Simon J. Greenhill

Simon J. Greenhill

@simongreenhill.bsky.social

I study how languages and cultures evolve. Primarily with phylogenies and other assorted computational methods. Based at @Biology_UoA. Never met a language phylogeny or a cultural phylogeny I didn't like. #phylolinguistics

2K followers1.1K following1.1K posts

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Dahlem Center for Linguistics
@dclberlin.bsky.social

#OTD 87 years ago, Jane H. Hill (1939–2018) was born 🎉 A linguistic anthropologist, she worked on Uto-Aztecan languages in the US and explored the social dynamics of language, analysing the strategies behind racist language, including Mock Spanish. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Jeremy Berg
@jeremymberg.bsky.social

Very few people win the Fields Medal since it is awarded only every four years. But there is en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maryam_... Ignorant, racist, asshole.

en.wikipedia.orgMaryam Mirzakhani - Wikipedia
The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Stephen Chrisomalis
@schrisomalis.bsky.social

Humanists (and social scientists on that side of things): What are some things that you wish your colleagues in STEM / biomedical sciences understood about us? I'll go first: The folks whose work is most important in my field are rarely the best-funded; in fact, many never get a big grant.

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Alex Skeels
@alexskeels.bsky.social

Just in time for parental leave 👼! Early view of our new article is available open-access at @plosbiology.org Here, we model how global biodiveristy is related to changes in biome energy and area through deep-time. doi.org/10.1371/jour...

doi.orgHigh-resolution paleobiome reconstructions highlight ecological and historical dynamics underpinning global terrestrial vertebrate diversityHow past biome dynamics shape present-day biodiversity is unclear. This study uses reconstructed paleobiomes over the past 66 million years to show that current biome properties predict diversity bett...

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Jacob Aron
@jjaron.bsky.social

Replying to @jjaron.bsky.social

I used Claude and my actual reading data to project the likely point at which I will no longer be able to read all of my to-read list before I die

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Kevin Lala
@kevinlala.bsky.social

I am pleased to share this article written with Marc Feldman that reviews the history of scientific racism and biological race realism, through the lens of two recent books: Hochman’s The Race Illusion and Lorusso & Winther’s Remapping Race in a Global Context. academic.oup.com/bioscience/a...

academic.oup.comThe “zombie science” of biological race realismReview of Adam Hochman’s The Race Illusion and Lorusso and Winther’s Remapping Race in a Global Context.

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Ehud
@duhe.bsky.social

Really happy to share the news of our interdisciplinary research group on human an artificial conversation. Exciting stuff coming up! #ai #philsci #sts #literature #rhetoric www.the-new-conversation.com

the-new-conversation.comThe New ConversationConversation has become a primary mode of interaction between humans and artificial intelligence. This raises fundamental questions about conversation itself. What does it mean for a machine to partic...

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Simon Fisher
@profsimonfisher.bsky.social

You know a gene is selfish when its DNA twists the wrong way, as demonstrated by the left-handed double-helix proudly adorning the 50th Anniversary Edition of the multimillion copy bestseller on this topic.

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Johann-Mattis List
@lingulist.de

Finally out, we will try to improve it further, but you can test it already now, our Database of Cross-Linguistic Partial Colexifications (CLIPS) at clips.digling.org

Linguist List@linguistlist.bsky.social

Software: The Database of Cross-Linguistic Partial Colexifications (CLIPS)

dlvr.itSoftware: The Database of Cross-Linguistic Partial Colexifications (CLIPS)We are glad to announce the first release of the Database of Cross-Linguistic Partial Colexifications (CLIPS). It features accounts of partial affix colexifications, that is, cases in which a word form w recurs in the beginning or the end of a word form x. Cross-linguistically frequent partial colexifications have been reported to serve as a reliable proxy to word formation. CLIPS covers 9,141 partial colexification patterns involving 1,517 concepts and data from 253 language families. While t
Simon J. Greenhill
@simongreenhill.bsky.social

Just advised one the brightest young academics I know not to pursue a job offer in New Zealand as there is no way they'd be able to make a career here in the new research funding environment. Fucking thanks, Christopher Luxon.

Simon J. Greenhill
@simongreenhill.bsky.social

You can measure how tree-like your data are. Delta scores, split networks and posterior support all exist. There is no need to argue the point from first principles for another 150 years.

Simon J. Greenhill
@simongreenhill.bsky.social

Cool: Interindividual vocal tract diversity influences the phonetic diversification of spoken languages journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

journals.plos.orgInterindividual vocal tract diversity influences the phonetic diversification of spoken languagesHuman vocal tracts vary extensively between individuals, but how does this translate into phonetic diversity between speakers and languages? This study uses vocal tract imaging to develop a biocultura...

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Prof. Nicole Holliday
@mixedlinguist.bsky.social

You’ll be shocked that people are being extremely normal about this in comments. DeGraff is a well-respected linguist, and the topic is a valid subject of linguistic inquiry, even if it doesn’t jibe with your politics. Tenure is supposed to allow us to explore ideas. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/09/u...

nytimes.comThe Controversial Class That M.I.T. Is Paying a Professor Not to Teach (Gift Article)Michel DeGraff, a vocal pro-Palestinian activist, can’t be easily fired because he has tenure. But he has been kicked out of his department.

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

andrew phillips
@herfst.bsky.social

Lexical tablet from Ugarit ca 1400–1100 BCE, it lists words in Akkadian (left column), Hurrian (centre), and (syllabic) Ugaritic (right) king = [šar-ru] | i-we-er-ni | ma-al-ku lord = [be]-lu | e-wi-ri | ba-a-lu-ma enemy = [nak₂]-ru | tu-ur-bi | e-bu curse = [a-ra]-ru | ši-da-ar-ni | ṣi-il-ya-[tu₄]

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Eliot Higgins
@eliothiggins.bsky.social

Turning state violence into a public spectacle is a very fascist move BTW.

Kyle Griffin@kylegriffin1.bsky.social

WASHINGTON (AP) - Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed in December.

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Chris Dwan (he/him)
@somershade.bsky.social

“I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using: it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done, and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it.“ Ian Malcom - Jurassic Park

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Carina Schlebusch
@cschlebu.bsky.social

Nice to see our News & Views out in Nature! Maja Vukovikj and I discuss the fascinating study by Carter et al. exploring what our gut microbiomes can tell us about human population history. Our News & Views (open access link): rdcu.be/1UYLHWXGVEra

nature.comGut microbes that trace ancient human journeysThe Indigenous African Hadza and South American Tsimane share gut microorganisms that shed light on human dispersals and microbial losses in industrialized societies.

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Maximilian Schich
@schichmax.bsky.social

Oh no, the #brain works like a #humanities department: "neurons receive slow excitation and fast inhibition from their tangential partners" www.nature.com/articles/s41...

David Schoppik@schoppik.com

If you've ever wondered how the brain *really* keeps things in mind, come let Aaron, Nick & their colleagues in the Nagel lab tell you how the fly does it here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.comA split attractor design for rapidly writing a navigational goal - NatureThe recurrent h∆K–PFG neural circuit generates persistent heading memories through slow excitation, fast inhibition and a disinhibitory gate, where disinhibition controls the functional...

Simon J. Greenhill reposted

Ben Allen
@evodynamics.bsky.social

Curious if other mathematicians are finding the OpenAI results (in their human-readable form) so ill-defined as to be "not even wrong"

minimaliste13@minimaliste13.cpesr.fr

The ones in my area of expertise don't. I'm not saying there is nothing there, but it's block texts after block texts of ambiguous assertions about undefined objects which are false under plausible clarifying assumptions and which are as is not even wrong.