If you want to look up a synonym for a certain word, you can go to your thesaurus and check the list of possible alternatives you can use. But that doesn't mean that one should use a thesaurus simply to write fancy, highfalutin words, at least in Martin Amis' view.
In the context of avoiding repetition, he explains that a thesaurus or a dictionary would be useful not to replace a simple word with a more complicated one. Rather, it's all about rhythm.
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When you are trying to learn a new language, you start with simple words and you associate those with the objects that you see around you. Once you are able to attach a specific meaning to an object, animal, or some other thing, it becomes part of your vocabulary. From there, you start building on the words you know.
In language development, it was generally thought that children are only able to learn more specific terms later. But researchers have found that children use the same sophisticated method of reasoning when acquiring new nouns, the way adults would.
In a series of experiments with children 3 to 5 years old, the researchers found that when children are learning new nouns, they use what they know about these objects — how typical or unusual they are for their categories (such as fish, dog, bird or flower) — to help them figure out what these words mean. This type of sophisticated reasoning was thought to only develop later.
The researchers coined this tactic the “blowfish effect.” If children see a blowfish (or a greyhound or an unusual tropical flower) and learn a new word to go with it, they will assume it refers to that specific type of object and not the broader category of fish (or dogs or flowers).
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When people take action for a cause, an advocacy, or even just to simply keep their community from being commercialized, there are times when they succeed and there are times when they don't. But in one such instance, when there were plans to build a freeway cutting through Glen Park neighborhood, three women sprung into action to prevent it.
(Image credit: Wendy MacNaughton/The California Sunday)
https://t.co/XDjs4FIvJo @ Harpeth River State Park https://t.co/WupmscLIgf
— C.J.Garton (@cjgarton) July 23, 2019
This is an interesting way to have father-son bonding time. But C.J. Garton, a country music artist, has said that he always had the idea to go on a ride with his dad from their farm in Oklahoma to Nashville to tackle country music. Even though his dad has passed away, the dream lives on and he is now fulfilling said dream with his son. Garton currently resides in Nashville and so their 31-day trip will be from Nashville to Oklahoma.
In Dickson, they were on day 3 of a projected 31-day ride for “real country,” said C.J. Garton, a Nashville musician. Along the nearly 650-mile ride, the father-son riders get to spend “quality father-son time,” said Garton. They have also received some help from law enforcement with state Highway Patrol Lt. Travis Plotzer bringing them dinner from Cookout on Wednesday night.
(Image credit: C.J. Garton/Twitter)
Sudoku is an incredibly simple and straightforward game. You have a 9x9 grid divided into nine 3x3 grids and the goal is to place the numbers 1 to 9 in each box without repeating any number in any row, column, or box. You don't need to know complicated math to solve it. And this game has given Grace Yeoh an avenue to come to terms with math and the trauma it has caused her in school.
Every adult who considers themselves artistically inclined still harbours some degree of Math PTSD—a ‘disorder’ acquired from years of internalising that they were ‘too stupid’ to grasp the basic concepts of probability, understand differentiation and integration, or calculate relative velocity when they were in school.
To be clear, we are not trying to diminish the actual severity of PTSD. But if, while reading the previous paragraph, you experienced a sudden urge to close this article because you found yourself feeling inexplicably defensive, you’re one of these sufferers. Guess what, you’re not alone.
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Living in an eco-friendly neighborhood can impact our lifestyle but what researchers found was that green spaces with more trees could lead to positive health outcomes. Humans have always lived alongside nature and there is an interdependence among all organisms in an ecosystem. So it's no surprise that having more trees in our neighborhoods would help us maintain good health.
...when it comes to promoting human health, not all green spaces are created equal. That's the conclusion of new Australian research, which finds higher levels of wellness in areas marked by one particular manifestation of the natural world: leafy trees.
"Protection and restoration of urban tree canopy specifically, rather than any urban greening, may be a good option for promotion of community mental health," write Thomas Astell-Burt and Xiaoqi Feng of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales.
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This is the video of the close encounter of Asteroid 2019 OK we have been Twitting all day with the Earth: https://t.co/bjT7uhQJuO pic.twitter.com/3e4UyPcdPl
— ASAS-SN (@SuperASASSN) July 25, 2019
We have been getting a lot of close calls with asteroids of late, with each one drifting ever nearer our terrestrial space. The most recent one happened last Thursday when Asteroid 2019 OK sped past the Earth at a distance of about 70,000 kilometers which might seem far but it's a lot closer to us than the Moon.
Due to the trajectory of the asteroid – flying towards us from the direction of the sun – astronomers had no warning it was headed our way. It is the largest rock to fly at such close quarters to the Earth this year, and possibly for many years.
Astronomers believe the asteroid is between 57 and 130 metres in diameter. Telescopes only began to pick it up a couple of days ago, with a confirmation it was an asteroid only coming in the past 24 hours.
Had it been on a collision course with Earth, its impact would have decimated a city, according to astronomers. There were other asteroids who had also passed by Earth but 2019 OK was the closest. -via PS Mag
(Image credit: ASAS-SN/Twitter)
Writing can get frustrating and confusing, especially for editors. One of the things that a lot of writers consider a pain in the neck is probably the use of punctuations. There are a lot of punctuations which have various functions. But among them, dashes in particular seem to have different variations.
So you’ve got the hyphen. That’s the “-” guy. It joins words together... Then there is what is called the “figure dash.” That, too, is the “-” guy. It has the same meaning and use as the hyphen, but when you use it to connect numbers, rather than words or parts of words, you call it a “figure dash.”
Then, if you are a regular reader of this website, you likely know the “em dash,” which several of us, most especially me, overuse badly. That’s the “—” guy. The long one. It has many uses, but mostly you will see it on either side of an interpolation—not an aside (which would be better marked with parentheses)—in the middle of a sentence.
And then there's one more, smack dab in the middle of a hyphen and an em dash. It's called the en dash. Technically, if you want to write something well, it's good to know these things. But for practicality, I think it's best to just keep things simple.
(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Actually, that would be the worst "would you rather" question ever. These two pests are probably the worst of all creepy crawlies especially since they are so prevalent in urban areas. Wherever we go, we are sure to find at least one of these guys hiding in a corner or a hole in the wall somewhere.
Personally, I think rats are worse just because of their destructive capacity. They can eat anything. Roaches just scare people off because they can fly. Apart from that, it's a lot easier to get rid of them. Rats, on the other hand, are on a different level. Here are some answers from the Splinter staff:
Roaches by a mile. They look disgusting and move in an extremely creepy way. Plus they can survive a nuclear bomb and would probably mutate into super roaches the size of golden retrievers.
It’s definitely rodents. Roaches suck but getting rid of them is easier, both on the practical level and on the guilt level. If you have to kill a rodent, it’s horrible. They’re mammals, they make noise, they have faces. Killing a roach is deeply whatever. Also god forbid I ever have to deal with a whole rat in my house, I would lose it.
What do you think?
-via Deadspin
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Fight Club is a cult classic. It tells the story of a cynical anarchist who leads a group called Project Mayhem the goal of which is to bring down the capitalist establishment and set everyone free from their debt.
It lives up to its popular motto which says "rules are meant to be broken" in a nutshell. But a lot of people who watch and have watched Fight Club don't really have that as a take away. Instead, many of its male fans think it's about masculinity and their entitlement.
“In the decade and a half or so after its release and reception as a cult classic, Fight Club has been embraced by the loose collection of radical online male communities (known as the ‘manosphere’) as a kind of gospel text,” Paulie Doyle wrote for Vice.
“The manosphere’s affinity for Fight Club stems from a common central, biologically deterministic claim: Men are naturally predisposed to being violent, dominant hunter gatherers, who, having found themselves domesticated by modern civilization, are now in a state of crisis.”
But that's not what Fight Club is about. In her article, Rebecca Renner, who is a die-hard fan of the novel and film, sets things straight about the real point of Fight Club.
(Image credit: 20th Century Fox/IMDb)
Oh Gnome! Anyone want to adopt the World's Largest Gnome?
— LANMonkey (@LANMonkeyGC) March 5, 2019
Howard the Gnome - a long-time roadside attraction near #Nanoose on #VancouverIsland will be evicted Apr30! 😬
Check out the article, and let me know if you've visited Howard!https://t.co/qI2ZBb29S0 pic.twitter.com/P59AmHqKVp
Howard the world's largest gnome with a height of 7.19m will have to vacate his premises soon or Chevron Canada will be forced to tear him down. For 25 years, he stood as a landmark in the local seashore community of Nanoose Bay, but now it is time for him to bid farewell.
“He’s a landmark,” says Bridget Matawish. Her grandfather, Rob Hale, constructed Howard using recycled materials shortly after passing ownership of the family’s amusement park to Matawish’s father, Bruce Hale.
Even after the family business changed from amusement park to gas station, then was sold to Esso in 2006, Howard remained; visitors sometimes made a trip just to snap pictures of the beloved giant.
Matawish turned to social media, posting Howard's dilemma on Facebook and turning to friends to tell them that Howard is available. And within a day, many responded and said they would like to take Howard in. Eventually, Howard found a suitable caretaker in Rob Galey.
(Image credit: LANMonkey/Twitter)
The neighborhood around Eastlake Terrace near the coast of Lake Michigan has seen the waters continue to encroach on its shores to the point that the only barrier separating the water from the streets is a concrete breakwall which was installed by the Army Corps of Engineers last year. That too might soon be swallowed up.
Edward McClelland who has lived in the neighborhood for ten years recounts the change that occurred along the beaches of Chicago. Due to the effects of climate change, some of the beaches, like Juneway Beach, have already disappeared.
According to the Army Corps, Lake Michigan is at its highest level since 1986, the year it set an all-time record.
In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration warned that “[s]everal Great Lakes are expected to reach record high water levels in the next six months... residents should prepare for an increased risk of erosion and minor flooding during storm events.”
This is only one of the reminders that if climate change were to continue its march and we don't do anything to reduce our emissions and implement more eco-friendly and sustainable practices, soon we would be forced to move further inland and maybe even search for higher ground to escape the creeping waters.
(Image credit: Edward McClelland/Chicago Mag)
If we don't curb our carbon emissions along with other greenhouse gases, climate change will spell disaster for some of the popular coastal national parks in the US. As sea levels continue to rise, we might see some land areas being submerged underwater if a storm surge were to hit. Here are a few maps that show the flooding risks of various national parks in the US.
(Image credit: National Park Service/Mapbox, OpenStreetMap, Digital Globe)
The first drops of freezing cold water trickling down your skin can send shivers down your body and really give you a jolt especially when you take a shower first thing in the morning. But people have been suggesting that taking cold showers in general have legitimate benefits to our health and disposition throughout the day.
So Danielle Zickl of Men's Health tried it out for a month. And she found it to be really refreshing. I too have discovered how cold showers can make you more mentally alert and feel physically energized. It's a great way to start the day.
According to a 2016 study in the journal PLOS One, “the most commonly reported beneficial effect [of cold showers] was an increase in perceived energy levels (including many reported comparisons to the effect of caffeine).”
According to Henry Halse, C.S.C.S., owner of Halse Strength and Fitness in Philadelphia, taking cold showers on a regular basis helps your muscles recover from a workout. “When you apply cold to a surface—for example, your skin—it causes more blood to flow to the area,” he said. “Increased blood flow to an area is what promotes recovery.”
It takes some time to get used to taking cold showers but there are a few things that you can do to ease into it. In my case, I start with the extremities and after a while, I poke my head and torso until my whole body is under the shower. It genuinely feels good after it's over.
(Image credit: Pixabay)
The stereotypes that exist in society don't necessarily hold true for everyone especially since each individual has their own unique traits, backgrounds, and contexts. A recent thread on Reddit explored the question of problems encountered by "attractive people".
One might think that people who are generally considered "attractive" by others wouldn't have a lot of issues in life. However, that is not the reality at all since not all "hot" people use their good looks to get by in life neither do they want to be defined by them. Because of these stereotypes, they are boxed into specific categories that define and reduce them solely on their appearances instead of considering all of their qualities as human beings.
"If you are shy, anxious, socially awkward or generally quiet but also attractive, people assume you are rude and standoffish," reads one comment. Others chimed in to say that, while they don't think they're attractive, other people have said that they are, and that their introverted natures have led them to be deemed cold or stuck up.
Though there are times when I have felt intimidated by attractive people, they have more to do with my self-esteem issues and social awkwardness than anything else. Still, we can't make generalizations about other people based on appearances or even isolated instances because everyone's different. The best we can do is to approach someone with a blank slate and hope for the best.
-via Men's Health
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