Let’s just get this out of the way: There are, in fact, differences in the way men and women think, speak, act, etc. How much of that difference is due to nature and how much is due to nurture is up for debate. But that is not what this post is about.

This post is about a particular language myth that, for whatever reason, will not die. There are literally dozens of peer-reviewed, scientific studies refuting this myth, and yet the popular culture clings to it.

The myth I’m referring to is the idea that women talk more than men. More »

When I built my computer, I had no problems at all. I mean, sure I was confused or puzzled by a few steps, and I was certainly challenged by the process, but I was never frustrated. All in all, it was a very empowering experience. I learned a lot and I was really successful.

And then I decided to upgrade. When I bought my graphics card, I made the mistake of not researching the computability of graphics card drivers with Ubuntu. It caused a whole weekend of headaches and troubleshooting and frustration before I got it working again.

So did I learn my lesson about doing research before making major changes to my computer? Apparently not.

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So I finally got around to beating Never Alone!! It was a good game overall, but as I was thinking how to review it, I had a hard time deciding whether to review it as a Native American, as a Linguist, or as a Gamer. So why not all three? (Warning: Spoilers in the “gamer” section) More »

So, you bought and installed a shiny new graphics card on your Linux machine. Congratulations! Now to make use of it by playing some video games! Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of games out there for Linux. Fortunately, there’s a thing called WINE, which is sort of like a Windows emulator, but not really. It’s basically a layer of code that makes (most) .exe (Windows-only) programs work (kinda) on Linux.

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Last week, Jennifer Lawrence and Conan O’Brien had a little spat about whether the past tense of “sneak” is “snuck” or “sneaked.”

So which is it?

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I bought one of the best GPUs I could get for under $100. I determined this by using the benchmarks per dollar chart here and by watching Black Friday sales closely. I did not determine which GPU I should buy based on anything other than the above, and the games I wanted to play, and whether it fit my motherboard. Okay, so I did my research, I just didn’t take into account I’m running Linux and not Windows.

Big mistake.

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I know I promised to buy Never Alone on release day, but as it turns out, none of the gaming systems or computers I own can play it. Waiting for Black Friday sales to bulk up this thing.

In the meantime, Happy Wugsgiving!

wugsgiving

Flashback to my first quarter of grad school.

We take turns buying snacks with a $40 budget in my department. It was my turn that week. I bought a lot of snacks. An older grad student comments on all the snacks, and I mention that I found a couple coupons, so I was able to get more snacks than usual.

His response?

“That’s some wicked palatalization you got there!”

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In case you didn’t know, FiveThirtyEight is an awesome blog about statistics. Recently, they posted a challenge against the new Words With Friends Artificial Intelligence. For the sake of science, I decided to replicate their study.

I’m an avid WWF player. As of this writing, I have played exactly 1800 games since October 2010 (which amounts to a little over one game per day). Of those, I’ve won 930, lost 864, and tied 6. Yes, I win more than I lose, but not this isn’t statistically significant (χ² = 2.4281, df = 1, p-value = 0.1192). In other words, I win more than I lose mostly due to chance.

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Today would have been Aaron Swartz’s 28th birthday. He was an activist for Open Access, and I think Open Access is important too. Educate yourself: