"If your restaurant hasn’t been remodeled, you don’t need to worry, it won’t be"

'No one has tried to challenge that'

Books Seeds of Story The Perils of Learning Alien Languages: The Sapir-Whorf Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis Thinking about how language shapes the way we think, from Newspeak to texting and the Internet. By Ruthanna Emrys | Published on September 9, 2025 Credit: Lava Bear Films Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Lava Bear Films Welcome to Seeds of Story, where I explore the non-fiction that inspires—or should inspire—speculative fiction. Most weeks, I’ll dive into a book, article, or other source of ideas that are sparking current stories, or that have untapped potential to do so. But occasionally we’ll do a “retro edition,” looking at a seed where the science has moved on, or just moved in new directions. What was so appealing—and is there anything left to mine? This week, I talk about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, and the idea that describing ideas as ungood stops thoughtcrimes. How It Started, How It’s Going… In the 1930s, linguist Edward Sapir and insurance agent-turned-linguist Benjamin Whorf developed linguistic relativity: the hypothesis that the language(s) you speak affects how you think about the world. Whorf drew on his experience with insurance claims: for example, a warehouse fire started by someone throwing a cigarette into a barrel marked “empty.” It was, indeed, empty of gasoline, but unfortunately highly flammable fumes remained—but the word, he felt, kept people from thinking through the safety implications. Ironically, linguistic relativity is itself relative. Researchers have treated it on a spectrum ranging from weak—“language has effects on thought”—to strong—“you can only think about things for which you have words.” The first is so basic as to be uninteresting, while the last is demonstrably wrong and yet deeply appealing to researchers, writers, and conlangers. In between these two extremes sit nine decades of research on color perception, future planning, gender, and anything else that varies between human languages. As a young psychologist, Sapir-Whorf was everything that made me go “Ooh, shiny!” There’s a dragon-hoarding satisfaction in learning which languages conjugate by when something happened and which by whether you saw the thing happen, which divide the world by animacy and which by ownership status. Not to mention all those awesome “untranslatable” words (inevitably accompanied by a translation). And as a writer, the idea that words have incredible power is irresistible. The actual post-Whorf research is both fascinating, and inconveniently nuanced. It’s easier to perceive color differences for which you have words—but not impossible to pick up the ones not covered by your language. In general, this is true of every way that language divides the world—you’re more practiced at thinking about the distinctions you talk about. Languages with strong time markers tend to be associated with stronger future planning, with the major caveat that researchers who strongly value future planning may be just a wee bit biased against cultures that don’t obviously share their priorities. Languages that mark the evidence for a statement do not, alas, inoculate you against disinformation. In fact, it turns out that people will use “I saw this myself” markers for things told to them by authorities, or just people they need to flatter. The biggest problem with the strong Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is that humans make shit up. Specifically, new words, whenever we find ourselves in serious need of them. Prescriptivists may complain about changes for decades, but neologisms swiftly grow cromulent. Meanings shift and expand. New forms of grammar or punctuation add nuance to sentences. In short, you cannot linguistic change, no matter how hard you try. Stories of Old Science One of the most well-known uses of strong linguistic relativity in speculative fiction is, of course, George Orwell’s 1984. Oceania controls its people by teaching Newspeak, a limited version of English that tries to both reduce the bounds of what can be said and make it impossible to talk about revolution without treating it as doubleplusungood. 1984 is many people’s first encounter with this idea, and linguists therefore like to use it to illustrate the way language doesn’t work. And yet. We have a lot of psycholinguistic research on Russian color words, but little on the way authoritarians actually do use language as a method of control. Sure, revolutionaries can make up new words to support their revolutions—and do. But it’s also true that people use a Party’s preferred terms to signal loyalty, and that talking in those terms changes how people think. Arguments over neopronouns (or pronouns that have been around since Shakespeare) aren’t disinterested academic debates, for example, and they aren’t irrelevant to how trans people get treated. Linguistic relativity hit its science fictional heyday in the 1950s and ’60s, trickling off over the rest of the 20th century. Stories like Jack Vance’s The Languages of Pao and Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 have languages deliberately created as tools to foment rebellion or develop superpowers; Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land has the organically developed (we assume) Martian language helping humans achieve superpowered enlightenment. Both parallel real-world efforts to create languages-for-a-purpose, ranging from Esperanto (created in the 1800s to facilitate international community) to Loglan (created in the 1950s to test Sapir-Whorf). Cartoon by Rex May (English translation: “Professor Brown, someone is here who wants the proof of the Whorf Hypothesis.”) Not all Whorfian stories are quite so “But what if ubermenschen???” Suzette Haden Elgin’s Native Tongue trilogy includes alien languages that destroy human minds and bodies if learned, plus a human conlang intended to better represent women’s experiences. I knew Elgin on Livejournal and had something of a love/exasperation relationship with her writing. It seems unlikely that even the most alien languages would cause learners to explode with the cognitive conflict, which she in fact knew in real life. And her idea of women’s experiences and mine were very different—I was not the only one, and she remained frustrated to the end that Klingon had so many more speakers than Láadan. (But every time someone goes on about government waste, I do think of her media gasping over Linguist families’ entirely-imaginary gold faucets.) More recently, the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis plays a central role in Ted Chiang’s “The Story of Your Life,” and in its movie adaptation Arrival. Is non-linear time perception, like fine divisions among colors, something that can be opened up by the right language classes? Depending on your view of clairvoyance, it might well fit into the category of being possible without linguistic tools, but easier with them. At the same time, learning shrimp language wouldn’t give you new types of photoreceptors, any more than learning human languages causes parrots or ravens to think like us. Language is an attentional filter, not a sensory receptor. At least, that seems to be the way it works in our universe. I could write a whole separate essay about fantastical languages that enable sorcery, or open the human mind to things mortals weren’t meant to know. But frankly, I’m not sure most of these are even thinking about Sapir and Whorf. I once attempted to learn Hebrew from a teacher who believed that it was, in fact, the divine language used to create the universe, and many fantasy languages seem to draw on that kind of older mystical belief. Languages that feel wrong are a trope in weird fiction, and as far as I can tell draw about equally on said mysticism and on H.P. Lovecraft’s distress at hearing Yiddish on the streets of New York. Digging for Salvage Chiang’s story more than proves that there’s still room for linguistic relativity in modern science fiction. At the same time, the space for non-eye-rolly extreme effects is diminishing—Chiang makes it work, but Chiang also manages science fiction about the Tower of Babel and tiny cellular homunculi. However, the space for stories about nuanced linguistic relativity is wide open. Authors could explore the cross-species perceptual insights that are—and aren’t—available to therolinguists. You could make a whole, and extremely timely, epic about the neologism-creating rebels against Newspeak. Interstellar anthropologists oversimplifying “primitive” cultures and languages are out there, but could be even better informed by real-world experiences. We know a little now about how decades of tightly-focused study impact people who are still, supposedly, isolated from the rest of the world—and how study can be warped by ridiculous answers to ridiculous questions. New Growth: What to Read Benjamin Whorf’s own Language, Thought, and Reality is still a good introduction to the Sapir-Whorf approach to linguistic relativity, if for obvious reasons well out of date. More recent coverage includes Deutcher’s Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages. Everett’s Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes talks about the experience of study with a specific—extremely linguistically popular—Amazonian tribe, though I have since heard many researchers question the claim that the Pirahã have no number words. Going further afield, but giving a good sense of how flexible language and thought really are, Gretchen McCulloch’s Because Internet is a terrific discussion of online language shifts. I learned a lot and became very anxious about my use of periods while texting. David Peterson’s The Art of Language Invention gets into modern conlangs, while Arika Okrent’s In the Land of Invented Languages covers more historical ones, how they succeed or fail, and what they do and don’t do to the cognition of speakers. If you want to try your own hand at language building, and playing with the relationships between language and culture, the Dialect role-playing game is an enjoyably intense way to spend an afternoon with a table of fellow nerds. My family built an abandoned Martian settlement with a subculture of brave desert truckers. Wishing you a full liter and a strong seal! What are your favorite sorta-untranslatable words, from conlangs or organic languages? What do you wish we had better ways to talk about? Share your thoughts in the comments.[end-mark] The post The Perils of Learning Alien Languages: The Sapir-Whorf Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis appeared first on Reactor.

Texas state Rep. James Talarico on Tuesday announced his bid for the Democrat nomination for the 2026 U.S. Senate election in the Lone Star State. Talarico has gone from a once relatively unknown Texas state representative to a bona fide media darling for Democrats since appearing on Joe Rogan’s podcast and becoming a spokesman for Texas Democrats protesting the state’s redistricting efforts from Illinois, to which they fled. Those media appearances even earned him the gratitude of former President Barack Obama. In the Democrat primary, Talarico will be facing off against former Congressman Colin Allred who challenged Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in the 2024 Senate general election. Allred was quick to be portrayed as the Democrat establishment’s favored candidate for 2026 by Talarico in an interview with Politico. “We’re going up against the political establishment in both parties. We’re going up against those billionaire megadonors and their puppet politicians. But you know, my life has always shown me that it’s a good idea to bet it on the underdog,” the Texas state representative told Politico. Allred reportedly secured more than $100 million in 2024 to take on Cruz only to lose the race by more than 8 points. Nevertheless, polling from August by the former NFL linebacker’s supporters showed Allred ahead of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton among likely midterm voters. Paxton is challenging incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, to be the Republican nominee in the 2026 general election. Other declared Democrat candidates in the primary are Terry Virts, a retired Air Force colonel and astronaut, and two lesser known hopefuls, Emily Morgul and Michael Swanson. A graduate of Texas’ flagship public university, the University of Texas at Austin, and Harvard University, Talarico worked as a middle school teacher before elected office. He has also touted his Protestant mainline seminarian resume and has discussed extensively his positions on moral issues. On Rogan‘s podcast, for example, he defended Christian support for abortion. “So, this idea that to be a Christian means you have to be anti-gay and anti-abortion. There really is no historical, theological, or biblical basis for that opinion,” Talarico told the podcast host.  Talarico has also in the past praised a form of Christianity endorsed by nonbelievers. “The thing that warms my heart the most is people who say, ‘I’m an atheist, agnostic, or I left the church or I left religion. But this is the kind of Christianity I can believe in,’” he told Politico in 2023. The Texas state legislator is also known for opposing a state bill that would have required the Ten Commandments in every public school classroom.  “This bill to me is not only unconstitutional, it’s not only un-American, I think it is also deeply un-Christian. And I say that because I believe this bill is idolatrous,” Talarico said in a clip posted on X about the legislation. The post Democrat Texas State Rep Launches Bid for Cornyn’s Senate Seat appeared first on The Daily Signal.

More than half the nation’s students now live in states with school choice, new data shows.  Over a dozen states made progress on school choice over the past year, including six that adopted universal school choice policies allowing all students to receive some form of funding to attend schools of their choice. Meanwhile, a full 25 states now incorporate a “parent bill of rights”?affirming that parents, not the state, are the primary caregivers.  That’s according to The Heritage Foundation’s 2025 Education Freedom Report Card, an annual report that ranks states based on how well they advance education freedom and school choice for families.  “Parents are properly the primary educators of children,” said Jason Bedrick, a research fellow at Heritage’s Center for Education Policy. “States should be implementing policies that empower parents to choose schools that align best with their values and work best for their children.”  That’s what Heritage’s score card seeks to encourage, according to its authors—evaluating states based on criteria like availability of school choice programs, academic transparency, and quality of civics education.?  This year’s report card shows broad improvement across the board, with Texas and Idaho displaying the most growth. Texas, home to 11% of the nation’s children, just adopted a universal school choice policy this past year—helping the nation to reach what Bedrick called a “tipping point,” with half the students in the country living in states with school choice.  Florida ranked the highest on the scorecard, outperforming all other states in all but one category.  Florida’s high score reflects its “staying true to a very simple principle: Education decisions belong to parents,” state Department of Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas told The Daily Signal Tuesday.  “Parents in Florida have been empowered, and they’ve been energized to get involved,” Kamoutsas said.  Over 1.4 million Florida students—out of 2.9 million total—now benefit from school choice. Over 155,000 are homeschooled—nearly double the number from a few years ago—400,000 use charter schools, and 500,000 benefit from private school scholarships, Kamoutsas told The Daily Signal.  But Florida and pro-school choice advocates don’t seem content to rest on their laurels.   Asked what changes he hopes to see next, Jonathan Butcher, acting director of Heritage’s Center for Education Policy, said, “We’re at 25 states now that have a parent bill of rights. My hope is that would become 50.”   Kamoutsas says Florida’s next challenge will be tackling local pushback against school choice policies and passing legislation to provide accountability at traditional public schools.   The post Parental Rights, School Choice ‘Hit a Tipping Point’  appeared first on The Daily Signal.

In the wake of the release of video footage of the fatal stabbing of a young Ukrainian refugee woman in a Charlotte, North Carolina, light-rail car, House Speaker Mike Johnson is renewing his call for a national crime crackdown. “This 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee was brutally murdered in cold blood on a train in Charlotte, North Carolina,” said Johnson, R-La., at the House Republican leadership’s weekly press conference.  “Her name is Iryna Zarutska, and she was on the way home from her job at a pizzeria where she worked. She was stabbed repeatedly by a career criminal with a rap sheet a mile long. It’s infuriating, it’s heartbreaking,” he said. "President Trump is speaking out on the murder of a Ukrainian refugee in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was a man out on cashless bail…"A career criminal who should've never been on that rail car. pic.twitter.com/on9hhcHZUU— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) September 9, 2025 The Louisiana lawmaker criticized media outlets for not covering the story as much as he thinks they should. “If you only read The New York Times, The Washington Post, or most of the other mainstream outlets, you don’t know anything about Iryna’s heartbreaking story. For some reason, many national news outlets have refused to cover it,” Johnson said.   “It’s social media that has amplified the story and made everyone pay attention to it. And Axios shamelessly reported that this was, quote, ‘fuel,’ for the MAGA messaging battle, as if it’s some sort of contrived problem,” he added. Johnson used the shocking slaying as reason to support tough-on-crime policies. President Donald Trump has called for congressional Republicans to pass a “comprehensive crime bill.” “This individual [charged in the case], Decarlos Brown [Jr.] is his name, was arrested and released 14 times. Yeah, more than 14 times. We don’t have to live like this. President Trump is proving that every single day in our nation’s capital,” he said, referencing Trump’s deployment of federal law enforcement in Washington, D.C. National Guard troops are seen here at Union Station in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 28. (Fatih Aktas/Anadolu via Getty Images) Johnson pledged that Republicans would continue to work on the issue of crime, but did not go into specifics. “This is not just talk; this is action,” he said. “Republicans are in charge, and when Republicans are in charge, those days are over, the days of allowing soft on crime. We’re not going to do it.” But Trump is entering unknown territory as he continues his capital crime fight. On Wednesday, Trump’s power under the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973 to control law enforcement in Washington, D.C., expires. That authority would typically need to be extended by Congress, but Johnson said during the question-and-answer period that, since D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has directed the Metropolitan Police Department to cooperate with the National Guard and federal officers, no action is needed. “My understanding is that the current status of it is that the Democrat mayor of D.C., Muriel Bowser, wisely welcomed the assistance and she said … it was an indefinite welcome mat to keep the crime low,” Johnson told reporters. “I understand it is an agreement between the White House and the local leadership … . I’m not sure if Congress has any necessity to do anything.” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (left) and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, both R-La. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images) Before Johnson spoke, House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., pledged to “have the president’s back,” and referenced a number of capital-related crime and oversight bills. “We’re going to be bringing bills through committee tomorrow and ultimately to the House floor in the weeks ahead,” he said. “We will make D.C. safe again. We will get rid of all of these ridiculous laws and limitations on law enforcement. No cash bail. Right now. If you’re under 25, you can be treated as a 14 year old if you commit a violent crime. Crimes at gunpoint, you can walk free the next day, if you’re under 25 years old,” said Scalise, adding: “We, as House Republicans, are going to address it. I call on every Democrat to join with us and give up their defund-the-police, soft-on-crime mantra.”   The post ‘Infuriating, Heartbreaking’: House Speaker Calls for Crime Crackdown After NC Light-Rail Slaying appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Newly appointed UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has opened the door to the rollout of digital ID systems in the UK, reviving a proposal she has previously supported. Mahmood’s remarks came during a high-level meeting with allies in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, where migration and security were top of the agenda. Speaking alongside her counterparts from the US, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, she laid out her position. “Well my long-term personal political view has always been in favor of ID cards. In fact I supported the last Labour government’s introduction of ID cards. The first bill I spoke on in Parliament was the ID cards bill which the then Conservative Lib Dem coalition scrapped. So I have a long-standing position which anybody who’s familiar with my view.” Her comments arrive just days into her tenure, following a dramatic cabinet reshuffle that has reset key departments, including the Home Office. With illegal small boat crossings continuing to rise and more than 1,000 people arriving in a single day over the weekend, the pressure on the government to deliver results is intensifying. The total number of arrivals this year has already passed 30,000. Mahmood emphasized that these plans are not borrowed ideas. “This is a Labour government with Labour policy and Labour proposals,” she said. She insisted that Labour had been preparing these policy positions well in advance of taking office. Mahmood added that digital ID is something that she has “always supported.” Now in a position to influence policy directly, she stopped short of confirming a rollout but said it remains under discussion within government. She offered no clear answer when asked whether every UK citizen would be required to have one. The stated goal is to reduce illegal employment and weaken incentives that draw people to cross into the UK without authorization. For privacy advocates, however, the return of digital ID proposals raises longstanding concerns about surveillance, data control, and potential misuse. “In the end, this is about how you strike the balance between human rights on the one hand, and securing our borders,” she said. “I do think that that balance isn’t in the right place at the moment.” She pointed to forthcoming changes to domestic laws and legal guidance as the preferred method of adjusting that balance rather than leaving the convention outright. While Mahmood avoided giving a timeline for any digital ID scheme, her renewed emphasis on identity systems suggests a shift that could have wide-reaching consequences for privacy in the UK. Whether the idea moves beyond internal discussions may now depend on how far the government is willing to go. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood Revives Digital ID Plans appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Washington has decided to pull the plug on a series of international agreements crafted under the Biden administration to coordinate campaigns against what governments labeled “disinformation.” More than twenty nations in Europe and Africa had signed on, but the memoranda are now void, closing the book on an effort tied to the controversial Global Engagement Center (GEC). That office, which long caused controversy over its role in urging platforms to restrict online content, was wound down at the end of 2024, briefly rebranded as the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference Hub, and ultimately shuttered after months of political and legal battles. According to European officials, partner governments were informed last week that the United States would no longer take part in the cooperative framework. The Biden White House had originally pitched the initiative as a collective shield against propaganda from Russia, China, and Iran. The GEC was created more than a decade ago to counter terrorist recruitment online before shifting its attention toward foreign state messaging. That change, however, placed the center at the center of a heated fight over free speech. Republican lawmakers accused it of veering into domestic censorship, even as its defenders insisted the work was limited to hostile operations overseas. More: Head of Controversial Global Engagement Center Admits Europe’s Regulatory Power Over Social Media Censorship Enforcement The Trump administration took a very different view from that of the Biden administration. The disagreements over the GEC illustrate the deep divide between those who argue for centralized, government-led coordination against foreign propaganda and those who see such structures as a direct threat to free speech, especially when those agencies were found to be used to suppress the speech of Americans. For many, the center became a symbol of how counter-disinformation policies could be weaponized to stifle domestic political speech under the guise of national security. Around 22 countries had signed onto the agreements, which the Biden administration saw as laying the foundation for a unified response to foreign information campaigns. With Washington walking away, those allies are left to decide whether to continue their efforts without American coordination. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post US Withdraws from Biden-Era Global “Disinformation” Agreements appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Thunberg: Ah, We Were Hit By a Drone! Tunisia: A Drone? Thunberg: ... We Got Better

We thought it was DDT. We were wrong.