off-brand

💗 hey this is just a sideblog!! 💗 she/her 💗 links will be added soon

[mesogeios]

Can you recommend some essays about speech or language?

Here are a few essays and articles about language use (off the top of my head). I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do!

How Words Fail by Cathy Park Hong

Politics and the English Language by George Orwell

Of Strangeness That Wakes Us by Ilya Kaminsky

The Meanings of a Word by Gloria Naylor

Mother Tongue by Yoojin Grace Wuertz

Borrowing a Simile by Walt Whitman

Word Order by Lewis H. Lapham

Four Essays by Mikhail Bakhtin

Nature: Chapter IV Language by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Strange Persistence of First Languages by Julie Sedivy

What Do You Lose When You Lose Your Language? by Joshua Fishman

[rederiswrites]

There really really ought to be a book about how the staple crops of different civilizations shape and influence those civilizations, and I really want to read it.

[alexseanchai]

Salt: A World History by Mark Kurlansky and A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage (three are alcohol, three have caffeine) are not quite that, but may still be of interest?

[rederiswrites]

I read Salt back in the day and it's so so good, second the rec. I have heard of 6 Glasses and not read it but I am sure I would probably love it. Gotta see if the library has it. Thank you!

[pandorasquillandquotes]

Gonna throw Empire of Cotton by Sven Beckert in the ring here! You'll never see the modern world the same way again.

[vaspider]

A Short History Of The World According To Sheep by Sally Coulthard blew my mind. So many things are tied to wool and sheep and weaving and so many words and phrases are tied to wool, people have no idea.

Example words which come from textiles/weaving, if not specifically wool (go look them up!): subtle, shoddy, tabby, Brazil, rocket, twit, warped, going batty, on tenterhooks, text...

[foxofninetales]

I'll throw in a rec for Pickled, Potted, and Canned by Sue Shephard - a very interesting look at food preservation and how the availability of different types of food preservation shaped cultures and cuisines.

[electronsprotonscroutons]

Sweetness and Power is this but for the topic of sugar

[magneticdeclination]

The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past might also be up your alley. It's about "forgotten" foods and staples. They talk about different types of wheat, sauces, veggies, etc and a little about the cultures from whence they come

[doctornerdington]

Also: Much Depends on Dinner by Margaret Visser. One of my favourite books.

[bitchwhoyoukiddin]

DO I HAVE A SERIES FOR YOU. University of California Press has a gift for you and it is a 80+ book series on food studies. There are even some that are open access (legally free), but the rest are in libraries.

I also highly recommend Frostbite by Nicola Twilley. It’s about the impact refrigeration has had/is having on food preservation and culture, globally. It was one of my favorite books of this last year.

[calystarose]

Also, The Rice Theory of Culture https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1172&context=orpc By Thomas Talhelm

[karis-the-fangirl]

Consider the Fork isn’t about food itself exactly but all about cooking technology and how it changed how and what we eat

[lustingfood]

Caramelised Onion Cheese Toastie (x)

[medusa-in-chains]

radical feminist watchlist

A list of 116 films compiled on Letterboxd, including I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), Citizen Ruth (1996), An Unmarried Woman (1978), Reds (1981)

My radical feminist watchlist, if anyone is interested :)

[typewriter-worries]

my favorite reads of 2025

The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age

Extremely Online and Incredibly Tedious

Stop Calling My Daughter Pretty

Taylor Swift Is The 21st Century's Most Disorienting Pop Star

No Good Art Comes From Greed

AirPods Are a Tragedy

Only Fads: A Culture (and Economy) of Labubu

As a mother to teen daughters, I'm not that concerned about Sabrina Carpenter's influence (...but I am about Gracie Abrams)

Taylor Swift is not the English teacher she wants you to think she is

The Secret Society of Lightning Strike Survivors

Less TikTok, More Screaming

The era of QAnon capitalism

Puritanism took over online fandom — and then came for the rest of the internet

Scapegoating the Algorithm

You Can’t Post Your Way Out of Fascism

How Wellness and Beauty Influencers Can Be Part of an Alt-Right Pipeline for Teen Girls

Ruins in Reverse

The “Disney adult” industrial complex

A lot of y'all aren't woke, just assholes

Comedy’s Safest Slur

ChatGPT Shaming Is Making Our Writing So Much Worse

AI Slop Recipes Are Taking Over the Internet — And Thanksgiving Dinner

Is The Love Song Dying?

Hot subpoena summer

The Old Guard That Never Was (And Why That’s a Good Thing)

[rollercoasterwords]

do you have any favorite poems? Or poets

YES!!!!! here is a long list of some favorite poems:

we have not long to love - tennessee williams

dream song 28: snow line - john berryman

a poem about the hounds and the hares - lisel mueller

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond - e.e. cummings

[i carry your heart with me (i carry it in] - e.e. cummings

wishbone - richard siken

scheherazade - richard siken

dirty valentine - richard siken

the torn-up road - richard siken

you are jeff - richard siken

the crowds cheered as gloom galloped away - matthea harvey

outbreaks - kitchen mckeown

if morning never comes - kallie falandays

i want to tell you yes - kallie falandays

another elegy - jericho brown

regarding the rottgen pieta - elle emerson

the sensual world - louise glück

hesitate to call - louise glück

the edge - louise glück

gretel in darkness - louise glück

messengers - louise glück

snowdrops - louise glück

telemachus' guilt - louise glück

midnight - louise glück

siren - louise glück

october - louise glück

the silver lily - louise glück

persephone the wanderer - louise glück

the pond - louise glück

beg - franny choi

making of - franny choi

perchance to dream - franny choi

august peaches - joan tierney

you think you are something less real than you are - wendy xu

the double-bed dream gallows - richard brautigan

a boat - richard brautigan

molly brodak - molly brodak

what the dragon said: a love story - catherynne m. valente

the tenor of your yes - mary ruefle

in the desert - stephen crane

i try to sing along but i get it all wrong - frog k

two mangoes - kc cramm

from a german war primer - bertolt brecht

to be read in the morning and at night - bertolt brecht

saint judas - james wright

goodtime jesus - james tate

the crown of laurel - ursula k. leguin

the old catcher considers the failing of his knees - devin kelly

wild geese - mary oliver

a brother named gethsemane - natalie diaz

& some fave books of poetry: poems 1962-2012 by louise glück, when my brother was an aztec by natalie diaz, grit by silas denver melvin, soft science by franny choi, in the pines by alice notley, crush by richard siken, and war of the foxes by richard siken.

[tervehaz]

[lostverdania-moving]

Imagine two men, rubbing their penises together, sexually. But- get this- they're both straight. Do you like it?

[l0litas-deactivated20130114]

[kn1fed1ck-deactivated20250704]

i wish i was guy so i could like beat my best friend up and then make out with him like a faggot

[xx00xq]

[epithalamia]

[masterslavecommunity]

[devouredmelancholy]

[amerlcanteenager]

[anthropoetics]

a compilation of videos very worth watching! 

the pink triangles: the story of the gay holocaust

nawal el saadawi on feminism, fiction and the illusion of democracy

life beyond: alien life, deep time, and our place in cosmic history 

life beyond II: the museum of alien life

stephen axford: how fungi changed my view of the world

man spends 30 years turning degraded land into massive forest 

the prisoner of azkaban - why john williams’ score is the best in the series

video essay: the world of wong kar wai

how much is enough?

[anthropoetics]

what it means to be black in brasil

vozes da floresta | ailton krenak

the beauty of wong kar-wai

a japanese ufo? - the utsuro-bune incident in 1803

the ghosts of hokusai

“confidence” is a cult

why are wong kar-wai films so dreamy?

ambiguous horror of the wailing

[anthropoetics]

how the rich ate south korea

the stages of whale decompostion

what happens when you put your head in a particle accelerator?

how brazil’s music hid protest inside harmony?

hayao miyazaki: a importância do vazio

how nope tricks your ears

serj tankian eats his last meal

birds do not sing in caves

the horrors of becoming lost

[anthropoetics]

peking opera: china’s greatest gender-fluid spectacle

understanding snufkin: a moomins essay

the appalachian rainforest

in search of the greenman

two alaska towns: one survived. one disappeared

when a director understands sound

the life of an old school japanese cafe owner

the cotswolds most haunted stately homes

when the audience is tricked by the director

every “final destination” death, explained by the producer

[eleftheria444]

Happy pride month!!

This is my cinephile’s guide to lgbt cinema. I hope you can discover great films from here <3

My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Destiny (1997)

Young Soul Rebels (1991)

Maurice (1987)

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Beautiful Thing (1996)

Victim (1961)

Cruising (1980)

The Boys In The Band (1970)

Brokeback Mountain (2005)

An Early Frost (1985)

Another Country (1984)

That Certain Summer (1972)

Totally F***ed Up (1993)

The Celluloid Closet (1995)

Rope (1948)

Mädchen In Uniform (1931)

Winter Kept Us Warm (1965)

Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971)

The Children’s Hour (1961)

Making Love (1982)

Different From The Others (1919)

A Very Natural Thing (1974)

A Taste Of Honey (1961)

The Leather Boys (1964)

Brother To Brother (2004)