subnatural aid @subnatural-aid - Tumblr Blog

Unpaid internships are today's indentured servitude.

#opinion #internships #wage slavery but with 'experience in the field'

SYLLOGISM

word of the day

June 5, 2026

#word of the day #link #wikipedia #history #philosophy #syllogism #deductive logic

Today’s old-fashioned English pet peeve: from whence is redundant. Whence already means from+where. “Go back whence you came!” is correct.

elucubrare

true, but the use is attested to at least 1592. a little bit of pleonasm never hurt anyone.

tuulikki

To Shakespeare, no less:

Let them be whipp'd through every market town till they come to Berwick, from whence they came. (Henry VI, Part 2, 1592)

And the King James Version (1611) of the Bible is a garbage translation of Biblical languages, but is exceptionally stylish English:

And the Lord said unto Satan, From whence comest thou? And Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it. (Job 2:2)

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. (Psalm 121)

This is like how splitting infinitives is technically incorrect but “to boldly go where no man has gone before” objectively kicks ass.

datasoong47

#I mean wasn't “splitting infinitives” just smth a guy Made Up bc he thought english should act like latin and greek and stuff

Yeah, pretty much. The infinitive in Greek and Latin is a single word, and so cannot be divided, so he felt that English should work the same way

But I'd argue that things like "to boldly go" aren't actually "split infinitives" at all, because I'd argue that "go" by itself is the full infinitive, "to" is simply a particle which is frequently placed before the infinitive. But it's not actually part of the infinitive, as can be seen in constructions like "I must go" where there's no "to". So, to claim that "to" and the verb shouldn't be separated is, in my mind, as silly as if one were to make the same claim about putting adjectives between an article and its noun, calling "the tall man" a "split nominative", just because "the man" would be translated as a single word in Latin

#reblog #rhetoric #history #grammar #infinitives #shakespeare #english language

SINCERE + FOLK ETYMOLOGY

word of the day (two for one day)

May 21, 2026

#word of the day #wikipedia #link #history #wiktionary #sincere #folk etymology #revisionism #etymology

IRONY

word of the day

April 30, 2026

#word of the day #link #wikipedia #wiktionary #rhetoric #youtube #ironic #irony #alanis morissette #is it ironic that no one can agree on what irony is #this language gives me a headache which is why ive dedicated my life to it #Youtube

BLOG

word of the day

April 27, 2026

blog: n. Short for weblog. A meandering, blatantly uninteresting online diary that gives the author the illusion that people are interested

#word of the day #link #wikipedia #wiktionary #urban dictionary #meta #blog

DIGRESS

word of the day

April 21, 2026

to speak or write about something that is different from the main subject of attention or course of argument… See the full definition

#word of the day #link #merriam webster #wikipedia #wiktionary #digress #is it the destination or the journey?#or the adhd?

PARSIMONY

(and the Law thereof)

word of the day

April 10, 2026

Definition of Law of Parsimony The Law of Parsimony, also called Occam’s Razor, tells us that the easiest explanation is often the best one.

#word of the day #wikipedia #link #wiktionary #parsimony #law of parsimony #occam's razor #philosophy #be frugal with your wild theorizing

elumish

When establishing a betrayal plotline (i.e., some person or group of people betrays the main character) one of the main things needed to make it work is to establish an emotional attachment to the people betraying them first.

I'm reading a book right now where the main character's nation/government (including close coworkers + the father of her best friend) are most likely betraying her, but despite the fact that she is a high(ish)-ranking member of the military and the daughter of a high-ranking member of the government, there has been virtually no point where she shows any sort of emotional loyalty to them. She may need to turn her loyalty over to other people, etc....

And it doesn't seem to matter emotionally.

The people who she's realizing might be betraying her already don't treat her extremely well, and she doesn't seem particularly fond of them. Her loyalty is by virtue of birth, not patriotism, by most indications.

This isn't a problem unique to this book--the people committing the betrayal often have tells right from the beginning of a book, and it often ruins any sort of emotional arc. The reader already doesn't like them, and sometimes the main character doesn't either, so who cares.

If the betrayal is going to matter emotionally, there has to be enough of an emotional attachment to the people to make the loss of them matter. It should be a surprise, and it should hurt.

#foreshadowing #tension #creative writing #writing theory #laying groundwork #betrayal #emotional payoff #reblog