Random linguistic observation #137: in American English, depending on the tone, expression and posture with which it’s delivered, the word “yeah” can mean any of:
That is correct.
I approve.
I don’t care.
I am skeptical.
I wasn’t listening.
I agree to your proposal.
I require additional information.
I support you in this undertaking.
I didn’t tell you because I thought it was obvious.
I recognise the truth of your words, but fail to see their relevance.
I am a sapient jug of fruit punch.
We often look back at the early adopters of now-ubiquitous technologies and think: wow, we sure were silly to be so skeptical of something we now couldn’t live without.
It’s tempting to look around at today’s emerging technologies and wonder: what soon-to-be-indispensable conveniences will we ourselves be mocked for dismissing as impractical fads?
Rather than looking to the future, however, I often find myself peering further into the past, applying the question to technologies that are so omnipresent it doesn’t usually occur to us that there must have been early adopters at all.
Like, what must it have been like to be one of the first people to wear hats? What did the early-adopter glitches for the concept of putting things on your head look like?
I’m…
When you love a magnetic man, you cannot be anything but soft.
The Short Poems Series by Royla Asghar (via poems-of-madness)
acrid - pungent; irritating to the eyes/nose adversary - opponent blithe - casual, unworried cacophonous - noisy, unpleasant sound contrite - remorseful crepuscule - twilight edacious - devouring; consuming enigma - puzzle fallacy - misbelief; misconception forlorn - sad; dejected haphazard - random; unplanned incongruous - out of place mordant - biting; cutting; sardonic ostentatious - pretentious; designed to impress penitent - regret petulant - bad-tempered prelude - introduction resilient - recover quickly riposte - clever response stringent - strict
1. Last year the doctor told me that this kind of sadness is inherited. That they have discovered that sometimes it skips a generation. That the darkness inside me did not grow from nowhere it came from somewhere. I thought to myself, that there is a reason why I have always thought my heart was an attic where I hid pieces of myself. Pieces no one ever wanted. 2. The first boy I ever chose to show this sadness to decided to take it from my attic heart and planted it inside my soul instead. It was easy for him. My soul was a garden I showed him too soon. And he decided that meant he was allowed to take anything he wanted to. 3. Every man who has dared to love me since, has stared at this dark ivy covered soul like it is a haunted house, and I have never tried to explain the thing I have always known. Because men do not have to learn how to open their own selves and lock themselves up again. They are taught to be themselves and the world will accept them better that way. We are taught to break our bodies to be loved. We are taught to confuse sex and love. 4. I knew a girl whose father left her and she took all of her love for him and ate it to comfort herself. People joked how she lived in the kitchen. No one saw her tears when she ate. 5. A friend once told me that she locked herself inside the closet when her parents fought because her father beat her mother and she wished herself into the wood, just so she knew what it was like to be an inanimate object that couldn’t hear or feel anything. 6. My mother told me, that it is the way of the world for girls to grow into women by locking secrets inside themselves. Till now I still imagine every woman I have ever met as a big beautiful house. Full of secret rooms, hiding places, once filled with innocent laughter and joy. Now slightly sad and forgotten because of all those lost places inside them full of secrets.
Nikita Gill, The House Inside Her (via meanwhilepoetry)
Miles Morales Easter Eggs in Spider Man Homecoming