Poetry Divided.

Jess. I love music, languages, and books. 25. She/her.

[syringavulgaris]

Mary Oliver, Worm Moon

[farmgf]

Linda Pastan, The Months

[beyondstyx]

[sparklypunk]

I Wanna Get Better // Bleachers

[words-and-coffee]

She had almost laughed, at how absurd it all was, how water made mud of the ground. How hearts made mud of the world.

Jenny Hubbard, And We Stay (via words-and-coffee)

[peachisty]

the best plot twist this 2017 is how we managed to survive it?? so congrats everyone reading this, we made it!!!

[samtwomiller-blog]

i started writing this book by going on a train ride in november 2013. for 15 days, i met people around the country & asked them to talk about themselves & - oh my god - people talk about themselves

i still watch the videos i took. one dude gave me 2 hours of anti-corporate, deep-internet alien theories, then pulled up at a bar & played ‘piano man’ by billy joel flawlessly. everybody sang.

a prospector in nevada (literally, he searches for gold for a living, but in a cool, modern way) bought me a “glass” of really nice scotch…then sat in a back alley w me for 15 minutes while i puked it up. evidently you’re not supposed to drink it like a shot.

i met a woman who used to take the train with her husband, but he’d been dead for a while so now she just took it when she had a sunday off & could remember it.

she loved her husband a lot. she said it hurt a lot when he died.

she said the day after he died was the first time she ever really looked at the paintings in her office. i told her i didn’t really like paintings, & she said she didn’t either, it was a metaphor

she said it was also the first day that she really looked at karen, a secretary in her office. she’d never felt any particular way about karen, but she realized that day that she loved karen

then she started saying ALL OF THESE NICE THINGS ABOUT KAREN. karen was nice, karen was thoughtful, karen was lovely, but afraid to seem like she wanted to be liked. karen had a lot of friends but was never boastful about it. karen was super good at cross-stitching or something. 

it was the kind of shit you could only care about if you really, really looked at karen. by the end of the conversation, i loved karen.

we were sitting in a nearly empty train compartment, somewhere between truckee, ca & elko, nevada. & she cracked the whole code for me.

she said the day she was really free, was the day she figured out how to look at the people around her & feel lucky for every single one of them

she said all you had to do was decide to be grateful, & all of a sudden, you’d start finding reasons to love everything around you.

so past that point, she loved everybody as though they were her late husband. she figured out how to love the sister she didn’t really talk to anymore, the ornery woman who took the tickets, the strangers on the train, me.

i’m not as good as her yet, but i’m working on it.

i’m so lucky to know the people i know. i’m so lucky for the chance to know the people i don’t. i’m so lucky to have gotten 26 years, i’m lucky that the odds say i get 26 more.

i’m so lucky to have paradise fears & the family that surrounds it. now i’m so lucky to have joanna & ben & harper collins. i’m so lucky to get to put out a book.

side note: it’s a fictional book. none of those stories made it in, exactly. the book’s about a profoundly sad kid & his profoundly confusing grandfather. it’s a mystery, & i’m very, very proud of it. more on that later.

anyway, thank you for reading, always. today, i’m grateful for this life. in particular, i’m grateful for this insanely beautiful cover from victo ngai.

[lipbalm9000]

Alice Isn’t Dead, a podcast about a lesbian trucker searching for her missing wife and encountering ghoulish mysteries along the way, is being adapted for print and tv

[catandkitty]

unpaid internships are oppressive and should be illegal i’m not being cute or funny they are 100% designed to reward people with greater access to resources and i’m fundamentally opposed to hiring for unpaid labor every internship should be required to provide at least a nominal stipend

[xshayarsha]

From the 1891 edition of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray.

[lingthusiasm]

Transcript Lingthusiasm Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency

This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 9: The bridge between words and sentences - Constituency. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 9 shownotes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics. I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: and I’m Gretchen McCulloch and today we’re talking about how small pieces of language combine into larger pieces, AKA constituency. But first Lauren, what have you been up to lately?

Lauren: I have been moving jobs which also involves moving countries, so it’s been a pretty busy month!

Gretchen: It literally involves moving around the world.

Lauren: Yes, so I have been migrating slowly westward for the last few years, working in Singapore and more recently in London and after two fabulous years of living in London we are now on the move back to Melbourne, Australia. I will be a David Myers Research Fellow at Latrobe University for the next three years, which I’m really excited about. It’s an opportunity to bring together all of the different languages of Nepal and the Tibetan work that I’ve been doing across phonetics and across grammar and across gesture, all into one big project.

Gretchen: That’s really cool!

Lauren: I’m really excited about that, really excited to be back in Melbourne and lots of exciting research planned. What about you, what have you been up to?

Gretchen: I’ve been doing a lot of writing on the book (what else is new?) and I’m headed to the LSA Summer Institute, AKA “Lingstitute”, where I’m going to be teaching a class on linguistics outreach, so that’s exciting, and, in less momentous but still very important news, I was recently in an NPR article about the linguistics of ‘doggo’.

Lauren: I just love it when internet language memes make it into the new cycle and a whole new audience who’ve never experienced the meme get it translated for them.

Gretchen: Yeah, and they’re like ‘wow this is so cool but also what is this?’ If you haven’t encountered the doggo meme it’s based around a couple of Facebook groups and a Twitter account and it’s just a general zeitgeist about a slightly different cute way of talking to and about your dogs. And I had a lot of fun with the reporter, we actually talked for like an hour and a half, so we’ll link to the article in the show notes. But there’s even more of that story that didn’t make it in and so we’ve actually made a Patreon bonus this month which is a further deep-dive into the linguistics of doggo, even more historical origins, even more context, Lauren is contributing Australia.

Lauren: Even more Australian intuitions about where doggo might come from, so that’s on our Patreon.

Gretchen: It is thanks to Lauren that I was able to identify the word “doggo” as probably coming from Australia, so thanks Lauren.

Lauren: Everyone should have an Australian on their consultant list.

Gretchen: I think so.

Lauren: We also have previous Patreon bonus episodes which include how to teach yourself even more linguistics, which also includes our top recommendations for books videos and further resources for self-study, and also how to sell your awesome linguistic skills to employers so if you are thinking of doing a linguistics degree, you’re currently doing one and thinking about your next job or you’re looking for a career change, that has got you covered.

Gretchen: All sides of the linguistic spectrum! and if you have ideas of things you’d like to hear from us on the podcast or on the bonus episodes you can also do that at Patreon. And speaking of this we reached our sustainability goal on Patreon last month, which means that we officially have the funds to keep paying our producer and our transcriber, who are often the same person, and our audio hosting fees, which is not the same person. And I thiiiink by the time we record the next month’s episode, we may have reached our next goal, based on current trends, which is Operation Get Gretchen A Better Microphone.

Lauren: I am so excited about this goal, this is definitely one of those ones where our Patreon supporters help everybody win.

Gretchen: Yeah everybody wins, you all get to hear me on a better microphone, I win, I’m tired of this too, so this might be the last episode where I sound kind of scratchy, hopefully!

Lauren: So that is www.patreon.com/lingthusiasm, or you can find the link at lingthusiasm.com, oh gosh please, yes please, help Gretchen get a better mic.

Gretchen: Stay tuned to the next episode where you find out if this was successful.

Lauren: It’s going to be a great reveal as soon as you say a single line.

Gretchen: Yeah, I think I do the intro next time too!

[Music]

Lauren: Constituency is the fancy way of saying that stuff is made up of other stuff, and so that’s how fancy word for this very basic fact that is the main force of today’s episode.

Keep reading

[allthingslinguistic]

We did get that new recorder! Here’s a picture of it.

[lostboycrow]

traveler

I am writing this from a Holiday Inn Express on the outskirts of Billings, Montana. The Largest city in the state (with I believe a little over one-hundred thousand residents) and currently home to my most pensive thoughts as I traverse farther and farther away from the perfect routines of my Sherman Oaks Apartment in Los Angeles, and deeper into the familiar expanse of rolling hills and open prairie. I am in Big Sky Country now - and I can’t think of a better place to be.       Despite the howling breeze that sings of storms to come there is a stillness to reflect. Gas stations and every fast-food combination stretch across the 90 headed east. Miles marked by exit signs and eight-hundred numbers for Jesus ; all is swallowed by the vastness of the land leaving only my imagination in tact. It is a dreamers sky. Full of unfinished stories and unwritten songs.  As I continue east in the afterglow of my most recent release, “The First Legend”, I am at home amongst the sea of tall grass and sage that whisper with adventure in the wind. It is the birthplace of songs like “Adolescent”, “HiyHiy”, “Start Something”, and a place that ‘Traveler’ has gathered much from as I embark on this next chapter. Sonically…Lyrically…visually… It’s good to be back. Back and moving forward on the road to somewhere.    It’s funny how things can come full circle, and I’ve found so often do in songwriting. In the fall of 2014 I recorded four songs with a great producer who would later become an even greater friend, Dylan William. Those songs ? “Good or Bad”, “Adolescent”, “HiyHiy” and “Nobody Knows”. The latter spending most of its life in buried inboxed and private SoundCloud links until I began to carve out “The First Legend”. As I finished songs like “Verona” and “Traveler” it became clear to me that the first part of this album was meant to capture the unwavering even defiant bravado of newly discovered feelings. And chasing them to whatever end. “Nobody Knows” was the perfect anthem for the middle of a good adventure. Still lost in the certainty (and sanctity) of romance and running happily toward the unknown.   The unknown. Where the real magic lives. From the palms of Ventura Blvd to the ancient pines of the Black Hills, it breathes life into art. As I’ve continued to write this album I’ve learned to embrace it. The Unknown. To offer up my story to the music and listen. What does the song want to be? I am just s conduit, a conductor of energy. I am a storyteller. A good song - a true song, will make itself known when we embrace the fact that it could take us somewhere we had. It planned to go. I think that’s the basis for the whole project and really been my method throughout. Not only in song but relationships as well.            It’s so strange when you can’t stay            In the same place catch me riding             Upon that wave when it breaks             I won’t wait I’ll keep trying to find my …Sound…Name…Purpose…Community… Sense of wonder…Self awareness…my place among the familiar and unfamiliar…won’t you join me in my travels ? “

[aimmyarrowshigh]

my linguistic fascination of the week has been the growing prominance of leaving “the” out of the phrase “over the top” in american english, seemingly without regional barriers. ex: “you pour the cheese sauce over top,” as heard at work in minneapolis, but also “there as a tarp over top of her,” as heard on a podcast out of seattle.

where did this come from? i don’t remember ever having heard it said that way before this year?

[codeman38]

Here’s a selection of Massachusetts towns invented by a neural network.

To add a bit of a twist this time, I’ve also thrown one real Massachusetts town into the list as well, because it was included in the neural network’s output. Can you identify it without cheating and checking Wikipedia?

Prankic

Fallhard

Mockton

Dudefirle

Belchertown

Brewstork

Wrang

Duster

Hanesbury

Bestharp

Newford

Chilmont

Handingham

Stewhaver

Bycket

Hollington

[animedads-deactivated20210108]

folks, I’m just gonna say it. I don’t think it rains for long enough periods of time. it rains hard, it sounds good, I’m comfortable inside, but within 5 minutes the jig is up. the dream is over. I think it should rain for longer periods of time than it presently does

[tamarrud]

Tarjimly

Tarjimly is a Messenger bot that connects you with refugees realtime to help translate for them.

if you’re seeking to help refugees and are able to assist and translate short messages (in English, Arabic, French, Farsi, Turkish Urdu, German, Pashto among others), this is for you. 

[tamarrud]

I have been using this for a while now and it’s amazing to realise how sparing literally a minute of your day can make a huge difference in someone else’s life. From someone messaging you “how do I tell the waiter I want chicken” to asking you to look at an immigration notice they’ve received and are not sure what it says. Again, amazing and heartwarming.

[teddaroski]

Flor @ Newport Music Hall.

October 27th, 2015.

Badlands Tour.