iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 29/09/2026

Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025)

Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 28/09/2026

I will never understand APA style's rules for capitalization in reference lists. Article, chapter, and book titles are sentence case, while journal titles are title case? Make it make sense. #AmEditing

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 22/09/2026

Shakespeare did not speak or write in Old English (or "Olde" English)! Old English was spoken from about 500 AD to 1100 AD. Shakespeare wrote in Early Modern English, which was spoken from about the late fifteenth century to the late seventeenth century.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 22/09/2026

Editing tip: The form you want is "each other's," not "each others'." Sometimes people get tripped up because it feels plural. But the reflexive form is always "each other" (not "each others"), so the possessive form just adds "'s" like a regular noun. #AmEditing

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 21/09/2026

brb, adding similar-looking but unrelated words to the "Etymology" section of every Wikipedia article I can find

The Etymology section of the Wikipedia entry for "melamine": "The German word Melamin was coined by combining the words melam (a derivative of ammonium thiocyanate) and amine.[8][9] Melamine is, therefore, unrelated etymologically to the root melas (μέλας, meaning 'black' in Greek), from which the words melanin, a pigment, and melatonin, a hormone, are formed."

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 18/09/2026

I just found out that the cost of COBRA coverage is more than my take-home pay from my erstwhile job. Health insurance in this country is so fucking stupid.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 17/09/2026

A quick glance at the trending topic shows that apparently *everyone* is misreading that as "Meryl Streep cast as Asian."

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 17/09/2026

So Microsoft Word just doesn't autosave anymore unless you're willing to put everything in OneDrive, huh? #AmEditing

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 17/09/2026

I give this idea one MeowMeowBeen.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 15/09/2026

Anyone have any opinions (or better yet, data) on whether the "Open to Work" banner on LinkedIn is helpful? I've heard that some recruiters actually avoid people who have it active.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 09/09/2026

Welp, guess who just got laid off.

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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 08/09/2026

This was super interesting and detailed!

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

I picked up a copy of the collected letters of JRR Tolkien for reasons, and this is the most bullshit table of contents I've ever seen. I'm actively angry that it exists

Contents

Introduction - vii

Foreword to the Revised and Expanded Edition - xi

Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien - 1

Notes - 607

Index - 637

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 04/09/2026

Welp, they got me pegged. mydialect.us/quiz-standar...

A heat map of the US, showing the highest concentration of red around Utah

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Jeff Turrentine @jeffturrentine.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

JAMES JOYCE: Yes I said yes I will yes COPY EDITOR: Hi, Mr. Joyce. My name is Amy and I work on the production team. I was wondering if we could schedule a Zoom call for next week to discuss a few things that have popped up during the editing process. (Absolutely LOVING the book, btw!)

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Joshua Eaton @joshuaeaton.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

“There’s a new Mr. Beast book.” You bolt awake in your workshop in Mainz. It’s 1450. You’re Johannes Gutenberg, and you’ve changed your mind. The future cannot come to pass. Your printing press must burn.

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Iva Cheung @ivacheung.com · 01/09/2026

SEPTEMBER CARTOON: ivacheung.com/2026/09/two-...

ivacheung.com

Two dots - Iva Cheung

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Ken Tremendous @kentremendous.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

I'm renaming Lake Ontario "The Kennedy Center." Then I'm renaming the (current) Kennedy Center "Trump Lake." Then I'm tearing down Trump Lake and building The Ontario Center for American Lakes. Then I'm flooding it and renaming it Lake White House. Then I'm renaming the movie "The Lake House" "Ontar

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 25/08/2026

I just had an etymological realization: The bursa is so named because it's a sac or pouch (from the Latin bursa 'bag, purse'), which means that it's also related to "bursar", "disburse", "reimburse", and the like. www.etymonline.com/word/bursa

etymonline.com

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Tom Freeman @tomfreeman.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

They still haven't solved the hallucination problem, then

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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I was trying to figure out why cavemen sometimes do and sometimes don't drop prepositions. Anyone have a theory? COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/me PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com

Single-panel SMBC comic update. A caveman with a long beard, a spear and a yellow animal skin on one shoulder speaks to the viewer, saying "Me caveman. Me only have one pronoun refer self. Me not use articles. Me not mark plurals. Me not have copula, subject-verb agreement, or infinitival 'to.' it normal grammar. contain features present in mandarin, russian, latin." The caption below the panel reads "Never hire a linguist to write caveman dialog."

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 13/08/2026

This shirt is Phoebe approved.

A fluffy tuxedo cat with yellow eyes sits on my lap while I wear a black T-shirt showing a black and white Himalayan cat sitting on an open book (presumably a dictionary). It says "Merriam-Webster" below the book.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 11/08/2026

Sometimes I hate living in Utah.

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Colleen Barry @copycurmudgeon.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Even scammers can fall into the dreaded find-and-replace trap! Presumably last month they were sending fake recall notices about a “May 2026 purchase,” so when they updated to June, they hit “replace all” and wound up regretting “any inconvenience this June cause.”

A series of texts from a scammer pretending to be a recall notice. It starts with “This notice concerns an item in your June 2026 purchase history.” After some stuff about safety and a redacted link to their scam site, it says, “We recognize any inconvenience this June cause.”

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depths of wikipedia @depthsofwikipedia.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

not to be confused with quesadilla

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 07/08/2026

I'm sorry, but the "chauffeur" etymology just broke my brain.

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Stephen Hopkins @phil-lol-ogist.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Parents Parents 2026 BCE 2026 CE 🤝 "These kids and their damned tablets"

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 03/08/2026

Before bad takes we just had mistakes.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 29/07/2026

Uh, excuse me, neighbor. Uh, yeah, I couldn't help but notice that you bought pretty much all of my books! Can't make an AI model without books! Oh ho, true enough. But, uh, did you have to shred the books so no one could ever read them again? Heh heh heh heh, eh heh, yeah.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 28/07/2026

I could suck less if I wanted to. I just don't want to.

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smouritsen.bsky.social @smouritsen.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Liam Neeson: “If you return my plums, that'll be the end of it... But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you….” This summer. Taken: Plums

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Johnson's Dictionary Online @sjdictionary.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Available for pre-order! us.macmillan.com/books/978125...

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Costa Samaras @costasamaras.com · 19/07/2026

Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 17/07/2026

The Rise of Skywalker, hands down. So many maguffins. So many death fake-outs. An awkward and unnecessary romance between the leads. A cavalry charge on top of a star destroyer. "Somehow, Palpatine returned." The list goes on and on.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 14/07/2026

This reminds me of one of my favorite etymological facts: "stool" meaning "poop" comes from the kind of stool you sit on.

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Caitlin Cooper @caitlinmaycooper.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

Me, reading the headline: this makes no sense Me, reading the byline: oh, this makes sense

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 09/07/2026

Maybe it was a bad idea to let Google become such a monopoly.

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 08/07/2026

I wonder how many T. rex skeletons named Gus there are. www.facebook.com/share/p/1ERo...

Screenshot of a Facebook post by IGN that reads "Gus the T. rex is up for auction this month after years of excavation and reconstruction of 183 fossilized bones, with an opening bid set at $19 million." The picture shows a T. rex skeleton with the text "One of the most complete T. rex skeletons named 'Gus' is up for auction starting at $19M."

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Jonathon Owen @arrantpedantry.com · 08/07/2026

I'm reviewing changes from a proofreader who suggested capitalizing "to" in the book's subtitle "since it is acting as part of the verb." The subtitle is a construction like "A Proofreader's Guide to Proofreading." (Not the real title, obviously.)

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 06/07/2026

OK sure, great, but I don't that helps much. He's 80 years old, woefully out of shape, and probably doesn't even know the rules.

Trump Asked FIFA to Review U.S. Player’s Suspension. Now He’s Eligible to Play.

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