One of the first "outrageous" claims I saw as Jason Arday's media hounding unfolded was that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days! Wow! What a thing to claim! And the newspapers all suggested there was no evidence he actually did it. Well, they clearly didn't look very hard 🙄 🧵 1/26

Rolling out “academic freedom” as a rallying cry now, after the CRT panic led to a bunch of Black scholars and theory to be literally banned from classrooms, shit is too rich lol

Me, a US-based academic: I don’t care what any scholar believes, we all need to stand up publicly whenever someone’s academic freedom is threatened Me, continuing: also, the first time this has happened, motivating me to sign my first ever open letter, is in late 2026, to a race scientist, in Ghent

Fascinating article following the publication of a new book on Hawaii's English Standard School era. Will have to get a copy of the book. This is going to be one of my go-to examples of injustice in language testing, in terms of both test content and use. www.civilbeat.org/2026/08/denb...

<Pitchbot voice> "We wanted to understand what academia can learn from Jason Arday's rise and fall. So we asked someone who hates academia, is no longer a professor, and has never worked in a research university to weigh the questions his story left behind"

NPR@npr.org · last wk.

What can academia learn from Jason Arday's rise and fall? Atlantic staff writer and former academic Tyler Austin Harper weighs the questions his story left behind. n.pr/4cgsvEP

GenAI can behave oddly when asking for multilingual stuff to happen. Here I'm using English to prompt Gemini to translate some Korean text to Japanese, and Gemini's reply starts, rather inexplicably, with French. Really curious why this happens.

Crushed it this morning! #Lingule #1584 "ʻanoʻi": 1/6 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🏆 lingule.xyz

Ooh, another cool language game. Gonna add this to my daily rotation/play with students before class starts. I also highly recommend www.collocateswordgame.com (English is the target language)

Adam An@adamanlx.bsky.social · 2w ago

#Lingule #1582 "pa dej teev": 1/6 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🏆 lingule.xyz

From reading this thread, I learned that O'Connell is a journalist. Brain is absolutely cooked by propaganda. No wonder UK (and US) media ran hundreds of Arday stories. The whole affair is a much bigger indictment of the press rather than Cambridge or higher ed more broadly.

Sunder Katwala (sundersays)@sundersays.bsky.social · 2w ago

Presenter: [The argument was put that DEI advanced people not on merit] Woolley: "There are 975 Professors at Cambridge. How many do you think are black? Paddy O'Connell: "Its a fair question you're asking me. So I am going to say 30%" Woolley: "I tell you: less than half a per cent"

Plenty to reflect about re: the Arday affair, but I'm going to repeat this one thing. The playbook the right used here is effective even though it's not especially sophisticated, as it relies on the audience to do the dirty work. I've been calling it "Trojan horse propaganda", let's go with that. 1/

Well all's not well but I'm told that it'll all be quite nice You'll be drowned in boots like mafia but your feet will still float like Christ's Well I'll be damned They were right I'm drowning upside down My feet afloat like Christ's! (Modest Mouse, "Styrofoam Boots/It's All Nice on Ice, Alright")

Jessica Zellers@stellagarp.bsky.social · 2w ago

This was one of my favorites as a kid.

Buddhism in the wild (photo by Jerry Feldman, Target Honolulu)

Why I Left Academia Writing personal essays is easier than teaching, grant-writing, or getting research articles published. But nobody told me that in grad school my latest for the Chronicle

Retractions, fraud, plagiarism, and abusive behavior by academics (including those in prestigious institutions) largely goes unnoticed by news media when it can't be linked to either (a) a discipline in the crosshairs of conservatives or (b) DEI. 1/n

Toby Buckle@polphilpod.bsky.social · 2w ago

the media can't even entertain the idea that they decide what stories to focus on

Over the next several months, we will phase out some popular OSF features. These changes do not affect current public content, which remains safe and accessible. We have prepared support material to help users adapt. I am very sorry for the disruption to your work. Please read this post for details.

OSF Changes | Center for Open Science

We are preparing substantial changes to OSF that will reduce its functionality, focus OSF on its unique strengths, and move toward an integrated model with complementary services. As part of that shif...

cos.io

AI search results are driving me nuts. Two slightly different google queries related to Spearman's rho and Thorndike's case 2 correction give conflicting results, and the AI-linked sources do not address the issue directly; answers kind of just mash text from multiple sources (inc. a racist's blog)

Very glad to see @kmcmanus.bsky.social and Luke Plonsky put AAAL's feet to the fire a bit in their new editorial introducing two new Open Science-inspired article types. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Pretty wild story - A professor in Korea was sentenced to 3.5 years in jail for making his grad students write a paper (and collect/fabricate data?) for his daughter's college application (alternative path for "special talent"). I'll see if I can find a reputable English version..

제자들 논문으로 딸 서울대 치전원 보낸 성균관대 약대 교수 징역 3년 6개월 확정

자신의 딸을 치의학전문대학원(치전원)에 입학시키기 위해 제자들을 이용한 대학 교수에 징역 3년 6개월의 실형이 확정됐다. 22일 법조계에 따르면 대법원 1부(주심 천대엽 대법관)는 업무방해 등 혐의로 기소된 전 성균관대 약대 교수 이모(67)씨에게 이같이 선고한 원심을

w3.kwnews.co.kr

Very glad to see this study come out - we investigated the degree to which how people speak on TOEFL tasks is similar to how they speak in non-test academic tasks. Generally, we find strong similarities in terms of subjective quality (communicative effectiveness), fluency, and accuracy.

Investigating the Real-World Relevance of an Academic English Speaking Test: Extrapolating Subjective Evaluations and Linguistic Performance Characteristics - Daniel R. Isbell, Dustin Crowther, Jieun ...

To support use of tests in academic contexts, it is critical to demonstrate that test scores and test performances are associated with performance in academic s...

journals.sagepub.com

The claim “RFK Jr. does not fuck chickens” is not an evidence-based claim because studies have not ruled out the possibility that RFK Jr. fucks chickens.

Linguistic accommodation, oftentimes occurring without deliberate effort, is a widely attested phenomenon and likely plays a role in additional dialect acquisition.

Kat Tenbarge@kattenbarge.bsky.social · last mo.

People are making fun of AOC for having a slight southern accent while speaking in Memphis but they clearly don’t know the pain of habitually and unconsciously imitating the speaking style of the people around you

When I worked in WaPo Opinions in 2017-2018, senior editors specifically told junior editors not to factcheck Marc Thiessen and other MAGA columnists, otherwise they wouldn’t be able to publish anything by them at all, and “we need them for intellectual diversity.”

John Carl Baker@johncarlbaker.bsky.social · 10mo ago

It’s very telling that opening your publication to MAGA “thought” requires a massive downgrade in quality control.

A reminder that UC _faculty_ and Faculty Associations — not the universities themselves nor their administrators — are waging this battle in court, demonstrating great bravery and moral clarity.

White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants

Federal agencies that terminated more than a thousand research grants at the University of California last year admitted that they used keywords related to diversity, gender, vaccine hesitancy and COV...

apnews.com

New colleague just moved into her office today, so now I am officially not the youngest/newest in the department (after 6 years on the job...)!

Why wasn't RFK Jr the dean of medicine at Johns Hopkins? Liberal bias in academia! See more insights like this in a 10k word Atlantic piece.

mrsomerton@mrsomerton.bsky.social · last mo.

oh, just you wait- there’s more imaginary friends where that came from

At his next presser, a reporter should ask him what he meant when he drew his firearm and said "I'm not going to be a Charlie Kirk". He will most likely point out the misquote, at which point the follow-up should be "What's the difference?"

Shannon Watts@shannonrwatts.bsky.social · last mo.

Norman drew his weapon after a conversation about domestic abuse legislation turned to a debate over gun violence prevention policies. He laid the gun on the table for about 5-10 minutes, stating, "I'm not going to be a Gabby Giffords.” abc7news.com/post/congres...

New paper! Values such as openness, transparency, collaboration, clarity about conflict of interests have been promoted by women for *decades*, and now we have reframed this around the branding of 'open science' that we start to take them seriously. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Women as the First Open Scientists: Five Stories of the Neglected Contributions of Women in (Social) Science Reform History - Madeleine Pownall, 2026

Recent years have seen growing emphasis on “Open Science,” a movement to enhance research transparency, robustness, and accountability. Prompted by concerns ove...

journals.sagepub.com

Someone just sent me this photo from Chicago, unbelieveable

One of my better attempts at collocateswordgame.com : verbs that come before the noun "text"