PCA of the 2024 election, 12 random consistencies, for my AI lecture; up-down is socially liberal, left-right is homogeneity I think, Galway West mixes city and country for example, colour, the third component is "is there a local candidate", Tipperary North is blue because of Seamus Healy for eg.

#OTD 116 years ago, Mary Haas (1910–1996) was born 🥳 An expert in historical linguistics, Thai, and Native American languages. She was the first modern linguist to document the Creek language. In 1963, she was the second female president of the LSA. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

A pox anabhainn.substack.com/p/a-pox-on-y...

Man Donates  Body To   Culinary    Science https://theonion.com/man-donates-body-to-culinary-science/

Has anyone heard of "echo forms" of Irish verbs? open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

In nine hundred and eighty three or four Leif Erikson sailed to the Vinland shore Big mistake.

God forbid women have hobbies

Just went over to X to shut down some old work accounts; ones that hadn't been used in ages but hadn't been ever deleted. I was surprised to see people I know, like normal, everyday people, friends, big labs, assorted stuffed shirts, just chatting a way there like it wasn't weird. Scarlet for them.

Does anyone know why many Irish first declension nouns have weak plurals, I mean historically? anabhainn.substack.com/p/the-first-...

I just learned that Molly Brodak whose poem "In the morning . . ." is a personal earworm was a finalist on the US version of The Great British Bakeoff, how much life can end up not enough, or how little and too much. People are a mystery, vivid but a mystery. magazine.nytyrant.com/three-poems-...

To avoid: the Royal Society outrage! Ignore the Royal Society's claim to be some sort of elite house on the hill of the great and the good: what a bankrupt notion, any self-selecting club of the self-proclaimed great and good is a ark of pissantery.

Please spread the word🔊My lab is looking to hire two international postdocs. If you want to do comp neuro, combine machine learning and awesome math to understand neural circuit activity, then come work with us! Bonn is such a cool place for neuroscience now, you don't want to miss out.

Nora Crubs and the Galway of lore: open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

And Tiny Tim, who did NOT die and had no alternative, shone on the nothing new.

The arseless dog, the latest from Lig Sinn i gCathú: open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

Another day another sentence in Lig Sinn i gCathú I don't really understand: bheas - wtf? open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

The War of the Brothers. anabhainn.substack.com/p/the-civil-...

Dawn at Stonehenge this solstice morning.

Every time there's a breaking story about a celeb's treatment of women, everyone in the book world asks, "Is it finally Walliams?" Well, it finally is.

Least surprising sex pest news since John Lassiter.

Míol mór: open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

The difference between a language and a dialect is found in the heart of the speaker. If they say they speak a dialect, they speak a dialect; if they say they speak a language, they speak a language. Linguistics makes no distinction!

A useful debate about how best to give positive support to diverse Ulster identities derailed by eye-catching but a tiresome policing of the distinction between a dialect and a language. Blah blah blah.

Learned today that “Galápagos” comes from a Spanish word for tortoise, meaning that “Galápagos Tortoise” is, in fact, a tortology

More adventures in Irish vocabulary: orchids and balls. open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

The font debate reminds me of this mural: conorhoughton.github.io/blog/2025-02...

My train from Bristol to Bath was delayed for half-an-hour; we were stood in the corridors griping when someone learned on his phone that the delay was caused by a broken down stream train, some sort of excursion for the Bath Christmas Market.

Who on Earth is Seán-the-Burnt and why does he laugh: open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

Final #neuroskyence preprint of the year! We updated our big neuroinflammation project, studying psoriasis-like inflammation in both humans and mice. Main take-home: we see impaired thalamostriatal signalling in humans and mice alongside depression / anhedonia. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Martin Parr NBaLaA.

RIP the great Martin Parr

A male rock ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) in winter plumage. Ptarmigan is from Gaelic 'tarmachan' meaning "croaker". The p- was added when people mistakenly assumed it was a Greek word. A bird forever warning people: "A werewolf!" (just in case of werewolves).

"Senior gardaí are annoyed at what one source termed the “weak” response from the Defence Forces, which had the LÉ William Butler Yeats in the area" A drone knows nothing of the Fates When aloft in the clouds above Nor can LÉ William Butler Yeats Destroy a thing that cannot love.

I had a nightmare where abebooks sent an unwrapped which was just a list of all the books I'd bought from them in 2025 and the words "how many did you actually read asshole?"

Remarkable photograph. Any leads on who or where ? (Iveagh Trust Buildings ?)

First year selling my art at Christmas without the Other site, where most of my sales came from, as well as losing US orders to new tariffs, so it'll be a tough one - I put huge work into every order, so even if you can't buy, shares help get them in front of eyes. GRMA! www.ciaraioch.com/artprints

We'll miss Seán, he is a great colleague, a super scientist and just a fun and exciting person to have around.

this is mesmerizing

“Our findings challenge the conventional focus on low-dimensional coding subspaces as a sufficient framework for understanding neural computations, demonstrating that dimensions previously considered task-irrelevant and accounting for little variance can have a critical role in driving behavior.”

Margaretta D'Arcy has gone to her reward, sometimes hard to like, always easy to admire, sometimes righter than anyone, sometimes just plain odd; Galway at its prickly fearless best. NBaLaA.

Jennette Winterson read in Bath on Thursday and talking about story telling and narrative remembered who father, a man who, she said, could read only with care, often telling stories, most of which started with "there was one I knew who . . .".

AI for Good Panel Discussion from #BristolDataWeek With @conjh.bsky.social, @sanakb.bsky.social, @sethbullock.bsky.social, @simonmcs.bsky.social, Sidharth Jaggi, Agnes Nairn, @digitalfutures.bsky.social, Genevieve Liveley Watch now: tinyurl.com/3fnc9mtv Video credits: @beestonmedia.bsky.social

Often it's the elections you think you've won that end up making you saddest.

#OTD 89 years ago, Suzette Haden Elgin (1936–2015) was born 🎉 Best known for her work on verbal self-defence and for the conlang Láadan from her Native Tongue series. The Elgin Award for the best sci-fi poetry collection is named in her honour. #WomenInLinguistics #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

So does anyone understand how to make indirect relative clauses in Irish, in present and past, or even, maybe how to recognise an indirect relative clause.

📣MY FIRST BOOK OUT!📣 Does language rely solely on rules, or is there more to it? 🔎Explore the interplay between compositionality and analogy from a constructionist view in this New Cambridge Element (Elements in #ConstructionGrammar) 👉Download for free: cup.org/41DP95c ⚠️Available just for 4 weeks!

I think in general I have a fairly high “politician forgiveness” threshold because I understand they face a firehose of shit everyday and also in a democracy they have to comprise all the time, but Simon Harris not standing up for immigrants in this moment feels like one that crosses that threshold

Bród! (Fógra i Hong Cong)