As you can't have failed to notice, it was reported this month that Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson are sixth cousins three times removed. Ancestry.com shared the news - in no way, I am certain, prompted by team Swift as promo for her forthcoming album, The Tortured Poets Department. Call it the Tortured Promo Department - fans who crunched the numbers worked out that Swift probably has 3.3 million sixth cousins thrice removed. She is just as likely to be related to Ayn Rand, enslavers or any number of unsavoury people but there's no Today Show exclusive on those links. "How's this for a coincidence?" the broadcaster asked. Telling, and not in the way the Swift operation would doubtless like you to think: less indicative of a lineage of literary greatness than a taste for plausible deniability in a well-maintained void of information.
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