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Iirc, it began that way, but it’s used now as like a softened ellipses.

Too cool! Thank you!

Have… Have y’all considered not marrying partners that you don’t share interests with? Like, I know I’m an edge case in that I’m 35, gay, and have never had a live in partner, but it’s really not that scary being single until you find someone you actually enjoy being with. Either it’ll happen or it won’t, but I’d rather be single and able to enjoy my hobbies and passions than be with someone who shares none of them.

Fundamentally disagree. Look at how often people use emoji, AlTerNaTiNg CaSe, and other tricks to convey meaning online (and mainly from their phones). English is not losing complexity, it’s not being dumbed down, or becoming simpler because people are typing on a touch screen. It’s evolving in real time because the methods of communication are evolving. 300 years ago we capitalized nouns in English for emphasis on important nouns, some people capitalized all nouns like in German, we used punctuation quite differently. Before that, we used these big, chunky symbols to indent our lines and make them more readable (and then we got rid of the symbols, but kept the indents, and that’s why we indent the first line of a paragraph). We used to use 3 little stars (an asterism) to break paragraphs apart. Emoji, alternating case, ellipses made of commas, weird punctuation uses, capitalization forgone to convey a flat tone, periods missed at the end of a sentence to give it a friendlier tone, all of these things are living, real grammar rules. They’re just not the same ones as in the text books. Much like how AAVE is not taught in schools as correct or proper English, but it has its own grammar rules that are consistent among its users, the way people type now is fairly consistent, and follows a series of rules that have been agreed upon in the same way that any language agrees upon its rules.

English got frozen in time because of the printing press, and we all just assumed it had been the way it was for so long that that’s the way it was, English was set. But languages are constantly evolving, and there’s really no such thing as a correct way to write a living language. There is only the way we currently write it, which is constantly changing. Normally that change is fairly slow, but we with virtually every other aspect of humanity, the computer, the Internet, the smartphone, and other rapid technological changes increases the speed at which we adopt new cultural norms exponentially.

It’s also worth noting that we write more now that we ever have before. In the past, you may occasionally write letters, jot something down on a postcard or a birthday card, have a weekly shopping list, or a note from a phone call, but apart from secretaries taking short hand, stenographers, and other specialized careers involving writing specifically, the average person did not write anywhere near as much as the average millennial or Gen z, who may communicate exclusively through text, email, discord, whatever, with their friends on a daily basis. With more writing, it follows that the language will evolve faster. A short lived species will often demonstrate more mutation and variation than a longer lived species. There are just more generations to work with. Every email, every Facebook post, every text message is a potential for a random mutation in the language, and without the strict confines of previous generations telling us that something must be written in a certain way, because the primary purpose of writing in the past was much more professional and academic, much less casual, those mutations are given a chance to survive and to flourish.

Yeah, sometimes it is genuinely hard for me to read posts made by younger Gen z or Gen alpha, and it is especially hard to read posts that are trying to mimic the gen z/alpha posts but from older generations, but I am legitimately excited to see how English evolves without the confines or academic interference. I can almost imagine a high/low English split coming, and that’s exciting.

How do I type shavian? Is there an android keyboard? That’s so cool. I’ve read about it, but never actually considered if it was typeable realistically.

Iirc, there’s a church (I think in Italy, but I may be completely wrong, and I’m far too lazy to Google it right now), where the priest blessed the pipe that carries the water, and the church has a spigot outside for adherents to come to and get holy water whenever they want it.

I may be about to move to a town near the border, and I fully plan on visiting Mexico as frequently as I can. It’s one of the things I’m most excited about about moving there.

I will 100% be getting a second cheap phone, and only taking that when I cross the border.

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I dreamt once that I had a random Grindr hookup, and he showed me a brand new third hole that everyone has but nobody knows about, and then he proceeded to break that hole like he was trying to break my spine (hole was on the lower back)

I hate how I read that without tripping up at all lol

Honestly, I like Pulaski. Until she called Data Data, that went too far. His name is Data, not Data. That’s just insulting. It’s like called an Andrea Andrea, it’s just rude.

As a hippy dippy new ager, this is absolutely frickin hilarious

That’s awesome! Thank you for the links!

I’ve been watching this tatting YouTuber for a bit now, and I’m loving it. I love fiber arts in general, and tatting seems super fun

I would go to your Ted talk

Growing up in baptist churches in the south, I grew up hearing “near east” for Israel and surrounding, and middle east for basically everything else that wasn’t “the orient”

Mideast is newish to me, and the other two terms I haven’t really heard since I was a kid in the 90s/00s.

That was the intent.

So, in my experience, it’s less unhygienic, and more a problem with not covering up their natural smells. Sounds similar, different things. I’ll explain me experience with TTRPGers.

All the ones I know who fall into the funk trap are autistic folk, and the issue isn’t that they don’t bathe, it’s that they can’t stand those strong chemical smells they associate with body washes and deodorant*. So they bathe, but they use mild soaps, soaps designed for children, or unscented soaps, and they don’t wear deodorant.

Which creates a situation where the hygiene is okay, but the funk is still there, once they’re all in a group together. One on one, you really don’t notice, but get 10 folks in a room for game night, or a couple thousand together for an event or convention, and the funk becomes overpowering.

That said, I do know two that have just a general aversion to bathing, and consistently reek

*Edit to add

Also an issue with texture on the skin. One of my best friends is autistic, and he cannot handle the feeling of deodorant on his armpits. It tacks the hair down, it’s apparently sticky feeling, and he just goes into total meltdown until he can get it off. He can’t focus on anything else.

Let’s not defame us good, God fearing communist cock suckers out here doing the hard work of sucking cock and spreading the ideas of worker liberation and democratizing the workplace!