I do okay with that on a computer. It's phones that give me the problem. But Phone Society has taught me to only Text in miniscule snippets. On the phone, texting over 50 words is really pushing it. But it probably is the case that some people read my Substack comments on their phones, in which case most of them are scrolled over as "tl;…
I do okay with that on a computer. It's phones that give me the problem. But Phone Society has taught me to only Text in miniscule snippets. On the phone, texting over 50 words is really pushing it. But it probably is the case that some people read my Substack comments on their phones, in which case most of them are scrolled over as "tl;dr." (Which is, in turn, a truncation of the earlier "tl;dnr". At this point, "didn't" rather than "did" is simply assumed...typing that extra letter is Unhip! A cardinal sin, for Americans.)
Tangentially: in 1984*, wasn't one of the goals of Newspeak to reduce the entire vocabulary of English to 500 words?
*Kurt Vonnegut eventually found it borderline mandatory to address his young readership with footnotes such as this: "1984 was a book, by a man named George Orwell. He noticed worrisome trends."
And that was over 30 years ago. Around the same time, Robert Anton Wilson's wife Arlen observed to her husband: "Most young people don't seem to know much of anything any more, do they?"
My final concession to what is purported to be Civilization is to own the crappiest flip phone ever invented, originally a working stage prop used in the triumphant Royal Shakespearean revival of the "The Flintstones."
Its journey has been remarkable. Stolen by a stagehand, and then in turn confiscated by Scotland Yard, it mysteriously washed up on the shores of Bayonne, New Jersey, where it was found, miraculously, still in working order.
When I use it to call my local taxi company, Jerry the disheveled dispatcher answers and I have to scream "Speak Up!" because the volume is permanently on "Deep Throat Whisper." Or that's what he himself sounds like. Not sure which.
In 1984, our vocabulary had already been reduced to nine words. Kamala Harris has mastered the accepted usage of two of them.
I do okay with that on a computer. It's phones that give me the problem. But Phone Society has taught me to only Text in miniscule snippets. On the phone, texting over 50 words is really pushing it. But it probably is the case that some people read my Substack comments on their phones, in which case most of them are scrolled over as "tl;dr." (Which is, in turn, a truncation of the earlier "tl;dnr". At this point, "didn't" rather than "did" is simply assumed...typing that extra letter is Unhip! A cardinal sin, for Americans.)
Tangentially: in 1984*, wasn't one of the goals of Newspeak to reduce the entire vocabulary of English to 500 words?
*Kurt Vonnegut eventually found it borderline mandatory to address his young readership with footnotes such as this: "1984 was a book, by a man named George Orwell. He noticed worrisome trends."
And that was over 30 years ago. Around the same time, Robert Anton Wilson's wife Arlen observed to her husband: "Most young people don't seem to know much of anything any more, do they?"
My final concession to what is purported to be Civilization is to own the crappiest flip phone ever invented, originally a working stage prop used in the triumphant Royal Shakespearean revival of the "The Flintstones."
Its journey has been remarkable. Stolen by a stagehand, and then in turn confiscated by Scotland Yard, it mysteriously washed up on the shores of Bayonne, New Jersey, where it was found, miraculously, still in working order.
When I use it to call my local taxi company, Jerry the disheveled dispatcher answers and I have to scream "Speak Up!" because the volume is permanently on "Deep Throat Whisper." Or that's what he himself sounds like. Not sure which.
In 1984, our vocabulary had already been reduced to nine words. Kamala Harris has mastered the accepted usage of two of them.