So what's up with me lately?
Teaching in two unis AND completing a PhD app dossier for a Thai university soon. I've been heavily involved in teaching English to non-Filipinos lately, too! 😂
I'm breaking my bsky silence here just to invite you to the Free Linguistics Conference the UST Department of English is hosting this October.
Hope to see you in Manila! 🇵🇭
#Linguistics
#AppliedLinguistics
What is something about graduate school or life in academia that you think undergraduate you would have benefited from knowing?
I am putting together some content for a seminar class next week and would appreciate your suggestions!
Also would appreciate a re-post! 😁🙏
📢 *Open Access*
Thrilled to announce that my book "Linguistic Knowledge and Language Use" has just been flipped open access!
Thanks to @helenbarton2004.bsky.social from @cambup-linguistics.bsky.social.
The book & individual chapters can be downloaded here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/l...
📣 News of Social Corpus Scraper (my tool for collecting corpora of posts from social networks):
- a Discord module is nearly ready;
- a Truth Social module is in the works.
If you'd like to do some beta-testing, do not hesitate!
#linguistics #corpus 🐦🐦
"We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing."
~ Hermann Hesse
A new McCarthy era is upon us. Stupid, depressing, and dangerous as ever. I wonder whose name will carry the dunce cap in the history books. Too many are complicit. I’ll need to find upset and action, but for now I’m feeling grief at the dehumanization inherent to all this.
We should all be pushing our local & municipal government agencies and elected officials to establish @bsky.app accounts.
Making Bluesky more of a hub of civic information will encourage many, many users to migrate away from Twitter/X.
Is there a Bluesky HOWTO for govt departments and officials?
Saturday in NYC 🏳️⚧️
Interpretation for the non-scientists: When faculty get NIH grants, the University gets some extra cash to make sure the research is supported. NIH just cut that $$ by a LOT. That means Unis are less likely to support research. Most research in the US is done at Unis, so... it's bad 🧪
FYI if you only support diversity, equity and inclusion when you don’t have any pushback then you do not actually support it.
There's a word for people who prefer judging others to thinking critically about their own bitter natures: arseholes.
A screenshot from a proposed US House resolution “H.Res.59 - Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the sermon given by the Right Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde at the National Prayer Service on January 21st, 2025, at the National Cathedral was a display of political activism and condemning its distorted message.”
I’m not saying it’s Thomas Becket and Henry II energy but it is very much Thomas Becket and Henry II energy.
Also: talk to medieval and late antique historians.
By now I’m waiting for Trump to attempt to call a universal synod, establish his own definition of the nature of Christ, and reserve for himself the right to appoint bishops in and outside of his empire.
Stop letting unfunny men tell you there’s something wrong with you for not getting their “jokes”. Stop fake laughing. Let their reality reflect the truth of how fundamentally they misunderstand humor. Neuter their ability to use “it was a joke” for emotional cover. Make them see nobody laugh.
A straightforward call for ethnic cleansing from the US president
I really wish there was a day of reckoning for all of these right wing people who gradually and very carefully took out people's rights and pursued a vicious culture war where empathy is "a sin."
I for one do not want to wait for God to end the world. We need to play the long game, I suppose.
This is the same guy who tried saying on here a couple days ago that it was good that Trump was nuking DEI hires because they prevented a multiracial working class movement
State Rep. Gregory W. Porter (D-Indianapolis) released the following statement: “The active intervention to end or attack anything in the budget that gives state dollars to people of color is sickening. I won’t mince my words: It’s racist. Black Hoosiers and other minorities pay taxes, so we deserve to benefit from the state budget as much as our white counterparts.
“Martin University is Indiana’s only predominately Black institution. The only reason why it’s not an official HBCU is because it’s relatively young. Now they will receive zero state dollars, which is a complete cut from 2023. He also cut the College Success Program, which encourages minority and first-generation, low-income students to attend college. That means a total of $10 million in support for minority students has been eliminated."
Indiana isn't as big as Texas or Florida, but for those of us in higher education, it's worth paying attention to what is (and has been) going on. Take the Governor's new budget, which cut all of the $10M previously allocated to Martin University, the only predominantly Black school in the state.
Growing up in the evangelical church taught me that for too many, when reality seemingly disproves your beliefs, you don't reconsider your beliefs; you blame someone else for what God is doing. Take "God" out of it, and this is now at scale how the Trump-era GOP perceives the world.
Nobody really expects the president to actually read a bill, but Marcos Jr.'s comments and his claim of "woke absurdities" in the Prevention of Adolescent Pregnancy bill suggest poor staff work at the very least.
Anyway, in case you're curious: www.abs-cbn.com/news/nation/...
Chloe Cheung @chloecheung.bsky.social says she fears for her safety in the UK after Hong Kong placed a HK$1 million bounty last month. After asking the Home Office for security, she has only been sent a self-protection handbook by the Metropolitan Police
www.thetimes.com/world/asia/a...
So @matspike.bsky.social's answer to this question provides the best (short) explanation I have ever seen of what LLMs do and why it makes no sense to use them to explore human understanding of language
