Tombekai Sherman has produced a translation of a portion of Proust in the Vai script. It's the Madeleine excerpt. (Somewhere out there you will also find the Koran, the Bible and the Iliad in Vai)

Found in my photos from a few weeks ago. An incredibly realistic reproduction of the engraved Taï bone, from Magdalenian period. It looks like a couldn't finish eating it! Part of research by Neemias Santos da Rosa, Lila Geis, Lloyd Courtenay, Alain Queffelec & Francesco d'Errico

A Yolŋu flyer spotted in Nhulunbuy servo. Audition for Bluey episodes? I don't know! @ffnotes.bsky.social

University administrators two years ago: we can’t allow social justice movements to change the university as we know it University administrators today: in order to accommodate the new probabilistic bullshit generator no one likes we must change everything about the university

Thanks, Vonnegut. 💜

Just found a subreddit that pairs people with fucked up balls of string with people who love detangling balls of string and it is *very* wholesome

The Origins and Evolution of Writing: A Very Brief Synthesis My talk last week at the Faculty of Classics, Cambridge, for the VIEWS project @viewsproject.bsky.social youtu.be/SRC6QkiKtSo?...

Was there ever another independent writing system in the ancient Middle East? "Curious sequences [that] ... would make more sense if the signs instead represented syllables..." Great work by Kelley and colleagues (and some supporting remarks from lesser-Kelly!): archive.is/pbVRm#select...

"The origins and evolution of writing: A very brief synthesis" at Cambridge 16:30, 20th May. Zoom in, if you're in a compatible time zone!

Here is my response to the recent Bentz & Dutkiewicz paper on Upper Paleolithic marking systems and their presumed relationship to writing bravenewwords.info/2026/03/20/t...

I endorse this excellent-looking project!

Archduke Franz Ferdinand has entered the chat

University of Western Australia's archeologists are smokin', especially Dr Bandit Heeler

This makes so much sense now

Judy Kroo (UniMelb) and Matt Tomlinson (ANU) are starting a #linganth reading group, modelling it on CaMP anthroplogy but for Oz time zones. It's called CaMP Down Under and will be zoomed on the last Friday every month at 10:30AM AEST. Sign up here: forms.gle/MqGx7HrVPqC9...

'Some Account of My Intercourse with Madame Blavatsky' (1885) This is going to be hot

​The circular dance of bureaucracy everywhere: ​UNI ADMIN: In order to proceed you MUST provide us with your unique project code! ME: What is my unique project code? UNI ADMIN: KellyX34 ME: Alright, "KellyX34" UNI ADMIN: Thank you for informing us!

Today I learned that Charles Darwin wrote a 348 page book on 'The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms with Observations on their Habits'.

The banality of good ...read this from Gal Beckerman www.theatlantic.com/books/2026/0...

I once game a live presentation, after which somebody in the audience advised me to engage with the work of Piers Kelly

Totally normal seasonal notice from my rural Australian university

What the hell is this creature? Cross between a dingo and a drop bear? (Reminiscences of Australia, 1846)

Four different approaches to The Dreaming, an Aboriginal narrative complex guiding belief and action. bravenewwords.info/2025/09/14/d...

one of the biggest arguments against AI dependence is that the strongest proponents of its use have become visibly *dumber* in the last few years.

I've just read W. E. H. Stanner's 1953 essay 'The Dreaming' for the first time. I'm surprised by how well it holds up after 72 years.🧵

Most humanist critique of #genAI falls into the ideological trap of treating machine learning systems as less perfect quasi-human subjects, by claiming that human «creativity» or «intelligence» will always surpass machinic ones. That’s not the point, the comparison is flawed from the beginning 1/

Jordan Peterson on lasagne

Me and Alwyn talking about message sticks with David Marr on Late Night Live, wherevery you get podcasts, and also here: www.abc.net.au/listen/progr...

Every academic gets submission-request spam from predatory publishers, but what about requests to review a submitted manuscript? If you're predatory, why bother going through the charade of peer-review? I've received two requests in the past month and I'm confused.

“is my calculator horny?“ our tech columnist asks. “i entered 5318008 into it and turned it upside down. what i saw surprised me”

Centrists right now be all like

We've made this article from @cash4questions.bsky.social free to read, as it is proving very popular. University funding crisis: How to stay serene when wellbeing sessions are offered. "Beware employers bearing yoga mats..." www.researchprofessionalnews.com/rr-funding-k...

​As someone who is fascinated by intellectual history, I'm well aware that crackpots and fanatics have existed in all times and places. They are abundant, usually harmless, rarely achieve success and tend to disappear without leaving much of a trace. 1/

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...

For #smallpoemsunday, this beauty. Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

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...

Wild illustration from F. M. van Helmont's 'Alphabeti vere naturali Hebraici' (1657), attempting to demonstrate that Hebrew letters are derived from their places of articulation in the mouth. This is 'alef' א

Old and rare David Brooks banger

AI enshittifies Apple support

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...

old Soviet joke for our times: Guy stops by the newsstand every day, scans the front page, doesn’t buy the paper. One day the vendor asks what he’s up to. Guy says: “looking for an obituary.” Vendor says “those are towards the back of the paper, comrade.” Guy says: “not the one I’m looking for.”

"Life’s weird that way. There’s no rhyme or reason to anything. You can go into one building and see one group of people, and then go across the street into another building and see an entirely different group of people. Can you explain that? Of course you can’t."

Absolutely overwhelmed to be in the presence of the first-ever printed book to use the Cherokee syllabary, the Cherokee Constitution of 1827. At the American Antiquarian Society.

Can anyone recommend a recent-ish review paper on decolonial theory/praxis? Not looking for examples of decolonial scholarship but specifically a *review* of such scholarship.

"Uma worshipping Shiva" is an image of a woman writing on palm leaves. Pahari, Kangra, late 18th century. At CSMVS, Mumbai.

UK to USA chart of crochet terminology and symbols. It makes me think of numeric notation systems in which the oral realisation is variable according to the language while the graphic representation remains constant. Also: some signs are iconically motivated, others not at all.