Assignment the Detroit airport that says “there’s a difference between an answer and a Michigan answer.”
@jofrhwld.bsky.social posted this once and wrote “is it like, a prosody thing, or…?” and now I crack up laughing every time I come home. #detroitmichiganisintheeasterntimezone
Yeah! It took me almost to the end in Origin (and I felt silly for that) so I was really disappointed here.
The red cover of THE SECRET OF SECRETS by Dan Brown. A blue away brand suitcase is in the background.
The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown. Forgettable. I accidentally left it on the plane and I don’t even care that much. Langdon wasn’t even involved in solving any of the mystery, really, and there was no real “a ha!” foreshadowing of the villain. Next time Brown should just make the woman the star.
I was on a talk show hosted by Jerry Springer.
But…did he ask them to repeat the instructions to his room?
The thing is, I think that’s true? We’re outliers.
Having been a firsthand witness of the Twilight fanfic > NYT bestseller romance pipeline, it’s driven by people who read a book at 17 and want the same one at 35 with maybe more sex but that’s it.
Oooh I love a goof Stabilo.
When we moved offices, one of our staff was carefully checking pens to see if they wrote to decide if she should throw them away. I said, “Who cares? Do you like writing with it? No? Then toss it. Life is too short not to use the exact 50cent pen you like.”
I *only* use RSVPs. Why sacrifice?
Hah I love that this was the first comment; shoulda read them before quoting. Solidarity!
I maintain that this meme is RSVP erasure.
This is amazing though?
Currently! Kohn and Villareal (2019) have the hilarious finding that Kansas are adopting the Californian Vowel Shift but they refuse to believe that they are doing that because Californians are cool and they, as Kansans, know that Kansans are not cool.
Every field!!!!
Hello would you care to know what we know about the sociophonetics of Kansas? It’s very funny.
Anybody got a good citation on the increase in the use of “of” in prepositional phrases? “Large of a”, “off of a” etc.? AFIAF.
Yeah, I mean I think I’ve taught this as being more or less phonemic! colonizing before a final Slavic nasal
(I’m leaving that typo because text to speech is great. “Glottalizing” and “Syllabic”)
44 SW ohio white middle class dialect upbringing and I’ve always had a glottal stop in those words.
When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.
My niece is in the <$30,000 category. She used some of her hard earned money to pay for an LLM app to help her write a simple résumé of her serving jobs. It was riddled with errors, including major ones (dates of employment). When I told her what to change, she didn’t know how to edit it.
See the thing is, the ask if USian is disambiguating something misses the point of its use entirely. Very few if any people are claiming that others are confused.
People are doing A Language(tm). The word signals a particular stance about US relations with the global south. That’s all.
Actually, what I see in your replies is mostly “we find US Americans’ use of ‘Americans’ annoying, and so we found a term that annoys them back.”
The word is working. And because it’s successful, people have adopted in certain discourse communities. Fin.
This is really common in this kind of discourse—a party claims that the language change is to accomplish something other than what it is aiming for. Then they alone get to be the arbiters of “it doesn’t work.” Well yeah, the word isn’t supposed to change US imperialism. It’s used to take a stance.
It’s a demonym change in service of social justice. But i now see that OP is happy to concede that one of the main functions of “USian” is to piss people like OP off. It’s actually OP who is interpreting it as being about social justice—it’s a word that is signaling a stance.
You aren’t “generating a discourse”; you’re trolling in bad faith. I answered the content of your post as well.
“Dudes complaining about language change” is the bulk of what I teach and research, so you are fully in my lane. The history of it is taking “I’m better than *those* people” stances.
Two posts by Joshua Foust, one a pinned post advertising a co-authored book which claims to explain how to do public relations when people dissent, and the second taking offense at the term, USian and asking for other examples of demonyms forced in the name of social justice.
This is a hilarious juxtaposition. Is chapter one “how to preemptively pick a fight about something that doesn’t matter and then claim everybody else isn’t engaging?”
And, yes. Most recently and most WEIRDly Aotearoa. But it’s happened to lots of non WEIRD countries also.
The black and white cover of Still Life by Louise Penny displayed on a black Kindle.
Still Life by Louise Penny. A good introduction to this world. Sometimes harder to follow because lots of characters and names are introduced and their specific concerns (eg Philippe) are not resolved until the end. But the mystery is satisfying & the characterization is solid. #booksof2026 #booksky
The black-and-white cover of the book club for troublesome women by Marie Bostwick displayed on a black Kindle.
The Book Club for Troublesome Women by Marie Bostwick. A tour de force of well developed female characters and excellent attention to the matters if the era. I am especially appreciative that the author didn’t force unrealistic happy endings; the story seemed very real. #booksof2026
My break so far:
Non divers: “What do you do if you see a shark??? 😱”
Divers: “You stay very still and hope it comes closer, duh.”
🦈🦈🦈
My absolute favorite date was a student whose LLM wrote in a reflection response said that they “spoke two languages at home” with no further information. I commented back “if you’re not sure which two, ask me I’m a linguist. I can help!”
A Gen AI and higher ed issue that we are just not grappling with yet is that *I* can see AI writing relatively easily because I've seen 17 years of not-AI undergraduate writing. My grad students who are learning to be higher ed instructors don't have that tool in order to learn.
Teaching about Dutch colonialism today:
“They say old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can’t say. People just liked it better that way.”
At least a few undergrad students out of 150 laughed, people. The kids are all right.
