Rhythmic? No, not really. More exciting if the musician could somehow anticipate this fundamentally unpredictable event? Absolutely.

In Aristotelian geography, the coastline is infinitely divisible.

When he gets pulled out, he’ll be fisherman’s Worf.

Acknowledged. Launching Starfleet standard hat distribution holoprogram.

You arrive without traveling, see all without looking, and do all without doing. You get a nifty flute souvenir. The ship explodes. Score: 0/100. Thank you for participating in the Kobay-ouchie Maru.

It speaks only in disposable cup idioms. It says: “Red Solo, when the beer fell.” Now what do you do?

The alien blood corrodes away the bottom of your cup. Now what do you do?

The Kobay-ouchie Maru.

They wrote that whole ass article and never stopped to consider that time may be both an illusion (in the sense that it is an emergent rather than a fundamental property of existence) AND necessary for the evolution of life (in the sense that other hypothetical configurations of physical laws which do not feature an emergent arrow of time may not produce life).

In regions of the set of all possible universes where the physical prerequisites of evolution were not present, nobody would be there wondering about why that is. In this region, conditions are right for life to evolve, so somebody is here to ask the question. It’s just the anthropic principle.

He’s always got le mot juste.

If Santa wasn’t real, how you’d explain finland?

This reminds me of last year’s Christmas present from my husband - a homebrew powerpoint Only Connect game based on our favorite media. Instead of “twisted flax” or “two reeds” my categories were things like “lightsaber” or “Starfleet insignia.” Love the format (and that sweet man).

On the starship Enterprise, under Captain Kirk!

Counterpoint: he’s controversial because of what he says and does, not because of lies people tell about him.

“Should of” instead of “should have.”

“Me and her went” instead of “she and I went.”

“Flustrated” instead of “frustrated.”

“To who” instead of “to whom.”

“For all intensive purposes” instead of “for all intents and purposes.”

“Aks” instead of “ask.”

“Literally” to mean “figuratively.”

“Shoe-in” instead of “shoo-in.”

A semicolon instead of a colon.

Using a preposition at the end of a sentence.

Splitting infinitives.

Starting a sentence with a conjunction.

Each a simple “error” to remember. But there are thousands of them. None make an appreciable difference in understanding. None would ruin a business deal or a meeting except in terms of lost social standing for getting it “wrong.” This category of errors is what I believe to be meant by “improper English.” This is in contrast to “incomprehensible English.”

As I said, successful transmission of the message is the only true test of linguistic legitimacy. You’re absolutely right. People are instinctively aware of when their dialectical quirks are going to cause a problem communicating with outsiders, and they code switch. They simplify. Ironically, the less familiar the interlocutor is with English, the more “improper” a native speaker’s English might become. “My name? John. Your name?” Yet in so doing, they become more compensable because they’ve dropped the complex cultural dance which they are so often required by the powerful to perform.

I have a degree in linguistics. The most important thing it taught me is that there is a widely believed fiction, almost like a religion, underlying prescriptivist grammar. For the sake of social advancement, if you have both the means and the talent, it’s generally necessary to learn a list of arbitrary but extremely complicated prestige markers for your language, to earn the approval of the self-appointed priestly caste of grammarians, in order to rub shoulders with the rich and powerful. An overly complex shibboleth.

It’s a mechanism to oppress the lower classes while maintaining the pretense of pure meritocracy, by declaring arbitrarily that the dialect which is already spoken and written in the homes of the upper class children is proper, and all other dialects are improper, then implying that the “failure” of lower class children to acquire the prestige markers is an intellectual shortcoming, rather than the absence of privilege.

Can you buy books and hire tutors to learn these prestige markers? Of course. Is there general agreement among members of this cult about what their own rules are? Sure. If you choose not to use them, is your English “improper”? Absolutely not. It’s different but equal, as long as your meaning is clear. I would wager that more than 90% of people do not go even one day without saying or writing some example of “improper” English, which is nevertheless understood perfectly well by the recipient. Successful transmission of the message is the only true test of linguistic legitimacy. Everything else is performative.

By the way, while it doesn’t change much about this more fundamental basis for my opinion that “standard English” is an offensive fiction, neither British nor American English actually have the backing of a nation state. This is in contrast to, for example, French, which does. According to this article on language regulators, “The English language has never had a formal regulator anywhere, outside of private productions such as the Oxford English Dictionary.” Prompting my rhetorical question to you earlier: Who is the governing body? There is none.

For airborne contagions. Next question.

What is the governing body of your alleged “proper English”?

The question was, “How do you deal with depression about climate change?” Maybe voting in local elections does that for you (singular), but it may not work for you (general).

Already doing that. No change in material conditions, still depressed. Next idea?