𝔾𝔯𝔞𝔳𝔢 𝕊𝔩𝔞𝕪𝔢𝔯𝔰 ^(;,;)^

New article (fully OA) with Christopher Lewin! Did the Cornish and Manx languages die? Yes. But did they get revived and go on the highest level of recognition in European language policy? Also yes! We explore how that happened, and what it means for language revitalisation. doi.org/10.1177/1468...

"[Our research] found: - Every additional 100kg of vehicle weight was associated with a 6% increase in odds of pedestrian fatality; - Every additional 10cm of height was associated with an 11% increase in odds of pedestrian fatality. " theconversation.com/big-us-style...

Wish someone would release patches for my vulnerabilities

Top tip: wear a fake extra finger at all times, so you can claim that any photo of you is AI.

I have a joke about word play in academia but it's playwalled.

👻👻🎃🎃Halloween is coming!🎃🎃👻👻 Linguists! Do you wish the International Phonetic Alphabet was spooOOOoookier? I present... The INTERRED⚰️national FANG🧛etic AlphaBEAST 👹 r.jyu.fi/IPAspooky Free to use/adapt! (@creativecommons.bsky.social) Repost or I will send zombies to eat your braaaains. 🧟‍‍ 🧠🍽️

Northern hemisphere seasonal grumble time.

I am very pleased to finally share the briefing paper @dringebirnie.bsky.social, @melodyannross.bsky.social and I developed, entitled Reducing Friction: Addressing Inequalities Faced by Regional and Minority Languages of Europe in the Human-Machine Era: doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...

AI doomers actually feel a lot like government conspiracy theorists. Both are desperate seeking *certainty*. The govt is controlling us, or, AI will kill us. Scary, sure, but certain. Better than overwhelming complexity. Both also have prophets who see that certainty & gain status within a clique.

It's easy to say nobody has made a decent counterargument when you ignore all the people who have made decent counterarguments.

5 potatoes cubed is still 5 potatoes because potatoes are root vegetables

When I die I'd like the epitaph on my headstone to read "I wanted to be buried over there, you've made a grave error."

I once had a work trip that was severely screwed sideways by a fantastically incompetent outsourced travel company, and the fight was MAD-HEL. Even then I had to laugh.

I’ve flown MAD-HEL several times in my life.

I somehow never saw Dead Poets Society before & it is way weirder than I realized. Also, I am skeptical of the central theme that wealthy private school boys should be encouraged to be *more* smirky, self-expressive and aggressive, I can see some downsides to that theory

I think @darrigomelanie.bsky.social said everything that needs to be said.

This is going around as essential reading and for very good reason. Honestly the most incisive and full summary of the longtermism/x-risk pathology I have seen. Every stanza is a gem, and the closing is genius, but my personal favorite, because I have had this exact conversation almost verbatim:

Never ever forget or let anyone forget the reason why #EU exists in the first place is to keep Europeans from ripping each other apart the third time. If the membership fees had achieved nothing else, they would have been a bargain.

Not new, and not discovered...still great news. I offer a, perhaps, more accurate, less colonizing, title: "Western scientists describe a felid known to local communities as Tilcayo. It is the first description of its kind in over a century"

Due to economic conditions i had to downsize

kids are the worst

Suddenly feel like walking 500 miles to get away from them.

Not the first to say but the people who say trans folks deserve rights and dignity aren’t obsessed with trans people, we simply believe they deserve the same respect we all have because they’re human like the rest of us. The ones who want to take away rights are riven with obsessive monomania

Next in the @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social English online seminar series: @emma-putland.bsky.social (@lancasteruni.bsky.social), Mon 12 Oct, 13:00 EEST: 'Generating bias? A case study of AI-generated text and images of dementia' See the abstract and register👇 Go go go! r.jyu.fi/engseminars2...

Its not *the* main reason I'm staying, but certainly one of the factors in my decision to stay here in Finland has been "... This seems like a good place to ride it the next 50 or so years of human history..."

LOL. It’s Stewart Lee’s UKIP sketch!

"this email could have been a series of pictograms etched in stone"

Spending 3 hours trying to secure sign language interpreting services just because you live and work in a different EU country #deaftax

“A war does not end when the people who fought it die, but when the generations born afterward refuse to inherit the enemies of their parents…As long as hatred is passed down through families as an inheritance, the war is not over; it has only changed form.” eualive.net/war-criminal...

www.forbes.com/sites/keelyc...

**Announcement** Call for Papers: Language Policy Forum 2027 Venue: University of Osijek, Croatia Speakers: Ingrid Piller (Hamburg), Hassan Belhiah (Rabat) Deadline: 30 Sep. 2026 Theme: Language Policy in Context: Bridging Global Perspectives and Local Realities sites.google.com/view/langpol...

Shiela 🐑 we have talked about this before no snuggles when I am on duty

I feel like the kids who did poorly in science and history class are trying to get revenge on the kids who did well at science and history class and now we’re all going to die

It would be useful if someone bothered to check how many of those now crying about academic freedom being threatened when a racist crank was suspended (for not doing what he was hired to do) ever commented anything about e.g. academics losing their jobs for speaking out about Gaza.

Note from my notebook (2017). Still true.

Equally, if a university hired you to research or teach in a given field and you did so but all of your conclusions were terribly wrong because you were an insane racist who believed things that were not true, the university is still perfectly within its rights to get upset with you.

The dialogue around LLMs is kind of broken both in terms of critique and advocacy. For critique, we need to focus on how we attack fascist tech power consistently — LLMs are only one part of that; merely saying "AI bad" has simply ended up with a lot of people using AI quietly while feeling shame...

I think it’s ultimately a fight over who benefits from AI and who governs it. The fight against data centers is a fight against predatory capitalism run by psychopaths. Without shared benefits and humane rules the answer is Hell No.

Yes @enviroem.bsky.social! The myth that local meat (esp. beef) is better for climate than most plant-based sources of protein (even imported) is a tough one for many people to shake.

Art by Skizo