This makes so much sense now

From Australia, a while back, by Ayesha Kaak: doi.org/10.51681/1.232

I guess this must be what people mean when they say children are our best teachers.

So cool!

The New York Times When a Coat Becomes a Symbol of Conflict How the choice of outerwear for Gregory Bovino, the president’s Border Patrol chief, turned into part of the deportation story.

Gregory Bovino Der ICE-Kommandant im Nazi-Look Martialisch und effektheischend, so tritt ICE-Kommandant Gregory Bovino gern auf. 22.01.2026, 17.09 Uhr

the nyt style section vs. der spiegel

Oh Alex! I hope you're both on the mend and the trauma can give way to joy. Thinking of you & congratulations on the bub!

I haven't, but as an Australian (the natural habitat of hypocoristics), and secondly as a Linguist, I'd vote for 'extended hypocoristic'.

My high school french teacher used to say teaching us was like trying to keep kittens in a basket. Would you and your canine/feline team mind testing this one out for me?

Is it by analogy to 'look it up'?

Same!

As scholars, we know a bit about how to learn. We need to build relationships of trust, so that in the snatched moments after a lecture, during feedback, in an office hour, after a public event students hear:

Don't take the shortcut. The long way around is so much richer in the end.

There's always this insistence that people need to "learn how to use AI so they aren't left behind" and as an artist and an author, I don't know what there is to *learn* from models that were.... trained on my work.

Open Your Heart to Country WINNER, 2023 PRIME MINISTER’S LITERARY AWARDS, CHILDREN’S LITERATURE SHORTLISTED, 2023 KARAJIA AWARD FOR CHILDREN'S LITERATURE NOTABLE, 2023 CHILDREN'S BOOK COUNCIL OF AUSTRALIA BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD...

This book has Dharug (original language of Sydney) throughout. It would be worth contacting the publisher (Magabala Books) for recommendations too, as they publish lots of bilingual texts featuring Australian Indigenous languages and might be able to point to more of what you specifically want.

www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/...

@lizhumphrys.bsky.social yep, i can do this for Armidale in New England. I'll email you. Sounds like a very interesting project.

never thought i’d say this but please come work for me! the abc is hiring a researcher to assist in the task of providing timely and accurate language guidance to staff careers.abc.net.au/en/job/504660/…

Opinion | The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes A.I. is just what we need in the post-fact era: less research and more predicting what we want to hear.

Easily the best thing I've read about A.I. in higher ed, by @tressiemcphd.bsky.social (thanks @bicycleuser.bsky.social): www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/o...

My policy on AI What I will not do In the interests of transparency about my methods, it is important for you to know that I will never publish any text that was generated by AI, nor any text produced with assista…

I'm not going to use generative AI. I don't see any legitimate role for it in unis.

It's OK if you like it! I won't let students use it, and I won't read synthetic text if I can knowingly avoid it.

Here's my personal policy, drafted with help from colleagues.
bravenewwords.info/my-policy-on...

A movie poster for "Bouba's Delivery Service", where Kiki (the witch) has been replaced by the round figure usually associated with bouba in the classic linguistics experiments "kiki and bouba"

@lingthusiasm.bsky.social

Three AI-powered steps to faster, smarter peer review Tired of spending countless hours on peer reviews? An AI-assisted workflow could help.

Let's talk about this Nature piece in more detail.

I've rarely read something so anti-scientific anywhere short of the National Review.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

A painting of a bird next to the words"I find it difficult to concentrate while being bombarded with bullshit"

Literally every company now YouTube video by Eleanor Morton

Literally every company now

youtube.com/shorts/hL9pl...

That is interesting! I haven't come across that, but probably will now you've mentioned it. You could just raise as a 'hey looks like there's semantic change happening!' then both you and the student have some useful info.

Mark O'Connell: There is, in the end, nothing magical, nothing airy, about AI. It’s a machine of exploitation Within this system, our country plays a crucial and disproportionate role: a dense network of data centres and server farms has been built around Dublin

for every 100 words of text generated by ChatGPT, 3 l of water are consumed. The data centres that facilitate this technology are extraordinarily energy-intensive. The demands on the electrical grid, & the impact on the environment and the climate, are immense.
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

A must-read for anyone thinking about using LLMs in social science research.

LLM annotations (especially from closed, proprietary models) change unpredictably over time. And we don't know why. This is a huge problem for scientific reproducibility.

20 years ago we were suing teenagers for millions of dollars because they were torrenting a single Metallica album and now billionaires are demanding the free right to every work in history, so that they can re-sell it.

The law only ever serves capital.

Bill Labov made it possible for John Rickford and therefore Renee Blake and therefore me, to have a rich life in linguistics. He knew that Black students and speakers had so much to contribute. We will forever owe him a debt of gratitude for his contributions to the field, but also to all of us ❤️

Vale William Labov. Thank you for teaching me to see language and language users in all their creative complexity. And for your stewardship for a social-justice oriented linguistics.

There are quite a few posts on @therealrw.bsky.social that I've written in a rage. Thought I'd share them for the holiday season because why not?

Every eggnog deserves some bile. 😄