Photos from #Islington #London today. Grabbed a bite and sat in Islington Green, behind the statue of Hugh Myddelton, who built the New River. And the beautiful building used to be a pub, but now is a shop (typical change for the area).

Mary Hesse’s work on metaphor and analogy is great; that her work is out of print was frustrating when trying to teach philosophy courses on metaphor.

Gretchen McCulloch@gretchenmcculloch.com · 3d ago

Of interest to linguists interested in metaphors of cognition as well

Thinking I may start sharing some snaps from my exploration here in #London. Today I went to the Islington Central Library, which dates to 1906. Outside, on the old telephone booth was a fun little Bob Ross sticker.

Despite having moved multiple times in my life, including internationally, my brain manages to forget just how stressful and busy—and for how long—a move is. It’s like it blocks the trauma for self-preservation. And then the next (always “last”) move is surprising agony. But I do love London.

I heard an interview with someone from Anthropic a few days ago in which he described it as "a goal-oriented being" or similar (maybe just "behavior"?). He didn't use the language of desire, but it seemed strongly implied. It think maybe it was a rerun of Dario Amodei on Times Tech?

Jeff Greene@jeffgreene.bsky.social · last wk.

...we need to avoid letting anthropomorphic language become unexamined anthropomorphic assumptions about GenAI models. GenAI is a powerful yet "normal" technology that we can and must control. Any narrative that leads to people thinking GenAI is out of our control isn't helping anyone. (2/2)

The article of clothing pictured is a niqab, which the author gets correct. The nitwit of a headline writer apparently was a numpty, and, being a ninny, couldn’t think of insults starting with “n.”

This isn't an imaginary world. My job as a philosopher of premodern South Asia has been to ask questions of books. Part of the intellectual joy in asking questions of books comes from eliciting the answer onself by (re)reading and by conversation with other readers. #ai #philosophy

AFP News Agency@en.afp.com · last wk.

Imagine a world where you could ask a book a question as you read it. That's the pitch from a wave of new AI tools letting readers do exactly that u.afp.com/Sr2q

Having moved to London means more Singaporean/Malay food in my life. Today I had prata and fish curry, for the first time in a long time. Well, the stall was Malaysian, so prata was "roti canai." "Roti" is from the Sanskrit रोटिका (roṭikā), which means bread. "Canai" is maybe from a Malay word.

My wife has just had a framed print in our Airbnb fall off the wall directly onto her, while she was relaxing and I was cooking. I can't imagine the owner will believe this is true, but it is.

Among the many things I'm sad didn't survive the end of Yale-NUS: our Global Antiquity minor and related faculty research group. This was ten years ago. Studying Chinese, Indian, and Greco-Roman political thought in juxtaposition wasn't radical there; it was the starting point for all our students.

Carlos Noreña@carlosfnorena.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ancient history has gone global. This is surely the most exciting development in the field in the last 30 years! But what "global antiquity" is and how we should study it—and why anyone should care—are all open (and challenging) questions. Some thoughts on all of this for @aeon.co.

England and France are only playing for third place, but the winner does get to reclaim the North American fur trade

Well, the first football game I’ve gotten to watch in a pub here in London is really setting the bar high.

Just saw someone lionizing the use of a bot as a copy editor because it can spell and punctuate and apparently understands grammar, though no evidence was supplied. Cool. That’s about 23 percent of copyediting.

Authors beware of a scam. I got a message from “Jesse” from a philosophy Meetup asking if they could discuss my book, and I would zoom in. Why not? I replied to ask for info and emailed my publisher. “Jesse” replies with an ask for marketing money. Hackett replied that they’d seen this before. +

Just caught a “jealously” where “jealousy” should be. This typo almost made it through two rounds of pre-submission review and two rounds of external copyediting. My work here is complete. (Actually, far from it, but I’m enjoying the momentary win.)

As an #editor who was employed by 3 different #publishers in the 1980s & 1990s, I'm happy to learn that #employees of @uchicagopress.bsky.social & of Hachette Book Group have voted to #unionize! 🏆 This is part of a #labor #movement across the industry. lithub.com/both-univers...

Both University of Chicago Press and Hachette Book Group have voted to unionize.

At presses small and large, it’s another great week for the labor movement in publishing. As of this afternoon, the University of Chicago Press Workers Guild (UCPWG) has won their union elect…

lithub.com

With just over three days until the "London-based" in my bio is made actual, Luna's position on the couch mirrors how I feel in the face of my to-do list. Still, onward: proofs, indexing, editing, packing, and cleaning. With a little panicking squeezed in between.

Catching up on @lingthusiasm.com while doing chores. This episode is cool! lingthusiasm.com/post/8198085... I don't know if @juliesedivy.bsky.social has talked to South Asianists, but the aesthetic-grammatical traditions in India were onto much of what the interview discussed (continued).

Lingthusiasm - Lingthusiasm Episode 117: What makes for beautiful...

Lingthusiasm Episode 117: What makes for beautiful writing, scientifically speaking - Interview with Julie Sedivy Sometimes, a phrase seems to leap off the page and lodge into your mind, crisp and s...

lingthusiasm.com

Today's agenda: indexing, indexing, indexing. And in case anyone wonders: No, I am not using #AI for my #index for the reasons that the Society of Indexers identifies. While AI may someday be able to do the job, it doesn't yet. asindexing.org/ai-and-index...

Philosophers and other academics considering using AI to check your typeset proofs, this thread is for you. #philosophy #editing #proofreading (Question inspired by a recent post at @marcusarvan.bsky.social 's blog philosopherscocoon.com/2026/07/06/t...)

Wes Cowley@wes.wordsbywes.ink · 4w ago

It seems like a lot of work to not really achieve the goal. We’re going to spend the time devising a prompt and preparing the input, then review the output of multiple runs because we know the tool is unreliable, all to avoid actually looking at the manuscript one more time? (1/4)

A philosophy blog has a comment thread about how to proofread typeset articles. One suggestion is to use AI to do so, then check the AI’s work, prompt it again, and then repeat. IMO this is doubling one’s work without added efficiency. Editors and proofreaders: thoughts? #editing #proofreading

Family ties versus new home. (I am team Mexico all the way. But if England goes through, getting to watch them in a pub in our new city will be fun.)

Watching Cabo Verde last night on Telemundo, I was thinking how much more I enjoyed the games on that channel than on Fox (which was on when we went out to see the US game). Apparently, even non-Spanish speakers feel the same way. www.npr.org/2026/07/02/n...

Even fans who don't speak Spanish are watching the World Cup on Telemundo. Here's why

They may not understand every word, but fans appreciate exuberant announcers who match their enthusiasm. Plus, cameras stay on the field during hydration breaks rather than cutting to commercials.

npr.org

“The issue is also the forfeiture of opportunities for identity formation and seeing beyond one's own monolingual boundaries. MT may enable you to ‘see the world in your own language’ (Turovsky 2016)—but isn't the point precisely to see it otherwise?”

Critical AI https://read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/issue@criticalai-journal.bsky.social · last mo.

#CriticalAI4.1, Don't forget to check out Russian language scholar Kitt Pribble's critique of automated, LLM-based translation modules! read.dukeupress.edu/critical-ai/...

Dreyer’s copyedit has a great example of a sentence starting with a conjunction that a copyeditor should not strike. (I recently had to stet several of these unnecessary deletions in one of my books.)

Benjamin Dreyer@bcdreyer.social · last mo.

Welcome to my first live (sort of) copyedit, part 1.

saddened to hear of the recent passing of Victor Mair, one of the giants in my academic field, sinology. A few reflections on my own encounters with him and his work. (Warning: long thread that originally appeared as a long Facebook post: 15 posts below.)

Saddened to hear of the passing of the Sinologist Victor Mair, a linguistic genius the likes our field will not see again for a long time. I first got to know him via his incredible blog, Language Log, fresh out of college and was beyond-the-moon happy when he reposted my writing there, but

Edward w@edwardw2.bsky.social · last mo.

just heard on twitter that Victor Mair, the sinologist has died. x.com/AndrewSethMe...

Today is the last day of my employment at Smith College. In two weeks, I'll depart the US for London. I'm happy to say that I'll take up a part-time role there as the Managing Editor of the Aristotelian Society, beginning mid-September. (More at LinkedIn.) www.linkedin.com/posts/malcol...

Busy week: copyediting and style guide creation for an academic journal, copyediting for the APA Blog, and reviewing proofs and compiling an index for my own book. Maybe I'll find time to post about #academicediting and #philosophyoflanguage. More likely, my free time will be on move logistics.

Found some time to read Occhini et al's preprint, "Artificial intelligence is creating a new global linguistic hierarchy." I can't speak to their statistical work, but a few things in the paper struck me. arxiv.org/abs/2602.12018 #lingsky #linguistics #language

Artificial intelligence is creating a new global linguistic hierarchy

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform healthcare, education, governance and socioeconomic equity, but its benefits remain concentrated in a small number of languages (Bender, 201...

arxiv.org