People are now debating what the proper earring placement is.

I’m a professor of sociolinguistics in the UK and I approve this message 🤣 #linguistics (doubly because I’m originally from the US)

My university is seemingly planning to remove most of the humanities books from our library to build open teaching space. My humanities colleagues and I are having to move to new shared offices this summer where the expectation is that we won't have space for (or need!) all the books we have now...

it's destroying communities. not in the abstract "it's bad for the environment" sense, in the literally observable immediate sense. usage of it is tantamount to violence against your own neighbors, and it should be treated as the antisocial behavior that it actually is

actually i kinda *do* think using genAI should be such a social faux pas that the user is marked as a pariah and no longer feels welcome in the community. "AI is bad" is no longer an abstract (it never was), my city has been under a boil water advisory for a week because of AI data centers

Boromir: and why do we not EMBRACE the ring's power?? Aragorn: and what would you have us do with it? Boromir: a lot of editing advice, and also a way to take care of busy work, you know, memos about orcs et cetera Aragorn: Boromir: and difficult break-ups, if you know what I mean

If only we had a version of this policy at my uni... (instead it looks like we're moving towards exams/presentations with no AI and essays where AI use is scaffolded*) *I think that means we teach them how to use it? 😬

This is a cat checkpoint! Relinquish your most recent cat picture on your phone. 🐈

‘Maybe there is no more fitting way to begin…than to speak briefly in the language understood by the overwhelming majority of Jamaican people – even if that language still struggles for full acceptance.’ www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...

The bathroom ban in particular has no reason to exist, no basis in the supreme court ruling, and will likely be overturned in a human rights challenge. Why would you do it, unless you had lost all sense of moral decision-making.

Disgrace even by standards of Cardiff University It's fundamental violation of trust: the Salisbury Collection is a national possession of rare books, not an institutional asset to be discarded at whim The new Welsh Govt must intervene at Cardiff nation.cymru/news/fears-f...

What is the simplest way to pay people for taking part in an online study when they are not part of a panel? I will recruit participants via an institution. I want to give them a small reward for completing the study. Is there a simple way to do this?

Do I know anyone who’s F L U E N T in Scottish Gaelic? I have a phonetics question regarding a beguiling water spirit character name that I’ve created and I want it to sound authentic. #ScottishGaelic

If there was a consultation about this, it doesn't seem to have filtered down to students and staff in the subjects concerned (the petition is the first I've heard about it). Please sign and share if it's relevant to you.

Maybe I should get some students to verify this in my Dialect in Lit&Film module next year 🤣 (Excited to be teaching it again after a few years’ hiatus)

If a Croque Madame talked to another Croque Madame about anything other than a Croque Monsieur Would they have passed the Béchamel test?

I see Farage often referred to as a Temu Trump. Apparently in Spanish they use the expression Ali Express with the same meaning.

#linguistics Am I just noticing it or is the expression ‘temu x’ (for a not so good version of x) relatively new? I see it quite a lot online these days. Most recently: We don’t need a temu prime minister. If it new, worth adding to #woty word of the year list?

I think people who haven’t been through this often underestimate how stressful this is - not just for the individuals but for their entire family. Being in limbo where you can’t make basic life decisions for weeks or months is exhausting and mentally harmful. And how can anyone do their job well?

folx, I’ve been working on AI "ethics" for almost a decade now & hate to tell you there’s no such thing as "ethical AI" the only "ethical principle" that works is regulating the shit out of the industry & to take back control of our autonomy, fundamental rights, freedoms & right to exist w/out AI

What is wrong with people/universities/companies that they’re so willing to trust the bullshit machine? And so willing to push it onto others? It’s just making things up - at the cost of the environment, of the people who train it and of so many jobs.

🚨 | ALL Welsh Senedd Seats Declared! No overall majority - Plaid Cymru largest party Final results: 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 PC: 43 (+20) ➡️ Reform: 34 (+34) 🌹 Labour: 9 (-35) 🌳 Conservative: 7 (-22) 🌍 Green: 2 (+2) 🔶 Lib Dem: 1 (+1)

#linguistics If someone tells you they've won the Gold medal of Philology be suspicious ... www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

With great sadness UWP learnt of the passing of Colin H. Williams, a renowned expert on language planning and minority languages. He published many volumes and critical articles on this subject from the 1970s onwards ... (1/2)

Anyone on here know about Romanian orthodox weddings? Specifically the practices portrayed in Coppola's Dracula?

I get a lot of AI slop book marketing emails, but this is the first time I have ever been . . . mistaken for Jane Austen.

👍

Upset by academic royalty statements that don't meet the payment threshold? I just got an email letting me know that one of my books sold 0.01 pounds (for me) worth of copies this year 😂 Counting what I'm already owed, only another 747 years before I get £10

Je partage ici l'étude d'un collègue concernant la perception de différents accents anglophones par les locuteurs dont le français est la langue maternelle. Merci de diffuser largement, et surtout auprès de publics non universitaires, si vous le pouvez ! 🙏 nohea.llc.washington.edu/survey/Franc...

I can't imagine (m)any students preferring a generic skills module to what was available below. It sounds fantastic. What kind of student experience will they be getting? Universities are being vandalised.

Don't be shy to take on a little two-week side project. These five months will be the most precious three years of your academic journey.

Language shapes everything, from how we think to how we connect and innovate. Linguists are essential to understanding communication, and to creating ethical, responsible AI. We need more linguists. #TalkAboutSocialSciences #TalkAboutHumanities

ChatGPT = 🐈 j’ai pété = cat I farted , so not surprising it liked the ‘music’

we’ve got human beings on the dark side of the moon but microsoft word will still not let me add a comment to a footnote

This is about the US but clearly it applies to the UK as well. “Let’s just change the settlement rules for people who are already here (and make them even worse for anyone else who might want to come)”

Every. Goddamn. Company.

Happy birthday to the Washington Metro, which opened 50 years ago today with service on 4.6 mi of Red Line between Rhode Is. Ave & Farragut N. System now serves 130 mi. The DC Metro shows that, with good planning & enough investment, the public sector can succeed & build something extraordinary.

I agree 100% with Steven Vickers that authors will be falsely accused of using AI in the coming years. In particular, authors like myself whose works were stolen to train AI systems are at risk. When we write in our own unique styles, AI trained on us will quite likely flag us as using AI.

Good HE is really simple: quality time spent with subject experts who know and care about their students. My university and many others are deliberately abandoning this truth in favour of financial and organisational efficiency.

We are fast moving from cold spots to blackout. This is not trivial and the impact in terms of access to languages education will be inter generational. How do you “level up” or promote “growth” without a multilingual workforce and the know-how to deploy? www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

@profjt.bsky.social thought this and discussion under it might interest you bsky.app/profile/suzy...

Just declined an invitation to review a research study about gender inequities in academia. Mostly declined because I'm too busy, but also a little bit because they clearly couldn't see the irony fo sending me a paper to review on this particular topic and addressing me as "Miss Oliver."

By popular demand, here is the full, glorious message from Aberystwyth University Library, on their blog: wordpress.aber.ac.uk/librarian/?p... Hat tip to @walkyouhome.bsky.social for prompting me to realise it was a blog post, and thus available to you all ❤️

imagine being such an incompetent researcher that you think an llm can write your literature review

Doomscrolling break... Cartoon by Emiel Stevenhagen (emielscartoons) "Camembert"

Please signal boost 🙏 Neurodivergent PhD students: What reasonable adjustments and accommodations do you have for your studies? My PhD is in English Literature, I have ADHD (combined type), and I’m struggling. I would like to make changes, but I don’t know what might help.

(Everything is awful, I know) But for the weekend have a gorgeous example of (staged) French-English code switching. Renaud - It is not because you are Pondering how my students will react if I use it in class 😂 #linguistics #franglais #renaud www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw1p...

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

cot-caught-court on a British high street ;-) #linguistics