Jul 28so your adhd coping strategies keep suddenly failing(or: how to rotate your crops) — I’m overdue for one of these ADHD posts. I know I’m overdue because I have the urge to write one, I guess — these things sort of bubble up seasonally, sometimes in clusters of several in a row, and then months of none. This might itself be an ADHD thing. …Adhd12 min read
Jun 4prettier syntax(This is not my usual fare for this particular outlet; I’m assuming some familiarity with the mechanics of generative syntax, and use a lot of jargon that’s particular to minimalist syntax notation. Please feel free to skip it, and check out my more accessible posts elsewhere on the blog!) Let’s…Syntax7 min read
May 30pronoun espionagewhy i sometimes let people (especially bosses and doctors) misgender me so I can gain valuable intel I moved across the country this year, after living in Seattle for 7 years, which is the longest I lived anywhere as an adult. As such, I’ve been slowly rebuilding my life, including…Pronouns12 min read
May 25pronouns aren’t gender; please get better at looking at birdsPronouns aren’t gender. If you’ve been around the pronoun conversations for a bit, you’ve likely seen this line, but I find it’s either intuitive to you (like lightbulb-moment “oh, that explains a lot”) or you’re stuck on like, “….sure, but what does that mean?” I will run you through a…Pronouns6 min read
Apr 18you (yes you!!) should change your ID to X genderHey cis people! You should change your gender marker to X on your legal ID documents. Uhh why do you say that, Kirby? Well, the current thing that scares a lot of trans and non-binary people off of getting our ID genders changed to X is that, as it stands…LGBTQ6 min read
Mar 26intermediate pronoun studies: themselves and themselfQ: Should I say ‘themself’ or ‘themselves’ with singular they? A: This is a question I have gotten a few times, and when I’ve answered it in live Q&A sessions, my answer has been that infuriating Linguistᵗᵐ Answer: I dunno, which one do you say? What feels more right? I…Pronouns7 min read
Dec 23, 2021put a coin in the pronoun jarI am listening back through the archives of the comedy podcast My Brother, My Brother, and Me. It’s a comforting and familiar media, and I like having background noise that feels sociable but undemanding when I’m hanging out at home. Yesterday in my backwards binge-listen I hit Episode 553: The…Pronouns5 min read
Sep 22, 2021how to abolish deadlinesThis is a post I have been meaning to write for ages, but I was finally spurred into action by this episode of Big Mood, Little Mood with host Daniel M. Lavery and guest Divya Victor. On the podcast, they give advice to an anonymous letter writer who, as a…Pedagogy9 min read
Sep 13, 2021how to ask gender in a linguistics studyI get asked this a lot! This will be a short, informal version of work I’m in the process of writing up for formal publication in linguistics — it’s not yet peer reviewed, I’m not putting a ton of time into citations, and I’m not going to go deeply into…Linguistics10 min read
Jul 14, 2021Guest Lecture in Pronouns: VasundharaHello all! I had hoped to get this out in pride month, but it’s falling in wrath month instead; it’s fine, we’re still all totally in our feels this hot nonbinary summer, so we’re good! This is a guest post from Vasundhara Gautam, a computational linguist at Dialpad (moving to…Pronouns9 min read