Problems into Platinum @problemsintoplatinum - Tumblr Blog

all academic writing is either addison rae reveals the meaning (see fig. 1) or a genre I call the "troubling industrial complex" where you identify something that engages hegemonic power in a way that is ambiguous and incoherent and instead of arriving at a coherent reading of it via the work of your thinking and writing (you know like the job that academic writing is supposed to do) you make a really emphatic but essentially contentless claim that it "troubles" that power structure. and often you start reading academic writing and you're like is this addison rae reveals the meaning or is it troubling industrial complex and they're like I don't understand and you pull out a diagram explaining what is addison rae reveals the meaning and what is troubling industrial complex and they laugh and say "it's good academic writing sir" so you read it and it's troubling industrial complex.

fig 1.

latedawnsandearlysunsets

jame7t

Suckfuckers United: new game, $80, unplayable on release, cash shop has $20 skins

Plumboy 21XX: “retro” indie game. creator just posted something really dire on Twitter & you’re not sure if you want to keep your preorder even though they promise it’s gonna help find episodes 1 and 5 of the animated series

Gug: game released in 1999. You remember it being good. It’s not.

Dark Cave growing beneath your house’s foundations without you knowing and for years the semi-sentient ungrowth has learned to hunger for you, specifically, and it’s almost time: self explanatory

spiderbasil

settings

> my oyster

> configure my oyster

> release my pearl

apocryphics

lydia davis

snakesonacartesianplane

In the same vein:

"The simultaneous borrowing of French and Latin words led to a highly distinctive feature of modern English vocabulary: sets of three items, all expressing the same fundamental notion but differing slightly in meaning or style, e.g., kingly, royal, regal; rise, mount, ascend; ask, question, interrogate; fast, firm, secure; holy, sacred, consecrated. The Old English word (the first in each triplet) is the most colloquial, the French (the second) is more literary, and the Latin word (the last) more learned." (Howard Jackson and Etienne Zé Amvela, "Words, Meaning and Vocabulary: An Introduction to Modern English Lexicology." Continuum, 2000)

via ThoughtCo

Though I like how John McWhorter phrases it better:

But language tends not to do what we want it to. The die was cast: English had thousands of new words competing with native English words for the same things. One result was triplets allowing us to express ideas with varying degrees of formality. Help is English, aid is French, assist is Latin. Or, kingly is English, royal is French, regal is Latin – note how one imagines posture improving with each level: kingly sounds almost mocking, regal is straight-backed like a throne, royal is somewhere in the middle, a worthy but fallible monarch.

from "English is not normal"

metamorphesque

why do all the words sound heavier in my native language?

— @metamorphesque, Yoojin Grace Wuertz (Mother Tongue), Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky (by Garth Greenwell), Jhumpa Lahiri (Translating Myself and Others), @lifeinpoetry