[Ads-l] Huberman quirks

[John Baker]

“To blow one’s stack” does not relate to the computer meaning of “stack” or to electric guitar amplifiers. The OED has it from 1947 and says it is equivalent to “to blow one’s top,” to lose control of oneself through anger, excitement, etc. Presumably this relates to the chimney/flue meaning of “stack.”

Here is an antedating of the OED, from the Greenville (Ohio) Daily Advocate, Sept. 17, 1942, at 8 (Newspapers.com):  “One of the fellows here received a letter from the States and inside was an envelope containing sand from a beach in New York. Boy, did he go up in smoke and really blow his stack at that! It made him homesick.”


John Baker


> On Jul 12, 2025, at 11:07 PM, Chris Waigl <chris at lascribe.net> wrote:
> 
> Interesting point from Nancy. in my (imperfect) recollection, stack was a
> buzzword, or maybe a fad, in the Web 1.0 era up to the early 2000s or
> thereabouts. "I have too many things on my stack", "this blew my stack",
> "it's important to manage your stack well".
> 
> Maybe one reason it became less fashionable is the rise of interpreted
> programming languages. Fewer techies come trained in C or FORTRAN or other
> language where dealing with a stack overflow is a common occurrence or at
> least a rite of passage.
> 
> (But then, when I google "blowing one's stack" I get the feeling that the
> world of electric guitar amplifiers has something to say about it too.)
> 
> Chris
> 
>> On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 5:35 PM Nancy Friedman <
>> 00001b7f50001087-dmarc-request at listserv.uga.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> I wonder whether "supplement stack" has been influenced by computer-jargon
>> "stack," which has been around for decades. The Jargon File, published in
>> 1991 as The New Hacker's Dictionary, defines "stack" as "the set of things
>> [a person] has to do in the future"; to "smash the stack" is "to write past
>> the end of an array declared *auto* in a routine." A full-stack developer
>> handles both front- and back-end development of a website or application.
>> Wordnik includes this definition: "A section of memory and its associated
>> registers used for temporary storage of information in which the item most
>> recently stored is the first to be retrieved." Wordnik's example sentences,
>> all from between 2005 and 2010, are mostly tech-flavored.
>> 
>> "Stack" also appears in the name of the publishing platform Substack
>> (founded 2017). It's both an established computer term (a subset of a
>> stack) and a compound suggesting "a stack of subscriptions."
>> 
>> In Huberman's case, many of his listeners come from the tech world and are
>> interested in bio-hacking (etc.), so using a term from computer lingo could
>> be a way to connect with them.
>> 
>> 
>> Nancy Friedman
>> Chief Wordworker
>> web: wordworking.com <http://www.wordworking.com>
>> substack https://fritinancy.substack.com/
>> Medium <https://medium.com/@wordworking>
>> 
>> tel 510 652-4159
>> cel 510 304-3953
>> bluesky/mastodon/instagram  Fritinancy
>> 
>> 
>> 
>>> On Sat, Jul 12, 2025 at 6:09 PM Jesse Sheidlower <jester at panix.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> It's been common for decades in the bodybuilding/strength training
>>> communities to refer to
>>> combinations of anabolic steroids as "stacks", and to verb this, in the
>>> sense 'to combine steroids'.
>>> 
>>> Lots of examples from the 1980s; earliest I can easily find is:
>>> 
>>> 1985 _1986 Medical & Health Annual_ (Encyclopædia Britannica) 304/1
>>> Because different types of steroids have differing anabolic properties
>>> (and are associated
>>> with varying side effects), serious steroid users typically combine a
>>> number of steroids in regimens called "steroid stacks", in which
>> different
>>> types of drugs are used in combinations or are "stacked" one upon
>> another.
>>> 
>>> https://archive.org/details/medicalhealthann0000unse/page/304/mode/1up
>>> 
>>> I think I've only heard it in this exact context, though; the use in
>>> reference to regular nutritional supplements, or differing varieties or
>>> protocols of exercise, feels unusual.
>>> 
>>> Jesse Sheidlower
>>> 
>>> On Sat, Jul 05, 2025 at 08:51:17AM -0400, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>> Dr. Andrew Huberman, associate professor of neurobiology and
>>>> ophthalmology at  Stanford Medical School,  advises you to "build a
>> stack
>>>> of foundational supplements" for maximal health; in other words a
>> lineup
>>> of
>>>> supplemental interactive micronutrients.
>>>> 
>>>> He also talks about "stacks" of methods and practices, like yoga and
>>>> exercise, to keep you functioning. This use of "stack" is novel to me,
>> as
>>>> is his frequent reference to healthy practices as "tools."
>>>> 
>>>> Weirdly, he also says "messajeez" for  "mcgs."
>>>> 
>>>> JL
>>>> 
>>>> --
>>>> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the
>>> truth."
>>>> 
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>> 
>> 
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Chris Waigl . chris.waigl at gmail.com . chris at lascribe.net
> http://eggcorns.lascribe.net . http://chryss.eu
> 
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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