great little visual summary of how enshittification hits a supermarket gelato over the course of a decade

maura johnston@maura.bsky.social · 6d ago

important journalism www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/r...

Excited to reveal cover of forthcoming book, 6th edition of "Linguistics of American Sign Language" (LASL6), w/ @gallaudetpress.bsky.social Cover design by @michelvrana.com, original art "When Grammar Mood" by @christine.lol Preorder coming soon! @ryanlepic.bsky.social @jaceyhill.bsky.social

New Cambridge Element, ASL Signbank by Julie A. Hochgesang, out now! Read for free for the next 2 weeks at https://cup.org/3SBnjUN

In academia, we rarely appreciate the fact that we have all survived and escaped an education system built for uniformity and mediocrity, and that it is an incredible freedom to work at a public university. The question is what we do with this freedom. Uncritical "AI" adoption renounces it.

Time to smash this motherfucker up

Today I was awarded tenure at Gallaudet! This summer marks 10 years since finishing my PhD, and this fall I will be on sabbatical, trying to write a lot and to redesign my undergrad syntax class. I’m so grateful to keep doing what I love. Pic is me at the recent #ICCG14 at Princeton #linguistics

Wake up y’all new structure ambiguity exercise just dropped. #linguistics

At #ICCG14 in Princeton (huge thanks to @adelegoldberg.bsky.social & team for a brilliant conference!) we announced our plans for the International #ConstructionGrammar Association (ICGA), to be officially founded at #ICCG15 in Kiel in 2028. See here for more information: construction-grammar.org

International Construction Grammar Association

Visit the post for more.

construction-grammar.org

Today's Daily Cartoon for @newyorker.com by Kevin Maher and me.

I would like a personal apology from every man who called the station or emailed me personally to gripe about my voice during my time on public radio but never did the same to Ira Glass.

Ars Technica@arstechnica.com · 3mo ago

In the first @gallup.com survey on the topic, 7 in 10 Americans oppose the construction of data centers in their area, including nearly half who strongly oppose it. news.gallup.com/poll/709772/...

Some reflections on frequently unasked questions about stochastic parrots (the phrase and the paper): medium.com/@emilymenonb...

Stochastic Parrots 🦜: Frequently Unasked Questions

It’s been a bit over five years since the Stochastic Parrots paper (Bender, Gebru et al 2021) was published (and somewhat longer since…

medium.com

Journalists, let’s be careful about the language we use when writing or talking about AI. Here’s a thread — @emilymbender.bsky.social, I know you pay attention to this, too, so feel free to chime in. (1/x)

"Predictably, the huge spike in productivity that these companies claim their own AI products have enabled hasn’t resulted in more or better products, shorter work weeks, or better consumer experiences." www.404media.co/software-dev...

Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their Brains

“It's making me dumber for sure.”

404media.co

"The recent change to our course-management system has meant that I need to re-upload every document and assignment and reassign every homework. I will be attending three two-hour training sessions to help me do this." buff.ly/lv7w8kf

Class Is Canceled Until Further Notice While I Do My Job

4/29/26 Our most-read piece of 2024.

mcsweeneys.net

Happy May Day. They can’t kill us all.

i once saw a book review that described skimming the references of a book as seeing “who is cited and who is slighted”. anyway, today i observed that a new book “in my area” has zero bybee citations, and i think that explains a lot

Just released & free to download for two weeks: "Constructions, Networks and Linguistic Change" by Graeme Trousdale and Elizabeth Closs Traugott in the Cambridge Elements Construction Grammar Series #language #linguistics doi.org/10.1017/9781...

Constructions, Networks and Linguistic Change

Cambridge Core - Semantics and Pragmatics - Constructions, Networks and Linguistic Change

doi.org

Version 1.0 of the Grammaticon is now online! This has been in the making for over eight years. Quite a few of the entries are still preliminary, but I hope to expand and improve it over the coming months and years. Comments are welcome! An intro text is here: dlc.hypotheses.org/4316

file this under “getting old”: can we all agree not to use emoji to react to emails? who thought that was a good idea?

I don't need a summary of what's available online, in biographies, or even in my own notes. I need to comb through and find the great details, decide what interests ME. No, it's not efficient. It's slow and painstaking. But I don't believe in efficiency as an ultimate good, especially in writing. /

Meanwhile, the people I see complaining about this usually use the term "AI" without saying what they mean by it. In other words, they're starting the conversation form a non-nuanced position. >>

Computational Papers (CPs) are always Annoying To Read (ATR) because of their Extensive Use of Abbreviations (EUA). After Some Time (AST) reading a CP, there are No Words (NW) left TR due to the EUA, and I Almost Give Up On Even Trying (IAGUOET) TR the CP because it is so ATR any text with EUA.

If I had a nickel for every time I decided to stop using a “cognitive linguistics of ASL” paper because my students get too distracted by problematic examples, I would have two nickels. …Which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it’s happened twice.

here’s the thing, I’m not going to make an account just so i can decline your review request 👻

the absolute nerve of my electric company to jack up prices to subsidize energy-hungry data centers AND THEN SEND ME automated messages about how much more i am spending on electricity year-over-year as though i had just left the lights on 🪫🤬💸

I’m behind the trend on this one but I’m about halfway through Enshittification and enjoying it. Aside from the inherent dissatisfaction and frustration of the phenomenon, that is. Going to continue to be mindful about where I spend my money and attention in 2026 us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

Enshittification

Enshittification: it’s not just you—the internet sucks now. Here’s why, and here’s how we can disenshittify it.We’re living through the Enshittocen...

us.macmillan.com

thank you to my non-linguist friends who texted me this photo because they remembered that i do not like him

CNN@cnn.com · 8mo ago

House Democrats release more photos from Jeffrey Epstein's estate. It's the latest disclosure fueling public intrigue. https://cnn.it/45ilCPw

Now available! THE CRIP LINGUISTICS READER is a wide-ranging and groundbreaking collection that challenges normative ideas about what is considered “good language.” Visit our website for more information on this latest release from GU Press! gupress.gallaudet.edu/Books/T/The-...

I don't know how many times this needs to be said, but apparently a lot: If you are not in a position to verify the accuracy of some synthetic text, the synthetic text is not useful/has a high potential to be misleading. This is one of those cases.

Jonathan Aldrich@jonathanaldrich.bsky.social · 8mo ago

The rationale I was given for AI Summaries *alongside* ordinary abstracts: * The AI-generated summaries are intended to be more accessible to non-experts. (1/3)