Especially now that they’re building roads that curve upward and upside-down in so many towns.
Michael Erard
@michaelerard.bsky.social
Writer, linguist. Slips of the tongue, uh & um (amzn.to/40GCOM3); hyperpolyglots (bit.ly/3AXLtAe); first & last words (bit.ly/4kN0PKa). NEW: An anthology, THE LANGUAGE BEAT (Apple: https://apple.co/4fK71SA; Google: https://bit.ly/4wARdY2)
One of those research and writing days in which one of the drawers of the PDF pops open and there's general semantics again. Still waiting for someone to write an intellectual history of GS in the 20th century
This is so so nuts: the @earthshotprize.bsky.social is partnering up with NVIDIA. By my calcs: just 1 yr of NVIDIA's AI climate emissions undo Earthshot's total avoided emissions todate, several times over. No other company getting away with it quite like this one ketanjoshi.co/2026/09/16/n...
As a PhD student designing my first survey, I added what I thought was a throwaway question at the end. To my surprise, thousands of academics answered it! The paper is out today: doi.org/10.1093/pnas...
Climate/data friends: We're hosting an event next Thurs 4PM in with Harvard's Public Data Project, at our office in NYC. The focus is on how to preserve climate data when it's being destroyed by the government & how to make it USEFUL to climate people. Free, all welcome, SNACKS. luma.com/aboard-fqmf
When Public Data Goes Dark: Saving America's Environmental Heritage · Luma
Harvard Law School Library’s Public Data Project helps to solve the problem of environmental data’s fragility by building cutting-edge tools and interfaces…
luma.com
"Why writers are the perfect target for scams." No -- they're the worst target, or they ought to be. A writer is sensitive to words, tone, and the conventions of genre, so every scam email I see sets off alarm bells.
I will be eternally grateful to have been born in a literate culture where literacy was valued and expected and I still had the time, attention, and freedom to develop a literacy practice. Understanding context, inference, vocabulary, perspective, affect — all powerful, useful skills and values.
I built a thing. I LOVED making it. It's called TinyLittleOffice. It's a web office suite (word processor, outliner, decks, spreadsheet, calculator, drawing tool, diagram maker, animator, calendar, trip planner) that stores the docs in your URL. tinylittleoffice.com?c=hgmcggn#/v...
This Link Is This Document
QR code:…
tinylittleoffice.com
I’d be interested in knowing how this analysis informs the history of writing and scribal education.
Giacomo Benati@giacomobenati.bsky.social · 2d ago🚨Excited to share our new paper in Science Advances! We reconstruct communication networks across Mesopotamia during the rise of the world's first cities (3900-3000 BCE) and ask how large-scale connectivity emerged before modern states. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
🚨Excited to share our new paper in Science Advances! We reconstruct communication networks across Mesopotamia during the rise of the world's first cities (3900-3000 BCE) and ask how large-scale connectivity emerged before modern states. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The network structure of the urban revolution
Long-distance interaction has deep prehistoric roots, but the networks that emerged during the Urban Revolution were unprecedented in scale and organization. How early cities sustained this extensive ...
science.org
Wild. I got to this site in an old-fashioned way: a URL advertised on a flyer on a lamppost. So you'd think it's kooky. Instead, it's calm, professional, and thorough: very useful and well-informed about very scary developments hiding in plain sight, without being alarmist. www.vcinfodocs.com
Venture Capital Status
Verified information detailing the global impacts of Silcon Valley, United States venture capital and their global tech fascist projects: The Network State and American Dynamism.
vcinfodocs.com
"Politics, like faith, requires a spirituality to sustain it—rhythms; joyful and lament-laden communal practices; and ways of seeing and being that provide structure, sustenance, and direction." sojo.net/articles/opi...
This Is What An Antifascist Spirituality Looks Like
At the beginning of the second Trump administration, a homemade yard sign appeared in my neighborhood. It quoted the German Protestant pastor Martin Niemöller’s “First They Came” poem. Promoting both…
sojo.net
Last week the Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience hosted the 2026 Coller Dolittle Prize lecture by Julie Elie, who presented her work on decoding the language of zebra finches. The video of the talk is now available online! www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGb2... @lseanimalsentience.bsky.social
Can we talk to animals? | LSE Event
YouTube video by LSE
youtube.com
actual weather: sunny, dry scam weather: a front moving in, with bots hitting today on phone, Bluesky, email
You know, the thing is, I had drafted this piece a month ago, and then never published it, because I thought maybe it was too mean.
Russia's bombardment of Kyiv is disrupting much more than sleep: prices are surging, wages are being cut, and winter blackouts loom, journalist Denis Trubetskoy tells Meduza. He describes life under near-continuous attacks. meduza.io/en/feature/2...
Kyiv has learned to live between air raid alerts. After two months of relentless Russian attacks, there’s barely any time between them. — Meduza
Kyiv residents have lived under Russian drone and missile attacks since the start of the war, but this summer the attacks became a daily occurrence. Since late August, Russian forces have been…
meduza.io
For this Indigenous Peoples Day, your astonishing artifact is the earliest known Indigenous depiction of a European — a wood carving from Nunavut dated to 1350. 🧪🏺
Inuit figurine: A 700-year-old Indigenous carving of a European made a century before Columbus
This Inuit carving was made a century before Columbus set foot in the Americas and likely depicts a Norseman.
livescience.com
Why should we still learn languages in this day and age? Join me for a deep-dive into the joys of language learning this Friday (Oct 16, 5pm Sydney time, 8am Berlin time) Register your attendance at the free webinar here: www.goethe.de/ins/au/en/ve...
goethe.de
Who are the dead to you
Aidan O'Sullivan@aidanosullivan.bsky.social · last wk.Prof Jessica Smyth discusses what prehistoric human bone assemblages recovered in Ireland, from Newgrange and here, Fourknocks, Co. Meath tell us about society #AncientWorld_UCD #TheStoriesThatShapeUs @nmireland.bsky.social , @ria.ie @nationalmons.bsky.social www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7Ip...
There are many ways to destroy a university. Texas Tech, Texas A&M + the University of Texas have each taken a different approach…But the result will be the same: substandard education, substandard research + graduates who are less prepared for their future… + more prepared to obey without question.
All The Things You’re Not Allowed To Say In Texas
The state now controls what professors can teach.
theatlantic.com
Ingrid Piller ( @languageonthemove.bsky.social ) is giving a free online keynote in 16th October as part of the Goethe Institute's Language Matters series. Register via the link www.goethe.de/ins/au/en/ve...
goethe.de
I‘m so grateful to everyone who had me on their podcasts, read my stuff to prepare, took an interest in what I did/do
Michael Erard@michaelerard.bsky.social · last wk.When BBILY came out, anthro Peter Spear interviewed me for his podcast; it was one of the few times I got to talk about the "as is" and "as if" framework that lifted the book to another plane. Spear is now clipping the interviews for Insta www.instagram.com/reel/DePuy5C...
putting this here for later, but i should write a language de-socialization account of the Christa Pike situation
My statement on the ICE shooting in Marble Hill ⬇️
When BBILY came out, anthro Peter Spear interviewed me for his podcast; it was one of the few times I got to talk about the "as is" and "as if" framework that lifted the book to another plane. Spear is now clipping the interviews for Insta www.instagram.com/reel/DePuy5C...
trying to deal with editors who think language is just words