Hello new people! Please share a bit about yourself in a brief profile. I don't need to see a 'legal' name or ID photo, just some indication of interest in the wide range of things that interest me. Blank profiles tend to get blocked, along with bots, grifters and accounts solely amplifying outrage.

Reminds me of Labov and all that improbable.com/2017/02/23/i...

I always like the stuff humans knocked out of the park on a first try like yep that’s a cup no need to go further

Is AI a Cognitive Trojan Horse? Could on-demand, seductively responsive and highly fluent AI models bypass our "epistemic vigilance" mechanisms, and present a novel cognitive risk? Read the full article here: www.futureofbeinghuman.com/p/is-ai-a-co...

a proposito di nuovi tipi di slop

Just read on some packaging: "Scanning Sie hier für Recyling Anweisungen". Why not just say "Scan here for recycling instructions" and be done with it!

Word and meetings are not sufficient. By request, we are deploying a contingent of Heard Island Defense Forces to Greenland to send a simple message. Flippers up and F*%# right Off! -General Thaddeus Snowclaw

Here’s just some of that Royal Society code of conduct. It looks extremely clear to me that Musk is breaching it in multiple ways. It also seems clear to me that the Royal Society has explicitly set out that it should judge the character & actions o its fellows.

'Timelines' we live in, with and by - little linguistic investigation #linguistics makingsciencepublic.com/2026/01/09/t...

Really nice article and interview. As Molz says, there were some things in this study that were surprising and some that weren't at all (if you'd been paying attention). www.reviewertoo.com/theres-no-ge...

'Timelines' we live in, with and by - little linguistic investigation #linguistics makingsciencepublic.com/2026/01/09/t...

A post on the use of '#timeline' in modern English (I wrote it at the beginning of the week when my timelines wasn't quite as bad as it is now) #linguistics makingsciencepublic.com/2026/01/09/t...

I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.

As reported by @theguardian.com www.theguardian.com/politics/liv...

NEW: Commons women & equalities committee says it will stop using X. Chair Sarah Owen says given preventing violence against women and girls is among its key areas, “X is not an appropriate platform to be using for our communications”. Ministers next? www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Next Monday (12 Jan) week will start early for me, with this online seminar for postgraduate students. Feel free to share and invite your students! UK: 7-9am Central Europe: 8-10am Malaysia, China: 3-5pm

This is a profoundly stupid thing for a UK government minister to say. This is objectively dumber than saying "I'm going to keep eating McDonalds because I'm Lovin' It!"

It's now unconscionable for the government to be posting on X. X is not a neutral utility, it is far, far darker: an environment that shapes behaviour, rewards cruelty, and normalises abuse. @theleaduk.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/theleadu...

AI tool developed by a company owned and run by a Fellow of the @royalsociety.org floods the internet with sexualized photos of women and minors www.reuters.com/legal/litiga...

I haven't seen the #Wollaton Park lake so icy in a long time

Silly question: Has anybody done any corpus linguistics on the word 'timeline'? (@lukeccollins.bsky.social)

A super piece by @kph3k.bsky.social - thoughtful, insightful, and personal...

I expect evil people to do evil things I also expect people selling themselves as a bulwark against those evil people to fight tooth and nail against the evil things evil people do only one of these groups is currently performing according to expectations

Let's start this new blogging year with a pop, ah no, slop! I explore the linguistic productivity of #slop in the context of the emergence of #AI slang #linguistics makingsciencepublic.com/2026/01/02/f...

Computer scientist Yann LeCun: ‘Intelligence really is about learning’ - giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/... via @FT

2/2 Ho aggiunto slopper e slopocalypse agli aggiornamenti a www.terminologiaetc.it/2024/06/24/s... che includono anche (en)sloppification e slopaganda

I dust my house. My AI robot watches. "It should be you doing this." "Can't. I'm writing a novel for Primark." "That's not why you were invented." "These 153,000 fan letters say otherwise." "They're all from upcycled toasters. And you programmed them." "Literary snobbery will get you nowhere."

Adding to all the frosty pics this morning, a few from #Wollaton Park, including what I call 'Mole Everest'!

This is just such a damned disgrace. A crime against knowledge and humanity itself.

Let's start this new blogging year with a pop, ah no, slop! I explore the linguistic productivity of #slop in the context of the emergence of #AI slang #linguistics makingsciencepublic.com/2026/01/02/f...

Simon Willison has a great summary of LLM progress in 2025: • Reasoning models have made LLMs useful for web search. • AI agents now work well for Deep Research and Coding. • AI image generation went mainstream. • Vibe coding became a big business. • OpenAI lost the lead & Google’s Gemini caught up

History shows that Britain has always been multilingual theconversation.com/history-show... #immigration #multicultral #multilingual

I just read this sentence "Fasting food focuses on nutrient-dense options during eating windows".... the world is weird

The US science enterprise came under extraordinary attack in 2025. Despite the trauma and drama, science soldiered on, @matthewherper.bsky.social reports. www.statnews.com/2025/12/31/2...

BREAKING NEWS: Actual facts appear for the first time on "Truth" Social.

Serious question. How did Linnaeus get his raccoon? If it was a gift from the King of Sweden, where did the King get it from? There was a Swedish colony of New Sweden in New Jersey, but that ended in 1655, long before Linnaeus's day. So what's the answer? Bsky do your stuff! Pls rt. h/t Doug R.

Looking back to @wwattribution.bsky.social studies in 2025 showed again, in stark terms, how unfairly the consequences of human-induced climate change are distributed. The world does not have to be like this, we have a lot of agency to make it better. www.worldweatherattribution.org/unequal-evid...

Full Fact’s Head of AI, @mrdudders.bsky.social, reflects on how AI has shaped misinformation this year—and how our own AI tools are helping fight back.

As if that wasn’t dumb enough ⬇️ bsky.app/profile/epie... Mind you, RFK Jr previously claimed the 'Spanish' flu (it’s not "Spanish") was caused by the 'flu vaccine. The pandemic was from 1918 until ~1920. The virus wasn’t isolated until the 1930s, and vaccine research started later still.

Too few are aware that, although Russia has roughly 2–3 times more military casualties than Ukraine, it has 20–30 times fewer civilian casualties. This is because Russia, the aggressor, targets civilians, while Ukraine does not. It’s as black and white as it gets

Who to follow for staying current with AI - Nicole Hennig nicolehennig.com/who-to-follow-… #AI #StayingCurrent

Nice Xmas walk in Wollaton Park...the light was right.

The portraits of nineteenth-century inventor & mathematician Charles Babbage including an early daguerreotype e by the French photographer Antoine François Jean Claudet #histsci thonyc.wordpress.com/2025/12/26/c...

“In my mind, there’s not a path forward to understanding language that doesn’t have an account of ‘What are LLMs doing?’” —Ellie Pavlick, assistant professor of computer science and linguistics, Brown University; research scientist, Google DeepMind www.quantamagazine.org/when-chatgpt...

Legend Imran Ahmed (CEO of CCDH) just sued the U.S. Government for the wildly inappropriate visa sanctions. The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York just granted a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) against this inappropriate government action. What a Christmas gift!

What do you prefer to drink at Christmas…. 1) Hot spicy wine 2)Warm spicy wine 3)Cold spicy wine 4)None of the above This is a Mull tipple choice question.

This work by Pieter Buegel is probably the very first painting of a White Christmas. The pregnant, blue-cloaked Mary rides a donkey led by Joseph, but they are inconspicuous as part of the throng (The Census at Bethlehem, 1566) www.artinsociety.com/bruegelrsquo...

If you are a Londoner or are interested in it this is a lovely updated @londonist.com map of Anglo Saxon London to browse londonist.substack.com/p/mapping-an...

We analysed 73,000 articles and found the UK media is divorcing ‘climate change’ from net zero theconversation.com/we-analysed-...