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The most insane thing is that "British (and Irish) citizens who are also citizens of another country will be ineligible for an ETA, meaning they can no longer use a foreign passport to enter the UK."

"An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library." Pubpeer, journals are next! theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-...

When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured” www.reuters.com/investigatio...

Reading @tashwalker.bsky.social and @adamzmith.bsky.social ‘s amazing new book The Logbooks and this call to Gay Switchboard they quote had me in hysterics #lgbthistories

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

Oops

What we all need to see is a red squirrel in a power pose. You're welcome.

Illustrations from the beguiling Clavis Artis, a German alchemical manuscript which claims to hail from the 13th century and have pages made from dragon skin: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/clavis-artis

One more time, syntax matters. I do hope the snake had a good time, though.

I reckon it would be a good move for cinemas in the US to be showing the original Downfall film now. Magnificent film with huge relevance for today

“When it draws near to witching time of night.” (Robert Blair) 🎨 Charles Livingston Bull #owlishmonday

New blog post "Achievements 2025" userblogs.fu-berlin.de/langsci-pres...

I really understand very little about the current version of reality.

Same story over and over. These larpers - Kirkegard, Pesta et al - pumping out the same effluence with their strategy - exposed by @harryshukman.bsky.social + @hopenothate.org.uk - to normalise and spread scientific racism. They KNOW it's bullshit too. Read this: www.theguardian.com/world/2024/o...

I've just used Good Law Project's tool to email MPs on the Council of Europe about the conversion therapy ban and Sex Matter’s transphobic threats. goodlaw.social/9f10d1

I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊 Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.

Do love some syntactic ambiguity in the morning

You can find me in the Times flying the flag for humanities and social sciences in this story about changes to funding at @ukri.org www.thetimes.com/article/be92...

I feel I should bang the drum for this post, which hasn't received the love it deserves. It helps to know that Jenrick's constituency is Newark.

“The United States will not let men steal trophies from women…” - says guy who happily took the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to a woman

The Doomsday Machine that is our university funding system will destroy everything in the end. First it destroys individual lives, then social mobility, then most universities, followed by the structure of income tax and the pension system. In the end it could threaten to destroy the economy itself.

The new chair of EHRC within first week seeking to meet with transphobic group about how to collaborate 🤮 So much for Stephenson wanting to build relationships with LGBTQI+ community again and to be judged on her actions. The fight continues. Wonder what @commonswec.parliament.uk can do?

great post by @dingemansemark.bsky.social on predatory publishers in academia, some of whom are quite well established and reputable ideophone.org/on-plagiaris...

Please help spread the word on this, especially to those who may be feeling cold winds towards their research. We’ve opened the call for our International Fellowships, enabling early career researchers to work for two years at a UK research institution www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/funding/sche...

Just published "The (in)transparency of meaning change and variation: A study of the indefinite cualquiera in European and Argentinian Spanish" by Olga Kellert #openaccess #ahl langsci-press.org/catalog/book...

Excited to share that our book "History of Ideas in the Science of AI" (co-authored with Luc Steels and Ann Dooms) is now freely available as #OpenAccess! #OpenScience, #AIResearch, #HistoryOfAI doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

our profile of Nadhim Zahawi from 2023, including - his friendship with author-turned-jailbird Jeffrey Archer - his HMRC settlement of nearly £5mn, made up of £3.7mn of unpaid taxes, a £1.1mn fine and some interest - his work as an oil industry fixer *while* a Tory MP www.ft.com/content/9a49...

Sentence Processing by Matthew Wagers: https://doi.org/10.21428/e2759450.624d819a

a decade is a long time in politics

very disappointing. There is a code of conduct for Royal Society fellows - it's not a value judgement to say that Musk has contravened it! see relevant bits of code and the Royal Society stated values below.

My new book is available open access from MITPress. It's a pretty new take on syntax, with some cool consequences for long-distance syntactic dependencies, and I think it should also appeal to non-minimalist syntacticians (since there isn't really any movement!) direct.mit.edu/books/oa-mon...

Dot-watching link is now live for @spinerace.bsky.social I'm the 🔵 (#195: non-binary category), so easy to spot 😂 Remember that messages of encouragment / kicks up the arse can also be left on this site 😉 #spinerace #pennineway #ultramarathon live.opentracking.co.uk/spinerace26/

Hey #linguistics check out this headline. The human language faculty is truly miraculous.

First paper of 2026 with Rhys Sandow, @jwgrieve.bsky.social, and Rose Stamp! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

We’ve today formally written to multiple public bodies about BBC reporting on transgender people. Here’s who we’ve contacted and why. 1/6

eeek! I plan to be at the end with a pint in hand to welcome Anson to the Scottish Borders!!

Packing an extensive mandatory kit for @spinerace.bsky.social becomes its own art from! #ultramarathon #spinerace

🆕 POLLING New YouGov polling shows 67% of the public want political donations capped at £50k or less. The public has spoken loud and clear – it's time to get big money out of UK politics. Read more ⤵️ https://www.transparency.org.uk/news/latest-yougov-poll-shows-public-want-end-big-money-politics

If I retire early it will be so I don't have to engage any more with the frustrating horror of corporate microsoft systems, from word, to outlook, to the abyss of despair that is sharepoint. Either that, or I open a university where everyone has to use LaTeX (you can tell I'm doing grading!)

Dictionary of the Oldest Written Language–It Took 90 Years to Complete, and It’s Now Free Online www.openculture.com/2026/01/dict... #books #literature #language

This report in Nature on the costs of competing for & administering scientific grants is shocking: "In other words, European taxpayers will have spent more on the funding process than on the funding itself, and the scientific ecosystem has been drained." www.nature.com/articles/d41... 🧪

Closing out my year with a journal editor shocker 🧵 Checking new manuscripts today I reviewed a paper attributing 2 papers to me I did not write. A daft thing for an author to do of course. But intrigued I web searched up one of the titles and that's when it got real weird...

"... and let me call This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this Both the year's, and the day's deep midnight is." www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44122/...

A “Reform vs Not Reform” strategy is only going to work for Labour if they are seen as credibly “not Reform” by LD/Green curious voters. Every hardline intervention on immigration weakens that credibility but without persuading Reform curious voters.

Job alert! 3 tenured research positions at CNRS, France with one preferably in philosophy of language Get in touch with a lab for more information #linguistics www.legifrance.gouv.fr/jorf/id/JORF...

HESA put the academic staff numbers in 23-24 in Essex at 1560, and given voluntary severence schemes it's likely to be lower now, so this is at least 2/3rds of all academic staff in Essex receiving risk of redundancy letters.

Today, the Academy publishes a report setting out findings from our Where We Live Next programme on place-led approaches to environmental sustainability. www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/publications...

And yet the BBC has blocked its journalists from even reporting that @rutgerbregman.com made this same, spectacularly self-evident, statement of fact in his Reith Lecture.

my great-grandparents arrived in the UK in the 1890s with nothing. they sold pickles from the front room window, took in laundry, worked as tailors. their children were nurses, teachers, salesmen. their grandchildren were professors, designers, opticians, doctors, magistrates, entrepreneurs.