Language Log

"Millennial Diagnosed With Tragic Inability To Even", Babylon Bee 9/30/2016:

BOTHELL, WA—According to reports, local 22-year-old Chloe Kowalski’s world was torn apart Thursday morning, as the millennial barista was diagnosed with a rare disease that prevents her from having the ability to even. […]

“We’ve never seen a case quite like this before,” Dr. Elizabeth Eden told reporters gathered outside the clinic where Kowalski’s devastating diagnosis was handed down. “Many millennials will experience short bouts of not being able to even for several seconds, often triggered by a cute video of a cat or other small animal, or perhaps something online that’s ‘so relatable.'”

“But Kowalski—she just can’t even. She may never even again, at least not without assistance,” she said, shaking her head grimly, according to reporters.

Bubble tea company needs a better translator. pic.twitter.com/b1qNAHVJy2

— IM🍑HIM (@ziyatong) September 25, 2017

That's all, folks.

[h.t. Jichang Lulu]

Last year, we looked at various transcriptions of Trump's surname:

• "Trump translated" (8/31/16)
• "Transcription of 'Barack Obama', 'Hillary Clinton', and 'Donald Trump' in the Sinosphere" (10/2/16)
• "Chinese transcriptions of Donald Trump's surname" (11/23/16)

Now, in "Why China Won’t Pressure North Korea as Much as Trump Wants," New Yorker (Sept. 19, 2017), Evan Osnos writes:

Chinese intellectuals have taken to joking that “Telangpu”—which is one of the Chinese pronunciations of Trump’s name—sounds like “te meipu,” which means clueless or lacking a plan.

Better late than never:

Tweeted yesterday by the magazine Bon Appétit (which is apparently not the same as the restaurant management company):

The average millennial spends $96 billion on food. Here's how we break it down https://t.co/VoUan99Tbq pic.twitter.com/nYr7c2Yfan

— Bon Appétit (@bonappetit) September 18, 2017

I think it's becoming clear that alternating male and female personal names to individuate Atlantic tropical cyclones is not a good idea. These storms are becoming far too nasty. Calling a storm "Harvey" makes it sound like your friendly uncle who always comes over on the Fourth of July and flirts with your mom. And "Irma" sounds like a dancer that he once knew when he was in Berlin. Science tells us that these devastating meteorological events are probably going to get worse in coming years. (Ann Coulter says that as a potential cause of increased violence in hurricanes, climate change is less plausible than God's anger at Houston for having elected a lesbian mayor; but let's face it, Ann Coulter is a few bricks short of a full intellectual hod.) Hurricanes need uglier names. You can't get Miami to evacuate by telling people that "Irma" is coming.

Accordingly, next year the National Hurricane Center is planning to name tropical cyclonic storms and hurricanes after unpleasant diseases and medical conditions. Think about it. The state governor tells you a hurricane named Dracunculiasis is coming down on you, you're gonna start packing the station wagon. So as the season progresses, the following will be the named storms in 2018.

Since "Dognition" is now a Coursera MOOC as well as a company, it might be time to revisit an old, obscure and bitter joke — Garrison Cottrell, "Approaches to the Inverse Dogmatics Problem: Time for a Return to Localist Networks?", Connection Science 1993:

The innovative use of neural networks in the field of Dognitive Science has spurred the intense interest of the philosophers of Dognitive Science, the Dogmatists. The field of Dogmatics is devoted to making sense of the effect of neural networks on the conceptual underpinnings of Dognitive Science. Unfortunately, this flurry of effort has caused researchers in the rest of the fields of Dognitive Science to spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to make sense of the philosophers, otherwise known as the Inverse Dogmatics problem (Jordan, 1990). The problem seems to be that the philosophers have allowed themselves an excess of degrees of freedom in conceptual space, as it were, leaving the rest of us with an underconstrained optimization problem: should we bother listening to these folks, who may be somewhat more interesting than old Star Trek reruns, or should we try and get our work done?

The marvels of modern natural language processing:

Michael Glazer, who sent in the example, wonders whether Google Translate has overdosed on old Boris and Natasha segments from Rocky and Bullwinkle:

Everybody seems to enjoy sharing dialect maps displaying the boundaries of different American regionalisms. So it was only a matter of time before this enticing form of data visualization got satirized. On Twitter, Josh Cagan takes it in an absurdist direction.

https://twitter.com/joshacagan/status/885384919047782400

Do Victor's posts stoke your appetite for fine foods? Feast on these:

Created by Jonathan Smith:

David Crisp, "Gianforte: Congress’ newest misdemeanor", Last Best News 6/25/2017:

In case you were wondering whether Greg Gianforte will ever live down his body slam of a reporter for the Guardian, here’s a clue.

The Associated Press reported last week that Gianforte drew boos from the Republican side of the aisle during his brief speech following his swearing in as Montana’s representative in the U.S. House. The murmurs apparently had nothing to do with misdemeanor assault but came in response to Gianforte’s call to “drain the swamp” and for a bill denying pay to members of Congress if they fail to balance the budget.

But what’s really interesting is the C-SPAN transcript of Gianforte’s swearing in. The transcripts, according to a FAQ at the C-SPAN website, are drawn from the closed captioning that scrolls on the screen during sessions of Congress. The transcripts are included on the website to help visitors find the video they want, not to provide an accurate record of the actual speeches.

But they can nevertheless be revealing. On the tape, House Speaker Paul Ryan swears in Gianforte, then says, “Congratulations, you are now a member of the 115th Congress.” On the transcript, Ryan says, “Congratulations, you are now misdemeanor of the 115th Congress.”