crow neighbors and i have been working on a game where they catch thrown kibbles out of the air
one will leap like a goalie to catch it if my throw arc is off
one is a big baby and will just
come real close for an easy throw
but they all seem to like it if I applaud their successful catches 😌
What do you do when the only records that remain of a language were made by someone who had absolutely horrendous views of the people who spoke it?
In our latest episode we get enthusiastic about a crossover episode with Claire Aubin of @thisguysucked.com!
A colorful orange flyer with images of abstract mountains at the bottom. Text at the top reads: "Stories from the Heart: Community Language Projects from Ready to Revitalize". A cartoon of a green bird is flying past the text. Below is a photo of Gibrilla Kamara wearing a white shirt and blue tie. Next to photo is the text "Gibrilla Kamara, Society for Indigenous Languages, Cultures, and Communities of Sierra Leone (SILCC): Restoring the Roots of Indigenous Languages in Sierra Leone". Below that is text: "Gibrilla Kamara will discuss the revitalization of the Mani and Limba languages in Sierra Leone. He will also discuss how the Society for Indigenous Languages, Communities, and Cultures (SILCC) is restoring the unique approaches their ancestors have used to protect and preserve the language, culture, and forest for generations." and the text "April 15, 9:00 am Pacific". At the bottom is a QR code with the link to register and the ELP logo.
Starting on April 15, join us each month to hear real-life stories of language revitalization around the world!
The first speaker will be Gibrilla Kamara, sharing about his work to revitalize Limba and Mani, and protect and restore forests, in Sierra Leone. 🌳
bit.ly/stories-from...
can’t stop thinking about how this is exactly what happened to canids after being domesticated. wolf will try and try, dog will just give up on a problem immediately if there’s a human around
"If I'm sick, I'm sick whether I believe it or not. My refusal to be persuaded will not keep me from sickness; it will only keep me from remedy. But I won't be able to make a choice about truth unless I hear it.
"Fundamentally, healing involves confrontation." www.the-reframe.com/a-confrontat...
hey remember how a week ago we were all holding our breaths to see if a civilization would be annihilated and we’d all have to live whatever remained of our lives with the unbearable horror of not having prevented it
anyway doordash grandma
We do now know the NSF is proceeding with dissolving the Social and Behavioral Sciences Division. Congress might reverse it, but it is now already underway. YOU CAN NO LONGER SUBMIT FUNDING PROPOSALS TO SBE. Program officers are being moved to different parts of the agency. Call your Congress member
ELP's spring 2026 newsletter is now available! Each quarter, we share news and inspiration in language revitalization around the world, upcoming events, jobs and funding opportunities, and more.
Read the newsletter at: bit.ly/ELPspring26
Amtrak has been by far the chillest border crossing experience for the last year or two (US citizen crossing into/out of Canada). Other land crossings have also been slightly quicker and less Papers Please for me than air.
as a southerner: this is the best holiday
New from 404 Media: the FBI was able to extract incoming Signal messages from a phone even though the app was deleted. Why? Because parts of messages were stored in the iPhone's internal notification database. Shows how secure chat data can come from unexpected places www.404media.co/fbi-extracts...
description from Huntington library: "A lithograph printed on heavy paper. Satirical "death certificate" issued for the Southern Confederacy. Mourning border, each line in different typeface, with: Died, Near the South-Side Rail Road, / on Sunday, April 9th, 1865, / The Southern Confederacy, / Aged Four Years, / Conceived in Sin, Born in iniquity, Nurtured by Tyranny, Died of / a Chronic Attack of Punch. / Abraham Lincoln, Attending Physician. / U.S. Grant, Undertaker. / Jeff Davis, Chief Mourner. Below in smaller print an epitaph that ends with: And this one line shall grace your grave-- / Your death gave freedom to the slave." https://hdl.huntington.org/digital/collection/p16003coll6/id/5033
to all who celebrate...
“When the violence of one’s oppressor feels inevitable, when people don’t know how to stop what’s happening, the risk of moral surrender is real. Will we allow our sense of empathy to become dull and fade?”
One week from today! We hope you’ll join us to learn about some amazing language revitalization work in Sierra Leone:
I hope they now teach it by just making the class watch season 2 of The Rehearsal
For folks in Montreal, see you there?
"How does one hate a country, or love one?"
Ursula Le Guin always out there expressing my exact feelings in trying times.
SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL IS GOING TO HAPPEN
I'm hiring! 2 x postdocs in Cognitive Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics, to work on the cultural history of Australia and Papua. More details in link below, and please do repost or share elsewhere!
www.isle.uzh.ch/en/jobs/post...
Daily Mail headline about the guy titled “shocking anti-white bias of taxpayer-funded help service which fired brave staffer who stood up to non-binary bully”. below is a photo of the dude in a backwards black cap with a grey beard
oh he’s just a grifter who got his start being a terf and a Defender of Whites lmao
luckily he’s on a part of the internet where I deleted my account so I’m not tempted to take out my earrings, make an ill-advised post, and waste my whole night 😮💨
where is this guy, I just wanna talk
Flyer with background photo of a misty, mountainous tropical forest. Text on maroon shape reads "Language documentation learning series". Below, text on a green shape reads "2025 session recordings now available on YouTube!" Text beneath that reads "learn the basics of language documentation for free! https://bit.ly/2025langdoc" At the bottom are logos of the Endangered Languages Project and Language Documentation Training Center, and a QR code going to the YouTube playlist.
Did you miss ELP's fall 2025 Language Documentation Learning Series? Now you can catch up - all the recordings are up on YouTube!
This free 8-week series covered introductory topics in language documentation, meant to help people document their own languages.
Watch at: bit.ly/2025langdoc
A relevant CBC article that came out today:
'"You could say that the AI is inadvertently colonizing and hurting Indigenous language revitalization because [people] are taking information generated by an artificial intelligence and putting it out there for people to read," said Sherbert.'
They’re really doing amazing work over there 💚
I applied for an apartment in there a few years back and was SO excited and they said “this rent would be 33% of your paycheck. it has to be 30% so fuck off” 🙃
‘[She] said words in the Han Gwich’in language that essentially mean, “We’re not a threat to you. Have mercy on us and leave us alone.”
Her grandmother and other elders always told her that animals understand the Native language.
“I’m glad I remembered that and that I knew those words,” she said.’
love all of this and also want to say we don’t have to start from scratch in imagining the possible worlds, because there are so many existing worlds which have space for language fluidity and diversity baked right into them, which is good news
Good text that should help many people understand that it is generally not a very good idea.
shoutout also to @jeff.doctor @runningwolf.bsky.social Te Hiku (tehiku.nz) and everyone at @e-l-p.bsky.social ) who helped shape and refine this answer