a lot of prescriptive linguists (the fancy term for snotty english majors, faux-talgic baby boomers, racist gatekeepers, and other subdivisions of the language police) like to shame The Youth for lazy capitalization and punctuation, but the interesting thing is that most young ppl i know who build their lives around texting are actually pretty damn deliberate about their language choices
“u” and “you” show degrees of closeness w/ your partner; using punctuation at the end of a reply text indicates tone; capitalizing certain words in the middle of the sentence is for Emphasis; sometimes we’re sloppy and sometimes we make mistakes but there is a real grammar to internet communication because by “grammar” i mean a “code of language rules that society agrees upon in order to create meaning”, and that is the opposite of being lazy
(tumblr absolutely has such a grammar and you can tell when someone’s not fluent)
the old guard is passionately defending a pure linguistic territory that we don’t want anymore, it’s not useful enough for 21st century relationships dependent on the subtleties of texts
this is actually really important, since text based communication lacks the ability to indicate meaning through tonal variations, it’s really so smart and impressive that we’re modifying our written grammar to show emphasis and differences in meanings and tone
The proclamation rings from the tall Ivory walls, “You can’t have meaning where we find none!” the huddled masses reply with a soft chant of “smh”
We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.
Carl Sagan
(via nasahistory)
(via nasahistory)
…often women aren’t allowed to be characters in history, they have to be stereotypes. Cleopatra was a poet and a philosopher, she was incredibly good at maths; she wasn’t that much of a looker. But when we think of her, we think: big breasted seductress bathing in milk. Often, even when women have made their mark and they are remembered by history, we are offered a fantasy version of their lives.
Dr. Bettany Hughes on women’s absence from history, and the ways historians need to actively put women back into the narrative. (via thepoliticalnotebook)
