Pull up your messages on your phone. Ignore the emojis and just look at the exclamation points. Or the qualifiers like “literally” and “actually” … Do you see them?

John McWhorter has an interesting op-ed in the New York Times about how our collective language has gotten extravagant. “People are ever more emphatic in how they communicate” today, he says. “What was once a single exclamation point now has to be (at least) two.”

Interestingly, this change in language comes down to our association with novelty. “Like with anything designed to make a noise, so to speak, the effect wears off after time, like an old joke or a song you get tired of. This means that language is always drawing new things into the churn to keep us sounding urgent, committed. “The linguist Martin Haspelmath says we all just try to “talk in such a way that you will be noticed.”

The exclamation points are a classic example. One used to really call attention to a sentence. But now, a simple period now seems flat or even annoyed, while an exclamation point conveys a smiling salute, a signal that all is okay between you and the other person. (“Be there soon!”) This means that to convey actual exclamation, we now need two markers. (“Holy shit!!”) And I would not be surprised if in another 20 years people are using three.

Thow in our constantly evolving tech and you’ve got a whole other issue. While AI was trained to write like humans, these large language models are eroding the unpredictability of our writing and shifting the way we talk. Researchers are now finding that AI pushes users toward a more standardized speaking and writing style, reducing variations in sentence structure and vocabulary.

Then there’s “algospeak”, which is essentially how social media algorithms are transforming our communication. Sometimes this looks like self-censoring content so that it doesn’t get “shadowbanned”. Kill becomes unalive, for example. Beyond euphemisms, though, algospeak is also about prioritizing trendy keywords. Starting a TikTok video with the phrase No because or I’m sat for this has more potential for virality because the algorithm knows those phrases attract more engagement.

President Donald Trump said talks ​with Iran will happen today but declined to set a deadline for an agreement after earlier saying he had called off an ‌imminent attack in hopes of quickly reaching a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and resolve the impasse over Tehran’s nuclear capabilities. Trump added that the planned operation would have been the biggest since World War II, while adding that the U.S. was ready to attack Iran.

“Now what we’re doing is we’re talking to them in the form of a negotiation. It begins tomorrow afternoon,” he told reporters Sunday aboard Air Force One, without disclosing the venue or participants. He has, of course, said most of this before. Repeatedly. He’s reached this point in the cycle several times, threatening to unleash hell and then trumpeting a coming negotiation with Tehran. Analysts and lawmakers are now trying to decide whether the president’s latest announcement means negotiations with Iran will truly get underway or if he’s just working through unappealing options.

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Fresh off of all the smoke that wafted over from Canadian wildfires, more blazes in Washington and Oregon have forced evacuations, caused power outages and burned hundreds of thousands of acres as firefighters battle dozens of massive fires across the Pacific Northwest.

The current fires are among 99 active large fires burning across America as this year’s wildfire season exceeds the 10-year average for both the number of fires and the acres burned, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. So far this year, 45,835 fires have burned more than 5.2 million acres across the U.S., the NIFC says.

More fires continue to rage in parts of France and Spain, with no sign of abating. According to The Guardian, records have already been smashed and with the fourth heatwave of the European summer setting in, there are few signs of the waves of wildfires ending. Climate change is contributing to larger, more frequent wildfires across much of the U.S. West, studies show. It is also increasing the frequency of critical fire weather and driving more extreme fire behavior, making fires harder to contain.