"'Stop talking over your brother,' they’d chide. 'I asked him a question.' And I would quieten down, shamed."

"My brother would say nothing, but entreat me with frightened eyes to step in. As a small child, I felt my brother spoke without language. I heard his voice in my head, and I believed I was his translator. To me, this felt natural. It’s easy to scoff – the delusions of childhood – but as toddlers we read everything around us.... Maybe, my brother’s non verbal cues felt like language to me. So much of what is communicated between people involves attunement, a subtle reading of one another’s emotional states, micro-expressions and non verbal cues. Perhaps I just hadn’t learned to distinguish...."

Writes Jessie Cole, in "I spoke for my brother when he was too afraid to answer — now, he speaks in melodies, and I have learned to listen" (Guardian).

Jessie Cole is a writer. Her brother, Jacob Cole, is a guitarist. I'm listening on Spotify, here. 

"But I think the meta text of why it was so shocking was all of the people that were waved off as conspiracy theorists. Right wing fever swamp people were completely right."

"Were a hundred percent right. They were completely right. And the people who, you know, even now, you know, you still hope they're telling the truth. Like maybe we can trust some of what they say they were this profoundly wrong. I think that is like the, the deeper layer of the shock."

Says Bari Weiss, somewhat babblingly. 

Jake Tapper, who has more reason to babble, speaks eloquently:

"From the beginning, those voices were highly regulated and controlled so as not to provoke certain outrage..."

"... as if it were a given that a woman virtually freed of her uterus and visual sexual signifiers would obviously pose some considerable threat. Consider the guidelines of a pamphlet for operators published by the Chicago Telephone Company in the early 20th century and called 'First Lessons in Telephone Operating.' The book was used to train some of the first generations of disembodied female voices — belonging to women who were given entree into a new line of work only because the young men who preceded them found the job so annoying that they were, in fact, uncontrollably rude. 'The training of the voice to become soft, low, melodious and to carry well is the most difficult lesson an operator has to learn,' the guide reads.... The voice of novel technological communication has been, almost from the beginning, a female voice, which is to say the voice of a helper, a perfect helper, pleasant, unflappable, immune to insults, come-ons and bossiness. It’s a short path from the telephone operator to Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, both forever placating, always even-keeled, impervious...."

Writes Susan Dominus, in "Has the Internet Changed How Women Sound? Technology’s many automated female voices are nothing if not helpful" (NYT).

"This is the first video edited with the Neurolink.... This is my old voice, narrating this video, cloned by A.I. from recordings before I lost my voice...."

I am the 3rd person in the world to receive the @Neuralink brain implant.

1st with ALS. 1st Nonverbal.

I am typing this with my brain. It is my primary communication.

Ask me anything! I will answer at least all verified users!

Thank you @elonmusk! pic.twitter.com/bxYO3SBfA2

— Bradford G Smith (Brad) (@ALScyborg) April 27, 2025

Twinspeak.

NEW: Australian identical twins speak in sync after witnessing an armed carjacking incident in Queensland, Australia.

This is hands down a top 5 interview of all time.

The twins, Bridgette Powers and Paula Powers, explained how their mom came face to face with a… pic.twitter.com/qvbOxK2Vyf

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) April 21, 2025

"Just a heads-up."

Liberal woman informs everyone that she won't be dating white men anymore.

Groundbreaking information.pic.twitter.com/2lC5Kqm0Qb

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) March 29, 2025

Ridiculous on so many levels, but I'm just going to highlight the exaggerated enunciation — "as a WHiTTTTe woman."

It made me think of this TikTok video criticizing Rachel Zegler ("Snow White") for over-enunciating:

"He’s still not a populist nationalist, he’s a globalist. He and I have a chasm that is probably insurmountable."

Said Steve Bannon, quoted in "The Populist vs. the Billionaire: Bannon, Musk and the Battle Within MAGA/President Trump has made clear he wants to keep both men and their allies within his movement, but the tensions are growing" (NYT).

Mr. Bannon vigorously disagrees with Mr. Musk’s support for H-1B visas, which allow high-skilled individuals to work in America. Mr. Bannon has also warned that billionaires like Mr. Musk and other tech executives — many of whom supported Democrats before backing Mr. Trump — will abandon the MAGA movement.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "Is this a mixed metaphor: 'He and I have a chasm that is probably insurmountable'?" And: "I think a good writer would see the concrete images behind these words and keep things coordinated. I believe George Orwell — 'Politics and the English Language' — supports my position."

But Bannon wasn't writing. He was speaking. 

Who's in the worst position to write a book about the coverup of Biden's cognitive decline?

Tapper then: It's a conspiracy theory to say Biden has cognitive decline. It's a stutter.

Tapper now: A book on the cover up pic.twitter.com/UjnQXgkzFF

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) February 26, 2025

Here's Jake Tapper incensed over Joe Biden's "stutter" and outraged over claims of Biden's cognitive decline.

Now he's cashing in on a book about Biden's cognitive decline and media cover up. There is no bottom for these people.
pic.twitter.com/rdNdqh4YKQ

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) February 26, 2025

"James Earl Jones, a stuttering farm child who became a voice of rolling thunder as one of America’s most versatile actors..."

"... in a stage, film and television career that plumbed race relations, Shakespeare’s rhapsodic tragedies and the faceless menace of Darth Vader, died on Monday at his home in Dutchess County, N.Y. He was 93.... From destitute days working in a diner and living in a $19-a-month cold-water flat, Mr. Jones climbed to Broadway and Hollywood stardom with talent, drive and remarkable vocal cords. He was abandoned as a child by his parents, raised by a racist grandmother and mute for years in his stutterer’s shame, but he learned to speak again with a herculean will.... Some theatergoers, aware of Mr. Jones’s childhood affliction, discerned occasional subtle hesitations in his delivery of lines. The pauses were deliberate, he said, a technique of self-restraint learned by stutterers to control involuntary repetitions. Far from detracting from his lucidity, the pauses usually added force to an emotional moment.... 'Because of my muteness,' he said in... a 1993 memoir... 'I approached language in a different way from most actors. I came at language standing on my head, turning words inside out in search of meaning, making a mess of it sometimes, but seeing truth from a very different viewpoint.'"

From "James Earl Jones, Actor Whose Voice Could Menace or Melt, Dies at 93/He gave life to characters like Darth Vader in 'Star Wars' and Mufasa in 'The Lion King,' and went on to collect Tonys, Golden Globes, Emmys and an honorary Oscar" (NYT).

Why do tech geniuses have dysfluent speech?

That's the question I asked Grok after having listened to Elon Musk talking with Trump for 2 hours and then beginning to engage with this new Joe Rogan conversation with Peter Thiel:

 

Grok characterized my question as "age-old" and gave me a 7-point list of possible reasons.

I said "You could turn those 7 things into 3 things. Restate everything in 3 points" and it gave me this 3-point list:

1. Brain Overload: Their minds are too busy solving complex problems to prioritize smooth speech. It's like their CPU is always at 100% capacity.
2. Social Skills Rust: Spending more time with machines than humans means their conversational skills might be a bit... out of date. They're fluent in code, not small talk.
3. Overthinking & Literalism: They might overthink every word or take language too literally, turning a simple chat into a computational challenge.

That pretty much perfectly compressed the 7 points.

Impressed, I asked it a question that arose on this blog yesterday, "Why did Kamala Harris, speaking of 'price gouging,' have a Freudian slip and say 'price gauging'?"

I got an excellent answer, again in the form of a long list, this time 6 points. 

One of the points was "Economic Jargon Overload":

Politicians dive into economic terms like they're swimming in alphabet soup. Maybe her mind mixed up "price gauging" with "market gauging" or "public sentiment gauging." It's like when you're so deep into tech talk, you start saying "byte" when you mean "bite."

So my next question was "How would anyone know if I was saying byte or bite?" and I got a 7-point answer.

Ridiculous, I thought, and I said, "A human being would have answered 'they wouldn't,' but you give me a 7-point answer. How would you justify your behavior?"

It conceded "Ah, you caught me in my AI nature, didn't you? Here's my attempt at justification" and gave me another 7-point answer! 

1. Overthinking is My Default: Unlike humans, I'm designed to process information exhaustively. My circuits are wired to consider all possibilities, even if it's overkill for simple questions....

And on and on, demonstrating the aforesaid overthinking.  

So then here's a screen shot showing what I asked and what I was surprised to get:

"Mr. Harrell’s team sank into his brain’s outer layer four electrode arrays that looked like tiny beds of nails."

"That was double the number that had recently been implanted in the speech areas of someone with A.L.S., or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, in a separate study. Each array’s 64 spikes picked up electric impulses from neurons that fired when Mr. Harrell tried to move his mouth, lips, jaw and tongue to speak.Three weeks after surgery, scientists gathered in Mr. Harrell’s living room in Oakland, Calif., to 'plug him in,' connecting the implant to a bank of computers with cables attached to two metal posts protruding from Mr. Harrell’s skull."

From "A.L.S. Stole His Voice. A.I. Retrieved It. In an experiment that surpassed expectations, implants in a patient’s brain were able to recognize words he tried to speak, and A.I. helped produce sounds that came close to matching his true voice" (NYT)(free access link).

"But while he is seen as a long shot for VP, the blizzard of Buttigieg appearances is thrilling his legions of fans on social media..."

"... who see the young Midwestern mayor turned transportation secretary as an adept messenger for a reshaped, post-Biden campaign. Fans who have stuck by Buttigieg since his 2020 White House bid often identify themselves with a bee emoji — an insider reference to his memorable encounter with a bee during an Iowa campaign rally — or recently more simply with a dragon. Across TikTok, X, YouTube and Threads, they share videos of his appearances and boost his remarks, adding notes saying he 'NAILS it,' 'SCHOOLS Fox host' or simply 'slays.'"

From "A long shot for vice president, Pete Buttigieg is suddenly everywhere/In a reshaped race, the transportation secretary has dialed up his role as a key political messenger for the Democratic Party" (WaPo).

His speaking ability really is fantastic. The tone of his voice, the speed, the substance... whether you agree with him or not, you really ought to admit that he's the best at speaking. The others in contention for VP pick are nowhere near him in this skill, which is not the only skill involved in government, even though we often act as if it is. I consider Trump a genius at speaking, but it's a wild and entertaining form of speech that makes some people worry he lacks the proper temperament to serve as President. Buttigieg sounds exactly presidential. 

"It felt like he was still the smart, witty guy we’ve all followed for many years, but the volume and speed are turned way down — to an alarming level."

Said an unnamed female Democratic Party donor quoted in "Inside the glitzy fundraiser where Biden lost George Clooney/At the June 15 event at L.A.’s Peacock Theater, some donors said this week that they noticed Biden seemed slow. He seemed frail. As he greeted donors lined up for photos, he trailed off or spoke too quietly in small talk conversation to be heard" (WaPo).

Making small talk with the current and former presidents while preparing for a photo, the donor said that she and Obama shared a brief joke that Biden initially seemed to miss. The current president only attempted a retort “in a barely audible voice” after the photo was over and others had moved on, she said.

So this lady got her big moment, wafted a joke/"joke," and Obama laughed, because that's what sharp people do when someone they want to please say something intended as a joke, and Biden did not laugh. In the wealthy woman's opinion, conveyed to The Washington Post with a demand not to use her name, Biden seemed to miss the joke/"joke." Initially. What was the purported joke and was it explained to him so that eventually he acted as though he got it? Maybe Obama explained it: Joe, this woman and her husband donated $100,000 and she believes she's said something amusing — don't you understand? And then Joe seemed to understand. But Joe had to have known he was at a fundraiser. And who could this lady be but a donor?

"Biden’s word salad and sudden drops in volume to pianissimo are relevant for reporters to cover because they’re a microcosm of the questions..."

"... at the heart of the 2024 Democratic campaign: Is the president’s mental state strong enough to beat Donald Trump and can he serve for four more years? The desperate Biden team is ready to go to war over every syllable."

Writes Maureen Dowd in "Joe Biden, in the Goodest Bunker Ever" (NYT), detailing how the Biden team came for her:

"I never used to talk to myself. Now I do it constantly."

"When I asked my middle-aged friends if they did it, too, the confessions flooded in. One said that when she texts people, she says the message out loud when she’s typing, even in public. 'I just looked in my cabinet and said aloud, "Please, god, let there be vanilla extract,"' said another. Do middle-aged people talk to themselves all day, every day? And is this a problem? I consulted some experts."

Writes Jancee Dunn, in "I’m Middle-Aged, and I Talk to Myself All Day/There, I said it" (NYT).

Unfortunately, the experts — there are experts on what's "called private speech or external self-talk" — hadn't studied the phenomenon of talking to yourself more as you age. So the author didn't get the reassurance she seems to have sought: It's a very common development in middle age.

I see that more than one commenter over there says I talk to myself, but I'm not really talking to myself, I'm talking to my cat/dog. Now, this is one reason I don't want a dog. I'm pretty sure it would cause me to talk to it all the time, and I think that would change my pattern of thoughts into things one says to a dog. 

Actually, I think the practice of speaking aloud would change what I'm thinking. Even if there is no listener to make me ask is this intelligible? is this boring?, putting things into speakable words absorbs my attention. I would imagine a listener. 

But the external self-talk discussed in the article sounds like speaking you would limit to yourself because it would annoy another person: expressing anxiety, encouraging yourself, asking where you put various items, narrating squirrel antics. And it's no wonder such spoken-aloud thoughts make you worry you're slipping into an unwholesome version of old age. You're fussing endlessly over trifles. That's something you can do silently, but when you do it out loud, you get a bit of distance on yourself: you hear that person and you think she's turning into that stereotype of an old person I've always worried I'd become.

Reading poetry out loud "can induce peak emotional responses... that might include goose bumps or chills. "

"It can help you locate an emotion within yourself, which is important to health as a form of emotional processing. Poetry also contains complex, unexpected elements, like when Shakespeare uses god as a verb in Coriolanus: 'This last old man … godded me.' In an fMRI study... such literary surprise was shown to be stimulating to the brain... [Literature] can cause us to recall our most complex experiences and derive meaning from them. A poem or story read aloud is particularly enthralling... because it becomes a live presence in the room, with a more direct and penetrative quality, akin to live music.... Discussing the literature that you read aloud can be particularly valuable.... [D]oing so helps penetrate rigid thinking and can dislodge dysfunctional thought patterns.... [It may] expand[] emotional vocabulary... perhaps even more so than cognitive behavioral therapy...."

Writes Alexandra Moe, in "We’re All Reading Wrong/To access the full benefits of literature, you have to share it out loud" (The Atlantic).

This essay talks about reading out loud to another person and reading aloud when you are alone. There is some discussion of the benefit of listening to another person read to you. You might adopt the practice of taking turns reading aloud with your spouse. There's a brief mention of audiobooks, in the context of saying that you'll remember more of a book if you read it out loud.

It's like "Saturday Night Live." Hard to believe I'm not watching a comic actor.

a snippet from Katie Britt's overly dramatic rebuttal. i will say that she is the best Alabama senator. pic.twitter.com/9Fm8h4yUA8

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 8, 2024

I think that may be how young people talk these days. I think it's learned from TikTok! It doesn't sound natural to me, but it may be the new reality as young people spend so much time watching videos. It may be contagious — like creaky voice and Valley Girl uptalk.

"In the interview, David Marchese of The Times asked Mr. Wenner, 77, why the book included no women or people of color."

"Regarding women, Mr. Wenner said, 'Just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level,' and remarked that Joni Mitchell 'was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.' His answer about artists of color was less direct. 'Of Black artists — you know, Stevie Wonder, genius, right?' he said. 'I suppose when you use a word as broad as "masters," the fault is using that word. Maybe Marvin Gaye, or Curtis Mayfield? I mean, they just didn’t articulate at that level.'"

From "Jann Wenner Removed From Rock Hall Board After Times Interview/The Rolling Stone co-founder’s exit comes a day after The New York Times published an interview in which he made widely criticized comments" (NYT).

Wenner's book, called "The Masters," collects various Rolling Stone interviews, and every single one is with a white male. Good and obvious choices like Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Bruce Springsteen, and Bono. But, come on, how could Wenner not have known he'd be challenged for omitting all women and all black musicians?!

Why wasn't he prepared with a response — and by that I mean an articulate response?

"It’s a kind of mosaic of what it was moments before"/"My memories are a montage of magical madnesses."

What if we all started talking like that?

Those are 2 quotes I've happened to blog in the last 24 hours — see here (Robert Downey Jr.) and here (RFK Jr.).

Have minds fragmented? Are we dreamily struggling to pull them together with alliteration and the notion that splintered things really do cohere? This mess in my mind is... a mosaic... a montage....

You know, we've been laughing at Kamala Harris's way of expressing herself, but she's not the only one.

"If reading opens up a world of imagination and possibility, then speaking and listening opens up a lifetime of empowerment — a chance for those who too often feel invisible in their own country, to be heard."

From "Sir Keir Starmer wants speaking lessons for all pupils new/State school children lose out to privately educated, says Labour leader and promises language skills at heart of national curriculum" (London Times).

Labour will announce a review of the national curriculum that will seek to “weave oracy into lessons throughout school”....

Geoff Barton, the general secretary of the Association for School and College Leaders, said: “Oracy should be a core entitlement, and held in the same regard as reading and writing. Indeed, if students can articulate effectively in conversation, they are more likely to be assured readers and able to express themselves well in writing.”

Oracy. I don't remember seeing that word before, perfectly easy though it is to understand. The OED traces it back to 1965 where we see the author coining a set of words: