Digital life
fromPsychology Today
5 days agoThis May Be Low-Key the Hardest Time to Decode Slang
Slang evolves rapidly, reflecting youth identity and social connection, and serves as a cultural password for belonging among generations.
I started in stand-up because it felt like the most direct way to connect with people. There's no filter. You go on stage, and you find out very quickly if something works. That shaped everything for me. It forced me to be honest. If you're not honest, the audience knows. That idea still drives how I work today.
Computational linguistics is a two-way street: You're either using a computer to do things with human language or communicate or translate or teach a foreign language, or you're using computational techniques to learn something about human languages. Her work documenting and preserving endangered languages uses a little bit of both.
Two-thirds of the attempts at humour during these talks fell flat, drawing either polite chuckles or no laughter at all. Almost one-quarter of attempted jokes were judged as a "moderate success", eliciting audible laughter from around half the audience. Only 9% prompted most or all of the attendees to laugh enthusiastically.
A crack of thunder, a flash of light, and a sulfurous mist flooded my apartment. Marax, President of Hell, stood before me. Marax entered my summoning circle, eyes burning with unholy fire, and I gave him the stack of homework to flip through while I brushed my teeth. Marax marked up the papers and fleshed out my bullet points into thoughtful feedback before I even got to my molars. Then-three hours of my life, saved!-I banished him back to Hell.
On last night's Saturday Night Live, we learned that time stops for nothing-not people and not language. Marcello Hernández, the cast member perhaps most likely to become SNL's next breakout star, dropped by the "Weekend Update" desk to inform the Millennial co-anchor Colin Jost-and, by proxy, many Millennial audience members-of the slang terms favored by Gen Z.
They are exploring the nature of comedy and standup as a response to being a Palestinian now. This documentary follows the group as they attempt to put together a national tour, with shows in Ramallah, Nablus, Haifa, Nazareth and Jerusalem. In so doing, they encounter the basic problem of struggling through roadblocks, and sheer dismay and horror at the wholesale destruction of the war between Israel and Hamas.
The term "conspiracy theory" calls to mind a variety of dubious claims and controversies, like rumors about Area 51, claims that the Earth is flat, and the movement known as QAnon. At first blush, these phenomena would seem to have little in common with bogus word origins. But there are a variety of false etymologies that spread virally and refuse to go away, in much the same way that stories about chemtrails, black helicopters, and UFOs refuse to die.
For the first time, speech has been decoupled from consequence. We now live alongside AI systems that converse knowledgeably and persuasively-deploying claims about the world, explanations, advice, encouragement, apologies, and promises-while bearing no vulnerability for what they say. Millions of people already rely on chatbots powered by large language models, and have integrated these synthetic interlocutors into their personal and professional lives. An LLM's words shape our beliefs, decisions, and actions, yet no speaker stands behind them.
I was a smiley, happy child. I've had cerebral palsy since birth, so I've never known any other reality. At three years old I went to a disabled nursery connected to a disabled school, and I remember thinking, Why am I here? At the end of the day, the teacher brought my parents in and said, Rosie should be in a mainstream school.
Steve Martin Writes the Written Word is an aptly-named collection and excellent introduction to the comedian's best writings, including some new material. In another piece, he makes the list of 100 greatest books he read laugh out loud funny with fake titles such as "Omelet: Olga - Mnemonic Devices for Remembering Waitress' Names" and "Marijuana! Totally Harmless (can't remember author)."
Anyone who spends untold hours surfing the Web for humorous content will eventually find the work of one Vladimir Shmondenko, a prankster who goes by the name Anatoly. He's developed a faithful following, and, as far as I can tell, makes a comfortable living entirely from his TikTok and YouTube videos.
The lyrics have a rather annoying quality to them, similar to the way that other songs like "Call Me Maybe" by Carly Rae Jepsen, "Fireflies" by Owl City or even "Friday" by Rebecca Black did in their time - songs that gained rapid popularity and, just as quickly, sparked rapid backlash from many due to overexposure to them.
Readers who saw my previous post will recall its focus on a recurring pattern of laughter and humor found during my deep dive into the humor of the Seinfeld series. I wondered why we tend to laugh at various things going into our bodies and tried to explain why we might be so inclined using the Mutual Vulnerability Theory of Laughter.
No one could accuse Fleming of tailoring his act to please a conventional audience. His stage attire lies somewhere between "androgynous hipster" and "clown," and his only criteria for a premise appears to be "What does my brain fixate on?" He expects his audience to keep up with any cultural reference his Massachusetts-born, millennial, Skidmore arts-graduate brain might make without ever stopping to explain what, say, "Gatsby-esque" might mean in the context of Bitmoji.