words matter
On one hand, there is an importance in gaining clarity when you name certain things. On the other hand, there is a danger that you lose all nuance, that you’re basically trying to elevate your personal comments and personal experience by invoking the higher authority of psychobabble
Delia Cai • Esther Perel Thinks All This Amateur Therapy-Speak Is Just Making Us Lonelier
is it mere coincidence that these terms move further away from their specific usage and towards a neutered, politically neutral meaning?
charlie • Do Words Mean Anything Anymore?
Words and their meanings have weight in the world of matter, shaping and reshaping realities through a most ancient alchemy.
Alix E. Harrow • The Ten Thousand Doors of January
Like an amulet worn around the neck, these words might somehow shield or guide or console or sustain the one who held them close to mind and heart. I also thought of it, and continue to think of it, as a matter of these verbal amulets shaping our perception of the world. They form our thinking, our feeling, and our imagination in such a way that
... See moreThe Convivial Society • Amulets Against the Spirits of the Age
“Japanese people feel relieved once you put a name to something,” said Mitsuo Takeda, a judge of the Shodoshima contest and an artist who designed a large installation featuring a bug-eyed yokai large enough to walk through. “If you are pulling grass and you get a cut and you wonder what happened,” he said, “if you think, ‘Oh, it is just a yokai,’
... See moreNew York Times • A Japanese Island Where the Wild Things Are
We hardly notice, because language is water we live in, but words are how we embed meaning, indicate that concepts are juxtaposed or similar or reminiscent, and form our own mental maps of reality. Words are our embeddings, and language is our latent space
Jon Evans • Language Is Our Latent Space
The term bedrotting screams the quiet part aloud: when the ability to work is cherished above all else, rest has to be framed as abject.
Anne Helen Petersen • Bed Rotting and Loud Quitting
It’s what makes women ‘power-hungry’ or ‘manipulative’ where men are ‘ambitious’ and ‘shrewd’.