“You can’t say “if this didn’t happen then that would have happened” because you don’t know everything that might have happened. You might think something’d be good, but for all you know it could have turned out horrible. You can’t say “If only I’d …” because you could be wishing for anything. The point is, you’ll never know. You’ve gone past. So there’s no use thinking about it.”

— Terry Pratchett - Lords And Ladies (via aeshnacyanea2000)

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Okay normally I'm on the side of "words mean whatever we need them to mean".

but guys, I don’t like the suggestion that it’s what is happening here. Being unfamiliar with the term, and guessing its meaning based on vibes, doesn’t mean you have equal authority on whether it’s “correct” with the community who actively use this word in a technical sense.

please do consider that if you haven't been exposed to the word in the context it's used in, "both are correct" and "you can interpret it differently" and “there is no right or wrong answer” and “it feels like it SHOULD be X” cannot be a fully realised take. Sure, linguistics recognises there are rules in which meaning changes - but “laypeople being unfamiliar with the word, and liking vibes better” isn’t one of them.

You can do that with most words, especially slang, and shape them to the needs of the majority, but this isn't like... a fanfiction word, invented for fanfic and, like, solely used for injured hockey players where it doesn’t matter if the injured limb swaps sides 4 times in a sex scene and phases through a stomach. It is, in its context, a bit more load-bearing (ha) than that.

It's fine to be unfamiliar with the context, and it's fine for words to change, but do just take a quick second to hear it in a native sentence!

One of the most common ways of using this word is to assess four-legged animals. "Favouring" is a specific grouping of behaviour - a hesitancy in gait, stiffness, reluctance to put weight on a limb. It’s often inconsistent, as the animal tries to compensate or conceal the pain. It may not be a full limp or obvious lameness, since prey animals especially will actively try to conceal this; favouring is a subtle reluctance, and a useful word for a very specific recognisable behaviour that the animal is usually trying to lie about. (That’s probably why it’s used in romance fiction, as it’s an interestingly romantic and stoic way to react to pain, and doesn’t mean the limb is inconveniently disabled. A fictional character favouring a wounded leg can wince attractively when it’s jostled, but it doesn’t matter too much if the author forgets and has them run to the door suddenly - “favouring” isn’t incompatible with “running” in horses either.)

The sentence “Favouring the off hind” is equestrian jargon: it means “pain behaviour on the back right leg.” It does not mean “opposite-pain in the not-on deer” and is not confusing in its professional register.

If you've only vaguely heard of "myeloma", and most people in a poll are guessing it's a skin cancer, that doesn't mean that myeloma and melanoma can now readily collapse into the same word - they're under active use in their native contexts, where the people frequently using them do need to communicate the difference between skin and blood cancer.

A poll of laypeople misunderstanding “myeloma,” or non-horse-people misunderstanding “favouring,” isn’t quite enough to indicate a full semantic shift and change of meaning of the term. The community that uses the term “favouring” in the context of “limb injury” - vets, farriers, farmers, commentators, equestrians - knows what it means and uses it consistently in the same way. They’re not confused. because to them, it isn’t a vibesy, sex-scene-hand waving word. It’s a cluster of pain signals.

If you aren’t familiar with that usage, then that’s really more about your own lack of familiarity. Not all interpretations DO carry equal authority, especially when one is just confusion/unfamiliarity. You just haven’t met it before, and that’s fine.

Tl;dr: I’m all for words changing meanings, but we shouldn’t be too quick to declare that when it’s based entirely on unfamiliarity and vibes-based readings.

I love the orchestra trying and failing to maintain a straight face throughout

Exactly. These people had to rehearse at least a few times all at once yet when it's nkt their turn to play they still look at that guy with the typewriter as if he was the most fascinating thing they have ever seen.

My husband's wind ensemble played this song when he was in high school! you can do it with normal auxillery percussion, but it's so much more fun if you do it with a real typewriter

now that is a writing mood

they were really like, the only reasonable approach to this piece is to insert a clown at the center of the orchestra

If you're not playing Leroy Anderson's 1953 classic "The Typewriter" with an actual typewriter on stage... why would you even BOTHER?

From wiki

According to the composer himself, as well as other musicians, the typewriter part is difficult because of how fast the typing speed is: even professional stenographers cannot do it, and only professional drummers have the necessary wrist flexibility

example: my grandpa passed away last year, and my mom is still in the long process of dealing with his stuff. i was helping her dig through some boxes and found this thick leather bound notebook. she said yeah, that’s his address book. i don’t know how to throw it away. i said okay, i’m taking it. it’s mine now, not your problem. and it was obviously a relief for her, letting me take this book full of decades and decades of her dad’s handwriting and allow herself to passively believe that it isn’t gone, even if she intellectually understands otherwise. but i couldn’t throw it away either. and it ended up in yet another box that moved with me to my new apartment and got shuffled around from pile to pile until i finally thought, no, this wasn’t the deal. i owe it to my mother to feel this sadness, to perform this tiny sliver of mourning for her so that she doesn’t have to, and by hoarding this useless object i’m not holding up my side of the bargain. so i threw it away, and i felt sad, but a lighter kind of sadness. now that’s adult

#anybody can get railed what do you know about the mundanity of grief? #anyway (tags from @ macklesufficient)

things that dont cost money: hiking, walking, birdwatching, identifying plants, drawing (you have a pen, reading (library), collecting rocks, dancing, singing.... etc wtc etc

if you cant find a hobby you can afford, thats a you problem. and if youre posting online, you have a device to do that, get some free games, trawl wikipedia, study something. stop picking fights online and do something else.

if you can write an essay about it on your phone you can write fanfic or poetry or something on your phone also and it will be much nicer for everyone involved, including you

I recently discovered arts and crafts thrift stores thanks to @oldearthaccretionist and holy shit affordable new watercolor paints are awesome. Under 10 bucks cad gets you a solid amount of stuff!

Board Game Arena is free to sign up and play & a Premium subscription (which lets you host tables for some of the games) is like "one coffee a month" cheap. (Full disclosure, if you sign up through that link, I might get part of a free month of Premium.)

I have like 8-10 asynchronous games of Wingspan going at any given time. I fucking love playing The Bird Game.

the funny thing is. I originally typed out "fifth rule of fandom is everything goes back to gilgamesh & enkidu" but then I thought 'no, I can't trust that people will be familiar with the epic of gilgamesh'

I should have known. nerd ass website.

The defining feature of tumblr is not "the website where people actually think infinite chocolate is possible", it is defined by a group of people refusing to break kayfabe, another group being genuinely confused by an optical illusion (NOT the same thing as thinking infinite chocolate is possible) and a third group who is certain they are a lot smarter than the other two.

“Was this book bad or was I simply lacking enough life experience to appreciate the narrative when I read it” : an award-winning followup

Sometimes, you pick up a book you hated as a teen, read it again with fresh eyes and lived experience, experience it anew and hate it for completely different reasons.

that is called the "hygiene hypothesis" and is an important early step down the medical science denial/antivax pipeline.

I know it's a somewhat common belief, but it's also straight up medical misinformation and I wish people would stop saying it.

Infections are more likely to cause immune problems than prevent them, and you don't get allergies from being "too clean"

Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

I did some more research and it seems that it's less misinformation and more a highly debated medical hypothesis that has both evidence for and against it. X X

However you are right that it is dangerous for people to use this hypothesis as an excuse to avoid vaccination.

So much like how the hygiene hypothesis has changed to be more about bacteria I should update my analogy.

The over sanitation of the internet is like cleaning every surface with antibiotics, killing both the harmful bacteria that can make people sick but also all the necessary bacteria needed for a healthy microbiome. By censoring anything that could possibly be controversial, people are no longer given the tools to help build understanding and nuanced opinions.

Much like how a body without a healthy microbiome doesn't have the defenses against invading harmful bacteria, people who haven't been able to develop the ability to understand nuance don't know how to handle anything slightly controversial.