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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 29m

Ah, yes, the common emotion of "hole".

(I didn't realize this is the official Unicode designation for the hole emoji 🕳️)

Screenshot from a spreadsheet reading:

"🕳️ | 2014 | Smileys & Emotion | emotion | hole"

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 2h

Adams talked about the beauty of New York the way a grindset bro on Instagram talks about his newest scam businesses, filtered through the brain of an old man. One of the big appeals of New York to him was 9/11 could only happen there.

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 2h

I was living in California when everyone loved Hillbilly Elegy. I was going crazy, because I'm his age, I'm more Appalachian than him, I also went to fancy schools, and people would tell me about what Vance was saying but not listen to my rebuttals. One of my few Cassandra moments.

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 3h

It helps explain the current state of American politics. There are many "smart" people who want to be told they're stupid by people who don't know anything besides how to be mean. So many people want to find, or even create, a bully to suck up to! I don't get it, but it's been 25+ years of this.

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 3h

This was the era of "The Weakest Link", and for some reason a ton of Americans wanted to be bullied by mean, petty, posh British people.

It's such an unpleasant read that I don't even have anything specific to say; it's just a "okay, I get it, I suck, let's move on". But so many people loved it!

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 3h

I recently re-read (part of) Lynne Truss's "Eats, Shoots, & Leaves" because I want to try to do a retrospective on books that influenced our relationship with #grammar.

I hadn't realized just how annoyingly people wrote in the early 2000s, especially Brits writing for an American audience.

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 3h

People aren't mad that a woman has a business. They're mad, like you said, that her business is sloppy lying in a field where lies aren't supposed to be tolerated. Similarly, we're not mad at Jenkins for being a woman with an opinion,we're mad that her opinion is divorced from reality!

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 3h

And, as always, people like Jenkins ignore the actual issues to cast the thing people are complaining about in the most neutral light. It's the "you can't seriously be mad at a Supreme Court justice for having friends?" dismissal of Clarence Thomas's corruption all over again forever.

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 5h

"Red hat = crown of thorns" is one of the craziest attempts at allegory I've ever heard. I know I'm naive and all, but I don't understand how everyone is isn't like "ok man, I'm not going to listen to you anymore" when Thiel won't stop talking about the antichrist and how it's everyone except him.

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 21h

I don't have anything coherent to add, just anger.

We've all known this all along, but a ceasefire means they get to pretend that the fog of war has just been lifted. "Oh, this is terrible! Obviously I wouldn't have supported this, if only I'd known!" As with Iraq, as with Vietnam, as always...

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 22h

The jasmine milk tea marble cake turned out too bitter, and I put too much rosewater into the blackberry rosewater marble cake. Still trying to figure out how to do a Sichuan peppercorn and citrus cake effectively...

This concludes Gabe's Cooking Corner for the day.

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 22h

Been doing some experimental cooking today, and I'm happy to report that the crispy curry lentil snacks have been a hit. Finally a satisfying way to eat regular brown lentils. Mushroom+onion, ras el hanout, chaat masala, and ranch all worked too.

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 1d

I do find it very suspicious that Mamdani has yet to state his opposition to the Babadook. How can we be mad at Hakeem Jeffries for not endorsing Mamdani until Mamdani addresses the Babdook situation??

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 1d

I'm really glad they started doing the video broadcast. I love seeing the production process.

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 2d

I greatly preferred Mike Honda, and he wasn't great or anything.

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 2d

At SDSU, one of the main campus walks had tons of "all activities on this walk must be pre-approved by administration" signs up, as a reminder of the new rules they passed to stifle protest. Yet there were two non-SDSU guys walking up to everyone going by to recruit them to their church.👍the regents

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 3d

I was arguing yesterday with someone who insisted that ICE wasn't a problem; I was falling for media lies and he's never been harassed by them.

He kept trying to convince me that the real problem with the government was that he had to pay $6k in property taxes on a $400k house. You nailed it.

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 3d

I fell in love with this sentence as soon as I read it. It's such a good example of a sentence that is syntactically ambiguous but pragmatically unambiguous. I know what it means, but I also get to pretend it means that this person has never met their newborn. What a delight!

Text that says "I now know a few books I'll be buying for my newborn that I'd never heard of before."

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Reposted by Prescriptivism Must Die!

Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 4d

"Ethnicity" is something that happens to other people

Saul Staniforth @saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 4d

"You go to some places like Handsworth.. parts of Dewsbury, Bradford, Leicester, where you see.. a single ethnicity.. we don't think that's healthy thing"

Kevin Hollinrake is MP for Thirsk and Malton, which according to the 2021 census is 98% white.

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Reposted by Prescriptivism Must Die!

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 6d

It's true. The Oxford comma, often said to eliminate ambiguity, can sometimes increase it. It’s not a panacea, and writers and editors shouldn’t treat it as one
stancarey.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/t...

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 4d

Interesting hypothesis, definitely makes sense. I wonder if it's also that, as a radio host, you have to internally censor to make sure you're not accidentally saying/doing anything inappropriate. That persistent overcarefulness in language feels similar to prescriptivism; I could see it extending.

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Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 5d

In this case, though, "these people" was a writer at the New York Times. It may be comforting to think that such beliefs stem from ignorance, but the truth is that highly-educated people delight in cruelty at least as much as anyone else. Even more so, in my experience.

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 5d

He and his ilk have paid lip service that "diversity" is good, but that every effort ever undertaken to do anything to encourage it is poorly implemented or overvalued. It's only recently that they've been confident enough to be explicitly anti-diversity. Here's a 2000s quote from Hegseth:

Notes from the Publisher (Pete Hegseth '03 as an undergrad at Princeton):

[I'm skipping to the relevant part:] All this talk of "diversity" has diverted Princeton from its original academic focus: Western civilization and the curious combination of Socrates and Christ, strength and humility, democracy and piety, Athens and Jerusalem. Diversity is a note-worthy discussion topic, yet highly overvalued at this University.

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 5d

One problem with there being more people named Gabriel now than in the past is that there are more embarrassing people named Gabriel, too.

But at least it means people screw up my name less.

Kelsey Atherton @atherton.bsky.social · 5d

That's a reason to not release the product, to not even make the product. If your lawyers advised it was okay to release the product, fire them. If you did not have lawyers to say this, fire the person who said you didn't need lawyers, hire some, then fire your whole team and pull the product.

gabriel &
@GabrielPeterss4
• • •
we are working hard on fixing unnecessary content violations on sora 2!! bear with us, we are a small team!
2:09 PM • Oct 6, 2025 • 13.7K Views

Prescriptivism Must Die! @mgrammar.bsky.social · 5d

I sometimes worry, because a number of my early influences into linguistics turned out to be bad people. I wonder if it's something about me, something about academia, or just the usual bad apples. Thankfully, my later influences all seem to be really admirable role models, so it's (probably) fine..

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