Hard men make soft men. Soft men become hard men… What were we talking about?

We’re just getting to the oldest linguistic debate. Is a linguist’s job to describe, or to prescribe? I lean very heavily towards describe.

That’s literally how accents and dialects work. People in a bubble developed different linguistic shifts. To them, and to to broader world as a whole, they are speaking a correct form of English, and yet some thick accents are practically unintelligible to people who haven’t practiced hearing the accent. We only recently began worrying about being understood beyond our narrow in groups. For the majority of history, these “bubbles” are just what we called cultures.

There are those constraints around written/spoken word, for sure. I’m more referring to how close it is to the “raw” thought.

We evolved the ability to think. In order to allow our thoughts to reach others, we developed spoken word. In order to allow those spoken words to be passed through time, we developed written word. Each refers back to the previous “layer” of communication.

Even someone who has a speech impediment, for instance, is still using the same written language as someone else in the same culture. And that written language was developed specifically to try and evoke the words someone in the culture speaks.

Words aren’t “endangered”. There are literally an infinite number of potential words, if we need to reinvent a meaning, we can quite easily(see: synonym). Further, the original meanings still exist. You can still use “awful” to mean “inspiring awe” and you’re correct, you just won’t be understood.

Gotteeeeeem!

That evolution has happened SO many times. Why does “literally” give you fits when “awful” or “terrific” do not? Perhaps because it’s the shift you happen to be living through?

And “6 7” is a shibboleth, a linguistic phenomenon that’s been going on for as long as we have written history, essentially, it’s just now that it’s the youngins doing the thing, it’s bad. Yeah, you right, pretty shitty take.

Written word is a facsimile of a facsimile of what we’re actually communicating. We go from nebulous thoughts, concepts not bound by language, to sounds that roughly convey those concepts, and then to squiggly lines that roughly convey those sounds, and then back up the chain in the other person. Really, it’s a miracle we understand each other at all.

Thought the first word was hunt, but the U ruined it. I think you’re right.

Killing in the Name is the right answer, I feel.

Where people walk, but also sight lines. Particularly in bedrooms.

Why do you think they have time to sleep?

One more time, for the commenters in the back!

Can I get a comic credit??

I get that, and I don’t disagree, but my point is that the venn diagram of “shoots up schools” and “shoots up political targets” don’t really overlap. Kids don’t kill people for political reasons, they kill because they’re in pain. Yes, they have a “better” target but that target isn’t causing them active daily suffering.

Assuming it’s school attendants themselves, then they probably don’t have a direct reason to shoot up anywhere but their school. Maybe their home. Their school is probably the thing that’s causing them direct issues in their life, it’s where their anger is aimed, and people don’t often consider better options when they’re that level of angry. I just don’t really see these two things having enough overlap for that to be a thing.

Obviously, it’s a very different scenario when it’s not someone who’s enrolled at the school. That’s a level of dysfunction that I can’t even begin to look at the world through the lens of. I don’t think that kind of dysfunction is the one to take suggestions of better places to shoot up, though.

To be fair, aren’t almost all school shootings done by attendants of the school? At least all the ones that have stuck in my brain are ones committed by current or previous students of the school they shot. And I can’t think of how to verify that either way this morning. In those cases, though, it’s probably not entirely political, but personal.

Counterpoint. Yes, it’s anecdotal, but the biggest success my mother has had in kicking her cigarette habit has been identifying herself as a non-smoker. She did that before cutting back at all, and now she’s from 35/day to 6. Every other attempt, she’s identified as a smoker trying to quit, and it’s failed.

Same theory - let them identify as what they want to be. Once they identify as such, the behavior will follow easier than if they’re saying “I’m trying to be an ally”.

And your denying them any openness and acceptance as someone actively trying to become better, even in the smallest of steps, is denying said people reason to grow. Shit doesn’t happen overnight.