Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Nobody uses the word wicked literally anymore. Eg: “one great and wicked project fermenting and working all over Europe.” (from a 1797 book about alleged Illuminati conspiracy where the word appears 31 times) https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47605/47605-h/47605-h.htm
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
“Wicked” strikes me as having connotations of wilful pursuit of immoral designs. Evil in motion. Pity it’s fallen into disuse. The modern British usage in the sense of “cool” is much less interesting. “Evil” is a conscious disposition, “bad” is an external judgment, but “wicked” is like installi
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Venkatesh Rao ☀️
@vgr
Do you know anyone you’d unironically describe as wicked? We seem to be in a redemptive fables mood. The show Wicked tries to redeem the wicked witch of Oz. Cruelly the movie tries to redeem the 101 Dalmatians psycho. Are we done with wickedness as an unreconstructed trait
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Sachin
@sach
wicked venkat , it rhymes well
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