Do You Live in a Fuck State or a Shit State?

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The Guardian reports today on the latest work of Jack Grieve, a professor of forensic linguistics at Aston University in the UK, aided by research from Diansheng Guo and Alice Kasakoff of the University of South Carolina and Andrea Nini, of Aston University. Their research topic is this: how do people swear in different US states? Only a British newspaper could publish this, since American newspapers would never allow such family-unfriendly swill in their august pages. Hell, I may be stretching things by doing it at Mother Jones.

You can click the link for the full rundown, but you’ll be interested to know that “fuckboy” is one of the fastest rising words of 2014. It’s apparently popular in the mid-Atlantic region and in California starting just north of where I live—which explains why I’ve never heard of it.

In any case, here’s a sample of Grieve’s linguistic maps. On the left are states where “fuck” is especially popular, and on the right are states where “shit” is especially popular. California is clearly a fuck state, which fits with my observations of a lifetime. Of course, you also have some states—mostly in the polite Midwest—that don’t use either, and some—mostly the coastal areas from South Carolina up to New Jersey—where they really like them both. Fascinating, no? Certainly more interesting than the old soda-pop-coke chestnut.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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