jesse_the_k | Entries tagged with rhetoric

I’m seeing more progress pride flags flying in my neighborhood. In the poll, I’m using “queer” in the broadest possible sense: any (sexual or gender) (orientation or preference). The poll is anonymous—even I can’t see who voted how.

( Progress Pride Flag )

Poll #32560 Pride Flag Messaging

This poll is anonymous.
Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 70

When you see this flag flying on an unknown residence, what meaning do you take away?

View Answers

Someone queer lives there
36 (51.4%)

Someone who lives there has a queer family member
20 (28.6%)

Someone lives there and wishes to show support for queer folks, without any indication of the resident’s queer status
57 (81.4%)

Someone thinks the flag is pretty
2 (2.9%)

Someone wants to say, “let’s queer the universe, motherfuckers, cause the status quo is woeful.”
29 (41.4%)

See my answer in comments
5 (7.1%)

Ticky?

View Answers

is tacky
8 (17.8%)

is here
42 (93.3%)

Per an email from OTW a couple weeks back, I learned that they’re updating the Terms of Service (TOS) for Archive of our Own (AO3).

They finally address requests for including warnings for Hate Speech, Racism, Slavery at some length, but they’ve hidden the discussion deep in a draft.

tl;dr — No new warnings. Only a handful of people have commented. They’re soliciting comments until 17 November 2024. The rest of this post is linked excerpts from OTW’s reasoning against warnings, and from folks who've commented.

( 900 words )

I write to urge the use of Usonian to mean "someone who lives in the USA."

The noun Usonia is formed from the first letters of the United States Of North America. Add the "-ian" suffix meaning "from this place" to make a very useful adjective.

Many writers of my acquaintance recognize this issue, and use USian to describe USA residents. Unfortunately, USian is hard to say. Usonian rolls readily off the tongue.

Why bother? This point was brought home to me while chatting in an English-language practice conversation with a visitor from Chile. He was dumbstruck—how dare these estadounidense claim ownership over all of America?

America, of course, begins way up in Nunavut, Canada, North America and extends all the way south to the Diego Ramírez islands in Chile, South America. Usonian is a more precise way to describe people from the United States.

You may have heard the word before: Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Usonian house as an affordable architecture that responded to the width and openness of the US suburban. The first Wright Usonian house is just a mile from me.. While Wright is often credited with coining the term, the credit is actually due to Scottish immigrant James Duff Law, who wrote in 1903:

We of the United States, in justice to Canadians and Mexicans, have no right to use the title "Americans" when referring to matters pertaining exclusively to ourselves. A much more euphonious word is "Usonia," and as it represents in a similar way the "United States of Northern Independent America " (a most important qualifying and accurately descriptive adjective being added) I am inclined to think it makes a perfect word and a dignified name to designate our land, our people and our nation — "Usonia," "Usonian" and "Usonians" sounding equally well. It has also to us Scots the added merit of making a good rhyme to Caledonia, and thus knitting more closely together both Usonians and Caledonians.

Here and There in Two Hemispheres

What say you! American? USian? Usonian? Terran?

...how would Christian practices be orientalized? @spacevinci provides a snappy demonstration. Their persona is deeply involved in Jewish ritual, channeling the supremely self-confident attitude that power enables.

My family is Jewish; I was raised in a strictly atheist household. I never attended temple or Sabbath dinners. @spacevinci's disinterest in the timing, pronunciation, or meaning of Christian observances resonates with my experience growing up -- Christians assumed I'd know all about their prayers, holidays, and traditions.

Three minutes, without captions
https://www.tiktok.com/@spacevinci/video/7169050739803688235

https://linktr.ee/spacevinci is Miriam Reid

Their Critter Conglomerate filk explores the tender communion that makes us human -- with jazzy folk music. Stream on Soundcloud

I am not a person, I’m 3 possums in a coat
And we like to claim it’s GUCCI, but we got it from a goat
Say it’s vintage or it’s avant-garde, whatever boats your float
I don’t care, I’m not a person, I’m 3 possums in a coat

Full lyrics

Or listen right here:

( sweet silly music )

Internet Archive Backup

http://web.archive.org/web/20221123133250/https://www.tiktok.com/@spacevinci/video/7169050739803688235

Another great column from s.e.smith, who goes deep into the flock of starlings metaphor. The topic is the surge of people newly disabled by post-acute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, better known as Long Covid. While disability elders can see this as a chance to mentor the newbies, it’s also a chance for us to see the world anew:

( 340 words )

https://catapult.co/stories/se-smith-year-in-review-long-covid-disability-chronic-illness

Go peruse R. K. Duncan's excellent essay about anti-fat bias in SFF, both prose and visual, with lovely comments! Absolute worth reading in its entirety. In addition to its primary focus, I was struck by how elegantly Duncan wove content notes into the beginning.

This is going to be a Jeremiad, not a hopeful essay. If you want the good news about fat protagonists in SFF, look at this lovely piece from Meg Elison. If you need education about fatphobia and the ways it harms fat people mentally and physically, try these episodes of Maintenance Phase on anti-fat bias, eating disorders, and the obesity epidemic.

If you are fat, stay if you need righteous anger, but please don’t make yourself read this if you need something soft right now. This essay is for thin SFF fans and creators.

https://www.tor.com/2022/10/25/sffs-big-fat-problem/

I read fail_fandomanon when I wish to exercise my brain but not enough to actually think or write or put pieces together. (Unlike Twitter, the political discussion is firmly gated to other threads. Unlike TikTok, it's blessedly static text.)

This totally silly and non-wanky thread explores the vital topic of fabric* in fandom:

https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/524762.html?thread=3175894490#cmt3175894490

Keep expanding for all the delicious comments.

* Where fabric is actually autocarrot for fanfic, but that doesn't stop the great discussion.

Do you have an online self-soother?

Seeing in the Dark: A secular sermon on race, grief, accountability, and change.

A brilliant essay by Breai Mason-Campbell is the centerpiece of the first issue of new political magazine Pipe Wrench.

( 200 word excerpt )

The sparkling minds behind Lingthusiasm are doing a virtual live show on April 24, 2021. You get access by being a patron of Lingthusiasm at any level. It’s a monthly Patreon charge, so you can spend as little as $3 for one month. Their topic is backchanneling. The live show gives listeners the chance to talk back to them and each other while they get enthusiastic about how people show that they’re paying attention, such as “uh huh” and nods and 👍 and ASL's Oh I See.

It’s part of LingFest, a fringe-festival-like program of independently organized online linguistics events for the week of April 24 to May 2. See the LingFest website for details on other events.

https://lingcomm.org/lingfest/

The American Dialectic Society nominates more than 50 items for "Words of the Year." I was particularly delighted by ( these five nominees )

This month's Lingthusiasm podcast addresses "Writing as a Technology." Reading and writing are so tied in to early education that I was surprised to learn that the "real" object of linguistic study is language as it is spoken or signed.

The Lingthusiasts (GretchenAMcC and superlingo) have collaborated with Crash Course https://thecrashcourse.com for a 16-episode introduction called, surprisingly enough

Crash Course Linguistics

Sixteen episodes on YouTube with excellent captions

The pace of instruction is very fast — in addition to host Taylor Behnke’s excellent speaking voice, there are copious graphics as well as an animated section called "Thought Bubble."

The episode Computational Linguistics delivers a great smack-down of all those foolish hearing computer researchers proposing gloves that "translate" between ASL and spoken language, beginning here:

direct link

( YouTube embed )

ETA even with a transcript I got it wrong! pupillate means “cry like a peacock” glaucitate means “cry like a whelp”

----- original post follows

Word Matters is four Merriam-Webster lexicographers talking about English language. Catnip, right?

Episode 8 is "A Collection of Obscure Words That Are Pretty Much Useless"

Sometimes, a word falls out of use through no fault of its own. Other times, the blame lands squarely on the word's shoulders.

It's a beautifully moderated conversation between Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski, collaborating with New England Public Media.

Stream show, with full transcript

https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-matters-podcast/episode-8-useless-obscure-words

This essay at TIME magazine captures the "hlepiness" dynamic so well.

I've Been Paralyzed Since I Was 3. Here's Why Kindness Toward Disabled People Is More Complicated Than You Think

It’s 3400 words, and it’s worth every second spent reading. I want to transplant it into the brains of so many people.

( 260 pungent words )

https://time.com/5881597/disability-kindness/

I use a power wheelchair for community mobility. When difference is readily visible, it means coping with people who want me to be their good deed for the day. (I have non-evident impairments as well and that comes with its own frustrations.)

This essay explains why that's so hard! It’s an excerpt from her book, Sitting Pretty: The View From My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body due out next week.

hardback
DRM-free audiobook
ebook

The Black Language Podcast

by blacklangpod

https://blacklangpod.buzzsprout.com

Creator Anansa Benbow opens my brain to the huge varieties of black language, especially AAVE/Ebonics. The first episode declares: no grammar police and pinged my disability pride when she said, "I stutter. Imma gone make this podcast" and carried on. The second explores the pragmatic function of aight so boom in storytelling. The third episode takes direct aim at the reality that Black creativity drives US culture, including language change, and yet White people valorize White AAVE speakers while excoriating Black AAVE speakers.

She compares the experiences of Rachel Jeantel, star prosecution witness in the George Zimmerman trial whose testimony was simply not understood by white jurors, with Bhad Bhabie, a white rapper who gained fame by disrespecting her mother on Dr Phil:

Language appropriation of Black people is not simply language borrowing, unfortunately, it comes with the erasure of Black people. Again, the push to promote stan/twitter/internet language, instead of recognizing that the language used on social media comes from Black people is an example of that erasure.

Sorry to report no transcripts for this podcast.

Accentricity

by accentricitypod

https://www.accentricity-podcast.com

Sociolinguist Sadie Ryan explores linguistic ideology as applied to Scots. In her words:

This is a podcast about people and how they talk. About accents, and why we care about them. About languages, and how they refuse to be controlled. About why there is no such thing as bad grammar, no language is more important than any other language, and every voice is valid.

I learned that Scots language is scorned as uneducated by many English power brokers. A pair of episodes document kids just learning to talk and how they speak one year later.

I had to listen to the first episodes several times to get accustomed to her accent — sadly, no transcripts. Excellent bedtime listening.

Learned about both of these from the Huge List of Linguistics Podcasts hosted by Lauren Gawne aka superlinguo:

https://www.superlinguo.com/post/158448074588/linguistics-and-language-podcasts

Long-Term by idiopathicsmile

Completely adorkable Good Omens gen fic, POV of a very queer, very UU minister interviewing a couple she calls Bowtie and Sunglasses. Only canon you need to know is that the couple getting married are a demon and an angel who’ve been flirting for 6000 years.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/19703515

Second of several posts about the SDS@OSU Virtual Conference held the first weekend in April.

Communicating and Framing Diagnosis and Difference

Rachel Larrowe, a DePaul University MA student, presented a fascinating paper on "BPD, CPTSD, and Identity: the Discursive Construction of Diagnostic Possibilities." She deployed a very close reading of how the two conditions are defined which raised the following issues:

There’s significant overlap in diagnostic criteria for Borderline Personality Disorder and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. C-PTSD was considered and excluded from the most recent US diagnostic/billing/research tool, the DSM-5, while it is part of the rest-of-the-world tool ICD-10.
People DXed with BPD often have terrible, traumatic childhoods.
Quoting her presentation: ‌What if so-called disordered personalities are the psychological consequences of childhood abuse? What if trauma doesn’t always look how the medical establishment and the media have taught us to expect? How can a disorder be post-traumatic if a child never experiences a time pre-trauma?
There’s gender trouble here: CPTSD is more commonly DXed in men, BPD in women. CPTSD is partly defined by events people experience, while BPD is defined by how people are. Some of the behaviors unique to BPD, such as ‌Individuals with borderline personality disorder make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment overlap with how women are defined as needy and "too much."
What if we could accommodate these needs? Her example: if I’m doubting my place in a relationship, could it be okay for me to text someone "I’m afraid you’re hating me right now" and they could reply with "🧡👍 all clear" and we’d all be good?

ETA: 23 Apr 2020, correct researcher's name and degree

Thanks to

ysobel for the concept, I'm declaring Dreamwidth bankruptcy. It's not that I haven't read your posts, it's just that I'm too wiped to respond.

( Bella is still alive and warty )

I listened to the first two Lord Peter Wimsey books on audio. The narrators were busy demonstrating their grasp of a range of accents, which makes for A+ soporific companionship when I'm too tired to read.

( psych drugs stink )

I have absorbed almost all of

LulaVampiro's blog. ( Excellent -- two pieces worth reading right now )

Are you interested in modifying language in service of social justice? I sure am -- see my rhetoric tag.

The Conscious Style Guide has a monthly roundup newsletter with fascinating links. Here are my favorite links from this month’s. Full newsletter archive and signup on their site.

genderiyya.xyz

Wiki Gender is a collaborative feminist platform that works on producing knowledge on gender, feminism, and women-related issues in Arabic language; and curating and storing other Arabic productions in these fields, be it written or multimedia content. Additionally, we translate into Arabic selections of texts and academic papers covering the topics of gender and feminism. Lastly, we discuss and boldly experiment with Arabic language terms and grammar in order to create and promote a more gender inclusive and accessible modern Arabic.

The trends that may end the “y’all” vs “you guys” debate

Black author Jason Parham addresses "What We Get Wrong About ‘People of Color’"

The phrase turns a plural into a singular, an action that betrays all the ways we have come to understand contemporary identity.

Press release: Identifying and removing bias from web corpuses to prevent machines learning our biases

Actual Research: Automatically Neutralizing Subjective Bias in Text by Pryzant, Diehl Martinez Dass,Kurohashi, Jurafsky, Yang

I'm thrilled that Markdown simplifies formatting your DW posts has proved popular and helpful. I didn't explore all Markdown's features to keep it short. I regret that now. I'm drafting a "Markdown: the sequel" post with the remaining features. In a better timeline, I would have written "Markdown: the novel," integrating the sequel stuff in the first post. I want to maximize reference utility for DW users in the next decade. Three ways to do this occur to me, and I bet you have a better idea.

( Three possible plans and a poll )

Current Mood: confused
Current Location: Next to sasha_feather on the couch
Current Music: 60hz hum

Captain Awkward is an advice-and-discussion site where I’ve learned a lot.

A recent post: “Rule Explainer: Why We Don’t Diagnose People Through The Internet,” does an outstanding job of demonstrating why armchair diagnosis is a Bad Idea.

( details in here )

All this, plus the Parable of the Prodigal Son! This is why so many abusers get away with half-ass apologies!

https://captainawkward.com/2018/07/19/rule-explainer-why-we-dont-diagnose-people-through-the-internet/

....saved by Metafilter.
( If you need 38 belly laughs open the cut )

My therapy is good, it's not quite so damn hot, I'm reading tons of stuff, I did too many things yesterday and have done fuck-all today, and so it goes.

Toby is a multi-media artist. They dance, they make exquisite textiles, and they write. I loved their story in Accessing the Future.¹, print and ebook

Their SF story “Morphic Resonance” has busy public transit, lovely assistive tech, found family, and dreamy meditations on body modification.

( excerpt )

Although I trend SF, I also enjoyed Toby’s fantasy story, “The Way You Say Goodnight,” which I read in Transcendent 2, The Year’s Best Transgender Speculative Fiction² or via Kindle.

( excerpt )

Toby also writes non-fiction, and I loved their gentle and deep interrogation of the questions visibly disabled people too often field

( last excerpt )

( footnotes )

accessibility [37]
advocacy [17]
apple [13]
assistive tech [122]
- audio/image description [17]
- captions [25]
- wheelchairs [65]
audio [27]
beadwork [16]
bodymind & impairment [273]
capitalism [19]
classism [37]
climate [24]
clouds-clouds-clouds [16]
comics [38]
computer hardware [22]
cons
- wiscon [65]
covid-19 [24]
cultural appropriation [12]
design [13]
disability
- culture [118]
- history [20]
- news [17]
- policing [15]
- pride [51]
- rights [35]
- studies [36]
disablism [66]
doctors [25]
dogs [57]
dreamwidth [18]
family [62]
fandom [27]
- due south [12]
- sga [11]
- sherlock holmes [21]
fanfic [41]
feminism [13]
food [50]
friday five [17]
geek [21]
gender [13]
gluten-free [41]
help wanted [19]
history [16]
home in msn [51]
how to computer [24]
how to dreamwidth [26]
human rights [26]
inaccessible content [30]
infrastructure [37]
interdependence [56]
ios [19]
joyful things [320]
language [24]
lazyweb [88]
living online [130]
media [76]
meme [66]
memoir [172]
meta [55]
metaphor [27]
moan-whine-rant [70]
moving with purpose [31]
music [36]
myguy [71]
photo [93]
pod* [29]
poetry [11]
political rhetoric [16]
politics [18]
poll [13]
ponderments [56]
power [27]
privilege [13]
queer [12]
racism [62]
radio [20]
rave [70]
reading [91]
rec [51]
review [41]
rhetoric [26]
science fiction fantasy [32]
science is fun! [18]
sex [15]
sexism [13]
signal boost [252]
snowbirds [23]
software [17]
swimming [11]
tea [12]
technology [13]
trans* [16]
transit [13]
travel [67]
video [86]
visibility [13]
white privilege [14]
writing [12]

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Inside the Little Plastic Castle

adventures with Jesse the K

Entries tagged with rhetoric

poll: Residential Pride Flags--what do they mean to you?

No Racism/Slavery Warnings in AO3's TOS update #endOTWracism

USONIAN forever!

boost: If Judaism Was the Religious Majority by @spacevinci

boost: Listening to Long Covid’s Lessons and Teachers—Today and Tomorrow

boost: SFF’s Big Fat Problem

boost: Delightful Riffing at fail_fandomanon

boost: Seeing in the Dark on Pipe Wrench

Seeing in the Dark: A secular sermon on race, grief, accountability, and change.

Live Lingthusiasm on Backchanneling

Linguistic Fandom

Crash Course Linguistics

ETA glaucitate means "cry like a whelp"

Rebekah Taussig’s Insights on Managing Non-Disabled People’s Need to Help

I've Been Paralyzed Since I Was 3. Here's Why Kindness Toward Disabled People Is More Complicated Than You Think

raves: 2 linguistics podcasts and 1 GO fic

The Black Language Podcast

Accentricity

Long-Term by idiopathicsmile

Online Con Report 2: SDS@OSU -- BPD vs CPTSD

Communicating and Framing Diagnosis and Difference

Rambling thoughts are rambling

boost: Modifying Language for Social Justice

HELP! Managing Another Markdown How-To Post

Capt Awkward Challenges Our Redemption-Narrative Addiction

Another Non-Post

Impressed by Toby MacNutt

About Me

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