{"id":32302,"date":"2026-07-24T12:40:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:40:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=32302"},"modified":"2026-07-24T12:40:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-24T17:40:08","slug":"oh-no-not-this-s-t-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/?p=32302","title":{"rendered":"Oh, no. Not this s&#8211;t again."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was considering using that title for the previous post, but I figured in the end (ha!) I&#8217;d probably only have one chance to use the GoT reference. And I can use it here, too, because this is one of my peeves that I am petting.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"https:\/\/nypost.com\/2026\/07\/24\/lifestyle\/massachusetts-whaling-museum-turns-1-star-review-into-hilarious-merch-worst-aquarium-ever\/\" target=\"_blank\">It is estimated that over 90% of the ocean\u2019s whale populations were decimated through the practice of commercial whaling, which was a major engine of the American economy in the 19th century, as captured in books like \u201cMoby Dick,\u201d the 1851 masterpiece by New York native Herman Melville.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The word &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.merriam-webster.com\/dictionary\/decimate\" target=\"_blank\">decimate<\/a>&#8221; means &#8220;reduce by ten percent&#8221;, or \u201cto select by lot and kill every tenth man of a military unit.\u201d Now, personally, I am willing to cut folks a little bit of slack: if one our of every nine, or one out of every eleven, is killed, I&#8217;m okay with referring to that as &#8220;decimation&#8221; or &#8220;decimating&#8221;. As long as it is <strong>close<\/strong> to ten percent, I&#8217;m okay.<\/p>\n<p>But the phrase &#8220;over 90% of the ocean\u2019s whale populations were decimated&#8221; is just ridiculous. It has no meaning. It is nonsense.<\/p>\n<p>Does the <strong>NYPost<\/strong> even have editors any more? I think the answer to that is &#8220;no&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was considering using that title for the previous post, but I figured in the end (ha!) I&#8217;d probably only have one chance to use the GoT reference. And I can use it here, too, because this is one of my peeves that I am petting. It is estimated that over 90% of the ocean\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[158,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mammals","category-wordplay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32302"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32304,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32302\/revisions\/32304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sportsfirings.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}