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Elise Kramer

@elisekramer.bsky.social

Linguistic anthropologist @ UIUC.

36 Posts453 Follower167 Folgt
Katie Mack@astrokatie.com · 8mo ago

I don’t know if anyone else notices or cares, but when I see a presentation in which the speaker uses obviously generated-AI images to illustrate their slides, it makes me immediately less confident in whatever other content they’re presenting.

Elise Kramer@elisekramer.bsky.social · 8mo ago

In 9th grade, I got in trouble in gym class. We were doing a unit on the high jump, so I was told to write a two-page essay about the high jump. As someone who resented being assigned busywork, I went somewhat off the rails. Here are some excerpts from my paper. First, I established a premise.

The High Jump perhaps represents man's ascent into greatness. One second you are soaring through the air with the grace of an eagle, the next you are falling, a frenzy of arms and legs, and finally, you hit the ground like a sack of beans. It was Neil Armstrong who best summed up the symbolism of the high jump when he said, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Of course, as most anybody with half a brain knows, he said that when he became the first man to walk on the moon. Which leads me to wonder… What would the high jump be like if it were held on the moon? Better yet, Pluto?Throughout history, scientists have been hard at work trying to improve the style of high jumping. Originally, there were a few styles that people used that attained relatively high jumps. The most popular was the scissors jump. However, the world of high jumping was changed for the better when Dick Fosbury invented the "Fosbury Flop," which involved twisting around when you reached the bar, and going over it with your back to the ground. When scientists grew tired of calculating parabolas and formulating how to attain the highest jump possible, they became restless and rowdy. They began rioting. They threw stones at old ladies on the sidewalk outside their lab. Finally, in an attempt to quiet the physicists, NASA assigned them a special project. This project: What would the high jump be like on Pluto?
Elise Kramer@elisekramer.bsky.social · 9mo ago

In New Orleans for AAAs! Looking forward to seeing how many different iterations of shrimp I can eat in the next three days. Also participating in this fantastic scholarly community etc etc

Elise Kramer@elisekramer.bsky.social · 9mo ago

I'm discussing the enregisterment of typefaces in class today, and usually I only talk about people's reactions to Comic Sans, but thanks to some fortuitous timing I have a new example.

A screenshot of a powerpoint slide with a bunch of examples of people judging the new "The Oval Office" sign taped to the White House exterior
Elise Kramer@elisekramer.bsky.social · 9mo ago

My new article "The Caveman in the Mirror: Masculinity and Paleofantasy" is now available via early access from Signs and Society! It's part of a special issue, "Chronotopes of Gender," that I coedited with @cat-tebaldi.bsky.social. Full issue will be out in December! doi.org/10.1017/sas....

The Caveman in the Mirror: Masculinity and Paleofantasy | Signs and Society | Cambridge Core

The Caveman in the Mirror: Masculinity and Paleofantasy

cambridge.org

Elise Kramer@elisekramer.bsky.social · last yr.

Chants of Sennaar is a very cool linguistics-y game, but with one thing that annoyed my semi-linguist self: one of the languages' syntax initially appears to be verb-first (VS), but then every other sentence is OSV, so I guess it's just... Yoda syntax?

Elise Kramer@elisekramer.bsky.social · last yr.

Something my students and I realized today, discussing Spitulnik's Zambian radio catchphrase article: a lot of the famous media phrases that have been taken up in American discourse ("Houston, we have a problem"; "Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore") are examples of dramatic understatement.

Veena Dubal@veenadubal.bsky.social · last yr.

This should terrify every person in this country. The use of machine learning systems to approximate an individuals views on war and then, if they are here lawfully on a visa, tag them for deportation is about as sci-fi dystopian as it gets. www.axios.com/2025/03/06/s...

Scoop: State Dept. to use AI to revoke visas of foreign students who appear "pro-Hamas"

The effort includes AI-assisted reviews of tens of thousands of student visa holders' social media accounts and marks a dramatic escalation in the U.S. government's policing of foreign nationals' cond...

axios.com