fellow linguistics pals, in case you missed it, this is where we’re at right now at Essex if you are a student or alumni, please please please make your concerns known to the university

it’s come to my attention that my tumblr post has been crossposted to bluesky, so I’m posting it on my account here #AntiAI #GenAI

Requested a correction from @princetonupress.bsky.social. Let's see what happens.

Wildly different things, tasks, techniques, subspecialties being lumped into "AI" and then being conflated with each other, doesn't help. Different types of models vs the techniques to train them vs the tasks they are supposed to accomplish, all under "AI".

“But that praise usually masks the reality that we’re absorbing stress the system refuses to hold. We become the buffer, the translator, the proof of concept, the person who makes things work without ever being asked what it costs us.” open.substack.com/pub/blckgirl...

Ahmed the Fruiterer being the everyday hero that saved multiple lives of mostly Jewish people today is the only politics worth a pinch of shit in this act of terrorism

This is fucking grim. Somebody invented a white guy, an "IT professional" named Edward Crabtree, who stopped the Bondi shooting and spread it all over the internet, which was picked up by AI agents and slop aggregation sites. The real hero is a fruit stand owner named Ahmed el Ahmed.

Now imagine sharing your private fantasies with what you believe is a bot that cannot judge or remember. Just that, on the other side, is a man in a one-room home in Nairobi, pretending to be an AI companion. That man is Michael, and this is his story: data-workers.org/michael/

One of my neighbors has been putting up these fish facts posters. All kinds of different fish, marine, freshwater, deep, shallow, all kinds. This is a good one. “Stg this real fish” took me out. Good work, neighbor.

Holy shit. Reuters reporting that new admin instructions on visas are if you worked at a platform in trust & safety or content moderation or on fact checking or online safety at an platform you *and your loved ones* are ineligible for H-1B visa. www.reuters.com/world/us/tru...

Words matter. Language matters. Languages matter. @spencerhazel.bsky.social on how universities cut their language degrees, AND stress the importance of language, AND use language poorly and offensively in communicating their decisions ("marketing-infused slop"). #AcademicSky #Universities

Auckland Uni has responded to my OIA request re consultancy spending in 2024-2025 $600k to PWC and $500k to Nous Group for "strategic design, organisational change, transformation services" etc This is roughly what our whole faculty of science spent on internally funded postdocs in the same years

No matter how tough you say times are, there’s always enough money in the banana stand to pay an external consultant to scope ‘academic efficiency opportunities’ www.theferret.scot/consultancy-...

🔴 NEW: The University of Edinburgh has quietly paid more than £750,000 to a controversial consulting firm amid job cuts - staff say bosses ignored "repeated" questions about its role. Read more about 'Nousferatu' 👉 www.theferret.scot/p...

Dismal framing. Every aspect of most asylum seekers’ lives is controlled & paid for by the Home Office. They can’t work, are told where to live & have no autonomy or dignity. So they aren’t *choosing* to use taxis & don’t need to be “banned” from doing so. The HO just needs to get its act in order.

Speech technology researchers are working to improve text-to-speech with the goal of accessible communication. However, TTS models are also being used to produce misinformation, deepfake pornography & more… Read our latest blog post from @alice-ross.bsky.social, CTMF PhD Fellow ▶️ edin.ac/4re6En4

this is how you lose the dish war

I used to handle interlibrary loans for a public library. ILL is a magnificent expression of the idea that readers deserve books, and books deserve readers. It’s libraries everywhere pooling their resources for the benefit of everyone. Killing IMLS could have killed ILL. This is great news. 📚

For those of you in the UK, especially if you are a UK citizen, can you please take part in the consultation on changes to Indefinite Leave to Remain (Settlement) that were just proposed by the UK government. We need as many people as possible to reject these proposals. www.gov.uk/government/c...

Back on the @ucuedinburgh.bsky.social picket line, standing with colleagues against senseless cu ts. Cover in The National by Lucy Garcia with quotation from @drjogrady.bsky.social pictured, and in The Herald, www.heraldscotland.com/news/2562598... #UCU #StopTheCuts

Just to say, I am a supervisor here: UKRI AI Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Responsible and Trustworthy in-the-world Natural Language Processing www.responsiblenlp.org/2026-student... If you are reading things like this and planning PhD project, do reach out: www.ft.com/content/e5b7...

🔔new paper alert🔔 I argue that language technologies are usefully understood as a type of language management (i.e., ways of changing how people use and think about language) -- especially in the workplace -- connecting critical work on AI with language policy www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

"it is striking how many of the key players we have looked into — the people who have gone out of their way to put up hundreds of flags — seem anything but ordinary." manchestermill.co.uk/the-men-who-...

University of Edinburgh cutting its Institute for Academic Development which offers crucuial training and support for students, lecturers and researchers. I woked at the UNSW learning centre and know what a huge difference these services make. #AcademicSky thetab.com/2025/10/31/e...

I'm unreasonably upset at this flattening of Garak into Fashion Lizard,he was the Enigmatic Fashion Lizard and this cannot be erased

You can't cut thousands of jobs through a chaotic and miserable process without affecting students. They see what is happening very clearly (and have already experienced course closures...) thetab.com/2025/10/24/u...

The is particularly true of current ukgov funded research on AI that starts from the premise “Yay! AI is Brilliant! Amazing! Woohooo!!!”

seems pretty obvious that only having ‘policy-driven’ research is a bad idea (looking at both UKRI and Horizon)

so many things happen in a single teaching day. trying to teach new perspectives & critical thinking while also juggling intense one on one interactions, managing entire classrooms with all kinds of personalities, people opening up about things, some students excelling, others silently struggling

ONLY migrants though, no one else is to study English because it's a rip off and a waste of time, am I getting this right.

LAVLANG! IN! EDINBURGH! 2026! 💜🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🪻🦩💬✨

So many Australian colleagues put through a year of worries and uncertainty. All because Nous Consultancy only thrives on a scarcity narrative? Bit if a reminder that those cuts can never be justified in pedagogical or academic term, whatever the spin.

@zackpolanski.bsky.social nails it: "Britain is not broken because of migration. Britain is broken because of inequality. Because of an economy that allows billionaires to hoard wealth while millions struggle to get by. Because of a political class that has lost its nerve and forgotten its purpose."

We have 20 years of UK evidence that says Rachel Reeves is correct about this. Deeply depressing that some in government (let alone other parties) seem incapable of grasping it. migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/br....

I have a little stall at the @edfuturesinstitute.bsky.social Doors Open Day today! I’m sharing some early research around children’s views of AI at school. Come say hi if you’re around!!

Digital IDs are a terrible, dangerous idea for numerous reasons. But, even on their own terms, what's the gap they're supposed to fill? It seems many people don't realise that we already have eVisas. All migrants get this "digital record" of their status and permission anyway.

I am genuinely baffled and distressed as to why the UK government is intent on destroying UK's genuinely world-leading universities, who bring £265 billion into the economy and support more than 250,000 jobs. This tax will kill us. www.standard.co.uk/news/politic...

i made a helpful reference

“You have knowledge, and I have skill, and between us we have...” “We have the Ring of Erreth-Akbe.” “Yes, that. But I thought also of another thing between us. Call it trust...”

i know this is hardly an original point, but it is astonishing that a government this focused on growth or whatever is just… doing anything it can to kill the two really big industries (higher education and creative industries) this country still has?

I wish Peters Kyle and Mandelson had someone as smart and experienced as Tim Wu on their side when they were negotiating the "Tech Prosperity Deal" on.ft.com/47WmGLi

fun new paper out, led by the amazing @mxeddie.bsky.social (who you should hire!!) — we looked at why TikTok users use ‘linguistic obfuscation’ and turns out* people love to play with language and they also love to express who they are in addition to avoiding content moderation

Hey a thing I really don’t want to get lost here is that while Tylenol doesn’t cause autism, IT’S FINE TO BE AUTISTIC. Let’s not grant them the premise that autism should be eradicated in our way to correct the science, okay? Okay.

I wrote my new Nature World View in this transition — one last reflection before leaving Colombia. It explains why inequities persist in science, even when dressed up as inclusion, and why we must stop mistaking access for change. 👉 rdcu.be/eGEun

Application for a PhD position at our department is now open! We are looking for applicants that are interested in areas of sign language linguistics, general sign language studies, or deaf bilingualism/multilingualism. Deadline is 15th Oct. Please share away! su.varbi.com/en/what:job/...

The London I know and love:

coates is genuinely a generational writer

"In August almost half of Britons (48%) listed immigration as one of the top issues facing the UK" yet "official figures show that the number of people coming into the UK is falling"