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Stan Carey

@stancarey.bsky.social

4.5K followers 250 following 1.6K posts

Editor, writer, lapsed biologist in the west of Ireland Copy-editing, writing: https://stancarey.com Language: https://stancarey.wordpress.com Strong language: https://stronglang.wordpress.com 🎞 https://letterboxd.com/stancarey 🦣 @[email protected]

stancarey.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · Nov 10

I should introduce myself, now that the world is ending. I'm a freelance copy-editor/proofreader from Ireland. And I write, mostly about language: stancarey.com
stancarey.wordpress.com

I hike a bit and always have a book on the go and a film in mind. Background in biology; environmentalist at heart

Stan Carey editing and proofreading | Tidy, tighten, or transform your text

stancarey.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 4h

It would if it wasn't already taken by slang! Have you tried this dish?

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Reposted by Stan Carey

Ada Palmer @adapalmer.bsky.social · 1d

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

After Dinner Conversation® @afterdinnerconversation.com · 1d

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 9h

News reporting "obscures a key driver of the climate crisis": meat production www.theguardian.com/environment/... #climate

Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds

Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissions

www.theguardian.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 9h

You're probably right

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 9h

We're a rule-loving species. Some people never met a usage rule (however ill-founded) that they didn't immediately add to their arsenal of arbitrary nonsense with which get one up on other people

bsky.app/profile/tiny...

Dave Mathieson @tinydbass.bsky.social · 9h

It's weird letting grammar rules take precedent over readability. I'm pretty pedantic about a lot of this stuff, but only because poor grammar, spelling, punctuation etc. push unnecessary work onto me, the reader, which ultimately dilutes what the writer is trying to say.

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 10h

I like and use the Oxford comma, fwiw. But the tribal zeal it inspires is as misplaced as it is tiresome

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Dan Marshall @danthat.bsky.social · 18d

Every time I watch ALIEN I am transfixed thinking to myself "there's no way they've left themselves enough room to get the third horizontal line in that E without it looking like a squashed-in mess!" but no, every single time there it is, and it's beautiful. Most tense part of the movie tbh.

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 11h

"What memories crowd in upon you!" Walter Benjamin on book collecting:
web.archive.org/web/20210414...

web.archive.org

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 14h

A debate made even stupider by the fact that the word "burger" derives from the name of a European city: Hamburg #etymology

Gernot Wagner @gwagner.com · 16h

One of the nuttier cultural fights: EU parliament will soon decide whether veggie burgers are allowed to be called "burgers" because...meat lobby.

Austrian daily Der Standard: "EU-Countdown for Veggie-Burger"

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Lynne Murphy @lynneguist.bsky.social · 2d

"By removing the hashtag, tech platforms are redistributing organizational power away from the users and toward themselves. Now they have all the say in who gets to see which topic, and how topics are structured in the first place."
etymology.substack.com/p/why-platfo...

Why platforms are killing the hashtag

Today I write in anticipatory nostalgia for the cornerstone of a more democratic internet—one which is slowly being stolen from us.

etymology.substack.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 2d

That's a neat inversion. I think this example is popular in large part because a cartoon showing those characters went viral

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 2d

Ha! I do wonder about their relative likelihood of causing ambiguity and would love to see data on it. My hunch is that use of the comma wins out, on balance, but I could be mistaken

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 2d

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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Rob T @thexclaim6.bsky.social · 2d

Trying to work out the name of a film, which I’m 99% sure I didn’t make up…

It ends in a darkroom with the camera lingering on a photograph in developing fluid that slowly reveals the killer/solution, but it then turns white from being overdeveloped

Maybe Italian/giallo adjacent

Help!

#filmsky

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Sheo @sheologian.bsky.social · 7d

“It actually doesn’t take much to be considered a difficult woman. That’s why there are so many of us.”

Jane Goodall

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 6d

Here's a wonderful little clip of Goodall greeting the world, chimpanzee-style

More on pant-hooting and other chimp-related communication in these excerpts from her book "In the Shadow of Man"
stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/06/28/c...

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 6d

Not specifically, it's safe to suppose, but it all matters

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 6d

Jane Goodall's first scientific paper was sent back to her with amendments, the editor having replaced every "he"/"she" (referring to chimpanzees) with "it", and every "who" with "which". She changed them back, refusing to mark non-human animals as inferior.
stancarey.wordpress.com/2015/05/27/a...

Annals of animals which get ‘who’

In a local newspaper some time ago I read about ‘dormice . . . who nest in shrubs and hedgerows’. The grammar of this phrase struck me enough to write a brief post on the different kinds of anteced…

stancarey.wordpress.com

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 6d

RIP, Jane Goodall. She was the best of us
janegoodall.global/rememberingj...

Remembering Jane

1934-2025Remembering Dr. JaneScientist. Conservationist. Humanitarian.Dr. Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and UN Messenger of Peace, was a remarkable example of courage and convict...

janegoodall.global

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 6d

Nice-looking spot. You're not camping, are you?

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 8d

"What is interesting now is the arrival of slang that draws not on language, but on digital memes, from Tik-Tok and elsewhere. This is a whole new ball game..." @misterslang.bsky.social:
jonathongreen.substack.com/p/all-togeth... #slang

All Together Now

The Argot-naut Crew

jonathongreen.substack.com

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 9d

Or often, in this case, when I enjoy what she disdains

Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 9d

Sometimes she aces it

pauline kael bot @paulinekaelbot.bsky.social · 9d

Among the films that have moved me most deeply there are two by Carl Dreyer—THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and DAY OF WRATH; and among the films that have excited me most by thier visual and conceptual daring there is Dreyer's VAMPYR. (1967)

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Blue sky nice guy @rajandelman.bsky.social · 25d

Do you think unbending Clippy until he was a long piece of metal would be painful for him. Or do you think it would cause him to feel a great sense of relief

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 11d

Three good talks on the state (pejorative) of rewilding in Ireland #spéirghorm

irishwildlifetrust.bsky.social @irishwildlifetrust.bsky.social · 13d

📺 Watch it back: Rewilding in Ireland 🌱

Feat. Eoghan Daltun
@irishrainforest.bsky.social
Mary Reynolds @wearetheark.bsky.social
Pádraic Fogarty
@whittledaway.bsky.social

🔗 youtu.be/j8X8bD8GmGA?...

@irishenvnet.bsky.social
#Rewilding

Rewilding in Ireland | Theory, Scale, Practice

YouTube video by Irish Wildlife Trust

youtu.be

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