Nerds on this thread may be interested in linguistic research on emoji as gesture by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne.

Here’s an open-access academic paper for the mega-nerds out there

With an overview of that article written for a more general audience, in The Conversation

For those who prefer their edutainment in audio format, McCulloch and Gawne’s podcast is a fun and eclectic listen. Here’s the episode on emoji as gesture.

Further Reading

For those wanting to learn more, McCulloch’s 2019 book “Because Internet” is a delightfully fun read that I can strongly recommend. It looks at the wider picture of how the internet has changed communication, with a chapter dedicated to emoji. There’s been a lot of productive discussion (both academic and informal) in this area since then, and McCulloch’s work has been a key factor in driving that.

Also, I’ve not yet read it, but Lauren Gawne has a more recent (2025) book titled "Gesture: a slim guide " that says it’s “suitable for readers of all backgrounds”.

If you’re interested in either of these books, then you should support the authors and purchase the book(s) if you have the means to. Certainly, that’s preferable to downloading it for free from a shadow library like Anna’s Archive(Wikipedia has reliable and up to date links to this site (so you know what sites to avoid, ofc) and pointing you there means I’m not directly linking you to the naughty site.

N.b. I am a biochemist, not a linguist, and so my word-nerdery is purely of the hobbyist variety. I don’t have particular domain knowledge in this area.

Also, this comment is in part because I linked these resources to a friend not too long ago, so I had it mostly to hand.

“I have decided to make it public for developers who may face similar issues in the future.”

What a bro. Now this is what solidarity looks like

Because the journals existed as massive, financially powerful entities. There were negotiations over open access arrangements a few years back which led to things like “gold open access”, which involves papers being free to read, but costing a heckton for the researcher’s in “Article Processing Charges”. This happened because the journals effectively argued that “even though we’re functionally useless in the modern day, and don’t even provide services like copyediting or typesetting support for researchers, you can’t just make research actually be fully open, because then we would no longer be able to be absurdly profitable. Won’t someone think of the profits?!”. And then their influence meant the open access agreements were half baked and insufficient.

However, there is a continuing movement that is pushing for actual open access — “Diamond Open Access” doesn’t charge either the researchers or the readers of papers. It’s still small, relatively, but it’s growing, especially in the global South or amongst independent researchers who can’t afford absurd Article Processing Charges. Profit driven journals have prestige on their side, but I reckon that Diamond Open Access will continue to grow as research funding becomes more scarce relative to the amount of research being done.

“The diamond model has been especially successful in Latin America-based journals (95% of OA journals[1]) following the emergence of large publicly supported platforms, such as SciELO and Redalyc. However, Diamond OA journals are under-represented in the major scholarly databases, such as Web of Science and Scopus. It is also noteworthy, that high-income countries “have the highest share of authorship in every domain and type of journal, except for diamond journals in the social sciences and humanities”.”

(Source: the linked Wikipedia page)

And what’s worse, when there were some big negotiations on open access a few years back, the agreements were wholly insufficient and still disproportionately enriched the journals at the expense of researchers; “Gold Open Access” journals will publish the research unpaywalled, so anyone can read them, but will charge absurd “article processing charges” that are often thousands of dollars, shutting out researchers with less financial means (such as those in the global South or independent researchers).

Fortunately there is a growing movement who gives a fuck about actual open access; Diamond Open Access research involves no fees to either the author or the reader. This is how it should be.

‘The diamond model has been especially successful in Latin America-based journals (95% of OA journals[1]) following the emergence of large publicly supported platforms, such as SciELO and Redalyc. However, Diamond OA journals are under-represented in the major scholarly databases, such as Web of Science and Scopus. It is also noteworthy, that high-income countries “have the highest share of authorship in every domain and type of journal, except for diamond journals in the social sciences and humanities”.’^[1]

The future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed

[1]: Source: the linked Wikipedia page

When I want to treat myself, I shave, exfoliate and moisturise my legs, and change my bedsheets. It’s divine.

I used to shave my legs because of the nebulous patriarchal pressure that many girls and women experience. But now I do it for good reasons and it’s much more liberating

Great explanation. I’m a biochemist who loves nerding out about this stuff (and practicing science communication), so I came into this thread prepared to explain more about this works. However, your comment has left me with nothing to do but to be appreciative of your excellent comment

Yeah, same here. I can remember a few different scattered interactions I’ve had with OP — enough that if they never posted again, I would notice their absence.

I wouldn’t say that trauma dumps are fun to read, but as someone who has plenty of trauma of my own, being able to relate to a random internet person has sometimes been a rare source of solace for me.

I’m sorry for your loss.

I’m going to share with you a sentiment that I don’t imagine you’ll be able to fully process right now, when everything is still so raw and jumbled, but I hope that in time, it might offer you some comfort, as it did for me.

When I lost my partner back in 2021, it made me think a lot about legacy — in particular, the fact that deciding a person’s legacy is a task that falls to the people who are left behind. On the days where the grief hurts particularly badly, this idea helps me to stay focussed on the duty I feel to carry my partner’s memory forwards, through embodying his virtues and learning from his flaws. It’s a heavy burden, but one I’m glad to carry.

It’s okay if thinking this way is too much for you right now, especially as you have so much on your plate in terms of logistics. I just wanted to share this with you because what you said about your dad’s birthday touched me. Your next few birthdays are going to be pretty rough, but I hope that in time, you’ll be able to remember the joke about how you’re your dad’s birthday present in a way that’ll still hurt, but in a warm, loving way that inspires you to continue making your dad proud. He might be gone, but you’ll always be his birthday present — a birthday present that will continue to become even better as you continue to learn and grow.

I’ve never lost a parent before, but I relate to what you describe about feeling untethered. That’s another part of why I commented. My partner used to be one of the tethers connecting me to the world, and losing him meant I needed to find new ways to anchor myself so that I could be the tether that holds his memory here. It’s disorienting and exhausting and the worst part is that when you feel like you’re beginning to adjust, another wave of grief will hit you when you’re least expecting it. Grief doesn’t happen all at once, nor does it follow a predictable path. Be kind to yourself over the coming weeks and months.

Good luck with taking the dog to the funeral home on Friday, and good luck with supporting other members of your family too. I hope that the funeral logistics go smoothly enough that you are able to find some time to begin the long process of reorienting yourself. And please don’t feel the need to reply to this comment if you don’t have the brain space for that. God knows you’ve got enough obligations on your plate

I’m glad to hear that. It sounds like the bit at the end of your original comment was just a hyperbolic joke. I commented because I had had friends who have said things like that in a context where tensions in the relationship did end up escalating to the level of physical violence, which is never okay.

Since learning about what they went through, I try to be more proactive in pointing out potentially problematic stuff, because for both of my friends, what got them out of that situation was the cumulative effect of people saying “dude, are you okay? That is not something you should be experiencing”. Fortunately, in this case, it appears that this was me being overly cautious

Truly, this is the socialist utopia I am fighting for.

From each according to their ability; from each according to their needs. If you have plenty, it’s only reasonable to share with the cumslut

Defeat the cumslut by becoming the cumslut.

!You know you want to!<

The same place we will end up if we let capitalism cannibalise human society.

For various reasons, things didn’t end up going well for these civilisations, but it’s not like we’re doing much better. Learning from examples of classless societies throughout history doesn’t mean trying to replicate their modes of doing things exactly, but understanding how they functioned in context (including why these civilisations are no longer around).

Research has actually shown that people respond better to people with Scottish accents. Apparently at least one big company (might have been British Gas?) factored this into their decision about where to base their upper tier customer service call centres

You don’t seem like you’re very happy in your relationship. Given you got married not too long ago, I can only hope that there are good parts to your relationship that made you want to be married to this person, because what you describe in your comment doesn’t sound healthy or okay. If you want to remain married to this person, y’all should probably try to work through this shit, because it’ll fester into resentment otherwise

I mean, that is the definition of ragebaiting

I didn’t know about the reformulation thing — is it Adderall that’s affected? I’m not personally on Adderall, but I like to be aware of the overall landscape of ADHD meds due to having many friends with ADHD (and also being a nerd)

If corporations can get the benefits of legal personhood, then they should be subject to the penalties too.

It certainly can, but it’s far from typical. Whereas it’s not uncommon for lesbian/sapphic sex to last for hours, such that I’m pretty confident that the average duration of sapphic sex is going to be much higher than the average duration of heterosexual sex

I think there’s more to it than this. In my experience, sapphic sex is less focussed around orgasm, which means there’s often periods where the sex/making out is sort of enjoying the good vibes (no pun intended).

In contrast, men that I have slept with can become overly fixated on the idea of me orgasming, which always annoys me because I’m quite difficult to bring to orgasm, and they don’t seem to get that orgasm != good sex (they’re certainly correlated ofc, but one doesn’t necessarily mean the other).

Women also tend to take much longer to reach orgasm, which can mean that sapphic sex tends to be quite dynamic in terms of positions, tempo, use of toys etc… Like, if I’m going down on a partner who can only orgasm through oral sex, and I know that the position I’m in will start causing me pain before she’s anywhere near orgasming, then I might opt to switch things up to be in a position that’s restful for me (so I can resume oral afterwards) but still stimulating for my partner.

TL;DR: I think the biochemical wakefulness can’t hurt, but I think sapphic sex going on for hours is mostly sociocultural

It took me a long while to find someone who actually appreciated weird stuff like this. There are plenty of folk like us out in the world, it just takes some time to find them sometimes.