language is a virus – Finious's Folly

Language is a Virus: Sentence Structure Reveals Brain’s Secrets

I’ve been analyzing the way I write and speak a lot recently for some reason. One of the reasons is stumbling on an article about a group that has developed an AI that can read the way we communicate in writing to statistically predict whether the subject will develop Alzheimer’s, all with surprising accuracy.

Then there is this computer program which was published in the Harvard Business Review which analyzes the use of pronouns and sentence structural elements (detached from the main content words of the sentence,) as a statistically significant indicator of things like the writer’s or speaker’s honesty, personality, social standing, and current psychology. Continue reading Language is a Virus: Sentence Structure Reveals Brain’s Secrets

Language is a Virus: “Luck Out, Cash In” Conundrum

So I see this lottery touch screen kiosk thing in a store and its big blurb is: “Luck Out, Cash In”. Okay I know in United States & Canada colloquial speech, “Luck Out” means to be lucky. Heck, I’ve used it that way myself. But it has always annoyed me as it seems short for “out of luck” to me, which of course means UNlucky. Apparently I’m not the only one who feels that way, as the dictionary also gives the colloquial definition in England and Australia as exactly that — luck out there means to be unlucky.