Heatmap showing phonological distances between Indo-European languages. Darker means more similar.
Phonological distances for linguistic typology and the origin of Indo-European languages
a "... significant correlation between phonological distance and geographic proximity"
arxiv.org/abs/2604.11565
💥 Russia: Ukrainian housewife kitchen drones imposed kinetic sanctions on Novokuybyshevsk Oil Refinery in Samara region, 1,100km from Ukraine.
174,000 bpd output.
Today, the Trump administration quietly removed paper sanctions on Russian oil at the end of Friday business day.
"Putin, Xi and Trump all liked Orbán for the same reason: his hostility to liberal democracy and his willingness to play the role of spoiler within the EU. Orbán also played a useful ideological role"
giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT
ERC could instead just make indirect costs ineligible
That would get a lot of pushback from infrastructure-heavy institutions, but it’s justifiable on it own terms (“we fund the projects themselves, not the costs of running a place”) and it would certainly reduce the number of applications
This basically amounts to "too many people are applying, so we'll make the process entirely insufferable to reduce applications".
There would have been another option to reduce workloads of reviewers *and* applicants: making the application form less dense.
Thoughts:
more evidence that 'birdsong' and 'whale song' are less analogous to human song and more analogous to speech
I wonder if non-human vocalizations will eventually lose the 'song' moniker
We will read histories of today’s US in a few decades and wonder how something like this could happen. Slowly allowing Polio and Measles to celebrate comebacks is pure stupidity.
#EvolangXVI starts off with a plenary by @glupyan.bsky.social on the cognitive functions of language! #language #linguistics
Two weeks ago, the Hungarian opposition was bracing for a false flag operation, an "emergency" that would allow Viktor Orban to turn the tide or even cancel an election he is losing. Now it appears to have arrived
Här alltså de nya medlemmarna som partiledningen firat. www.dn.se/sverige/oron...
Graphical abstract showing four panels. Panel 1: a person in an MRI scanner with blue cognitive thought bubbles drifting from their head and pink body thought bubbles from their torso, with organs glowing inside. Panel 2: blue bubbles for cognitive items (Self, Words, Focus, Images, Future, Past) are larger than pink bubbles for body items (Breathing, Movement, Stomach, Heart, Skin, Bladder), with arrows showing body thoughts link to more negative and less positive emotion. Panel 3: physiological traces (EGG, ECG, respiratory) show higher arousal with body-wandering; a bar chart shows cognitive items (Past, Future, Repetitive, Vivid) correlate with more ADHD and depression symptoms while body items (Breath, Stomach, Skin, Heart) correlate with fewer. Panel 4: medial brain with thalamus, somatomotor cortex, and interoceptive regions highlighted, plus a chord diagram showing connectivity between these three regions.
New paper in PNAS! When the mind wanders, it often drifts to the body. We call this "body-wandering". These thoughts are often negative, but are associated with reduced ADHD & depression symptoms, driven by a distinct interoceptive-allostatic brain signature. pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520822123
🇪🇺❗️🇭🇺 EU countries are increasingly sidelining Hungary from sensitive discussions over fears it may be leaking information to Russia, - Politico
Diplomats say smaller, closed-door formats are being used to avoid sharing details with Budapest.
Att bara precis lyckas vinna en partiledaromröstning mot ”ingen” är ändå en prestation i sig, det måste man ge Mohamsson!
L-mötet låter lite som ett spontanhärmat redaktionsmöte på Bulletin?
Hungary under Orban has been a Russian client state for years. The corruption levels are on par with those of its Russian masters. There is virtually no difference. The revelation that secret communications inside the EU have been delivered to Russia comes at no surprise.
well, looks like settlement of the Americas is up for grabs again.
Well, the US was promised back the good old days. The Liberal Democracy Index now shows the US is back to the 1960s. All the impressive gains from the 60s and 70s wiped out. A sad phase in history. Likely more decline in the pipeline.
Europe pressuring Ukraine to repair the Druzhba pipeline is a pathetic display of cowardice.
Hungary and Slovakia do not need Russian energy to survive and have had years to diversify.
Forcing Kyiv to secure Russian oil transit represents a complete failure of priorities
People re-use each other's words, syntax and semantics in conversation, arguably to facilitate common ground. In a new Proceedings of the Royal Society B we assess whether this tendency can be used an individually reliable trait (e.g. to correlate it to something else): doi.org/10.1098/rspb... 1/
Empathy is not a narcissistic psychopath's strong suit.
Rumor has it that Nature is also considering charging authors 'evalution costs' to submit papers.
They must be hurting for money: they've only published 101 Open Access articles to date in 2026.
This means Springer-Nature has gobbled up $1,281,690.0 of science funding this year.
#openaccess
"We are freeing Iran from religious fanatics".
A prayer for Trump in the White House.
Det pågår en katastrofal utsvältning och nedmontering av offentliga kulturinstitutioner i Sverige.
magasink.se/2026/03/mede...
new research on kava drinking and its role in cultural evolution by @vaclavhrncir.bsky.social, @scottclaessens.bsky.social and colleagues at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social and partner institutions!! well done!!
www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...
Viktor Orban is now 20 points behind in the polls - and so he has ordered the military to guard “key energy facilities” against a possible Ukrainian “attack.” Hungarians fear he plans a fake national security emergency or false-flag incident before the April 12 election
apnews.com/article/hung...
Dansk säkerhetspolis vill säga upp Palantir av säkerhetsskäl, när Gunnar Strömmer fick frågor om den svenska polisens användning av tjänsten viftade han bort det som konspirationsteorier www.dn.se/ledare/isobe...
Just published in Science, baby chickens show the bouba-kiki effect! In an accompanying Perspective, @bodowinter.bsky.social and I argue a broader, multimodal framework of iconicity is needed to illuminate the origins of language.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Bored of Peace
This new paper in Science is also accompanied by a cool perspective piece by @mperlman.bsky.social & @bodowinter.bsky.social! #language #linguistics www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
