@saltmarshhay.bsky.social
Motion sickness is much worse on buses for me - it’s the way it feels in stop and go traffic, it’s fine moving fast on a highway (back seat of car is bad but not as bad, never get motion sickness on a train, love taking the train).
November 19, 2025 at 12:12 PM
Motion sickness is much worse on buses for me - it’s the way it feels in stop and go traffic, it’s fine moving fast on a highway (back seat of car is bad but not as bad, never get motion sickness on a train, love taking the train).
I think that’s why calling racists out as weird and creepy can be so effective - it’s norm reinforcement not asking people to feel their way individually through an ethical situation. I don’t think empathy itself is rare, but slow empathetic processing on behalf of strangers might be.
February 9, 2025 at 10:49 PM
I think that’s why calling racists out as weird and creepy can be so effective - it’s norm reinforcement not asking people to feel their way individually through an ethical situation. I don’t think empathy itself is rare, but slow empathetic processing on behalf of strangers might be.
Maybe he’ll flame out even faster than a Tesla and we’ll never know.
December 6, 2024 at 4:29 PM
Maybe he’ll flame out even faster than a Tesla and we’ll never know.
I grew up overhearing my mom arguing and gossiping in Yiddish with my grandparents so that gave me a slightly different association, but I think my husband does have that “spicy insult language” kind of association.
December 1, 2024 at 1:44 AM
I grew up overhearing my mom arguing and gossiping in Yiddish with my grandparents so that gave me a slightly different association, but I think my husband does have that “spicy insult language” kind of association.
So interesting!
November 20, 2024 at 12:00 PM
So interesting!
That may be completely wrong (and the linguistics descriptions are surely mostly wrong) but it’s fun to think about.
November 17, 2024 at 7:15 PM
That may be completely wrong (and the linguistics descriptions are surely mostly wrong) but it’s fun to think about.
My hunch is that when the meaning is ambiguous, the ingrained urge to still pick a word to emphasize forces us to enrich that word’s meaning using our own associations and experiences (or else to give up and throw the book against the wall). And maybe that’s partly where the feelings come from.
November 17, 2024 at 7:14 PM
My hunch is that when the meaning is ambiguous, the ingrained urge to still pick a word to emphasize forces us to enrich that word’s meaning using our own associations and experiences (or else to give up and throw the book against the wall). And maybe that’s partly where the feelings come from.
When we read (if we hear a reader in our head) we’re primed to simulate the pauses and stresses and rising and falling pitches, partly by rote - grammatically or whatever we intuit the clauses and parts of speech (fill in correct description here). And partly through working out the meaning.
November 17, 2024 at 7:13 PM
When we read (if we hear a reader in our head) we’re primed to simulate the pauses and stresses and rising and falling pitches, partly by rote - grammatically or whatever we intuit the clauses and parts of speech (fill in correct description here). And partly through working out the meaning.
But for the next segment, “just a few days before Christmas,” I’m less sure. Christmas seems like it has the most “content,” but knowing Clarke, the “before” sounds like possibly ominous foreshadowing. I don’t know what to emphasize most and since I’m not reading aloud, I’m not forced to pick.
November 17, 2024 at 7:12 PM
But for the next segment, “just a few days before Christmas,” I’m less sure. Christmas seems like it has the most “content,” but knowing Clarke, the “before” sounds like possibly ominous foreshadowing. I don’t know what to emphasize most and since I’m not reading aloud, I’m not forced to pick.
In English we distinguish meaningful utterance segments by pausing, dropping our pitch at the end of the segment, and stressing the segment’s key content word. For example, in “It was winter,” I would mark winter as the key content word: It was *winter*. (No idea if that’s correct, tbh).
November 17, 2024 at 7:11 PM
In English we distinguish meaningful utterance segments by pausing, dropping our pitch at the end of the segment, and stressing the segment’s key content word. For example, in “It was winter,” I would mark winter as the key content word: It was *winter*. (No idea if that’s correct, tbh).
I’m afraid I still don’t know. But. Finding the prosody pyramid led me to a (barely) educated guess.
November 17, 2024 at 7:10 PM
I’m afraid I still don’t know. But. Finding the prosody pyramid led me to a (barely) educated guess.
Anyway, this explains why those rhythmic and alliterative lines sound poetic - poetry tends to be rhythmic and alliterative - but why does it make me feel things? I don’t even like most poetry, but I love this type of prose.
November 17, 2024 at 7:09 PM
Anyway, this explains why those rhythmic and alliterative lines sound poetic - poetry tends to be rhythmic and alliterative - but why does it make me feel things? I don’t even like most poetry, but I love this type of prose.
I’m not going to explain how we “hear” stress and pitch when we read, that’s pretty easy to look up and I only barely follow so I’d do a poor job explaining it.
November 17, 2024 at 7:08 PM
I’m not going to explain how we “hear” stress and pitch when we read, that’s pretty easy to look up and I only barely follow so I’d do a poor job explaining it.
There’s alliteration (few flakes fell fields, and in the next line along lane led). And it’s more rhythmic than standard prose - it alternates more regularly between “weakly” and “strongly” stressed syllables (a strong stress is louder and longer, and often has a noticeable high or low pitch).
November 17, 2024 at 7:08 PM
There’s alliteration (few flakes fell fields, and in the next line along lane led). And it’s more rhythmic than standard prose - it alternates more regularly between “weakly” and “strongly” stressed syllables (a strong stress is louder and longer, and often has a noticeable high or low pitch).
Take the first few lines: It was winter, just a few days before Christmas. A few flakes of snow fell on the quiet fields. It sounds poetic (to me). Maybe nursery rhyme-ish, or somewhere between a nursery rhyme and a fairy tale. Why?
November 17, 2024 at 7:06 PM
Take the first few lines: It was winter, just a few days before Christmas. A few flakes of snow fell on the quiet fields. It sounds poetic (to me). Maybe nursery rhyme-ish, or somewhere between a nursery rhyme and a fairy tale. Why?
I’m going to skip ahead to yesterday. I was reading the first page of Susanna Clarke’s new thing and trying to identify why (for me) it feels simultaneously gentle and pulsing with feeling.
November 17, 2024 at 7:05 PM
I’m going to skip ahead to yesterday. I was reading the first page of Susanna Clarke’s new thing and trying to identify why (for me) it feels simultaneously gentle and pulsing with feeling.
Once upon a time, I wanted to know how fiction makes you feel things. The mechanics of it. Before long, I gave up and left academia, but I kept reading off and on and sometimes found fruitful search words. Metaphor theory; pragmatics; selective cog sci stuff. More terms I forget.
November 17, 2024 at 7:04 PM
Once upon a time, I wanted to know how fiction makes you feel things. The mechanics of it. Before long, I gave up and left academia, but I kept reading off and on and sometimes found fruitful search words. Metaphor theory; pragmatics; selective cog sci stuff. More terms I forget.
Loved reading this, thank you for sharing it!
October 18, 2024 at 10:01 PM
Loved reading this, thank you for sharing it!
Love the critique of claiming unprovable specificity of a vague intervention effect, and yes, anti-med stigma is v. bad, but there is definitely no such thing as chemical imbalance. Other v. good reasons why meds help many! Chem imbalance is thoroughly debunked, though (sorry, this is a pet peeve).
July 16, 2024 at 6:11 PM
Love the critique of claiming unprovable specificity of a vague intervention effect, and yes, anti-med stigma is v. bad, but there is definitely no such thing as chemical imbalance. Other v. good reasons why meds help many! Chem imbalance is thoroughly debunked, though (sorry, this is a pet peeve).
Apologies if this isn’t welcome - if I ever went back to therapy (and I went off and on for decades), I’d ask to regularly see progress notes, either to check if it felt like it was helping or to notice patterns, etc. Don’t know if that would help, but maybe - hope today’s session goes easy!
May 13, 2024 at 1:24 PM
Apologies if this isn’t welcome - if I ever went back to therapy (and I went off and on for decades), I’d ask to regularly see progress notes, either to check if it felt like it was helping or to notice patterns, etc. Don’t know if that would help, but maybe - hope today’s session goes easy!