Sublime

An inspiration engine for ideas

AllPeopleCollectionsArticlesAudioBooksFilesHighlightsImagesLinksNotesTextTweetsVideosSocial

Alejandro also takes the “Mouths.” Mouths are people who talk so much in their professional and personal lives that they’ve forgotten how to be quiet even during a road test: hairstylists, bartenders, customer service reps, insurance salespeople, business recruiters, event planners, corporate fundraisers, backpackers who tell you how they’ve done B

Katherine Heiny • Games and Rituals

Early Internet users used alternate spelling or “leetspeak” to bypass word filters in chat rooms, image boards, online games and forums. But algorithmic content moderation systems are more pervasive on the modern Internet, and often end up silencing marginalized communities and important discussions.

Taylor Lorenz • Access Denied

Clarity of language is clarity of thought—and the expression of a certain sentiment, no matter how innocuous it seems, can change your learning, your thinking, your mindset, your mood, your whole outlook. As W. H. Auden told an interviewer, Webster Schott, in a 1970 conversation, “Language is the mother, not the handmaiden of thought; words will te

Maria Konnikova • The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win

I think back to a quote from the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein that I came across in college: “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”

Brené Brown • Atlas of the Heart: Mapping Meaningful Connection and the Language of Human Experience

Unlike examples from hyperbolic articles, where almost every word is replaced with slang (r u gna b on teh interwebz l8r?), only 2.4 percent of the actual teens’ messages were slang. (I’m reminded of the surveys of perception versus reality for other kinds of youth behavior, where everyone thinks everyone else is drinking more and having more sex t

Gretchen McCulloch • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

“Cyberspace,” Goldhaber explains, “offers a much more effective means of continuing and completing attention transactions, as well as opening up more possibilities to almost everyone. Whoever you are, however you express yourself, you can now have a crack at the global audience.”

L. M. Sacasas • Your Attention Is Not a Resource

Jane Straus’s Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation

Emmy J. Favilla • A World Without "Whom"

An even more extreme example comes in how English speakers smooth out “I do not know.” We’ve been saying it out loud for generations, long enough for it to have worn down to “I don’t know,” “I dunno,” and even a simple triplet “uh-huh-uh” or “mm-hm-mm” to the low-high-low melody of “I dunno.” “I dunno” is easier to articulate than “I do not know,”

Gretchen McCulloch • Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language

She never managed to match her speech to the cadence of theirs, never quite correctly timed a joke or a laugh.

Emilia Hart • Weyward: Discover the unique, original and unforgettable fiction debut novel of 2023 – a BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club Pick and #2 Times Bestseller