Posts

Posted on

Swearing is Good for You by Emma Byrne

Impressions

Not quite reviews, I talk about books I read and enjoyed.

Okay so first you need to know that I read anything I can get my hands on about how swearing works in the brain. So even though I didn’t know about Swearing Is Good For You: The Amazing Science of Bad Language before I got it for Christmas it was a perfect fit for me.

Second, I learned a lot of things in this book that other reading on the topic hadn’t taught me. For example, there’s an entire chapter on Tourette’s, how it works, and why it really doesn’t fit with the rest of the content of this book because cursing as part of a tic doesn’t behave like any other kind of cursing. Going into this book I had no knowledge of how Tourette’s works. Coming out, I am still a novice, but at least one with hopefully more insight and patience for my fellow humans.

I also learned a ton about how fluency in secondary languages doesn’t necessarily translate to emotional impact — unless you were learning some other aspect of emotional impact (such as the angst of being an adolescent) at the same time you were immersed in your second language. This directly impacts how and in what language you swear.

The book is barely 200 pages and covered neuroscience, pain management, Tourette’s, workplace swearing, chimpanzee swearing, gender and swearing, and swearing in other languages. It does not cover any particular case or topic in depth but rather serves as a well-written and intriguing survey of modern knowledge about the field. Considering that in most cultures the taboos around swearing extend to studying the taboos around swearing, the very presence of the book indicates both shifting cultural norms and the fact that we still have a lot to learn.

I fucking loved this book and recommend it to anyone with interests in linguistics or neuroscience or both.

Posted on

Day 345: electric rock

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 345:

One of the forms of stone down here is this red ore-like substance that shatters into a powder when I hit it.

And then it tries to electrocute me.

No seriously, it’s like the whole rock is filled with static electricity. Like it’s some kind of naturally-occurring battery. The shocks aren’t big but they’re definitely there.

The only reason I haven’t gotten electrocuted on a regular basis is because I’m wearing leather gloves and using wooden handles on my tools.

(I probably have enough iron ore at this point to make pickaxes out of solid iron, but since I go through pickaxes pretty quickly to begin with, so my iron stores are always in jeopardy,  and now the rocks are trying to electrocute me, I’m sticking with wood.)

I might be able to do something useful with this stuff though, even if it’s a small engine that takes a long time to turn. Or maybe just see if it zaps the zombies for me. More to come when I’m out of the lava lake sauna.

Posted on

Day 344: no diamonds

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 344:

I’ve carved as much around the lava lake as I dare. I’ve harvested granite, diorite, andesite, and obsidian (which is really really hard and takes a long time to mine correctly unless you like breathing shards of volcanic glass) but no diamonds.

Not a single one.

I’m down to the core bedrock here, so it’s not like they’re deeper. At this point I’m just assuming there aren’t any diamonds near this lake and I’m moving on.

Posted on

Day 343: hot stuff

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 343:

I’m digging around that giant lake of lava I mentioned. It’s got some good ore around it, and I’m hoping there will also be diamonds. On big rocky planets, diamonds usually form near volcanic activity because that’s where the pressure is. On a light rock like this one, I don’t know if there’s even enough pressure to make diamonds or if somehow they were picked up from a bunch of other rocks slamming together to make this one.

Either way, looking for diamonds where they’re most likely.

It is hot working near lava. I know that’s obvious but it’s really hard to overstate exactly how hot it is. This is one of those cases where I’m actually glad I don’t have a thermometer because if I did, I’d probably feel even worse.

And since the presence of hot lava does not seem to keep the monsters away, I’m working in all the armor I can manage to work in, so that makes me even hotter.

I’m glad there’s a spring in the stone here because I’m drinking a lot of water. And breathing it—the spring water plus the heat means it’s a steam room.

There aren’t any wrinkles in my armor, that’s for sure.

Posted on

Day 342: Diamond

One Among the Dead

Sometimes you need a project that’s just for, y’know, goofing around. This is the ongoing saga of my Minecraft character. For lack of a better title, we’re going with “One Among the Dead”. 

Day 342:

I went to the deepest part of the chambers I’ve mapped, then headed down until I found a door I’d put in to remind myself to mine, and crossed through.

From there, I dug until I found a pool of lava next to a pool of water. I glassed over the pool of lava (I’m still confused on why that works) and glassed up the pool of water. There’s a lot of obsidian I might be able to dig out later if I make another diamond pickaxe, but those seem to be the only things strong enough to break obsidian.

I ought to make an obsidian pickaxe.

Anyway, on the other side of of the lava pool was some ore, and I dug through that and hit some dirt and then some gravel and in that gravel I found some diamond.

Not a lot, not even enough to make another helmet, but more than I find topside.

So I’m counting this day as a success.

Reader, whoever you are and wherever you are, and however you found this bamboo book of my log, I hope that today you have found success as well, in whatever way you measure it.

(I also hope you are my rescuer and we’re currently eating a delicious lobster dinner on board your ship and laughing about how good life is not on that rock.)