Does nerdy shit count? I started reading Optimality Theoretic Syntax. Optimality Theory (or OT for short) is a really influential theory in the field of phonology, but its applications to syntax remain largely ignored because the syntax standard is the Minimalist Program (MP). OT is awesome though and I want to learn more about what it can and can't explain about syntax so I'm reading this book. I'm all about that violable constraint life, and very interested in syntax, so OT syntax is like my dream. Plus I'm discovering that there are stochastic OT models and I'm just like where has this been all my life?!
Linguistics as a field really sets an example for how to alienate anyone from ever being interested in it because of the horrible terminology. Optimality Theory... Minimalism... opaque terms that don't help -__-. Basically OT is a super cool theory, but since Minimalism is the "king" of syntactic theories no one pays attention to OT as applied to syntax. Which isn't cool because OT is awesome!might not have much interesting to reply with since everything you said is totally over my head
I think you'll enjoy (and by enjoy, I mean be horrified by) the Chomsky text generator.