I don't know if the internet and machine translation means the end of linguistic diversity, or the end of global languages!

it never ceases to amaze me that within my lifetime we have gone from "language learners must hoard every scrap of eg French newspaper bought in France and precious casettes of spoken radio" to "yeah can get infinite written stuff & podcasts with transcripts plus easy to translate those transcripts"

Happy International Women’s Day! To celebrate, we spoke with #Constellations exhibiting artists Amanda Coogan and Jennifer Trouton about their work, their experiences as female artists, and what #InternationalWomensDay means to them. youtu.be/fxcKz_UYm3c #CrawfordArtGallery #TouringandSharing

Is Claude conscious? Is a whale's song music? Does a mayfly fear the setting sun? Can a tree thirst for the rain? Is a spider's web art? Can a rock know it is beautiful? Does the wind speak? Will we every tire of asking questions that have no answers?

Forgetting female architects; it's sad @bathnes.bsky.social is allowing the demolition of our fine fire station, designed by a woman architect. www.architectsjournal.co.uk/news/opinion...

Jessie Buckley has walked back her "I hate cats" comment, another person crossed off my hero list.

More surprise at the noun-ness of Irish verbal nouns: anabhainn.substack.com/p/a-verbal-n...

Celebrating St. David's Day today, 1st March, and all things Welsh, with this delightful little medieval dragon with golden wings.

Life and art are hard. In both cases, making it through is a heroic achievement. We all have an arc to our lives. It is not tragic to age. But it feels like it is.

U Bristol has a new, free, online AI course with a nice mixture of technical details, explained in a simple way, and broader discussion of what it all means. I appear towards the end filled with anger at the big corporations and wonder at the big machines. www.futurelearn.com/courses/unle...

The Greens now "very confident of a win" in Gorton and Denton and Labour sounding like they've lost; it must be a sturdy win if they're going so far off tallies.

The long 2010s are finally over

Quite rare to see a chart that says quite so overtly that no one involved has the slightest clue what’s happening here

Using my mind powers to influence the G⁊D by-election; it's exhausting.

All day the drum will tumble the balls and some time soon after ten one ball, and with it the future, will be revealed. A day where concentration will be difficult because, behind every pause, every silent moment, we will hear the sound of that rotating drum.

How does he sleep at night?

Irish verbal nouns really are nouns. open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

Irish verbal nouns and their objects: anabhainn.substack.com/p/pronouns-a...

Fucking bougie of him to get someone in rather than putting it up himself

If you want to tackle the "biggest problem holding neuroscience back right now" - comparing mechanisms of cognition across species - join us in @ox.ac.uk and @tcddublin.bsky.social . Please share! 3x Job Details below: (fantastic article @suthanalab.bsky.social ) #neuroskyence #neurojobs

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To accompany all those Bluesky science/academia #starterpacks, how about we also share introductions to the literature of our different fields. I present here a handy guide to main types of papers in the language sciences (inspired by the amazing @xkcd.com). #language #linguistics #science #academia

If this doesn't all end on a heath with a storm, a fool, a sword and a mirror saught to check for breath, then what the hell are the royals for.

Tfw you didn't study much medieval history at school

Best English monarchy day since Cnut told the tide to turn.

This year for Lent I am giving up ultraprocessed food and giving a fuck. I anticipate that by Easter I will be basically immortal and also in prison.

another favourite scientific headline, following confirmation of Einstein's general theory of relativity by observations of the 1919 solar eclipse. "Stars not where they seemed or were calculated to be, but nobody need worry" is a beautiful sentiment. i would have that on a t-shirt

Some notes on the subjunctive in Irish: open.substack.com/pub/anabhain...

Roses are red Is gorm é an bláth There no "yes" in Irish Ach is féidir “I do” a rá. #IrishValentine

Roses are Red This world is new If you were an LLM I'd attribute agency to you #aivalentines

Curious how language can emerge within swarms of robots? 🤖🗨️🤖 Then join our "Swarm Robotics for Language Evolution" workshop at @evolangconf.bsky.social, where you'll get to explore this topic through a live-coding demo and hands-on simulations. More info and signup here: romamile.com/SwarmLangEme...

Oh this is splendid. Reminds me of a famous incident from when I was at university when the union events organiser was told to order £500 of smoked salmon for a party. Instead he ordered 500lbs. It had to be delivered in a truck. Everyone ate salmon for weeks

They came to our countries and stole stuff and left people starving, we come to theirs to look after sick people, teach and make delicious food and they panic and talk nonsense about British values.

In 2000 it was already possible to submit to Physical Review by sending them the arXiv number. It is taking biology so long to catch up.

_Giovanni's Room_ is such an incredible book, romantic, intense, tragic and written with such elegance and power. I wish I wasn't so late coming to James Baldwin; if you've made the same mistake rectify it now!

I see from UKRI that the UK government has spotted the massive open goal but decided to swap the ball for a dime bar and a couple of yokes.

Some probably dirty words from Lig Sinn i gCathú I can't find in the dictionary. anabhainn.substack.com/p/some-new-v...

I am pretty sure that if Kemi Badenoch wasn't leading the Tory Party she'd have defected from it by now.

The parade of monsters continues; without the cruel and incompetent what will the Tory Party stand for?

crazy etymology

I hope he chokes on the Eucharist.

Bovino bovaĉas.

Head injuries are more typical of car accidents than cycling accidents, if anyone should wear helmets it's people in cars.

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