When you learn how to draw, early practice exercises involve drawing eggs and seals. It is so hard to draw a seal

I just described an unfinished journal article as hanging over me like the sword of Damacles before realizing I have no idea what that actually means because I went to public school

Language people — are there open LLMs that allow one to compute next word probability? If one wanted to report statistics on next word probability (conditional probability) of each word in a continuous language sample based on corpus noted how would one go about that???

Third Stepdad In Row Has Goatee

alright, alright.....are you alright?

Sound symbolism people -- what sound would a pileated woodpecker make? I vote kuh-tuh-kuh-tuh

Also someone who shall remain nameless put his hand right into a communal bowl of granola skipping the big spoon at the academy of aphasia- someone who studies proper nouns. I gagged

super exciting!

A molar bear

Fancy dog show just for mutts - let’s make it happen. Black tie. All mixed breeds. Categories like friendliest, sleeps longest, best sitting, most loyal

Love Gurdeep Pandher of the Yukon. If you don’t follow him yet, I highly recommend it.

🏅 Honorable Mention — Language and the Cerebellum: Structural Connectivity to the Eloquent Brain: doi.org/10.1162/nol_... Katie Jobson, Linda Hoffman, Athanasia Metoki, @hpopal-brain.bsky.social, @anthonystevend.bsky.social, @reilly-coglab.com, and @ingridsbrain.bsky.social

@kjobson.bsky.social just won honorable mention as paper of the year from the Neurobiology of Language for our (really her) cerebellar paper.with @ingridsbrain.bsky.social and me. direct.mit.edu/nol/article/...

In DC. Party at @jpeelle.bsky.social Airbnb tomorrow night!

30th street station waiting for my train to DC - society for the neurobiology of language conference - thousands of members and not a single one of them is a neurobiologist

I am beyond excited to announce that ggplot2 4.0.0 has just landed on CRAN. It's not every day we have a new major #ggplot2 release but it is a fitting 18 year birthday present for the package. Get an overview of the release in this blog post and be on the lookout for more in-depth posts #rstats

As a parent of a trans kid, the only ideology I know of is that people want to be allowed to be themselves and stay alive. It’s pretty minimalist as far as ideologies go. Shit is so dangerous right now.

I guess this has probably already gone viral somewhere but I am simply dying at this picture of a bear that looks like it hired a photographer to do a glamour shoot

Someone writing job ads has a good sense of humor

If you ever feel bad about your low cumulative citation count, just take heed that if you add up every citation of yours from now until the end of time it will be less than this 2-page article on the Tidyverse.

Language people! Is there any thematic role and eye tracking work where people describe object scenes where the agent is on the right vs the left of the image? @neilcohn.bsky.social ? Wondering if in right branching languages people just sweep left to right in picture description

!

UCDavis Psych is hiring an Assistant Professor in Human Cognition or Cognitive Neuroscience 🧠✨ Come join a vibrant, collaborative dept and live in a fun college town near Sacramento, San Francisco, Napa, and Lake Tahoe. Applications due Oct.21. Please share widely! recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07300

Shortest five weeks of your life

The dna results are in… and you ARE the father. This is our tan dog Fancy who we just learned has a brother named churro out there somewhere

I spoke with a colleague the other day who told me he has NEVER had a manuscript rejected. You should try it some time. You don't know what you're missing.

How would one move to the Shetland Islands? My new idea is half year there the other half in Croatia

Haverford College is looking for a tenure-track Assistant Professor of #Linguistics, with a primary specialization in #Sociolinguistics, secondary specialization(s) open -> www.haverford.edu/provost/news...

Training on down and stay

A shout out for @nrennie.bsky.social fab book on data viz! nrennie.rbind.io/art-of-viz/

@dezubg.bsky.social Jai Hindley having a great Vuelta this year

Who’s going to Neurobiology of Language next week? I’ll find you and say hi.

!!

We built an actual dollhouse and 3d printed figurines of our lab members in different scenarios for an eye tracking event narrative experiment. Look at how great these are turning out!

So much for ever visiting Florida again. Sorry to all my UF colleagues.

!!!!

New paper out titled, The differential meaning of models: a framework for analyzing the structural consequences of semantic modeling decisions. Co-authored with Jim Deitrick. We try to say some things about semantic models in simple, precise terms. Read it here: arxiv.org/abs/2509.00248

Does anyone know of any studies/experiments using abstract words as cues in verbal fluency? e.g., name as many 'scientific principles' as you can in 60s? (e.g., emotions, philosophical concepts, rules, conventions, etc)

Secret spot in the sun

Awwwww Yeah -- it's official

making a playlist like it's 1997, and I still have sports walkman -- Massive Attack, English Beat, Depeche Mode, Bjork, Echo & Bunnymen, NiN, Built to Spill, New Order, King Missile, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Dandy Warhols, New Pornographers, RATM, Garbage, Radiohead

I led a consensus project on semantics last year. I was happy with the end result but made many mistakes along the way. If you're considering doing something related, read this paper; also recruit someone who knows Delphi criteria. people study this stuff journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol...

shot heard ‘round the world

Grad student missed first class tonight because of a conflict with Nine Inch Nails concert. I responded your head is like a hole and think they did not get the reference. Now it’s awkward

New on CRAN: tok (0.2.0). View at https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=tok

Here's a set of new results from my lab asking how the brain combines different ideas (concepts)! Now in press at J of Cog Neuro, we looked at how semantic composition (combining different concepts together) shapes brain activity. Preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... #neuroskyence

Open rank job in language and interaction at Rutgers. Relevant for #linguistics #EMCA jobs.rutgers.edu/postings/258...

Phone autocorrected ‘Pierce Brosnan’ to ‘Pierce Brisbane’ and oh the possibilities

No AI in this eye tracking experiment! Fishing line, 3d printed shapes, and a homemade lightbox. The stimuli are turning out beautifully thanks to @chenyuez.bsky.social

Many updates to our psycholinguistic database page. You terrific people have been busy distributing open source data including lexical databases for BSL, French, German sign. LMK if I've missed anything www.reilly-coglab.com/data