L’ACL encourage le gouvernement du Québec à reconsidérer son décret visant à interdire l’usage de certaines formes d’ #écritureinclusive. // The CLA calls on the Govt. of Québec to reconsider its decree banning forms of #inclusivewriting. #linguistique #linguistics cla-acl.ca/pdfs/Ecritur...

Merci à @cla-acl.bsky.social pour le bon travail avec ce communiqué de presse

Bravo @cla-acl.bsky.social pour ce communiqué de presse! Merci aux universitaires pour leur expertise, soutien, et clarté sur ce sujet. 👏 Lisez-le!!

Tu devras arracher l’interpoint et iel de mes mains froides et mortes. vas t’en faire foutre, Québec

The @cla-acl.bsky.social has issued a press release "calling on the Government of Québec to reconsider its decree banning forms of gender-inclusive writing, specifically the inclusive pronoun 'iel', the word 'toustes' and the interpoint." cla-acl.ca/pdfs/Ecritur...

Just encountered a form that distinguished legal gender and gender identity (cool), and the gender identity list was pretty good (also cool), but also had options including "Cis-Woman", "Female" and "Trans Woman".

Fucking finally available in Canada!

I really do hope the phrase “Kavanaugh Stop” or “Kavanaugh Encounter” sticks.

The universities I've worked at all organize disciplinary affiliations like file folders—it's clunky and difficult to be in more than one place at a time. Interesting to think about how structures could be set up so that disciplinary affiliations were more like tag sets.

And not only this. Anyone who saw the Premier try to defend the ban on trans health care the other day heard her say “babies” over and over, as if creating more Albertans should be every youth’s life goal and purpose. The Handmaids Tale was not just a banned book, it’s our reality here now. #abpoli

"In some places, French postal workers now pick up prescriptions, return library books, and deliver flowers. Last year, only twenty eight per cent of La Poste’s revenue came from sending mail." Services can evolve in positive ways to meet new and growing needs.

- more fellas (immigration)

Full alt text.

Please boost! #linguistics student here at Swarthmore is running a survey for English speakers (who don't know Mandarin / any other tone languages) about how we learn tones. Take a few minutes to help out with this student research! swarthmore.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

GUESS WHAT WEEK IT IS

I am being served podcast ads that are basically a PSA asking Canadians to be less polite to Generative AI, because it takes up so much extra energy, but for some reason they're coming from KitKat? I hate everything about this.

Put simply, where universities have competent leaders and are governed through robust structures, one would not expect to find them relying on UniForum data or external consults to the extent that we see at so many universities in Australia and beyond.

Private consultants are taking control of how public universities are evaluated and run. My submission to the Senate university governance inquiry raises concerns about the impact of Nous Group and their dodgy UniForum data on our universities. www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStor... A thread

I wonder whether we could get the signatories to the Harper's letter to sign another one, with a kind of "I was concerned about free speech on college campuses, so believe me when I say this is worse" energy.

We do know, *and* they’re arbitrary labels inherited from the classical tradition. Quintilian seems to have been the first to use them.

I swear I have known the answer to this in the past, but: what is the origin of the terms "first/second/third person"? Do we know, or are these arbitrary labels inherited from the classical tradition?

I wish Raspberry Lime Rockies were a thing more places. (I associate them with Massachusetts, would be interested if they're common elsewhere.)

Trans rights are not the rights of a tiny minority, trans rights are everyone’s rights to self-determination, control of our bodies, and a society where opportunity and aesthetics are not restricted by sex assigned at birth You should support and defend trans people because trans people are people

Let me report live from the ground that academia is also very much not a meritocracy.

Having a high-anxiety day over here, so thought I'd share a small positive thing: My shoelaces come untied CONSTANTLY, so I looked up better shoelace knots and can recommend Ian's Secure Shoelace Knot: www.fieggen.com/shoelace/sec...

Incredible that the Bell Riots, DS9's grim vision of 2024 broadcast in 1995, remains way way way more optimistic than what is actually happening in San Francisco

Whenever people talk about an "era of political correctness" as though it's a recent thing, I remember being a kid in the 90s reading collections of old Dave Barry columns that were definitely making jokes about political correctness going back much earlier.

This is super useful! And if you're new to BlueSky, a reminder that you can go into settings and turn on "Require alt text" to prevent yourself from posting images without it.

Attention #AcademicSky Everyone is talking about books, but thousands of academic journals were also pirated and are entitled to up to $3,000 *per pirated volume!!!* if editors submit titles to join the suit. Incredible opportunity for underfunded journals to get some $$! #SkyStorians #MedievalSky

Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n

If it is any small consolation to those of you located in the US, for now you're still getting flu and COVID boosters 6-8 weeks ahead of us here in Canada.

One of the wildest parts of being a department chair is learning how many things some faculty members try to get staff to do for them.

🧵Oh boy. Here we go. Materials & resources for helping to protect our neighbors in this thread.

I have posted three (3) things for sale on Kijiji (basically Canadian Craigslist) after meaning to do so for (in the case of one item) upwards of 3 years. Please clap.

Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000 Episode 61 “Winning the Race to Hell” www.buzzsprout.com/2126417/epis... in which AI Now Institute’s @kate-brennan.bsky.social and @smw.bsky.social join me and @alexhanna.bsky.social to wade through the muck that is Trump’s AI Action Plan

For those who want a quick recap on epidemiology: It was plumbing that ended the cholera epidemic, not drinking sewage over and over to strengthen everyone's immune system. So that's why I built this thing. It's the new hygienic infrastructure that we need to get our lives back.

THIS FUCKIN' GLUE?! IS CANADIAN?!!

Whats something you realized years later that you'd totally misunderstood as a child? I'll start: I was told that dry cleaning involved cleaning clothes with gas, and definitely spent several years thinking that meant clothes were getting doused in gasoline.

Great postdoc opportunity at University of Toronto! (It's super competitive but possible!) www.artsci.utoronto.ca/faculty-staf...

Got my new passport today, and have to say I really nailed "wild hair and dark bags under the eyes, as though arriving after a red eye flight" in the photo.

students today loved my genAI policy (the one that includes the phrase "a fascist environmental catastrophe disguised as a plagiarism machine") and then proceeded to dish disdainfully on their other profs who are pro-AI. HEY PROFS GUESS WHAT? 18 year olds are making fun of you for your AI boosterism

Sometimes I really wish I could figure out a way to self-edit in real life even half as much as I do on here. It is a very slight comfort that at least my workplace oversharing isn't text-searchable in perpetuity.

I don't mind videos autoplaying on my timeline, as long as they do so silently. Video + sound is the *worst*.

I'm away from email for TWO DAYS and somehow I have 54 unread email messages. How?! Send thoughts and prayers.

I dream of one day posting about visiting Vancouver without feeling weird about sneaking in and out of the city without seeing my friends, because all my time is taken up with family nonsense. (This was originally going to be a post about how much I like the SeaBus)

I'll never forget that Canada Post letter carries deferred their contract negotiation during the COVID-19 pandemic because the workers felt they had a responsibility to continue to LITERALLY CARRY CANADA'S ECONOMY ON THEIR BACKS The way they are being treated as thanks for their service is SHAMEFUL

One highlight of LILG 2025: the official launch of the new open-access journal Gender Linguistics! Published by our association, the journal will be a space for research at all linguistic intersections of language and gender. Learn more: gender-linguistics.org #linguistics #journal #launch

never misses