The closing of African American Studies and GWSS at Iowa is absolutely heartbreaking. It is such an important time to study these subjects. Words really cannot express how upsetting this decision is. www.thegazette.com/higher-educa...

UI African American, Gender Studies faculty prepare for program closures

University of Iowa faculty in African American Studies and Gender, Women's, and Sexuality Studies are preparing for closure of their programs following a review of "low-enrollment" degrees and majors ...

thegazette.com

If you can donate to help Texas School for the Deaf build a new playground for their kids, please click the link to contribute givebutter.com/jdeuBe

2026 Saddles Up

By Texas School for the Deaf Foundation

givebutter.com

Last call for abstracts for the Cognitive Linguistics Association of North America Conference #CLANAC2 in Kelowna, BC this May 27-29, 2026. Any topics related to Cognitive Linguistics are welcome. Deadline has been extended to Jan. 30 and can be submitted here: ubc.ca1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

"Future looks bleak for Anihšināpēmowin, other language programs at First Nations University"

Future looks bleak for Anihšināpēmowin, other language programs at First Nations University | CBC News

The program, along with other Indigenous Language programs at the university, faces difficulties as classes have been cut down. This situation raises concerns about the fate of language learning.

cbc.ca

are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a... pls repost

If there's one empirical insight I'd want everyone to understand about American politics, it's this: America's problems are solved problems. Just not here. What would change if the US simply matched the average of 31 peer democracies? Not Denmark or Norway. Just the middle of the pack. 🧵

People who aren't in Minnesota might not know that if you drive or walk past pretty much any school, there's going to be a group of people, parents and childless, standing guard to make sure the kids are safe from feds. It's pretty remarkable. And very disturbing. www.mprnews.org/story/2026/0...

Twin Cities students walk out, decry ICE as surge continues

Hundreds of Twin Cities high school students walked out of school Monday to protest federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota. Officials are increasingly concerned about high absenteeism in some sc...

mprnews.org

The American Dialect Society has chosen its word of the year: slop…used as both a freestanding noun, and a productive suffix! Check out all the words we nominated at the link! And while I nominated “that’s AI” (and it won for most useful), there’s no fake news here!

Jesse Sheidlower@jessesword.com · 7mo ago

The American Dialect Society (@americandialect.org) has announced the nominations for its Word of the Year—this is the one that matters, people! Vote will be tonight. americandialect.org/nominations-...

The Multilingual Education SIG is hosting its preconference Wednesday, Jan 28th, 1pm. If you aren't already a member, you can join! We'll have a presentation by @annalim.bsky.social followed by a social gathering in the evening. #ACEDHH2026

MLE SIG Announcement 2026

YouTube video by Christopher Kurz

youtube.com

I'm hiring! 2 x PhD positions to work at Uni Zurich with me on "Evolutionary Semantics" for an ERC-funded project. semantically curious MA grads from linguistics, cog psych, anthro encouraged to apply evolvinglanguage.ch/studying-the...

Studying the Evolution of Abstract Thought - NCCR Evolving Language

In the new ERC-funded project, “Conceptual Diversity and the Evolution of Abstract Thought” (CONCEVO), Mansfield will lead a team of researchers to develop a method for reconstructing the evolution of...

evolvinglanguage.ch

finally, we're living through precedented times

Love this story about traditional ecological knowledge and stingless beekeeping in Peru! news.mongabay.com/2026/01/im-p...

‘I’m proud to be the first published Asháninka researcher’: Richar Antonio Demetrio on bees

In Indigenous Asháninka belief, bees were once spirits in human form. Stories tell of a woman who enjoyed making masato, a traditional Amazonian fermented beverage. Every day, she would boil and mash ...

news.mongabay.com

It's also worth noting here that the *minimum* salary for these ICE positions is $52,205. While the *median* salaries for childcare workers and home health aides are less than $35,000 per year.

Jess Calarco@jessicacalarco.com · 7mo ago

This ICE job posting reads like a video game ad. Which is almost certainly by design.

💯 It's our 100th episode! 💯 To celebrate, we're giving you 100 fun facts about linguistics this month See how many you recognize and tell us about your favourite linguistics facts this month in honour of our 100th episodiversary!

100: A hundred reasons to be enthusiastic about linguistics

This is our hundredth episode that's enthusiastic about linguistics! To celebrate, we've put together 100 of our favourite fun facts about linguistics, featuring contributions from previous guests and

soundcloud.com

Just wow. @pluralistic.net.web.brid.gy came out swinging in this article. He's right though and that's the coolest part.

WIRED@wired.com · 7mo ago

Savvy countries will discover there’s a way to mitigate the harm incurred by Trump’s tariffs—and it’ll boost their own economies while making goods cheaper too. www.wired.com/story/us-tra...

Episode of @npr.org Code Switch about the student protests and bloody strikes that led to the creation of ethnic studies across the US. I think about this episode all the time, especially when University administrators shut down protests & closed racialized student groups. TW: police violence

What the 1968 fight for ethnic studies classes teaches us about today : Code Switch

The fight over the soul of higher education is very alive right now, with the Trump administration engaged in dozens of investigations and multiple lawsuits against colleges and universities around th...

npr.org

Scientists should listen to philosophers more: correlation is not causation. New research shows fMRI signals don’t always match the brain’s true activity levels, overturning a core assumption used in tens of thousands of studies. neurosciencenews.com/fmri-neural-...

fMRI Signals Often Misread Neural Activity - Neuroscience News

fMRI signals don’t always match the brain’s true activity levels, overturning a core assumption used in tens of thousands of studies.

neurosciencenews.com

Today, ProPublica launched a first-of-its-kind app to help you find out where your generic drugs come from and what the factories that made them are like. Here’s how to use it.

Rx Inspector: ProPublica’s New Tool Provides Drug Info the FDA Won’t

We’ve launched a first-of-its-kind app to help you find out where your generic drugs come from and see the track records of the factories that made them.

propublica.org

Earlier this year, ProPublica found that the sepsis rate in second-trimester pregnancy loss hospitalizations increased by more than 50% under Texas’ abortion ban. Here’s how we did our analysis. (Published Feb. 2025)

Texas Won’t Study How Its Abortion Ban Impacts Women, So We Did

Since Texas banned abortion, no one has studied the statewide effects on pregnant women experiencing complications. Here’s how we sifted through data on millions of pregnancy hospitalizations and anal...

propublica.org

"take away Gxxgle's predatory acquisitions they wouldn't have a mobile stack, an ad stack...a server management, they wouldn't have document collaboration, they wouldn't have navigation. They haven't made a successful consumer-facing product in this millenium" Cory Doctorow youtu.be/d2e-c9SF5nE?...

a man in a suit and tie is pointing at something with the caption " what is that "

Alt: Jake Gyllenhaal in a black shirt puts on his glasses while he looks closwr at something near the camera. White text reads "what is that" " is that a burn?"

media.tenor.com

Funny coffeeshop chats: 1) Guy gives his guy friend a book as a gift, "oh cool, now I have a book to read" 2) two elderly ladies making plans for lunch, "I have leftover Chinese at home. Beef and mushrooms. Maybe you can show me how to reanimate the Mexican round things that come with the Chinese."

Chart via @taxfoundation.bsky.social / @carlquintanilla.bsky.social

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 8mo ago

Leavitt: "President Trump convinced President Xi to continue purchasing again American soybeans, which is something China wasn't doing under the last administration because they had no respect for President Biden or the country at the time."

This is the Tufts PhD student who seized by masked agents on the street and jailed for two months because she wrote an op-ed calling for the school to divest from Israel.

ACLU@aclu.org · 8mo ago

BREAKING: A federal judge ordered the government to restore Rümeysa Öztürk's SEVIS student record after it was wrongfully terminated in retaliation for exercising her freedom of speech. This allows her to fully engage with the opportunities of her PhD program.

NEW: The South Carolina NAACP and three voters with disabilities sued state election officials, arguing that several state laws restricting who can give and receive voting assistance violate Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act. They seek to block the restrictions.

🚨 NAACP South Carolina State Conference v. Wilson

Learn more.

democracydocket.com

The sound of your uncle's laugh; an ice cream cone you had ten years ago. Why do we hold on to memories like these? Are they more than mere mental clutter? Just one of the topics discussed in our latest episode, w/ @aliboyle.bsky.social & @jomahr.bsky.social! Listen: disi.org/what-is-memo...

5-year (!) postdoc opportunity: Join our Edinburgh team and do fieldwork on the Burun languages! Deadline for application: 17 December. Position starts March 1st, 2025 elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Calling all linguists: Join us for an evening with Eve Sweetser who will be talking about viewpoint and multimodal communication! Thursday December 4th at 5pm Central time #Linguistics #CognitiveLinguistics

@coglingna.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The Cognitive Linguistics Association of North America inaugural CLANA Speaker Series features Dr. Eve Sweetser presenting, "Viewpoint in Multimodal Communication" this Thurs., Dec. 4 at 3:00PM PT | 6:00PM ET. ASL–English interpretation provided. Register here: tinyurl.com/clana-sweets...

The Cognitive Linguistics Association of North America inaugural CLANA Speaker Series features Dr. Eve Sweetser presenting, "Viewpoint in Multimodal Communication" this Thurs., Dec. 4 at 3:00PM PT | 6:00PM ET. ASL–English interpretation provided. Register here: tinyurl.com/clana-sweets...

CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1965: 20-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio in 1990: 75-1 CEO-to-worker pay ratio today: 280-to-1 Trickle-down economics was always a sham. Nothing has ever trickled down.

This random copy shop has a stronger message than the Democratic Party