Pun of the week: From George Takei, on Bluesky: This left me in stitches. [image or embed] — George Takei (@georgetakei.bsky.social) September 21, 2024 at 10:00 AM Replies includes "I'm torn", "This is the kind of knit-wit I enjoy reading", "It's a race… dlvr.it/TDcrcc

Political deepfakes: Daysia Tolentino, "Trump shares fake photo of Harris with Diddy in now-deleted Truth Social post", NBC News 9/20/2024: Amid the recent news of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ arrest, former President Donald Trump reposted a doctored image… dlvr.it/TDZgTr

International Talk Like a Pirate Day, again…: We missed it this year, but the New York Times didn't , and posted a link to Laurel MacKenzie's "Pirate Lingo 101": Past Talk Like a Pirate Day posts: "R!", 11/03/2003 "Type like a pirate day", 9/9/2004… dlvr.it/TDXpvR

Trump all-caps theories: From Lane Greene on Bluesky (link): I've been trying for a while to figure out a theory of Trump's capitalisation. It's mostly nouns like Country, but not always positive ones. I never did nail down the pattern. But I've got a… dlvr.it/TDXpsh

Can Google AI count?: Apparently not. Given this recent tweet, in which Google AI Overview explains that "October 21 is not a Libra, as the Libra zodiac sign is from September 23 to October 22", I thought I'd try for myself. The result had a different… dlvr.it/TDWXC9

Cultural literacy at The Guardian: There has been an enormous turbulence over the simultaneous explosion of Hezbollah pagers (some call them walkie-talkies) at 3:30 PM on September 17, 2024, involving as it does actors in regions as far flung as the… dlvr.it/TDRVfP

What did Rich Lowry say?: Yesterday, Alejandra Caraballo tweeted: The editor in chief of the National Review just said the N word in regards to Haitians and Megyn Kelly ignores it. Andy McCarthy responded: Ridiculous. @richlowry (not tagged here, natch)… dlvr.it/TDL9pp

“Weak point; holler louder!”: My debate analysis for The Economist included these charts: : …with the commentary The final charts show the average pitches of the two candidates and their variability within each speaking turn (which can be a rough proxy… dlvr.it/TDGzL2

Trump as brass: score: Following up on "Trump as brass", I was curious about the relationship between the spoken pitch track and the score that Jase used to generate the trombone sounds. Here's his Xeet again, showing his score and playing his trombone… dlvr.it/TDGNRF

"We Await Silent Tristero's Empire": Abbie VanSickle and Philip Kaleta, "Conservative German Princess Says She Hosted Justice Alito at Her Castle", NYT 9/9/2024: An eccentric German princess who evolved from a 1980s punk style icon to a conservative… dlvr.it/TDDMLH

French Horn Church: Mark Swofford stumbled upon this church in Taipei: The Chinese part of the sign reads: fàguó hào língliáng táng 法國號靈糧堂 "French Horn Hall of Spiritual Food" This may be a branch of Táiběi língliáng táng 台北靈糧堂, which calls… dlvr.it/TDCxkG

"Bone Apple Tea": The "ABOUT COMMUNITY" description from r/BoneAppleTea: There's also r/BoneAppleTypo, and the #boneappletea Discord channel. [h/t M.O.S.T.] dlvr.it/TDC3rr

Quantifying the debate: Following up on "Type-token plots in The Economist" (9/6/2024), I lost some sleep last night doing some analyses of the presidential debate, which I shared with writers at The Economist to be published as "An alternative look at… dlvr.it/TD7H4Y

"Word salad": According to Wikipedia, word salad is a "confused or unintelligible mixture of seemingly random words and phrases", most often used to describe a symptom of a neurological or mental disorder. The name schizophasia is used in particular to… dlvr.it/TD1Ztv

Type-token plots in The Economist: From "The Harris-Trump debate will be a clash of speaking styles", The Economist 9/6/2024: The Economist's article covers some other easily-quantifiable aspects of political rhetoric, but this afternoon I'll focus on… dlvr.it/TCwVTz

Where weave is from: In a comment on "Trump's rhetorical 'weave'", J.R. Brewer wrote: This thread has had the side effect of causing me to learn (at least taking wiktionary at face value and not digging deeper into other reference sources) that the… dlvr.it/TCvnmt

German linguist Möllendorff and the earliest recordings of Chinese: "UCSB Library Acquires Rare Chinese Language Audio Cylinder Recordings", UCSB Library Newsletter (September, 2024) The UC Santa Barbara Library is excited to announce the recent… dlvr.it/TCtYSh