a chain reaction: because sexual relations were corralled by the church into monogamous marriage, the resulting problems either followed or were exacerbated.
- A.C. Grayling, The God Argument
Manangementspeak
Any future efforts to drill down on particular manifestations of fragmentation and nail down their incidence and costs to different actors or society more generally would thus face challenges.
- World Economic Forum white paper, January 2016
Sport
There is a window here. A tiny crack of light for England to dig towards.
- ABC News, Jan 7 2022
England’s Ashes hopes hanging by a thread after Australia turn the screw
- The Guardian, Nov 17 2022
Sam Kerr bombshell sucks life out of Australia
- The Guardian, Jul 21 2023
Music
It strums the pain of her listenership with its fingers, grappling with a muse that is sometimes more albatross than ally.
- The Guardian, Nov 17 2022
July 3, 2019
A very cool look inside the way we make and process metaphors. Lots of interesting academic insights, but all throughout it is primarily aimed at an audience of non-academic writers and readers. The author's sketched illustrations are the icing on the cake.
February 25, 2021
This book is easy to read, and well suited to those just starting to explore metaphors. Sullivan highlights the two broad types of metaphor; image metaphor (tends to be a comparison between two concrete items such as Richard the Lion-heart which demonstrates Richard is like a lion, (and a lion is like Richard)) and conceptual metaphors (which tend to be based on primary metaphors learnt as a child such as AFFECTION IS WARMTH which allows us to link concrete and abstract items, for example ‘my heart burns for you’ which equates the abstract love with the heat of a physical fire).
[The image metaphor is similar to Aristotle’s idea of a metaphor making pictures in the mind’s eye, and the second version is heavily associated with Lakoff and Johnsons CMT]
The concept of a mixed metaphor, she notes, has been seen historically as both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on its context and how far-fetched it is. Whilst the definition of a mixed metaphor has been variable over time, her version of it might best be represented by what is understood – a mixed metaphor creates a mixed message. In other words it does not have to have more than one metaphor (which is called compound metaphor) only that it’s source domain is unhelpful (she uses the example of lightening dancing like a drunk ballerina across the sky’s stage.) In the case of poetry and literature that can lead to complex, vivid, and enigmatic reading. In the case of a public speaker, that can lead to confusion and unintended hilarity.
Sullivan gives three reasons why metaphors are typically mixed by reader/listenrs; proximity (in time and space), similarity (in source/target topics) and how ‘alive’ or ‘awake’ they are (i.e. not dead)] Overall however, she appears to encourage a descriptivist (rather than prescriptivist) approach, in which anything goes with experimental mixing metaphors (preferably so long as they are used consciously and deliberately).
[Her take on mixed metaphors is akin to George Campbells’ 1767 version in which mixed metaphors and catachresis are essentially the same; metaphors which don’t relate to reality and are therefore a sign of weakness.]
Perhaps my favourite thing in this book is the word MALAPHOR which is an idiom blend, that acts like the love child of a metaphor and a malapropism (slip of the tongue / incorrect word used in wrong context). Another concept that could be useful is ‘corrective juxtaposition’ in which two metaphors are played off against each other [rather than a marriage of (in)convenience, it becomes a beauty contest of sorts.]
The half-page representations of tweets and some of the giant sketches are less delightful and feel a lot like padding.
Sullivan breaks down a single sentence mixed metaphor almost word for word over several pages according to Lakoff and Johnson’s CMT guides. Whilst the approach is extremely repetitive and could be seen as a bit of an overkill, it makes the book a good place to start research into metaphoricity. The book concentrates on modern examples and spends little time dwelling on the history of metaphor, however there were plenty of references to other research, creating multiple opportunities for further reading. As such, the book reads easily, and appears to be well researched and referenced.
[The image metaphor is similar to Aristotle’s idea of a metaphor making pictures in the mind’s eye, and the second version is heavily associated with Lakoff and Johnsons CMT]
The concept of a mixed metaphor, she notes, has been seen historically as both a good thing and a bad thing, depending on its context and how far-fetched it is. Whilst the definition of a mixed metaphor has been variable over time, her version of it might best be represented by what is understood – a mixed metaphor creates a mixed message. In other words it does not have to have more than one metaphor (which is called compound metaphor) only that it’s source domain is unhelpful (she uses the example of lightening dancing like a drunk ballerina across the sky’s stage.) In the case of poetry and literature that can lead to complex, vivid, and enigmatic reading. In the case of a public speaker, that can lead to confusion and unintended hilarity.
Sullivan gives three reasons why metaphors are typically mixed by reader/listenrs; proximity (in time and space), similarity (in source/target topics) and how ‘alive’ or ‘awake’ they are (i.e. not dead)] Overall however, she appears to encourage a descriptivist (rather than prescriptivist) approach, in which anything goes with experimental mixing metaphors (preferably so long as they are used consciously and deliberately).
[Her take on mixed metaphors is akin to George Campbells’ 1767 version in which mixed metaphors and catachresis are essentially the same; metaphors which don’t relate to reality and are therefore a sign of weakness.]
Perhaps my favourite thing in this book is the word MALAPHOR which is an idiom blend, that acts like the love child of a metaphor and a malapropism (slip of the tongue / incorrect word used in wrong context). Another concept that could be useful is ‘corrective juxtaposition’ in which two metaphors are played off against each other [rather than a marriage of (in)convenience, it becomes a beauty contest of sorts.]
The half-page representations of tweets and some of the giant sketches are less delightful and feel a lot like padding.
Sullivan breaks down a single sentence mixed metaphor almost word for word over several pages according to Lakoff and Johnson’s CMT guides. Whilst the approach is extremely repetitive and could be seen as a bit of an overkill, it makes the book a good place to start research into metaphoricity. The book concentrates on modern examples and spends little time dwelling on the history of metaphor, however there were plenty of references to other research, creating multiple opportunities for further reading. As such, the book reads easily, and appears to be well researched and referenced.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews