I’ve remarked in recent-ish posts about the extent to which online journalism has become the province of a sort of performative artlessness, where the banausic details of an event (in this case a Bob Dylan concert) take precedence over any kind of critical analysis; and also how an individual’s own ignorance (in this case about a word coined in 1960) is set up as default state for the rest of humanity, and anyone who knows more is an object of suspicion and loathing.

These two trends have met and had a big, ugly baby in the shape of a Buzzfeed article by one Caroline Bologna, who claims to find her mind blown by the information that “a.m.” and “p.m.” don’t stand for “after midnight” and “past midday” after all. I mean, that’s not a passing comment, that’s what the article’s about. It has as much weight and value as one of those videos where a Gen-Z influencer gasps and ultimately bursts into tears upon hearing a Kajagoogoo album for the first time. And I wonder what exactly you would need to blow a Buzzfeed’s journalist’s mind. On reflection, a damp drinking straw would do it.

This morning I discussed Craig Raine’s A Martian Sends a Postcard Home with a group of bright, polite and (above all) curious Russian teenagers. The gist of the poem is that an alien is describing commonplace objects and phenomena to his friends and that once we decode the things – from books to toilets to dreams – that he’s writing about, we see them anew, as if through fresh eyes, or whatever sensory organs Martians have.

There were extra layers of decoding that the students had to do though. First, the purely linguistic, which I’d expected – what is impatience? But then I realised they were being tasked with identifying things which which they have only a very fuzzy acquaintance. Home phones. Wristwatches. Postcards, of course. And pretty soon we can add books and cars you drive yourself to the list.

I wonder how long before they’re baffled by the very idea of dreams.

Sean Thomas in The Spectator claims to have found empirical evidence that music is getting worse. I agree with his conclusion, but don’t recognise his claim to objectivity; music is getting worse because I’m getting old and so, presumably, is Mr Thomas. If I were young, it would all be great, but I’m not, which is why I only get excited by the Top of the Pops re-runs on Saturday nights if they date from 1978 to 1983. Incidentally, Thomas’s characterisation of a modern lyric as “the desire of the singer to ‘kill his mofo bitches’ and celebrate his expensive car, hat and Rolex watch” suggests that he last listened to a rap record in about 1991, and then only fleetingly.

Moreover, it needs to be noted that this year sees the 100th anniversary of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, and the 200th of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, two groundbreaking works whose influence is still being felt. But I bet that in 1924 and 1824, there were plenty of people who could come up with an algorithm to prove that they were rubbish.

There is great music being produced now that will still be heard and loved in 2124 and beyond. We just don’t know what it is yet.

An example, if any were needed, of how fast language changes, and with it our attitudes. When I first heard the word “staycation”, meaning spending one’s holiday in and around one’s own home, I probably grimaced more than a little. But now I find myself wanting to protect the clunky, ugly neologism from a new meaning being applied by tabloid sub-editors, which is simply a holiday in one’s own country. Although I suppose I’m old enough to remember when the word for this was simply “holiday”.