I am once again begging journlists to ask a linguist before they publish hot takes about language. #linguistics CW: JKR, so there is transphobia, OBVIOUSLY.

JK Rowling sparks grammar row over 'trans' and takes fresh swipe at Amnesty

The Harry Potter author explained that the word 'trans' was not an adjective as claimed by trans activists

scottishdailyexpress.co.uk

If you’ve seen this article, you may be sitting with anger, pain, or just exhaustion at dealing with another helping of colonial nonsense. We feel a responsibility to speak back when these colonizing narratives show up, yet again, in such a prominent venue. endangeredlanguages.com/story/respon...

The New Yorker@newyorker.com · 2w ago

The idea that we have a special duty to prevent the death of languages is instantly compelling to anyone who loves languages. But is it true? www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

every day in research you learn something. Today I learned about "winsorizing", which is when you drop out datapoints in the first and 99th percentiles to reduce the influence of large outliers. I've seen people log10 transform, for the same reasons.. both seem.. not 100% satisfactory #datascience

have just learned that when working with #numPy, apparently NLP/ML people sometimes represent missing data for binary variables as -1 ...

Patrick Star Shocked in Spongebob Squarepants

ALT: Patrick Star Shocked in Spongebob Squarepants

static.klipy.com

I completely re-wrote the AI section of my guide to academic reading/writing to be much stricter and more negative (now titled "AI-generated fabrications as academic misconduct"). Please use/share with your students, and let me know if you have any more changes to suggest! doi.org/10.31234/osf...

The Nordic Journal of Linguistics is curating a special issue dedicated to the past, present, and future of the Saami languages. We invite contributions on Saami languages and Saami linguistics. We also welcome studies with varied linguistic methodologies, topics and more. 📚 https://cup.org/4rhHgfv

The euro banknotes seem to get a new look, and the @ecb.europa.eu has hosted a survey, asking which desing is the preferred one. I really like the stork on the 50€ banknote. surveys.ecb.europa.eu/10b/banknote...

The lost golden age of #language diversity. Tens of thousands of languages may have existed between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago - their decline began well before European colonial expansion. Study @science.org led by @damianblasi.bsky.social. See: tinyurl.com/84j9nezy & www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The lost golden age of language diversity

Tens of thousands of languages may have existed between 1,000 and 3,000 years ago - and their decline began well before European colonial expansion

tinyurl.com

aaaaaaahhhhhhhh😵‍💫 sounds like that food scientist guy all over again ("men eat more salad when women are around")

Nick Huntington-Klein@nickchk.com · 3w ago

This episode is interesting as it's about a research group explicitly trying dozens to hundreds of quasi experiments, progressing only with the ones that "work", backing them up with a bunch of robustness tests, and then extrapolating a lot from the results. podcastaddict.com/freakonomics...

may this kind of love find you

EXCELLENT: The Netherlands new OA policy seems to be well thought through obc.copim.pub/when-scaling... Policy explicitly recommends redirection & reallocation of funds from existing ‘big deal’ budgets towards community-driven alternatives, incl university-led diamond OA & Netherlands Uni Presses

When 'scaling small' becomes national policy

The Netherlands' new open access strategy echoes the principles the Open Book Collective was built on - 'scaling small' and community-led publishing

obc.copim.pub

New paper out now 🥳 When psychologists discuss generalisability, they often refer to vague notions of representativeness. We provide an accessible intro to the total survey error framework as a tool to reason about this more rigorously. w @taymalsalti.bsky.social @ruben.the100.ci >

senior male academics giving a conference paper, after being shown the "one more minute" sign

Erin Dwyer aka Ginger Is A Construct@erindwyer.bsky.social · 2w ago

Time keeping is my passion.

Imagine being a player in the World Cup final with your momentum drifting and muscles stiffening cos Justin bieber wanted to sing that catatonically boring ballad

Women's football worldcup is next year! Here's the teams so far! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2027_FI...

reviewing methods paper. i feel myself being possessed by @rmcelreath.bsky.social and @dingdingpeng.the100.ci as I write: "please demonstrate method with a simulation" and "make me DAGs for the case studies!"

Liz Lemon Begging Please

ALT: Liz Lemon Begging Please

static.klipy.com

Number of Linguistics job postings have dropped significantly in the Linguist List. Please note that the numbers reported below are inflated because some job postings mention multiple areas of study (e.g. phonology + phonetics, or computational linguistics + semantics).

we ran the numbers-- they are bad

The academic job market in linguistics: beyond vibes

the numbers are also bad

profling.beehiiv.com

The new book by @sophiasgaler.bsky.social on the value of linguistic diversity echoes the themes of the winner of our 2024 book prize www.ft.com/content/e4ce...

How to Kill a Language — the beauty and value of linguistic diversity

Sophia Smith Galer’s moving book is a rallying call to revive minority tongues amid increasing globalisation

ft.com

If you teach an intro to linguistics class, here is a great resource to bring you up to date with "design features of language".

Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics@mpi-nl.bsky.social · 4w ago

The ‘design features’ of language revisited. Final version by Michael Pleyer & al. with Koen de Reus, @limorraviv.bsky.social doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2025.10.004

Why speech acts can’t be reduced to matters of context change. New paper by Stephen C. Levinson doi.org/10.1515/tl-2026-2001

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (Nijmegen, NL - @mpi-nl.bsky.social) is looking for a new director! Here is a list of invited speakers for their "Future of psychology of language"-workshop series which is part of the search. humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.com/2026/07/mpi-...

MPI-Nijmegen searches for new director

The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, is looking for a director to head a new department there. They'...

humans-who-read-grammars.blogspot.com

for nice images for academic talks, I often turn to the image databank magnific (formerly freepik). they've now gone all AI, which is very frustrating. however, you can still filter to exclude AI-content.. so.. that's nice :/..

Paige | Hex@thebase16.bsky.social · 3mo ago

NO. god NO PLEASE GOD. NOOOOO

I challenge anyone go try and reproduce some random papers, even those based on open free public datasets, but without the code and/or a detailed description of how the data was obtained and processed, and not become militant about the necessity of code and complete data sharing at a minimum.

📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!

all the things we're doing in our attic apartment in the European #heatwave #canicule wet towels, fans, aluminium foil on outside of window, blinds on inside, curtains inside, parasol and splash pool.

technology is nothing without culture to hold it if you think about the interplay between community culture and tech, I can heartily recommend the tv show "Moonhaven" from @amcplus.com . it sadly didn't get a second season, but that happens to the best of shows.

it's been about a month since I started properly weening myself of reshape2. Today marks the first time I used tidyr::pivor_wider() correctly on the first go without having to look anything up!

laserhedvig@laserhedvig.bsky.social · 3mo ago

I've been a big fan of reshape2::melt/dcast() as opposed to the the corresponding tidyr functions, however.. I am now coming to the end of this rope as I'm moving into R >4 & the version mismatching errors are just not worth it anymore GOOD BYE RESHAPE2::MELT!!! I WILL MISS YOU SSOO MUCH!!! #rstats

Next week is the biennial meeting of the Association for Linguistic Typology (ALT) in Lyon, France. I'm going, and I'm very much looking forward to seeing interesting work from colleagues and catch up! #LINGTYP alt-2026.sciencesconf.org