cellarspider
Rambles Far Too Much
Hi. Been a while. They/Them. Working on a postdoc, so I might be here, or might be too braindead to tumbl.
34107 posts
Don't wanna be here? Send us removal request.
Last Seen Blogs
Text
another stroll (they met a cute cat this time)
182 notes
·
View notes
Text
When people get a little too gung-ho about-
wait. cancel post. gung-ho cannot be English. where did that phrase come from? China?
ok, yes. gōnghé, which is…an abbreviation for “industrial cooperative”? Like it was just a term for a worker-run organization? A specific U.S. marine stationed in China interpreted it as a motivational slogan about teamwork, and as a commander he got his whole battalion using it, and other U.S. marines found those guys so exhausting that it migrated into English slang with the meaning “overly enthusiastic”.
That’s…wild. What was I talking about?
33K notes
·
View notes
Note
Thoughts on Universal Grammar? I come from a very Chomskyian background in my undergrad where UG was touted as the One True Theory, but curious was the Official Linguistics Blog of Tumblr has to say
i side-eye
#my friends have seen me rage about a UG book that I read out of the spirit of “well let's give them a chance”#“I'm an amateur and this is a general audiences book”#“it's older but let's see if they had any compelling arguments”#BIGGEST. MISTAKE.#I returned it to the library with little slips of paper tucked between some of the pages#so that anyone who might check it out later would know how factually wrong the book was#because I might be an amateur in linguistics but I'm a geneticist with a neuroscience background#and OH BOY THE BOOK WAS NOT GOOD ON THOSE THINGS#it's “The Atoms of Language” if anyone wants to read it and find out what made me mad
71 notes
·
View notes
Video
40K notes
·
View notes
Text
Art by David Schleinkofer for Across A Billion Years by Robert Silverberg but never used (circa late 70s)
422 notes
·
View notes
Text
The world is really pretty at night,
and—it's all so—silent.
Twitter | Ko-Fi | Patreon
3K notes
·
View notes
Text
I got this ad on Tumblr and uhhhhh
That's a fucking seagull
I have to assume this is a mistake and they actually meant to use the dove of peace rather than the seabird of petty theft, but it's not an inapt symbol for the type of Christian-ish doctrine that represents God as a jumped-up Santa Claus
1K notes
·
View notes
Text
we just keep naming bugs like this
14K notes
·
View notes
Text
Ballpoint pen and pencil. Part 2 of illustrations "Whispers in the walls"
55 notes
·
View notes
Text
Out-of-Context "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea" Quotes to Put on Shirts:
-> "To be frank, I think that we're seeing things here that God wished to hide from man's eyes."
-> “Terrible avenger, a perfect archangel of hatred.”
-> “I declare it is easy to lead a snail's life.”
-> “I will not be eaten without protest!”
-> “The human mind enjoys impressive visions of unearthly creatures.”
-> “This precious carnivore, hunted and tracked by fishermen, is becoming extremely rare."
269 notes
·
View notes