Prof. Nicole Holliday
@mixedlinguist.bsky.social
Assoc. Prof of Linguistics at Berkeley. Language, identity & prosody, esp. in politics & human-computer interaction. Trivia person and marathoner. LA & the Bay. No one is illegal on stolen land. Views are my own. https://nicolerholliday.wordpress.com
I know it won’t happen, but it would be kinda epic if Capital One was the thing that finally took him down. After getting away with war crimes, treason, fraud, rape and thousands of other crimes, imagine getting felled by the “what’s in your wallet” crew!
Working on my syllabus for undergrad sociolinguistics, and I am genuinely jealous of the students, because they get to learn about so many cool things for the first time. Perceptual dialectology! Conversational style! Language planning! Multicultural London English!
The more you do science, the more you realize that you’re wrong all the time. But you get more information, and your hypotheses improve. People who are fundamentally incurious and arrogant just refuse to understand scientific processes.
Nicholas Grossman@nicholasgrossman.bsky.social · 6d agoOne of the worst things about the Senate’s attempted Fauci show trial is how the supposed evidence against him is early in COVID he considered multiple hypotheses, then increasingly ruled some unlikely as evidence came in. The objection is he did science. Fundamentally that is what’s under attack.
I love to be asked about what politicians are doing linguistically! apple.news/AY8ZE28KeSey...
Experts Spot A Curious Change In Trump's Voice In His 'I've Done More For You Than Your Parents' Speech — HuffPost
Turns out he’s doing a bit, and we’re all his captive audience.
apple.news
Your voice reveals more than what words you say. Linguistics Prof. Nicole Holliday (@mixedlinguist.bsky.social) studies the subtle speech patterns that shape perceptions of identity, belonging + trust — and why those insights matter as AI-generated voices become more common. Read more:
What your voice gives away - Berkeley News
In the debut of our new After Office Hours series, linguist Nicole Holliday reveals the signals hidden in how we speak.
news.berkeley.edu
This plan is popular, strategic, and budget-conscious. It’s a great idea and a major step towards universal coverage. But the folks downthread are screaming about how it’s not “single payer now” and claiming that they’ll refuse to support it. And that’s why we lose. Perfect = enemy of good.
Eric Michael Garcia@ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 2w agoAndy Kim suggests a new health care policy: -Enroll every child in Medicaid until the age of 26 www.notus.org/healthcare/a...
I think about this every damn day. I come from a line of people who were literally enslaved and who still believed that a better future was possible, and fought for it. I don’t need people with graduate degrees yelling at me from $3000 couches about how naive I am to reject doomerism.
Professa Murray@kalimurray.bsky.social · 2w agoEveryone coming on my feed and explaining to me that all is lost, I note what I have noted before, that there are no Negro Spirituals entitled, “Welp, I Guess It All Sucks and I Am Giving Up.”
Could Excel be conscious? We surveyed more than Jan 1 1900 people to find out.
Totally fine that everyone sounds American in The Odyssey (because what else would even make sense?) but when someone said “add some other stuff”…that part took me out 😆
Florida and it’s not even close. We could’ve had President Al Gore, with climate policy that may have prevented some of this. And honestly, his folks probably would’ve caught 9/11 before it happened too. But Florida (and the Supreme Court) is constantly ruining things 😡
jesse@jesseltaylor.bsky.social · 3w agoName the U.S. state you loathe the most, I don't care what the reason is unless it's like weird or bigoted
you stupid mother fucker (markwayne not eugene) we tricked the entire world into sending their smartest hardest working people here and then tricked those same people into staying permanently instead of going back to their home country you are BLOWING UP OUR SPOT
Eugene Vinitsky 🍒@eugenevinitsky.bsky.social · 3w agoI did not see this unhinged statement previously. These people really do not understand this country
I’m not high, but learning this fact made me feel like I was 🫨
Denali@denali.bsky.social · 3w agoHusband just came in to tell me that since the assassination of Abraham Lincoln every American president has been alive at the same time as Herbert Hoover.
Dunking on Stephen Miller for criticizing other people’s appearances, a megathread. This one is my fave.
Kevin M. Kruse@kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 3w agoMy man looks like if Pauly Shore straightened out his life a little *too* much
Ok, I’m calling it now. Barring any major scandal, he’s going to go into the Democratic primaries as the front runner.
The Tennessee Holler @thetnholler.bsky.social · 3w agoSEN. @ossoff.senate.gov: “Here’s what’s gonna happen tonight — the world’s most famous sore loser will deliver a primetime presidential sour grapes 🍇 address to pursue his 6yo grievances about the 2020 election while his war spirals out of control and the cost of living continues to rise.”
THEY’RE NOT SENDING THEIR BEST 😡
Subscribe to Radio Free America (link in bio)@kleinman.bsky.social · 3w agoThe important thing here seems to be that he's a recent ICE hire who wanted his ex-wife to lie about abusing her and the mental health concerns that she'd previously flagged to the military www.pressherald.com/2026/07/16/i...
If the comments (and history) are any indication, we'll never change because no one can seem to agree on the direction. It seems that Trump thinks that changing the clocks literally creates more daylight, which is obviously on brand for him. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/14/u...
House Votes for Permanent Daylight Saving Time (Gift Article)
House Republicans and Democrats united in favor of a bill to eliminate semiannual clock-changing, but it faces an uncertain fate in the Senate.
nytimes.com
We have a bottle of champagne for the main guy, but what does this guy get? A cheap rosé?
I’m watching on Telemundo and I’ve never seen “confusión de identidad” before, but once I learned that it really was mistaken identity, I wasn’t less confused. Either way, too harsh a penalty for flopping, despite the technicalities.
Every time I think I can’t be more disgusted by the darkness in the hearts of some citizens and how deeply embedded racism is in U.S. culture, I learn something new. I had never heard of Bernie Goetz, or Barry Allen, Troy Canty, Darrell Cabey, and James Ramseur. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/9...
100 Objects #6: "Sharpened Screwdriver"
Podcast Episode · 99% Invisible · June 26 · Bonus · 40m
podcasts.apple.com
And I’m sure they’ll say this is what happens when they only consider “merit”. That is probably even less true now than it was in 1951.
T. Greg Doucette@gregdoucette.bsky.social · 4w agoThe quick resegregation of higher education is particularly pronounced. In 1951, in the case of McKissick v Carmichael, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals compelled the UNC Chapel Hill School of Law to admit 4 black students. In 2025, they admitted 5. law.unc.edu/wp-content/u...
Automated emotion detection based on speech is wildly unreliable, and also, this is just evil. ““The AI assistant may listen to a user(s) at predefined times to hear various types of communication, such as sighs, laughter, and/or the tone(s) of a voice(s)”. www.404media.co/meta-patents...
Meta Patents AI Device That Tracks Your Emotions, Watches You Take Your Meds
Imagine a wearable device that records every moment of your day and makes suggestions based on your mood.
404media.co
"If we think about and feel what we experience by moving about in the world, if we mull and compare what resonates to our own knowledge and memories, if we analyze it using the perspectives and sensibilities gained from education and life experience, then what we have to say will be unique." 3/
Basement adventures showed me why ChatGPT can only ever be garbage.
In The British Library. Photo by Surekha Davies. Hallo readers, First, a news flash: Join me for a virtual book launch for HUMANS: A MONSTROUS HISTORY...
buttondown.com
ICE agents shot and killed an unarmed civilian in Houston, Texas. The victim was a construction worker, a father of three US citizens, had lived in the US for 35 years and was applying for a work permit. He panicked and tried to flee when he mistook masked, armed ICE agents for thieves.
YAC News@yacnews.bsky.social · 4w agoICE guns down an unarmed father in Houston, Texas, family calls for an investigation www.yacnews.com/ice-guns-dow...
Eagerly reading "The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI" by @doctorow.pluralistic.net, and on pg 6, I see a shoutout to @hagenblix.bsky.social after a mention of @jasonkoebler.bsky.social ! Follow these folks for some of the most important literary, academic, and journalistic work on "AI"!
You know you’re doing something right when the AARP readership takes the time to insult you via hate mail 😆 Adults do ruin slang, and it’s not cute to desperately cling to your youth because you can’t face your mortality. Stay mad, Flo 😎
Hilariously, Bluesky is arguing that FIFA is corrupt, Mexico fans arguing the same, England fans arguing the same, all for different reasons. Corruption allegations bring us together, as long as no one discusses specifics.
“I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery…I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope”. www.democracynow.org/2026/7/3/wha...
“What to the Slave Is the 4th of July?”: Frederick Douglass Speech Read by James Earl Jones
We begin our July Fourth special broadcast with the words of Frederick Douglass. Born into slavery around 1818, Douglass became a key leader of the abolitionist movement. On July 5, 1852, in Rochester...
democracynow.org
Apparently no FIFA ref is ever allowed to call out Messi for anything, and it makes Argentina extra infuriating to watch.
This is the best of who we are and what we represent. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
In the United States, Every World Cup Team Is a Home Team (Gift Article)
At block parties, backyards and beer halls, an expanded tournament gave immigrant diasporas large and small the chance to revel in support of their home countries.
nytimes.com
