Holy moley! (note the spelling) was Captain Marvel’s characteristic exclamation of surprise, and the strip popularized the saying among American youth, along with Shazam!
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But there is solid evidence that “holy moly” was already widely in use in the late 1920s as a jocular euphemism for “Holy Moses,” an oath that, at that time, might well have been offensive to some people. The writers of Captain Marvel simply picked it up and ran with it.
Interestingly, the spelling “moley,” which appeared in the very first issue of the Captain Marvel comic book, may have been influenced by the name of Professor Raymond Charles Moley, quite well-known in the 1930s as an important ally of President Franklin Roosevelt and organizer of his “Brain Trust” of advisors. Moley became even more famous after he turned against the New Deal and became a conservative Republican, and apparently there were political jingles and rhymes at the time coupling the name “Moley” with “holy.” Almost all modern uses I have found of the phrase, however, spell it holy moly.
McChuck: And at least half of all actual gun owners reported, “None of your besiness!”
Bob Sykes: China offers other countries real and substantial economic benefits. The US offers colonial subjugation, military intimidation, and exploitation and poverty.
Jim: This terrifying uptick from years prior resulted in the FAA and NTSB convening safety summits in March and May, respectively. Whether they dared to discuss root causes seems unlikely. Take it from me: the “aviation safety” “people” would rather disown their family than restore flight to the exclusive province of high-IQ young and youngish white men. That is not hyperbole—read it literally.
Bob Sykes: I see that I, myself, have provided a funny proof. Oh for an editing function. [Fortunately we have a Natural General Intelligence editor.]
Bob Sykes: It is claimed that 20% of American adults are illiterate, and that perhaps as many as 40% of Gen Alpha are illiterate. Elite colleges like Harvard and Berkeley are finding out that some of their freshman are illiterate and innumerate. We have entered a new Dark Age of illiteracy and superstition. Slavery and tyranny will soon follow.
Jim: Attention isn’t all you need. There is something else waiting to be discovered. And there is probably something genuinely irreducible about organic existence that will require the superintelligent silicon layer to be grafted on top of a carbon-and-water foundation. Plus, organic beings have a temporal gravity that cannot be simulated. Large language models are created by a Darwinian process that is a pale shadow of billions of years of the real one.
Isegoria: Longevity definitely has a genetic component: Three decades ago a famous study of Danish twins found that our genes “only moderately” influence how long we’re likely to live. Longevity, the authors estimated, was about 25 percent heritable, meaning the remaining three quarters was determined by environmental factors and lifestyle choices, such as diet and exercise. Most subsequent studies found heritability to be somewhere in the 20 to 25 percent range, and 25 percent is now widely accepted....
Bob Sykes: Although the obesity epidemic (at least two-thirds of everyone) explains much the the differences in death rates among Americans (and between Europeans and Americans), the basic cause is genetics. About 80 to 90 % of life expectancy is genetics, 5 to 10% diet, and 5 to 10% excercise and fitness.
Jim: The fundamental question is not technical, it is moral: Do Americans have a right to step outside without being subjected to obscene sci-fi surveillance? Flock is not the only offender. There are also: * Traffic cameras * ALPRs (automated license plate readers) * Store surveillance cameras * Doorbell cameras * BWCs (police body cameras) * Innumerable data vendors that trade in your personal information * Etc. and so forth, virtually without end If Americans have no right to privacy, then there is no...
Isegoria: Flock highlights how many missing persons they help find (10,000 last year) and how many stolen vehicles, but news stories tend to mention the kinds of crimes most of us think of: vehicle theft (~389), shootings (~194), theft/larceny (~160), homicide (~149), robbery (~129), hit-and-run (~105), assault (~105), and burglary (~102).
Patrick Henry: “700K crimes each year” Which crimes? Where? Running red lights? Murder? Rape? Illegal border crossing? Fentanyl sales? How many accused by photo were found not guilty? What others uses of data captured by Flock cameras are there? What revenue was obtained? When the consent of Americans to be tracked by commercial entities while going about their lawful business given?
Jim: I take your corrections. Someone should solve food at some point. Who is working on this?
Isegoria: Apparently his Grimmer than Hell collection includes the Lacey stories.
Szopen: Reminds me of the story of Dr. Witaszek who during WW2 tried to use typhus on Nazis. He was captured, tortured and executed. Children were sent to German families in order to be Germanized (recovered by red cross fortunately) and wife was sent to Auschwitz.
Bruce: David Drake’s Lacey and His Friends assumes the output will go to oligarchs.
Felix: The Transparent Society by David Brin, if I recall, assumes there will always be Flockish cameras and the like. So, make their output public. Side note: Amazon’s “Customers also bought or read” for this book is quite the interesting reading list.
McChuck: Being seen in public is fine. But what Flock camera coverage does is effectively stalking.
Isegoria: I haven’t read In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means to Be a Man: A Memoir. Does the father come back to die under the son’s care?
Michael Lynch: Actually Junod did have that father and wrote a book about it.
This took me a moment. Very nice. Initially I saw some kind of amorphous hentai; it seems to play on a classic Japanese watercolor-ink style.
You will like Marco D’Alfonso‘s comic mash-ups.
My fav: with great power comes great grief
There’s much more greatness on his tumblr.
This guy definitely has it, holy molly!
Or is it holy moly, holy moley? You decide…
via The Word Detective
And some comic mash-ups by Ryan Dunlavey, like Kraven and Hobbes, X-Nuts, Orlando Bloom County, The Doctor Doom Is In or Phantom the Menace!
Great Internet rabbit hole indeed…