I would have posted some weekend links on Friday, but I was too despondent to do a thing apart from be despondent.

Brexit. Heartbreaking Brexit. Tragic to me for selfish reasons – I have much skin in the EU game; and for humanitarian reasons – it seems to me that a huge dam has broken in these ever-rising floodwaters of western xenophobic fear-mongering. I’m disgusted that this is becoming our zeitgeist, and I’m terrified at the damage it will do and has already done. And I should leave it at that, because I’m not comfortable spewing forth my sadness and rage in such a public forum.

I will say this: the Scots have a sublime way with the English language. “Mangled apricot hellbeast” is so superhumanly charming and whimsical and imaginative — while simultaneously spot-on – that if I worked in publishing I would give the slinger of that inspired insult a huge advance to write whatever else her little heart desired. 

On that note, here are a few things I read over the past couple of weeks that didn’t leave me wanting to crawl into a hole and skip the next five to ten years:

This man. I love this man. I would PAY to be friends with this man. And here’s what he takes with him when he travels.

I share this article nominally because Leah Dieterich’s considerations of language and semantics are interesting but really because I love everything she does. (See here.)

Talk the-most-foreign-of-all to me: aliens.

10 must-watch TED talks for language learners

You will not catch me talking about squad goals, but this woman wishes she were allowed to use her kids’ new slang.

Ok, scratch that, I will use new slang just once and then never again.

Brexit: so not on fleek