Larry Davidson
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ljdljd.bsky.social
Larry Davidson
@ljdljd.bsky.social
260 followers 260 following 120 posts
A retired HS math & linguistics teacher in Dorchester (MA), I read, cook, and work on my model railroad, a never-ending project. My wife Barbara and I live there with our cats Abigail, Barnaby, & Cassandra. For some reason I'm left with no free time.
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ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2026/01/18/w...
#McWhorter #ArtificialIntelligence #AI
Will the real John McWhorter please stand up? (No, no, that’s not the real one; that’s the AI John McWhorter!)
John McWhorter is a professor of linguistics at Columbia University who is both a professional linguist and a popular linguist. In other words, he writes both for his colleagues and for the general…
blog.larrydavidson.com
January 19, 2026 at 12:36 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2026/01/11/t...
#trump #MarshFamily
They understand us across the pond.
Trump claims that the USA has regained the respect of everyone across the globe, but the Marsh Family knows the truth:
blog.larrydavidson.com
January 11, 2026 at 8:42 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2026/01/10/a...

#LangstonHughes #MiltonMeltzer #BlackHistory #HenryDavidson
A note from Langston Hughes to my dad
Seventy years ago the great Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes penned this inscription in the front of my dad’s copy of Hughes’s A Pictorial History of the Negro in America. (Note that Hughe…
blog.larrydavidson.com
January 10, 2026 at 2:33 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2026/01/08/e...
#linguistics #spelling
Enough is enuf.
This book would have made an excellent New Yorker article. But a whole book? Not so much. All right, I suppose many a New Yorker article does feel like an entire book — but Enough is Enuf by Gabe H…
blog.larrydavidson.com
January 8, 2026 at 10:06 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2026/01/06/i...
#linguistics #Hebrew #conlangs
Is Modern Hebrew a conlang?
So I keep seeing references to posts on Reddit…and I always ignore them. But then I said to myself, “Why not give Reddit a chance? What’s there to lose?” That led me to sign up for a few subr…
blog.larrydavidson.com
January 6, 2026 at 6:29 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2026/01/04/f...
#books #booksky #linguistics #language #AWayWithWords #MarthaBarnette #GrantBarrett
Friends with words
Yes, you read that correctly: the title really is Friends with Words, not the more familiar phrase Words with Friends. And even the correct phrase, Friends with Words, has at least two meanings (th…
blog.larrydavidson.com
January 5, 2026 at 10:38 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/12/26/t...
#christmas #ChauChow #ChineseFood
This year’s traditional Christmas dinner
In accordance with long-established tradition, Barbara and I went to Chau Chow yesterday for a delicious Christmas feast: beef noodle, Chinese broccoli, har gao, shumai, xiao long bao, shrimp paste…
blog.larrydavidson.com
December 26, 2025 at 6:09 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/12/25/w...

#christmas #hanukkah #chanukah
Where are you dining today?
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blog.larrydavidson.com
December 25, 2025 at 3:34 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/12/24/c...
#linguistics #english #AI #Claude
Claude predicts the future of English.
Recently I’ve been playing with Claude AI, so I asked it (him? are we personifying AI’s these days?) to predict how English will change over the next 600 years. (Why 600? Because Middle English was…
blog.larrydavidson.com
December 24, 2025 at 9:25 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/12/21/a...
#Chanukah #Hanukkah #Yiddish
A Chanukah carol (in Yiddish)
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blog.larrydavidson.com
December 21, 2025 at 9:38 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/12/17/t...
#linguistics #languages #julingo #LanguageJones
Two pop linguists who are worth listening to…
and whose videos nevertheless share one particular flaw. I’m talking about Julie Maksimova, better known as Julingo, and Dr. Taylor Jones, better known as Language Jones. You can see what they’ve b…
blog.larrydavidson.com
December 17, 2025 at 9:48 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/12/05/a...

#languages #linguistics #DannyBate #podcasts #blogs
“A language I love is…”
What took me so long? Today I learned about a new-to-me linguistics blog and podcast called “A language I love is…” This blog has been around since June of 2020, and the podcast since 2023, so I ce…
blog.larrydavidson.com
December 5, 2025 at 8:05 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/11/26/l...
#books #booksky #linguistics
Language city: The fight to preserve endangered mother tongues in New York
The title and subtitle may make this book sound rather esoteric. But in that case they are unintentionally misleading. You don’t have to be a linguist or a cultural anthropologist to enjoy reading …
blog.larrydavidson.com
November 26, 2025 at 11:30 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/11/22/s...

#Movies #Comedy #WarnerBros #ModelRailroading #CulturalChanges
“So you want a model railroad” — a well-known… okay… not-so-well-known Warner Bros. film from 1955
When you watch a movie made in 1955, you can’t judge it with 2025 glasses. A lot has happened in 70 years! With that caveat, enjoy this short Warner Bros. film. Also keep in mind, as the French say…
blog.larrydavidson.com
November 22, 2025 at 7:11 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/11/20/a...
#books #booksky #ElizabethGeorge #Cornwall
A slowly dying cause
What do you know about Cornwall? Cornish hens, I suppose. And Cornish pasties, but only if you’ve been to Britain. That’s probably it, unless you have an esoteric linguistic interest in the lesser-…
blog.larrydavidson.com
November 20, 2025 at 9:49 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/11/17/t...
#ModelRailroading #JasonJensen
Three cheers for Jason Jensen — not only a model railroader but also a true American artist!
Model railroading is both a craft and an art. My favorite model railroader on YouTube is Jason Jensen, who is #1 as both a craftsman and an artist. Many of his videos are lengthy, but they’re worth…
blog.larrydavidson.com
November 17, 2025 at 9:42 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/11/11/t...
#Springsteen #TheBoss #Nebraska #DeliverMeFromNowhere
The new Springsteen bio-pic
Your most urgent question (I’m sure) is why did I put a hyphen in biopic. The answer is that I learned recently that a majority of people pronounce biopic to rhyme with myopic! (In other words, the…
blog.larrydavidson.com
November 12, 2025 at 5:38 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/10/24/a...
#cats #TabbyCats
Abby wants more admirers.
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blog.larrydavidson.com
October 24, 2025 at 8:03 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/10/19/i...
#Jew #Jewish #DanielCainer
“I am a Jewish man.” —Daniel Cainer
As I was thinking about these matters yesterday (for obvious reasons), this popped up in my YouTube feed. Who knows why the algorithm chose it for me. In any case, even though I was never a bar mit…
blog.larrydavidson.com
October 19, 2025 at 8:14 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/10/18/n...
#NoKings #Trump #NoTrump
No Trump. No Kings.
Be sure to turn on closed captioning for this one, so you can see the parts that you can’t hear:
blog.larrydavidson.com
October 18, 2025 at 7:14 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/10/13/t...
#CarlSagan #CriticalThinking #QuestionAuthority
Triple threat: Carl Sagan, critical thinking, and an exam
Carl Sagan. A blast from the past, you’re going to tell me! But not really. As several commenters have pointed out after watching the video linked below, he’s more relevant than ever at this point.…
blog.larrydavidson.com
October 13, 2025 at 6:41 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/10/03/a...
#books #booksky #DeSilva
A Scourge of Vipers
My one-word review is “meh.” Bruce DeSilva’s A Scourge of Vipers is not a bad mystery. (There’s litotes for you. You can look it up, as I think I said in my last post in a different context, though…
blog.larrydavidson.com
October 3, 2025 at 6:32 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/10/01/m...
#flowers #MorningGlories #chiasmus
Morning glories on a glorious morning
Chiasmus here. (You can look it up.)
blog.larrydavidson.com
October 1, 2025 at 7:53 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/09/28/t...
#music #AncientWorld #greek #AncientGreek #BuskinAndBatteau #RobinBatteau
Truly these are oldies but goodies — songs from… wait for it… two millennia ago!
Back in the ancient world, when I was in high school, a friend and classmate of mine was named Dwight Wayne Batteau, better known (then and now) as Robin Batteau. For quite a while now he has been …
blog.larrydavidson.com
September 28, 2025 at 7:49 PM
ljdljd.bsky.social
blog.larrydavidson.com/2025/09/20/d...
#books #booksky #mysteries #spotswood
Dead in the Frame
Sooner or later, in the lives of all private investigators, they always get arrested for a murder they didn’t commit. At least the fictional ones do. It’s apparently a requirement of the genre. And…
blog.larrydavidson.com
September 21, 2025 at 4:46 PM