just-another-rachel @just-another-rachel - Tumblr Blog

Yall be careful!

"it's all fake looking ugly slop! Weird fingers! You can always tell!"

I need you to realize that literally none of these things are true, and that by continuing to believe them, you are making yourself gullible.

copperbooms

when did tumblr collectively decide not to use punctuation like when did this happen why is this a thing

rodimuss

it just looks so smooth I mean look at this sentence flow like a jungle river

prismatic-bell

ACTUALLY

This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.

Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:

ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff

Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.

In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style.

Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.

A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin.

Tumblr English should literally be treated as its own language, because it does not follow the rules of any form of formal written English, and yet it does have its own consistent internal rules. If you don’t think that’s cool as fuck then I don’t even know what to tell you.

sussexbound

i love this post

willowgrovecreates

This is super cool! Also idk if this has any relevance whatsoever but if you wanna have an argument inside one tag you cannot have commas in it so that’s a real existing constraint that has forced tumblrites to construct commaless sentences and perhaps this has helped in adopting the custom into posts as well ok I have no idea if this is what’s happened just I think it’s a reasonable assumption there might be a connection

sanerontheinside

^this.

The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just

pause in the middle of a sentence…

and let your voice

trail away

obaewankenope

look at all you precious brilliant nerds nerding about language you make me so fucking happy omg

language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesn’t remain the same unless it’s dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it

because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ‘tol’ and ‘smol’ in relation to ‘tall’ and ‘small’) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because there’s millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talking and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it

we’ve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system

and that’s fucking awesome okay

awesome

adora-korra

I love this so much and language is so great and I’ve noticed the lack of punctuation thing recently, even on twitter, and used it for like a specific kind of rhetorical effect. idk it’s so fun I fucking love linguistics and the evolution of language

elenorasweet

I also loved that the following one-word responses all sound drastically different out loud and showcase different reactions:

What?

What.

what

solitarelee

Oh hey! This is the post that caused me to write a thesis. Yall know this post is cited in like five different academic papers that I found while researching for it? @prismatic-bell is a username I see screenshots of in academia these days. P sure they’re in the tumblr book too. Wild.

headspace-hotel

i am kinda pissed about not being multilingual. WHYYYY DO WE HAVE TO HAVE A CRITICAL PERIOD FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING thats so cringe why am i already past the period of my life when language learning is most effective

nephilidae

Hey so I don’t usually comment on posts. But you mentioning this activated me like a sleeper agent, because even though I’ve now been out of the field for a few years, my doctorate is in psycholinguistics, and I was once a researcher. And my dissertation and much of my work was on spoken language acquisition, including in children.

And the one thing I would want you take away here is that there is no solid evidence for a critical period in human language learning. There is the theory that we have one, yes, but it is controversial, and the received view in my field, at least, is that there is no critical period in humans. It is certainly harder to learn a new language as an adult, but the mechanism isn’t physiological, and the distinction is important.

Some songbird species are believed to have a critical period. When these birds are very young, they are exposed to the songs of their conspecifics (or honestly even their population or immediate peers can have unique details to their songs, it’s wild). Anyway, the baby birds learn during this part of their development and then they mature to sing and pass those songs along as well. And if they don’t hear the songs to learn them in this specific period in their lives, they will never do so. They can’t. For reasons believed to be neurophysiological. This is what it means to have a critical period.

This is not believed to be the case in humans (yes, even the “feral children” case studies are controversial—that is a tangent I won’t bother with here). Rather, by adulthood, you’ve spent decades tuning your understanding of language to fit certain patterns of syntax and phonology. Any new language exposure you encounter must contend with that mountain of knowledge and expectation you’ve built for your other language. This is particularly true if you’re a monolingual for again, reasons I could write a whole other post about. But! There is nothing special here—you are not a baby bird, and it is not impossible for you to learn this new phonology (etc). You can do it. You need a lot of time, dedication, and importantly diverse exposure to the language, but you can do it. I hope that helps.

headspace-hotel

This is fascinating thank you, I didn't know the idea of a critical period was controversial and unsubstantiated that way. !!!

tenderrule34

Found this reddit post. This kinda makes me feel better. And it’s something I think about sometimes because I always feel like regardless of how hard I work on something I don’t get anywhere.

oldmanyellsatcloud

Nice summary. If you’re curious, the anon here is referring to studies over the last decade that have pointed to major impacts on pattern separation with depression, and how depression can have major impacts on nonsynaptic plasticity.

caelumrising

Psychology is amazing folks and more of it needs to be common knowledge

ceekari

Scientific explanation for why depression lies to you

headspace-hotel

BTW also when I was reading about autism genes i somehow got onto this database of genetic conditions which is how I found out that there is a condition where you are born without fingerprints

headspace-hotel

there is also a condition where you are allergic to cold temperatures

headspace-hotel

yall the range of human variation is absolutely wild, a lot of these genetic conditions are harmful or fatal (which is why we know about them) but there have to be like a billion random genetic variations that are largely innocuous that we Don't have diagnostic criteria for, I guess that would just be the full range of all human genetic possibilities, we are all just mutations ultimately.

But also like. Everybody is experiencing a completely novel iteration of being human. We act like it's the same and bodies are the same and there's a Standard way to be a human but there's Not we are all just awkwardly duct taped together basically.

So just think, there's this poor woman somewhere who's like "My feet go numb whenever I engage in vigorous exercise, what's up with that?" and she probably has an asshole doctor who is like No They Don't.

But actually she just has Feet Go Numb When You Exercise Condition. Which no one knows about yet. Because she's the only person that has it.

silvergryphonart

Speaking from experience, cold urticaria is a deeply stupid allergy. Doctors are getting better at believing it exists though

gay-jesus-probably

It's possible to be allergic to the moon. We know this, because of the twelve people that have walked on the moon, exactly one of them had a surprise allergic reaction to the moon dust as soon as he was exposed to it after his first moonwalk. We also have no fucking idea how common it is to be allergic to the moon, because the sample size is absurdly small, and we just. Haven't exposed enough people to the moon yet. Perhaps most of us are allergic to the moon, and we just don't know it yet. Maybe it was just that one guy.

Who knows! Certainly not us!

headspace-hotel

Moon allergy...

I wonder this sometime about rare animals. A lot of people are allergic to cats or dogs, because contact with those is common.

But what if I'm allergic to okapi, and I just don't know it because I've never touched an okapi?

squidong

Allergies are acquired, so you can’t be allergic to anything you haven’t been exposed to. Your immune system has to see it, be reactive enough to produce the “allergy” type of antibodies, and then you’re allergic the next time you’re exposed. So you’d have to touch two okapi.

headspace-hotel

New life goal: touch two okapi

sabertoothwalrus

yknow how the greener parts of apple skin are tan lines from where leaves and branches obscure the sun? I’m surprised I’ve never seen anyone utilize that for printmaking

sabertoothwalrus

finally got an apple that shows this effect well

sabertoothwalrus

OH THIS IS EXCELLENT THANK YOU

swedishjazz

inthefallofasparrow

beardedmrbean

theman

I GOT A FUCKING RAISE THE POTATO WORKED WTF

tattooedzombigirl

This potato works. Every. Fucking. Time.

imanutcase-10

Then bring me luck

thirddeadlysin

the day after I posted this last time I was notified that I was selected for a really cool mentorship gig and got an unrelated glowing review at work

sonarthebat

Apparently Tumblr blessings actually work, so shooting my shot.

storybookprincess

exactly a year ago today, i walked into my local animal shelter with one goal in mind. being a self-confessed sucker, i had gone to the shelter’s website earlier in the week & identified the cat who had been there the longest — a black adult kitty whose stay was 3 1/2 months & counting — and i was not leaving without her

jiji, as i would come to name her, was finishing up ringworm treatment & was thus in isolation away from the other shelter cats. the staff informed me that while she was safe to be adopted out, their shelter policy was that she had to be the last cat i saw that day to avoid any risk of spreading the infection. i assured them that that wasn’t an issue for me — i was here for one cat and one cat only

they repeatedly asked if i was sure about this — i really didn’t at least want to look at any other cats?? my answer didn’t change. yes, i’m sure. i’m here for jiji. no one else.

and so after a bit of paperwork and some wrangling to get her into the cat carrier, jiji came home with me

i quickly learned, however, that the reason jiji had been at the shelter for over three months was that she was, to put it mildly, an asshole. she had been a stray for some time, given birth to kittens very young, and generally had had a rough go of it, so her disposition was understandable, but the fact remained. she was an asshole. upon our first meeting in the shelter, she grabbed onto my foot and started bunny kicking my shoe with gusto. she stole my food as i was eating it. she scratched me so frequently that a coworker noticed & expressed concern.

however, up until this point, i’ve left out a critical detail of the story. a year ago today, possessed by some sort of temporary cat-induced mania, i didn’t adopt one cat. i adopted two.

on the same day, from a totally different shelter, i also adopted a tiny little one eyed kitten named ramona. how i ended up with ramona is another story for another day — the important part is that she was very young and very small, and she joined my hardened stray in my postage stamp sized apartment approximately one hour later

i did my absolute best to follow the standard protocol for introducing cats to each other. i tried to keep ramona in my bedroom and jiji in the living room and to introduce them slowly

but the separation lasted about two days, however, because jiji, my asshole former street cat who viewed my limbs as her favorite scratching posts, took one look at this scruffy little one eyed thing, asked “is anyone going to be this kitten’s mom?”

and didn’t wait for an answer

greatmountainfloofsquatch

Tell them both I love them.

the-forest-library

kill the imposter syndrome in your head because not only is there someone out there doing it worse than you, they’re also using chat gpt to do it

what-even-is-thiss

“Cats don’t actually love you”

A cat is a small creature in the middle of the food chain that is fully aware that you are a very large thing that could stomp its head in at any moment and yet it chooses to rest its tiny little head on your leg for a nap and spreads out on the floor near you exposing its belly and its most sensitive organs. It brings dead mice and bugs to you to share food.

Don’t you get it? This tiny thing trusts you. It wants to help you too. It licks your leg thinking that it’s helping. It kneads on you to find comfort. It shares its body warmth with you in the cold and gives you your space in the heat. It hisses at other mammals it sees outside including other cats in an effort to protect its family.

Cats love you so so much. But they will keep trying to eat plastic.

escuerzoresucitado

leofwines-deactivated20250831

raccoonmilf

I know this is a joke but like, yeah. It is. I promise you.

See, I had graduated early from highschool and then got my associates in Zoology. But then, from ages 18-23, I was medicated with antipsychotics and (for those last two years) a deadly combo of sedatives due to misdiagnosis after misdiagnosis, and then a psychiatrist who was legitimately on drugs and just writing random shit that almost killed me.

Anyway, needless to say, my brain turned to mush and stopped working, and it took me 6 years to get some sort of bachelors degree (in fashion??) and I graduated at the bottom of my class.

And then I got properly diagnosed (the “psychosis” was just narcolepsy) and got off all those meds. And I was so afraid my brain was permanently fucked. And it is, cause of the narcolepsy part, but the narcolepsy doesn’t kill the parts of your brain where your smarts are.

But I went back to school. Got another bachelors studying sustainable tourism. Turns out my smarts hadn’t gone anywhere when my brain turned to mush. I graduated with a 3.98 GPA.

Now I’m getting my masters in biology studying the intersection of tourism and the conservation of the critically endangered Cozumel raccoon. And doing well. 🤷🏻‍♀️

1thousandminus7

Your brain is not a muscle in the literal sense, but it is a muscle in the sense that the more you use it, the better developed it becomes. Not using it might make its usefulness dip for a bit, but that doesn't mean it's gone forever. You might have to work your way back up, start with easier exercises (puzzles, creative exercises, critical thinking questions) before jumping back into the stuff you used to do, but like a couch to 5k slowly ramp up the difficulty and you'll get there in the end. No one's brains are useless, you just gotta meet 'em where they're at.

hollyevolving

It's building and reinforcing synapses instead of muscle cells, but yes, exactly.

Also gotta make sure you get enough vitamin B12, to keep the myelin sheaths that protect your neurons & synapses in good shape.

what-even-is-thiss

I know that the reason that young entrepreneurs and young artists are often celebrated is to show kids and young adults that they’re not too young to start following their dreams but I think it often has the unintended side effect of making you go “Man, I haven’t even started an international business yet. I’m a failure.” when you’re like twelve.