New this week
kiwihellenist.blogspot.com
How to read an app crit
kiwihellenist.blogspot.com
~11 min read · May 23rd · If you're examining how reliable an ancient or mediaeval text is, the app crit is your best friend. But reading it takes practice.
Reader View · Shared by 126
The Guardian
Why do people, like, say, like so much?
The Guardian
8 min read · May 15th · Saying the word ‘like’ has long been seen as a sign of laziness and stupidity. But its use is actually richly nuanced, goes back to Shakespearean times, and is an indicator of, like, intelligence
rogersbacon.substack.com
Nomen est omen
rogersbacon.substack.com
~15 min read · May 20th · On nominative determinism and the power of names
Literary Hub
The Russian War on Ukraine Has Always Been a War on Its Language
Literary Hub
4 min read · May 11th · For Carolyn Forche, because she asked. “This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful.” –Oksana Zabuzhko * “We must thank fate (and the author’s thirst…
Recently popular
rogersbacon.substack.com
Nomen est omen
rogersbacon.substack.com
~15 min read · May 20th · On nominative determinism and the power of names
The Guardian
Why do people, like, say, like so much?
The Guardian
8 min read · May 15th · Saying the word ‘like’ has long been seen as a sign of laziness and stupidity. But its use is actually richly nuanced, goes back to Shakespearean times, and is an indicator of, like, intelligence
The New Yorker
How to Use (or Not Use) a Hyphen
The New Yorker
1 min read · Apr 25th · Plus: a brief digression into why The New Yorker hyphenates “teen-ager.”
Reader View · Shared by 135, including Clive Thompson, Madam Grammar, Jane, Charles Duhigg
are.na
Notes on “Taste” — Are.na
are.na
7 min read · May 10th · Are.na is a platform for connecting ideas and building knowledge.
Reader View · Shared by 133
kiwihellenist.blogspot.com
How to read an app crit
kiwihellenist.blogspot.com
~11 min read · May 23rd · If you're examining how reliable an ancient or mediaeval text is, the app crit is your best friend. But reading it takes practice.
Reader View · Shared by 126
Aeon+Psyche
The journeys taken by emotion words shape our inner lives
Aeon+Psyche
7 min read · May 4th · Changes to the meanings of euphoria, enthusiasm and ecstasy over time chart the ever-shifting territory of the emotions
Reader View · Shared by 124, including Jason Silva
toneofvoice.substack.com
The CIA
toneofvoice.substack.com
5 min read · May 14th · This is what really, really serious sounds like.
The Atlantic
Why People Can’t Stop Adding lol to Texts
The Atlantic
3 min read · May 2nd · It makes virtual communication feel more human.
The Christian Science Monitor
Language lesson: A professor learns the power of praise
The Christian Science Monitor
4 min read · May 4th · When a professor signed up to take an introductory Arabic class, he learned a bonus lesson: how to become a better teacher.
Reader View · Shared by 82
Literary Hub
The Russian War on Ukraine Has Always Been a War on Its Language
Literary Hub
4 min read · May 11th · For Carolyn Forche, because she asked. “This is what power really is: the privilege of ignoring anything you might find distasteful.” –Oksana Zabuzhko * “We must thank fate (and the author’s thirst…
All-time favorites
The Guardian
A robot wrote this entire article. Are you scared yet, human?
The Guardian
5 min read · 2020-09-08 · We asked GPT-3, OpenAI’s powerful new language generator, to write an essay for us from scratch. The assignment? To convince us robots come in peace
Reader View · Shared by 1012, including Nige Willson, Iain Brown, PhD, Mathieu von Rohr, Robin Wigglesworth, Joanna (J.F.) Penn, Michael Mina, Austin Kleon, Gary Marcus 🇺🇦, Evan Kirstel the $B2B Techfluencer, Rick King, Oliver Reichenstein, Yves Mulkers, Marc R Gagné MAPP 🍁, Mathew Ingram, emily bell, Taylor Lorenz, Nigel Warburton 🧡 #RejoinEU 🇺🇦, Guy Kawasaki, Jim Marous 💯, AI
OpenAI
DALL·E: Creating Images from Text
OpenAI
20+ min read · 2021-01-05 · We’ve trained a neural network called DALL·E that creates images from text captions for a wide range of concepts expressible in natural language.
Reader View · Shared by 991, including Jane Manchun Wong, Carla Gentry, Josh Wolfe, Sam Altman, Bill Slawski ⚓ 🇺🇦, Leo Polovets, Chris Messina, Vicki Davis, MIT CSAIL, AIKing.Eth - Vincent Boucher, Evan Kirstel the $B2B Techfluencer, Ser Jeff Garzik, Randy Olson, Soumith Chintala, Kevin Kelly, Ilya Sutskever, Joanna (J.F.) Penn, дэн, Vinod Khosla, Mario Klingemann 🇺🇦
Seth Godin
Why the blockchain matters
Seth Godin
4 min read · 2021-05-10 · But first, let’s understand some words… Bitcoin is not the blockchain. If the blockchain is a printing press, Bitcoin is a kind of paper money. There are countless things that one can do with a pri…
Shared by 459, including Christian Hartmann, Filippo Boninsegna📡, Tom Vander Ark, Joanna (J.F.) Penn, LARRY ELKAN, Adrian Swinscoe, jorge-ferrer, Ramon Ray, Tarik ESSAADI, Marvin “Polymath but really Just Generalist” Liao, simon-zaugg
Vulture
Why Do Corporations Speak the Way They Do?
Vulture
~16 min read · From 2020 · Literary critic Molly Young offers a witty dissection of how today’s businesses – especially start-ups, creative firms and online companies – spawn nonsense corporate slanguage and self-deluded gibberish. Young’s keen ear and sharp tongue will provide relief and amusement to anyone who’s endured a meeting replete with nonsense terminology, such as “parallel-pathing, growth hacking, upleveling” and “blitzscaling.”
Summary · Reader View · Shared by 459, including Sam Harris, Bailey Richardson, Steve Silberman, Jason A Miller, Kevin Marks, Bob Sutton, Michelle Garrett (she/her), Brooke B. Sellas, Dan Hill, Felix Salmon, Virginia Hughes, Riley Black 🦕🏳️⚧️, Madam Grammar, Nilofer Merchant, Daniel Boos, Henneke Duistermaat, Chris Heilmann, Matthew Herper, Jeff Atwood, Marsha Collier
thisworddoesnotexist.com
neuropsychologism: this word does not exist
thisworddoesnotexist.com
1 min read · From 2020 · 1. psychiatry or mental illness as distinguished from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or other forms of mental disturbance because of the impairment of the normal development of consciousness. 2. a…
Shared by 444, including Esther Schindler, Jane, hardmaru, Fabricio Teixeira, RodGeoghegan·com, Alf Rehn, Chris Bailey, Madam Grammar, Ian Lurie 🇺🇦, Josh Wolfe, Erin McKean, David McCandless, Stéphanie Walter, Mike Davidson, Joe Germuska, Jeff Atwood, Tamsen Webster, Message Strategist (she/her), tanh(mmalex) 🇺🇦, Piotr Migdal, Thomas Power
The New Yorker
The Computers Are Getting Better at Writing
The New Yorker
4 min read · 2021-04-30 · Whatever field you are in, if it uses language, it is about to be transformed.
Reader View · Shared by 400, including Harold Sinnott 📱📲, Christopher Lauer, Andreas Staub, Helen Yu, Brian D. Earp, Ph.D., Jeff Jarvis, Marcus Borba, ɹǝʞɹɐd ʍǝɹpuɐ, Joanna (J.F.) Penn, Brian Ahier, Theodora (Theo) Lau - 劉䂀曼 🌻, Glen Gilmore | 🌻🥽Metaverse 🕳🐇, Martin Ford, Josep M. Ganyet, Mark Tabladillo PhD, Dr. Sally Eaves #TechForGood #GartnerSummitEMEA, C_Emcke, Iain Brown, PhD, Marc Abrahams, AI
builtbywords.substack.com
Writing tools I learned from The Economist
builtbywords.substack.com
6 min read · 2021-04-05 · I learned writing from The Economist. Back home, it wasn’t easy to learn English. No one in my social circle was fluent in the language and I couldn’t afford a private tutor. The best I could do was…
Reader View · Shared by 385, including Katja Evertz, David Papandrew, Dayyan Smith, Lali, Gutly Myrat, Esther Schindler, Rick Powell, Mariella Petrigni 🌍 Translator
Aeon+Psyche
Why is the English spelling system so weird and inconsistent?
Aeon+Psyche
~13 min read · 2021-07-26 · Why is English spelling so weird and unpredictable? Don’t blame the mix of languages; look to quirks of timing and technology
Reader View · Shared by 384, including Madam Grammar, Uyên Đỗ, Patricia Smith, Tauno, Jane, Rick Powell, Mariella Petrigni 🌍 Translator, Anita Leirfall, Esther Schindler, Arin Basu, Dan Hill, Nigel Warburton 🧡 #RejoinEU 🇺🇦, Vaughan Bell
3quarksdaily.com
You Don’t Think in Any Language
3quarksdaily.com
8 min read · Jan 17th · by David J. Lobina (This is Part 2 of a brand new series of post, this time about the relationship between language and thought; Part 1 is here) A provocative title, perhaps, and perhaps also…
Reader View · Shared by 383, including Massimo Pigliucci