I land firmly in the camp that language is always changing. Meaning shifts over time, new words arise, slang is fun, and rules are meant to be broken. Grammar and syntax are important but understanding matters more. 

BUT I work in academia and grew up in a well read family. As much as I don't care about language rules, some things just sound clunky. I was educated a certain way and what's deeply engrained in my brain is hard to ignore. These days, I catch myself wincing when I overhear certain things. 

I was reminded of some of those things while watching a home design TV show this week. The narrator described ancient villages dotting the Scottish countryside as "countless." I literally recoiled at that comment. Growing up, I always heard my dad say that there are only two "countless" things: stars in the sky and grains of sand on Earth. Everything else can be counted. Using "countless" is just lazy writing. 

Another familial complaint is the use of the word "very" before "unique." Unique is unique - it does not need a modifier. In fact, AP Style just doubled down on this.  When I'm editing, I try to remove as many "verys" as possible. More often than not, it's unnecessary.

Finally, the common way we use "decimate(d)" annoys almost everyone in my family. "Decimated" means to kill one in ten. In modern usage, it means "mass destruction." Again, this is fine, but a different word would probably work better.

What are your language bug-a-boos?

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I started reading This American Ex-Wife a few days ago. While I don’t agree with Lyz Lenz’s implications that all women should get divorced, I agree with her overall point. Marriage mostly helps men and can be a trap for women. Lenz’s writing is a mix of vulnerable, angry, and sarcastic. Reading this feels weirdly cathartic.

*Books shared here are affiliate links for Bookshop.org

• Wash day. [CNN]

• Tiny tech art. [NPR]

• Voyager I is still kicking! [CNN]

• A syllabus on expiration dates. [Syllabus Project]

• Fixing the internet underwater. [The Verge - reader submission]

• A deep dive on historical markers. [Up First]

• The king under the parking spot. [Noble Blood]

• The sweet and sour side of the Meyer lemon. [Atlas Obscura]

• Kids need time to be independent. [Hidden Brain]

• A charming story about writing to trees. [Atlas Obscura]

• The aesthetics of Taylor Swift. [Culture Study]

• Why waiting is hard. [The Academic Minute]

• The Husband popped on Parallel when we were searching for a movie. This is a low-budget, sci-fi/horror flick that was surprisingly decent. It's a bit of a slow moving story about parallel universes and how a group of people move in and out of them. The filming style was reminiscent of a cinema studies student creation. There were way too many attempts to be artsy. [Amazon Prime]

• For our new binge, we picked A Murder at the End of the World. This stars Emma Corrin as someone who is decidedly NOT Princess Diana. I am impressed by her ability to portray strong and vulnerable at the same time. This is a miniseries designed for the true crime crowd. [Hulu]

• Our meatless Monday recipe for the week was peanut soba stir fry. This is a quick cook but the recipe makes too much sauce for our liking. I already cut it down but we still had leftovers. Next time, I'm just going to halve it. [Budget Bytes]

• Tried a new recipe: sausage and mushroom cassoulet. This took twice as long to make as planned because my sauce did not want to reduce in the oven. I eventually just simmered things on the stove to get it moving. I did get to use our broiler for the first time and I successfully managed to avoid burning the bread crumb topping. [Real Simple]

• We had our monthly at home date night dinner this week. I opted to make sheet-pan chimichurri fish. It was fantastic! Our fish took longer to cook than planned but the flavors were astoundingly good. The tomatoes take on a sweet profile from roasting which balances nicely with the tangy chimichurri. We served ours with boxed rice pilaf. [What to Cook When You Don't Feel Like Cooking]

Look at this amazing picture my friend took! I’m so jealous of her night sky viewing options in Maine. [Not linking to maintain privacy]

While I will never advocate to fake reading a book, sometimes you don’t have time to read something cover to cover. BookPecker provides summaries of over 14,000 titles. You can search for a title or browse by topic. The summaries are not linear recaps - they share the essence of the book.

Final exams start this week. Requests for help are either feast or famine. You never know what you’re going to get each day.