We should use this moment to remember that NOT DOING ANYTHING ABOUT JOHN YOO helped us get here thank you

Boy, it burns my beans to see John Yoo, famous for writing the 2000s legal memo that explained how torture wasn't actually against international law, getting to speak in polite society. Weird that a guy who we shoulda shipped to the Hague for war crimes would argue against international law.

Worth thinking about just how many sweeping powers successive US administrations have given themselves to combat “terrorism”.

Dox every groyper who ran the WH accounts, should follow them around for life

The grimness of US history should encourage us. Yes, people used to send lynching postcards. And other people saw that, worked towards building a more just society anyway, and succeeded beyond anyone's wildest imagination. There's more work to be done. What's our excuse for choosing despair instead?

I've been reading up on endangered languages, and I'm fascinated by this story about the death of the Arikapú language. The language is still alive, in that there are two people who know it. But they don't live near each other, so no one currently speaks it. pib.socioambiental.org/en/Povo:Arik...

Any linguist can tell you that the literal semantic meaning of an utterance is often quite different from its actual pragmatic meaning. Trump and others use journalists' willingness to report the literal to their advantage, and some journalists think people will infer the pragmatic meanings.

The US president threatening our allies after invading another country and kidnapping its president is never "insignificant". I am going insane. I hope ICE doesn't pick San Diego to do a show of force in, because Newsom will tut-tut us for being stupid enough to care as we're arrested.

The most important technological revolution of our lifetime has nothing to do with AI: Important to realize also that, once constructed, solar infrastructure just keeps working*, for decades, with very little additional cost. There's no need for a constant stream of inputs like fossil fuels.

Nice little structural ambiguity for the #linguistics feed

Word of the day: kafkaesliue

Do you ever think about number systems in #language? English's number words are actually pretty efficient. You only have to learn a few distinct words: zero to twelve, the semi-regular teens and tens, then hundred, thousand, etc. So maybe you don't think about them. But number words vary A LOT.

A non-zero-sum worldview is, in my mind, the core of what it means to be "on the left." You believe that through cooperation & solidarity, we can *all* benefit. Indeed, if you look back through history, you find that non-zero-sum cooperation is the root of pretty much every human advance!

It is a real societal problem that the people who have put themselves in charge of distinguishing good and bad ideas a) are gullible rubes and b) think that they are not gullible rubes. I say this as a gullible rube myself, but one who's smart enough to know how easily I'm tricked.

elected democrats who want their constituents to remain non-violent in their protests of these abuses must actually offer a path for ending the abuses non-violently. they currently are not as a party and it’s a major problem.

It's interesting that my governor will not only listen to, but be convinced by, an paid out-of-state agitator instead of the millions of people in California who are pushing for him to stand up to ICE.

I'm reading about an Indonesian language with a few thousand speakers, and it has a really cool morphophonological process: in some words with an /l/ sound, you can change it to an /r/, and it intensifies the word. It'd be like if in English, you could say "smarr" to mean 'very small'. #linguistics

go to hell.

Today, @wikipedia.org turns 25 years old. It's never been more important — or under more attack from authoritarians. Here's what to know about how we got here, and what we can do to push for its future. There's no better example of the web we make together. www.anildash.com/2026/01/15/w...

America has always been an argument. An argument between a wealthy white few ready to kill or control the rest to seize more money & power and the bravest possible people determined to make the promise of life, liberty & yes happiness apply to all, no exceptions.

Trump is going to invoke the insurrection act no matter what anyone does if that is what he chooses to do Admonishing people for protecting themselves and their neighbors from literal door-to-door raids by fascist police is the single most dangerous thing you could be doing right now

"No money furnished by this Act can be used to cancel programs or agencies funded by this Act." That's the missing one line in appropriations bills that is facilitating all of this illegal impoundment and abuse.

We need to pick up this Overton Window and throw it as far as we can. Stop waiting for shit to “be popular” and start advocating for what is transparently right.

When you teach, sometimes you ask your students what they think about something. You're not really asking it because it's interesting to you or other students what they think (though it can be!), but because you want to find out what they misunderstand. Then you *teach* them to understand it better!

Free idea for @katherinemiller.bsky.social, NYT Opinion, or whatever: Do one of these panels, but with a guest expert on the topics these people are discussing. See how they react to learning that they have no idea what they're talking about. Could be great content!

Happy 75th birthday to History Today! I'm very happy to have written for it in 2016 about the history of English spelling reform, and why it's always doomed to fail www.historytoday.com/brief-histor...

i have reason to cite this 2021 twitter post several times a year

ICE, get the fuck out of Minneapolis or we WILL lock up our own citizens

I think nothing makes people lose trust in news organizations as much as when they’ve seen something with their own eyes — and then see news coverage that doesn’t comport with what they themselves experienced. presswatchers.org/2026/01/why-...

To anybody who is offended by the governor of Minneapolis telling ICE “get the fuck out of our city,” but not offended by ICE ethnic cleansing secret police summarily executing a local mom, a message: Go fuck yourself. Learn the difference between a swear word and an obscenity.

I can't stop thinking of Mamdani's line about good grammar used to mask cruelty. So much of our current situation is that. JD Vance went to Yale, Trump to Penn. Pete Hegseth and Donald Rumsfeld both went to Princeton, and I did too. We all learned how to speak well no matter what we were saying.

The streets of San Diego having been ringing with anti-ICE slogans for hours now. I'm hearing chants echoing off the buildings in the distance; I tried to join the march but couldn't track it down from street level, figured it had ended. Nope, still going strong. People are really angry here.

If there's anything that speaking with LLM AIs should teach you, it's that you can make anything sound good when you write it. #ChatGPT can make a lie sound just as good as the truth. Often, the lies sound better, because they're not constrained to be true.

Jonathon's #AmEditing threads are always a treat in part because he's indirectly teaching you applied psycholinguistics.

I still think that the world would be a whole lot better if the Harris-Walz campaign had leaned into Tim Walz calling Elon Musk a "dipshit" instead of trying to be civil to a bunch of dipshits. It's good to be uncivil to losers who keep being uncivil to you and your friends!! People respect that!!!

24 hours ago, journalists were wondering aloud what "deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty" could possibly mean

*This* is good grammar masking cruelty. "Maduro dealt a grave blow to the dignity of his people"? You know what doesn't restore dignity? A plutocratic coup by a country that just wants your oil.

this is your mission. our pedophile president needs you to jump out of a helicopter to kidnap a head of state and his wife so some oil ceos can make a lot of money. we’ll be watching from a resort in florida that still serves wedge salad and checking how many retweets we get. good luck soldier

In the 2-3pm news hour on 9/15, CNN hosts a "Talkback Live" segment. They take comments from a group of 30-ish people. The only comments that don't get applause are the ones that suggest we must be careful that we don't hurt innocent people in our thirst for revenge. Some comments:

I brought this up last month on a different topic, but I think that today is a good day for all of us to go back and watch the post-9/11 news, or the 2003 "shock and awe" invasion of Iraq broadcasts, or the Operation Desert Storm broadcast in 1991.

In the morning, we'll see good grammar deployed to excuse acts of war. We'll be told they're re-establishing order in the world, and that those opposing what they're doing are the actual belligerents. It is amazing how consequential the misuse of language can be.

This is stupid low-effort racist sexist drivel, but even under this idea people like George would still lose in academia. I got a perfect score on the SAT, so I'd crush him and his whiny loser friends in his ideal job market. Go ahead, little baby, suggest more "merit" criteria I can beat you on.

Zohran Mamdani used the word "grammar" in his inaugural address, and that stirred in me a thought that motivated my blog but I doubt I've ever managed to articulate properly. Time for another go at it: Speaking/writing with perfect grammar is good, but it's neither necessary nor sufficient.

This may be the single most personally revealing thing I've ever said online: I fully understand this post, the post it is an homage to, and why leon would be making this post today. RIP Mike F.

i'm really having a hard time getting past the "surely we can all agree that Somalis are worse than trash" thing. this feels new and very bad

the scarecrow trials from the dark knight rises when bane takes control of gotham is no longer the moderate position. putting them in the puzzle box from hellraiser is now the moderate position

Got a #grammar / #linguistics question for y'all. (Well, really it's a usage question, but that's not a good hashtag!) My cousins had a backformation of "to verse", from "versus", which they used to mean "play a (video) game against someone". Anyone else encounter this? It annoyed me so much.

A small victory for people and direct services organizations who help their unhoused neighbors in California: As of January 1, it should (theoretically!) be illegal to punish people for offering outreach and support.