Lots of Freddie content out there right now. I wrote a piece on YIMBYism for the Daily Beast; like much of what I write it appears to have been hated by both sides. I also went on Breaking Points with Krystal and Sagaar, which I always enjoy.
And I did Bad Faith with Briahna Joy Gray.
In the world of “you didn’t actually listen, did you,” from the way the clips were tweeted or something some people apparently got the impression that I said on the show that Rogan should be deplatformed. I in fact said explicitly and repeatedly that he should not be. What I said was that, yes, there is a point past which platforms like Spotify will be motivated to remove people from their platforms, but the specific example I used was someone saying that the Jews are poisoning children. It was an intentionally, absurdly exaggerated example. And for the record I think people have the constitutional right to say that, but don’t have the right to stay on a particular platform if they do so. Yadda yadda yadda.
This Week’s Posts
Monday, January 31st - Covid as Liberal 9/11
The enforced panic of Covid reminds me of the post-9/11 period.
Tuesday, February 1st - If Only Simple Were Simple
The admonition to write simply is unhelpful and strangles creativity.
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Thursday, February 3rd - Against Voldemorting
Declaring that your politics can never be named is just a way to hide from criticism.
Friday, February 4th - “Made the Harbor” is Just One of Those Albums, Man (subscriber only)'
A brief ode to an album I truly love.
We also had the latest Book Club post and and and! the return of the serialized novel, the Red the Brown the Green.
From the Archives
I was the original “Bernie would have won” guy, thanks.
Song of the Week
Great cover of a great tune.
Substack of the Week
Tegan and Sara have a Substack. I have nothing else to say.
NFL Picks of the Week
Ughhhhhhhhhhhhh. I had Rams -3.5 and they only won by 3. So close. That pick ensures that I can finish no better than .500 this season. But that’s something to shoot for. Super Bowl pick next week!
Win-Loss-Push: 16-17-0
Book Recommendation
The Unfolding of Language, Guy Deutscher, 2005
Frequently I will look back at my academic career and wish that I had gone into different fields. I ultimately consider myself an applied linguist, but I imagine many in the field would begrudge me the label. If I could go back and do it again - and getting a job was not a concern, cause it’s a bleak scene out there - I might very well choose to be a historical linguist. Historical linguistics is a great specialty, in that it both contains a lot of highly technical work but also a lot of baubles of information that can be shared with a public audience. (Try drawing a sentence tree, as a syntactician, for a party trick.) The Unfolding of Language is a good popular account of some of the most basic elements of the development of language, with a focus on how the most simplistic statements of our ancestral past came to be superseded by sentences as complex as this one. There’s tons of little nuggets down here, and the book ably demonstrates that anyone asking the big “why” questions of linguistics has to know a lot about where language came from and where it went in time.
Comment of the Week
I think there can be no substitute for simply reading a wide variety of styles, and letting them soak into your internal voice.
Perhaps I have a more imitative personality than average (which might explain why I'm easily persuaded by new ideas, and also why I code-switch my speech to match my interlocutors so strongly that it annoys my wife), but when I read a writer with a distinctive style, I always find that their voice affects my writing quite strongly. And I don't just mean writers like Tom Wolfe or Cormac McCarthy, with styles so flashy that they border on schtick. I mean all types of writers, from Richard John Neuhaus to Terry Eagleton to randos on Reddit. And Freddie deBoer, of course. - Ethan Cordray
Enjoy your weekend! See you soon.
Aw, thanks for the comment of the week shout-out! I'll have to make sure to work a little flattery into all of my comments from now on.
I also enjoy linguistics and quite liked Deutscher’s book. It’s been years since I read it but I remember it striking a great balance between giving enough technical information to be interesting but not so much as to be overwhelming. Many general-interest linguistics books are so afraid of the latter that they ignore the former (John McWhorter’s The Power of Babel comes to mind, which I found surprisingly dull).