Everyone seems to be freaking out about Large Language Models lately. These troll the internet and have conversations with users based on the information they find. Basically, for any word, the look at what words typically come after those words and put together grammatically correct sentences in that way. ChatGPT is the most famous of…
We have a cursing problem. Cursing is constant and never ending. Almost every conversation contains curses. The one exception is when we’re around kids. Although refraining from cursing in front of kids doesn’t seem to stop the kids from swearing themselves. I’m not personally offended every time I hear a curse, which is good. Otherwise,…
The first time Gabriel cursed, he was four years old. I was at the park with him. As I was sitting on the bench, he ran over to me out of breath, visibly upset. “Daddy! That little boy over there said I said ‘shit!’ I would never say ‘shit!’” The absolute hardest thing to do…
I work part time as an English tutor at a local community college. I give all kinds of writing advice to all kinds of students. One of the most common bits of advice I give students is, “Don’t try to sound smart.” What I mean by that is the students should sound like themselves in…
This year was going to be different. Every year I promised to participate in National Novel Writing Month, and every year November slipped by with me barely putting any words down on paper. Not this year though. I had my story idea, my outline and notes. I even had a whole Chrome window dedicated only…
This post was inspired by my friend Kerri. In May, I wrote a post about Mental Health Awareness Week. It was kind of a jokey post about how I’m trying to have a conversation about mental health, and I didn’t even know there was a week, or a month, set aside for it. I said…
After reading my two-parter about why it can be so hard to talk about depression, a friend sent me this article: 18 Words for Sadness & Depression That Don’t Exist in English. It is exactly what it sounds like. Some of the words are helpful. For instance, the Pitjantjatjara (aboriginal Australian) word “Watjilpa” apparently describes…
Pretty much every time I go online, I get ads for Grammarly. It’s actually one of the few targeted ads that I get that makes sense. I write a lot and I’ve been teaching others how to write for over a decade. But I find that the ads have the wrong effect on me. Every…
It’s common to hear people complaining that America doesn’t use the metric system. It’s easier, it’s universally understood (outside of America), it brings the scientific community together, and on and on. Do these same people believe that everyone should just start speaking the same language? If not, what’s the relevant difference?
I often say that there are only six colors: blue, green, red, yellow, orange, and purple. You wouldn’t think so, but this upsets a lot of people. On the low end, people will point to a box of 64 crayons. Others say there are infinite colors. If you count black, white, and gray (not really…
