And the correlate: what if we cared for others’ dead as if they were our own? There’s a lot of interesting politics that results from the position that there’s no such thing as other people’s dead

Michael Erard@michaelerard.bsky.social · 57m ago

This

This

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 1h ago

El-Sayed: "My commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters. Because if there is one question of political philosophy that ought to animate us all, it's what would we do if we treated all our kids like they were all of our kids?"

Do animals use names? Some opinions: www.cell.com/trends/cogni...

Do animals use names? Conceptual and empirical criteria

In recent years, several claims have been put forth suggesting that animals of different species address each other using receiver-specific calls that function as individual names. If accurate, this w...

cell.com

Listen to my latest podcast with The Grading Podcast superhosts and superstars Sharona Krinsky and Robert Bosley. It's about #Schoolishness and #ungrading and #alternativeassessment and more! #AI might make an appearance. thegradingpod.com/episodes/160...

160 – Schoolishness, AI and the Future of Education: A conversation with Dr. Susan D. Blum.

What if the biggest challenge facing education isn’t grading—but our assumptions about school itself? In this episode, Sharona and Boz welcome anthropologist and author Susan Blum for a wide-…

thegradingpod.com

I’m waiting for news of reduced energy demand. Waiting, waiting, waiting…

David Roberts@volts.wtf · 21h ago

Don't look now, but the world has now installed 3TW of solar. Took 10 years to get from 100GW to 1TW. Less than 3 years to get to 2TW. Less than 2 years to get to 3TW. Analysts expect *9TW* by 2036.

But the idea there is some organic, virgin public opinion under all the layers of propaganda that can be nurtured is also a fantasy

Dutch is gonna be the secret family language at this Texas water park

“‘Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave’ delivers me back to the resolutely personal.” @magarmtis.bsky.social recently re-read Mariana Enriquez’s “Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave” after losing her father. The experience was different than any other read.

B-Sides: “Somebody Is Walking on Your Grave: My Cemetery Journeys” by Mariana Enriquez - Public Books

“I spent my adolescence in Buenos Aires and made my own fumbling pilgrimages to that city’s cemeteries.”

publicbooks.org

Going to do a thread, using some of my own (incl. older) work, to clear up some of these relevant concepts. Hope it helps builds conceptual hygiene and immunity to hyped claims about “AI” capabilities. 1/🧵

Iris van Rooij 💭@irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 4d ago

In my work, as in theoretical computer science, we distinguish between (exact) algorithms, heuristics (no guarantees), and approximation algorithm (approx. guarantees) Clear distinctions is relevant in many contexts, for instance this one in cognitive science link.springer.com/article/10.1...

📢 A New EvoThan Symposium is coming! Join us Sept. 14–15, 2026 at UCL, London (and online) for EvoThan2026: International Symposium on Comparative Evolutionary Thanatology. Come learn how animals respond to death and dying. Free to attend! Link: evothanatology.wixsite.com/evothan #EvoThan2026

Happy "There Will Come Soft Rains" Day! Ray Bradbury's greatest short story takes place on August 4, 2026 (in most editions; see alt text). If you haven't seen it, you must watch this incredibly disturbing animated Soviet version (Uzbekfilm, 1984.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=4oxP...

A reminder that THE LANGUAGE BEAT (a curated collection of my language journalism 2000-2024) is available as an e-book on THREE platforms: On Amazon: amzn.to/4aokz3c On Google Play: bit.ly/4wARdY2 On Apple: apple.co/4fK71SA

neerlandistiek.nl/2026/08/vers... @bbvt-uptij.bsky.social @ortv.bsky.social @nrpsinterpreter.bsky.social

Verschenen: The language beat

More than two decades ago, Michael Erard, a linguist and writer, set out to marry the linguist’s fascination with language to the journalist’s fascination with story.

neerlandistiek.nl

Something you’ll never be able to do with an LLM, by the way

Mark Thornton@markthornton.bsky.social · 2d ago

Very excited to share this preprint from me, @emmatempleton.bsky.social, @lindseytepfer.bsky.social & @thaliawheatley.bsky.social! "Friends and strangers engage in distinct regimes of body motion synchrony during conversation" osf.io/preprints/ps...

Lastly, if you are in NC and know someone (maybe it's you?) who has a physical disability and wants to learn more about NC Adapted Sports, here you go. It's a great organization. www.ncadaptedsports.org

North Carolina Adapted Sports

ncadaptedsports.org

For Texas Architect, I unloaded on Texas cities for using deferred maintenance as a precedent for demolishing and abandoning civic structures, including I.M. Pei's Dallas City Hall. Fort Worth and San Antonio aren't spared either. magazine.texasarchitects.org/2026/07/28/d...

"Deferred Maintenance" Endangers Civic Heritage - Texas Architect Magazine

If “deferred maintenance” is the government’s version of the excuse “the dog ate my homework,” then some Texas cities may…

magazine.texasarchitects.org

The American caste system in the late Anthropocene in action

Seth Masket@smotus.bsky.social · 3d ago

It’s important to understand that when 1.2 million Americans are dying from a disease, any government action is excessive and tyrannical, but if a dozen trans women want to play soccer no government action can go far enough

For your semantics class next semester. You’re welcome.

Great to see our new paper out; evidence for Neanderthals in Arabia! Time to stop imagining our hominin cousins as only being found in cold northern forests! www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Neanderthals in the desert? Population history best explains Middle Palaeolithic technological heterogeneity in Arabia

Northeast Africa and Southwest Asia present a rich record of hominin occupations between ca. 100 and 50 thousand years ago (ka) at a critical biogeogr…

sciencedirect.com

Jimbob Blinkhorn@jblinkhorn.bsky.social · 4d ago

New paper klaxon! Neanderthals in the Desert? Our new paper suggests that Neanderthals may have been responsible for producing MIS 3 Middle Palaeolithic Levallois blanks in northern Arabia! Have a look at this: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tfw your kid takes his first Waymo ride

Covid lockdowns demonstrated, in a deeply imperfect way, the possibility of large-scale social solidarity for a higher cause. That is a prime reason why so many powerful people want us to run screaming away from them into the comforting arms of selfish individualist competition.

UEFA for president

George Monbiot@georgemonbiot.bsky.social · 4d ago

Neoliberalism in a nutshell. UEFA on FIFA's proposal: “The moment external investors acquire ownership interests ... football changes forever. Commercial return becomes a permanent obligation. ... Every decision is no longer driven by what best serves the game, but by what best serves shareholders.”

I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful

this is a A) social experiment B) grift C) seed of a conspiracy theory

On Monday evening, Haitian workers at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport burst into tears as they were asked to turn in their badges. Marlene, 47, a single mother who has worked as an airport janitor for 12 years, said she has been sick to her stomach.

Airports, nursing homes and schools brace for disruption without Haitian workers

The Trump administration and courts are at odds over whether about 350,000 Haitians have officially lost humanitarian protections, but employers are already letting workers go.

washingtonpost.com

completely agree, the infinite flexibility of phrasal verbs is the greatest thing about this language

latina belt sprachbund🇲🇽🇵🇸☀️@languagespeaker.bsky.social · 5d ago

People kinda dismiss English as kinda being “whatever” on the prettiness scale but for me this is what makes English so beautiful

I’ll admit there’s one downside of not driving a car daily: quality conversation with the teenager that‘s not quite accessible otherwise. I’ve talked to several parents of newly licensed teen drivers who say they miss that time the most.

AI speaks over 100 languages, so it must also be built for multilinguals, right? Well... I’m thrilled to share that @teapotlinguist.bsky.social (Freie Universität Berlin) and I just received Una Europa Seed Funding to investigate exactly this, across two countries and three languages 😍🌈