🚨 Tell your Senators to vote NO on the GOP’s so-called “SAVE” Act”, which would: Require continuing voter purges w/ NO PENALTY for erroneous purges. Subject election officials to potential PRISON TIME & citizen suits for mistakenly registering a single voter—even if the voter is a citizen! 1/

18 million per week. That’s what we are collectively paying to hunt and kill people in Minnesota. I never wanna hear that we can’t afford to take care of our fellow Americans ever again. Healthcare. Education. Infrastructure. We can afford it all. www.kare11.com/article/news...

If Graham can hold up this bill for venal and treasonous reasons, then @amyklobuchar.com & @smith.senate.gov can block the whole spending package until Dems get the GOP to agree to clawback ICE detention funds.

Working on a project bringing linguistics to broader audiences? The 2026 LingComm Grants are $300 USD grants to help you with your project! Please apply and/or share with any up and coming lingcommers you know! Details: lingcomm.org/grants #linguistics #langsky #lingcomm

and now you can subscribe for vol 2! paperairplane.pub#subscribe

It’s the 11th of the month, time for a new edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things! This month: hemerology, ubuesque, and the fattura della morte buttondown.com/thingslearne...

This implies that when given notice, these facilities will change their behavior and conditions for the better. So... Democrats should be requesting NON-STOP rolling daily visits to these facilities. Whatever the "tour" mode is should become permanent.

The 2025 Word of the Year is "slop," both as a noun for low-quality AI-generated content and as a combining form for anything of little value. Read the full press release. #WOTY2025 #ADS2026 #LSA2026 americandialect.org/2025-word-of...

So sad to learn of John Langdon's death. His words-as-art were always a delight.

Make it viral.

Knowing that you are stable enough handle an emergency - the luxury that shouldn't be a luxury. I hope that, in 2026, that will become reality for many more people in the world.

There's a very nice writeup of my talk at OSS Tokyo in LWN! lwn.net/SubscriberLi... (gift link) Thanks again to the wonderful @kissane.myatproto.social and @ddbeck.com who created the Docs Advisor and Docs Archetypes (github.com/google/opendocs)!

Now would be a great time for a 10 episode, 20 hour prestige series about the ten years between 1916 and 1926, covering the establishment of the 8-hr work day & 5-day work week, in the US. Each episode would be one year & the middle episode should be entirely devoted to the Battle of Blair Mountain.

it’s today! planning to start my re-read at dusk for the full effect

Merriam-Webster Accused Of Bias After ‘Dictionary’ Named Word Of The Year

Announcing the Em Dash Appreciation Society (for Humans). em-dash-appreciation.org

It's the 11th of the month, and the last month of the year, so this is the "words I recorded in 2025" installment! buttondown.com/thingslearne...

Samuel Johnson: “I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.”

For your enjoyment: a zine combining letterpress blocks and measurement facts: zinebakery.com/assets/homem... via @dhnow.bsky.social

happy International Pie for Breakfast Day to all who celebrate

Me using the Cuisinart: hell yeah yes!!! Me washing the Cuisinart: well this sucks wtf

Any major dude with half a heart, surely will tell you, my friend Any minor world that breaks apart, falls together again When the demon is at your door In the morning, it won't be there no more Any major dude will tell you

there are 4 types of guys online. no exceptions.

Your last saved meme is your moral philosophy

I put my dresses on one torso at a time just like every other person

The collective noun for leaf blowers is a SCOURGE

It's the 11th of the month! Sending out the Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things newsletter a little late this month, but this edition has a lot of art-related links (including a MERCURY FOUNTAIN), some weird forensic science, and a really good name. buttondown.com/thingslearne...

We've filed 'The Montana Plan' with the Montana SOS. This is your Constitutional Initiative to make Citizens United irrelevant by simply removing a corporation's power to spend in elections.

Sometimes you have an idea so dumb that you HAVE to do it (I didn’t get this up in time for Halloween though)

I think we should bring back vibe spelling. Just add extra letters wherever, as you feel ‘em. Things can be frantick or hectick if you need that superfluous ’k’ edge. Resist the tyranny of received orthography!

I want a tracker, with arrows! I want interviews with their current and new neighbors! I want weekly followups until they get a new driver's license in their new state!

beginning to believe “neurotypical” is one of those words like “phlogiston” or “meritocracy” or “unicorn” that describes something that does not, in fact, exist

This was a very satisfying read, I recommend

Applications for the European Master in Lexicography (EMLex) (an international Master’s degree programme (120 ECTS) that has been offered since 2009) are now open! Deadline 2 Feb 2026 emlex.eu.usc.gal/web/

40 million Americans may go hungry in November because their SNAP funding is at risk. 40 million people at a time when most are already struggling to put food on the table. Trump just gave 40 billion to Argentina. That could feed every American. That could easily fund SNAP. America first?

If you missed it, @gofundme.com has set up (without consent) funding pages for nonprofits. Just got a mealy-mouthed reply from their Trust and Safety team with no answer as to when they will take these unauthorized pages down. Supposedly you have to "claim" the page to get it removed. Super-scammy.

Trump found another $20 BILLION to give to Argentina, totaling their bailout to $40 BILLION. Yet we can’t afford to prevent millions of Americans from losing their healthcare. Shame.

It's the 11th of the month, so time for another Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things newsletter, including sloyd, pranking autocrats, and gustatory-auditory synesthesia. buttondown.com/thingslearne...

All I want in life is to persuade everyone, when encountering politics & culture, to ask, "why are we talking about this?" I mean that very literally: anything you encounter on your screens reflects a choice. Someone covered that, talked about that, rather than the many other things out there. Why?

new retronym alert: "brain coding" domm.plix.at/perl/2025_10... (via @simonwillison.net)

Want to work on open source full time? The @roost.tools engineering team is starting to hatch! Come build OSS tools making a difference in Trust & Safety. This is a fully remote role, though some schedule overlap with North American time zones is expected. www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/43...

I loved this piece about the fate of the Fairyland dandelion sculpture from @reveleth.com www.coyotemedia.org/where-did-th...

Kavanaugh Stop is now part of the legal lexicon.

As a resident of #Portland it is impossible to capture how unhinged this is. We are a low crime city and the ICE protest "siege" consists of one auxiliary ICE office that normally has at most a dozen weirdos debating what performance art they should use to block a single driveway

It's the 11th (probably nobody needs to be reminded of that today) so time for a new edition of Things I Learned While Looking Up Other Things. The theme is "links I emailed to myself", including zipper bags, thermochauvinism, and Frankish weather-magi. buttondown.com/thingslearne...

If you were waiting for my sister @katemckean.bsky.social's great newsletter for writers, Agents and Books, to leave Substack before signing up, well do I have good news for you!!! www.agentsandbooks.com/oh-hello

The recording of the talk @emckean.bsky.social and I presented at Open Source Summit Europe is now available. Go here for video, highlights, links, and acknowledgments: ddbeck.com/osseu2025/

If you saw the talk that @emckean.bsky.social and I presented at Open Source Summit Europe, thank you for coming! I'll have more links and highlights to share later, but you can find the docs advisor and archetypes here.

Always nice to see a @parisinbmore.bsky.social shoutout (from @arapulido.bsky.social)

On August 27, @emckean.bsky.social and I are presenting at Open Source Summit Europe about resources that can help open source maintainers create and maintain docs. I'm looking forward to it (or at least I will be, when I've practiced my outline a few more times). sched.co/25Vub