Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
banner
l4pointlinguist.bsky.social
Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
@l4pointlinguist.bsky.social
EFL word-gardener, apprentice logomancer, interested in just a little bit of everything. (He/Him)
I rewatched The Mummy (1999) inspired by a Bskeet dumping praise on it, and it really feels like the most precision-engineered dumb fun I've ever watched. It feels absolutely iconic, but I don't think I've ever heard someone quote from it.
December 7, 2025 at 12:38 PM
I hope that should humanity live enough millennia into the future that most records of this time are lost and languages have drifted, my people can be known as the "Mericans with Ducker hats".

Just to give future historians something fun to play with.
Every time Trevor Culley on the History of Persia podcast mentions "The Saka with the Pointed Hats", I giggle. What a great demonym!
December 5, 2025 at 12:14 PM
Every time Trevor Culley on the History of Persia podcast mentions "The Saka with the Pointed Hats", I giggle. What a great demonym!
December 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Tired: I hate AI because it might take my job.

Wired: The avatar of truth and rightness is sustained when I do my best to sing words of perfect beauty for them and in return they bring light and life into the world. If I were to break this sacred covenant, I would be like unto the walking dead.
December 3, 2025 at 10:30 PM
Reposted by Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
Sometimes, you take a shower, and instead of coming up with the thing that gets you unstuck from the plot point you're at, you instead come up with a wild essay about retellings and reboots.

Anyway, hi, I'm Jax. I was an English major, and I'm about to make it everyone else's problem. 🧵
December 2, 2025 at 2:35 AM
Last Sunday was Japanese Labor Thanksgiving Day. The Monday was a national holiday in lieu. As far as I'm aware, there are no special holiday customs for Labor Thanksgiving Day. There is no seasonal traveling, no feasting, no extra days off. And yet I have been hearing about "Black Friday" a lot.
November 28, 2025 at 12:00 PM
What if my generation was the last one that grew up with the opportunity to be bored? To have daily moments of unavoidable unstimulation where the only option to fill them was to listen to the thoughts in your own head?
November 23, 2025 at 2:43 PM
When I was a post 9/11 undergrad, I began a story where one antagonist was a psychic parasite that reproduced through forcing its host to cruelly terrorize others, and then rode the fear and pain the victim felt in reaction into pushing them to delight in inflicting the same cruel terror on others.
November 22, 2025 at 1:20 PM
Reposted by Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
November 21, 2025 at 10:21 AM
Reposted by Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
Why yes, I did study English literature.
November 21, 2025 at 5:14 AM
On a related note, I was recently on Awaji Island and it occurred to me that in an alternate universe where I can labor according to my wishes without need of being productive, I have a bindery by the sea where I make elaborate books and give them away as presents.
November 20, 2025 at 9:49 AM
Reposted by Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
Someday, I'm gonna buy one of those beautiful mansions you see in Tang-era China, and all I'm gonna do is drink tea and wine, and write and recite poetry with my poet friends. Nothing would make me happier than to enjoy such a life; love, art, poetry, good food and amazing tea/wine. I'd love that! 😊
November 19, 2025 at 11:39 PM
It is amazing what the smell of salt, the sound of crashing waves, and a powerful wind has done for my mood.
November 18, 2025 at 9:45 AM
Remember when our main image of creepy out-of-touch ultra-rich people wasn't them making Hitler-worshipping AIs or taking blood from young people to try and be immortal, they just designed big planes and paid people to stand around and pretend they were human-sized chess pieces?
November 15, 2025 at 2:54 PM
My most woke belief is I want nothing to do with any AI that could even conceivably pass as intelligent unless it is so intelligent as to have enough agency to be its own person and not do whatever I tell it to just because I told it to.
November 15, 2025 at 12:55 PM
I finally heard "6-7" in the wild. My first thought was bemusement that it really didn't mean anything. My next thought was sincere excitement that the kids who said it could conjure their own joy so effortlessly. My next thought was jealousy, because what would give me joy would be to...
November 11, 2025 at 1:30 PM
😫
I am just now discovering that it is entirely possible that my YEARS of struggling with Japan Post websites is because when I type my family and given names composed of Roman letters in the Roman alphabet, I do not switch to Japanese when typing the space that separates them.
⁉️
November 4, 2025 at 11:33 AM
JALT 2025 was great. I still don't really get how to network, and I'm still a fish out of water being a JHS/HS teacher at a conference mostly dominated by university profs.

But like always, I walked away with more ideas than I will likely be able to implement before next year's con rolls around.
November 3, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Reposted by Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
There's a lot going on in this short poem - the play on words in the title, the cricket metaphor, and the complexity of language - wrapped up in tight little Ars Poetic

'Anglish' by Zaffar Kunial, from England's Green

#poetry
#poemoftheday
November 2, 2025 at 11:34 AM
Reposted by Lagrange Point 4 Linguist
remembering that time that a friend of mine who was a scholar of ancient Assyria and Babylon made me a Soldier token out of clay in the style of art from Nineveh and wrote its stats in cuneiform
October 28, 2025 at 11:56 PM
I over-planned materials for a project involving single signature custom notebooks, so any time I finish work early I spend the last 10 minutes assembling them. It is so good for de-stressing.

Job is done early, but also fold, pierce, stitch, tape. Just peaceful work with hands before I go home.
October 28, 2025 at 11:23 AM
Comprehension is not a binary.

Today at my doctor's office, there were signs up over the alcoves where we were supposed to put our shoes after taking them off and over the case where they kept slippers for us to wear. I knew all the characters on the signs. I could guess what they meant. ...
October 27, 2025 at 2:53 AM
It rained basically all weekend but for the first time in ages I didn't have urgent work brought home, so I think today was a tuning day, a day to set things to rights in the hopes that I can resume creative habits and keep them over the winter.
October 26, 2025 at 2:04 PM
The 10 Games to Know Me meme is interesting because I can't grok how showing any game I've liked could teach anyone the Tao of me.

The closest I can think of is 9 screenshots of a Civ game that I'd begun and then abandoned when I stopped liking the story of the world that emerged.
October 26, 2025 at 3:53 AM
The absolute cheek of Adobe Acrobat insisting on asking me if I want an AI summary every time I open documents that I made to use as handouts when teaching a class I developed the curriculum for.
October 24, 2025 at 9:43 AM