November 2008
“I love this song so much i want to take it behind a middle school and get it...”
– Wasted Efforts on “Werewolf Barmitzvah”
October 2008
Tumblr Strategy Part Two
shutupinternet:
Offensive content on Tumblr does not work. As “out there” as you think your sense of humor is, there is a great chance that it isn’t shared by your followers. 9/11 Jokes, Dead Baby Jokes, misogyny, racism or any content that secludes and demeans another group will do more harm than good.
Drifting through services, website and forums throughout the Internet it’s easy to pickup...
marykgo:
Tracy Morgan - Werewolf Bar Mitzvah
...
“a dog delivered me a letter from you. he scurried all the way from columbus; he...”
– I’m a pathological liar in chats.
Wikipedia: Anhedonia →
In psychology, anhedonia is an inability to experience pleasure from normally pleasurable life events such as eating, exercise, and social or sexual interaction.
On the episode of House I’m watching, the primary patient is anhedonic while the secondary plotline centers around someone named Joy. I feel so clever for catching that.
Life Without Buildings - The Leanover (Live)
and...
Here's that RS article about David Foster Wallace →
barthel:
It’s online now if you haven’t read it already. It’s very good.
Saved for later.
Photic Sneeze Reflex →
adam-weeks:
I, my son, my mother and a co-worker all suffer from this. Anyone else?
Well that explains it…
Forvo: the pronunciation guide. All the words in... →
sexartandpolitics:
“Users submit a word or a name they’d like to hear spoken in its native tongue. Don’t know how to say the name of the Brazilian dance xaxado? A local named Brazguy can help! And you, too, can help, by recording an mp3 and answering someone else’s query: As of this writing, there are 104,429 words in 190 languages, but only half of them have audio pronunciations. If you...
Wikipedia: Non-rigid designator →
In the philosophy of language and modal logic, a non-rigid designator (or flaccid designator) is a term that does not extensionally refer to the same object in all possible worlds. For example, consider the phrase “The 43rd president of the United States of America”: while the 43rd president of the United States is actually George W. Bush, if things had been different, it might have...
The BoingBoing Effect (clapclap version) →
barthel:
I have finally, finally updated the blog. It’s an explanation and expansion of the idea I wrote about on Idolator on Monday. The ending is rambling, but does sum up my ideas about the music biz right now fairly well.
For a nice dose of irony/meta/what-have-you, read “BoingBoing” as “Tumblr” in the second paragraph.
Ratatat - 17 Years
(via evanwalsh)
“The window broke.”
– This would be an example of an anticausative verb.
The Plan's the Thing: Deconstructing Futurate... →
A futurate is a sentence with no obvious means of future reference, which nonetheless conveys that a future-oriented eventuality is planned, scheduled, or otherwise determined. The sentences in (1) and (2) are examples of futurates. The (a) examples, which discuss a plannable event (a baseball game), are far more acceptable than the (b) examples, which refer to a presumably unplannable event...
Language Log: Forget framing — it's hypnosis! →
At the web site of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (“A Voice for Private Physicians Since 1943″), there’s an unsigned “News of the Day” item dated October 25, 2008, under the title “Oratory — or hypnotic induction?”. This article’s disturbing message is indicated by the rhetorical questions in its opening sentences:
Is Barack Obama...
Watchyooniverse:
Wow. This is a synchronized video of the three presidential debates and it makes both candidates look like robots.
“You really have to pay attention to words”.
aja:
Synchronized Presidential Debating Will Make You Jaded Again - Urlesque
(via three50eight)
Prefuse 73 - “The End Of Biters -...
'I Would Make A Bad President,' Obama Says In Huge... →
jessicachu:
xstevemurphy:
The blunder, captured by all major media outlets and broadcast live on CNN, occurred when the typically polished Obama fielded a question about his health care policy. Obama answered by saying he would give small business owners a tax credit to help them provide health care for their employees, and then added, “Now, I’m not completely certain that my plan would work...
Dear guys in the computer science lab,
Emailing each your CS367 assignment answers to each other for comparison is cheating. If you are going to cheat, please don’t conspire so loudly. Moreover, if you cheat, you are not allowed to complain about how you did “below the average” on the first exam.
Also, go fuck yourselves.
Cordially, Me
Tumbltape is awesome
misterpeace:
Tumbltape is awesome. Not everyone posts their favorite songs on their Tumblr, but for those of us who do, it doesn’t get any better than to have all your curent music as one handy playlist.
I recently discovered, however, that there’s no Edit feature. After realizing I had posted a song I didn’t want on my Tumblr, I contacted them and asked how I could remove it from my...
Echo & The Bunnymen - Clay
Most Echo &...
Linguistics
barthel:
Who started saying “throw [x] under the bus” first—reality show contestents or political journalists?
If you really want to know about the phrase: http://people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~nunberg/bus.html
“Actually, it’s my guess that somebody just pulled “throw under the bus” out of the ether one day, and other people picked it up and passed it along.”
...
“Beyonce is like the feds when it comes to promoting a conservative social...”
– excerpt from “If You Liked It Then You Shoulda Put A Ring On It: Beyonce and Socially Conservative Ideology” at postbourgie. (via abbyjean) (via perpetua)
Speaking of Beyonce, one thing that strikes me—a total non-expert—about her lyrics are her references to her name: “Because I...
Nickelback "Something In Your Mouth" →
perpetua:
As in, “You’d look so much cuter with something in your mouth.” This new Nickelback song is totally horrible, yet better than anything they’ve ever done before, and kinda fascinating in the way that it’s basically like an Electric Six song parodying stupid macho sexuality played totally straight and irony-free. (Via Maura)
Now, that is an awesome lyric.
Idolator: The BoingBoing Effect →
barthel:
The more academic version: audiences that flock to a site for its value-neutral content pick up a comorbid ideology and may or may not be actually backed up by the content being posted. This applies pretty strongly to Tumblr.
*stores away the phrase “comorbid ideology” for future use in grad school*
Also, the assessment of Tumblr is spot on. You join the site, follow some...
Language Log: Empathetic -in' →
Regarding where Obama tends to drop g’s:
In general, at least from this evidence, Senator Obama’s “dropped g’s” tend to occur in verb forms whose subjects are “ordinary Americans”, and whose meaning has something to do with the struggles of ordinary life.
Though this generalization pertains to only a small sample of Obama’s speech, it holds...
“We [linguists] believe that moral and aesthetic judgments about language should...”
– Mark Liberman
Gawker: Why David Foster Wallace Killed Himself →
britticisms:
“Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old...
Hostnames
courtneyj:
nosmo:
There’s a certain level of geeky connection that comes from naming a computer or a device. Some people seem to have naming schemes and consistent themes. I generally don’t. So Tumblr, what do you call your machines?
My Nano is Portia
My iPhone is Ophelia
And I just realized my MacBook was unnamed so it is hereby known as Cressida
All moons of Uranus.
My dell’s...
Meme - Weirdest thing that has been in your pocket...
shutupinternet:
Weirdest thing that’s been in my pocket? An orange.
This is the dumbest thing I have ever A pamphlet asking if I’m good enough to get into heaven.
Gimme My Guinea →