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

Noone who voted for Labour to give Kier that massive mandate they keep harping on about voted for anything that looked even vaguely like this.

Clear points about why AI-generated summaries are problematic despite claims by some that they're supposedly less problematic than other genAI use. Can I summarize this long text for you? NOPE, NOPE, NOPE

#WelshEnglish side project: Shops in South Wales using ‘now in a minute’ to advertise they’re opening soon. #enregisterment #commodification #nowinaminute (Separate study - why the quotation marks)

So I just found out that a cheeky term for a teacher in the Regency period was “Haberdasher of Pronouns.” I love the image of someone selling pronouns like buttons. Do we need to bring this back?

Bunch o' (socio) linguistics/language ideologies happening right here

How many times, in how many contexts, in how many ways am I going to have to say that this is what "AI" does— what it fundamentally *is*— before it sinks in? That all Bullshit engines do is statistically correlate training data & inputs via their weights to produce outputs you are likely to accept…

It's Mandatory Monday and AI is clearly the future. mandatoryrollercoaster.com/post/8081046...

I don't know if it's really clear, outside of coverage of Mpls and pockets of organizing elsewhere, that hundreds of thousands of people are actively and at every level of society fighting our government as it abducts and imprisons and torments our neighbors.

In the last few years we lost Luke Perry, Shannen Doherty, Michelle Trachtenberg, Malcolm-Jamal Warner, now James Van Der Beek. I’m sure I forgot someone but it hurts seeing so many names I grew up with leave us at such a young age.

AI is built on stolen labor and powered by data centers that are and will be placed in Black communities to poison us. It's really clear.

I know we're all busy but if you live in the UK and have 20-30 mins (maybe less if you don't go into detail) to respond to the government consultation about settlement, please do (I'm going to try do it tonight or tomorrow morning). The attached guide with a link to consulation is very useful.

Reform is threatening Bangor University over a student society’s decision. The society isn’t Bangor University—but this is a neat preview of how a Reform government would work: public money for supporters only. Trump-style politics, UK edition. Authoritarian reflex is already working just fine.👇

The onion remains undefeated in delivering the most accurate news. theonion.com/ai-chatbot-t...

I don’t want to laugh at a small business but also VERY funny

I've been reading about oral history today and as something I've built a lot of my work around, and something I'm intending to bring into my research, I just loved this paragraph by Paul Thompson that articulates some of how I feel about it. 'It makes for fuller human beings.' Lovely.

Straight into next year's sociolinguistics lecture

In the UK academic recession, you will be at one of these stages since many unis buy the same cuts model from the same consultancies. It is always the same process: *Talk of belt-tightening *Incidental savings (e.g. printing, refreshments) *Travel budgets cut *Promotion freeze (1/4)

Many days I get told awful news from universities that isn't even being reported now. That's... a bad sign. No-one has a plan, no-one's in charge, no-one knows what to do, no-one's even got reliable data. So little left to say or do if I'm honest. www.timeshighereducation.com/news/cardiff...

Remind me again why we should just accept genAI is here to stay... I don't think we need something that can't produce an accurate map of Europe (and York - eek!)

Last week in Minnesota, I watched ordinary people risk their lives to protect their neighbors. In the process, they not only won a significant—though not final—victory against authoritarianism, they proved virtually every MAGA social theory wrong. (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Minnesota ❤️

At the end of the day, the Black Lives Matter era was about whether people should be killed in the street, and lots of people decided yeah and put those little blue flags on their cars. It spread to everyone because it stopped for no one.

I guess I do think if you participated in the arrest of a five-year-old you are probably just fundamentally incompatible with society. That you are not a safe person for humanity to be around, generally

All these pop ups and emails telling me I can save time by using AI are seriously wasting my time. No! No! and yet again NO!

In sentences that have never been uttered (uddered?) before: "We don’t believe that Veronika is the Einstein of cows" #linguistics

Saw a lot of headlines saying "wikipedia is embracing ai" being tossed around tabloids, and I'm pretty sure they were maliciously written to make you feel a certain way about Wikipedia. What's actually happening is that wikipedia is demanding payment for data scraping and the corpos don't like that.

I'm looking for a Paris apartment to rent for 3-4 weeks in late March - early April (preferably 2 bedrooms, although a bedroom plus a sofa bed would work). Two adults and a kid. Does anyone have any leads? Thanks!

Minnesota legend Charles M. Schulz knew what made a great citizen. “Sometimes it is the very people who cry out the loudest in favor of getting back to what they call ‘American Virtues’ who lack this faith in our country.”

Years ago, 957 people from Twitter contributed to my research on 'because X' and I promised I'd share the results with them. I can't, because twitter, but please share it with people here anyway: www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... Non-paywalled pre-print: kar.kent.ac.uk/105654/ #linguistics

Overheard in the crowd, a mother explaining to her young child who is holding a cymbal: "Do you remember? This is the same road we marched on for George Floyd. Another man who was killed."

Have some, now want some (oops), relieved I've never heard of some.

Another day, another paper and yet another opportunity to accept that I can't really write about Welsh English without mentioning Gavin and Stacey in some way. #ShouldILaughOrCry #WelshEnglish

That thing when you read an article about Welsh accents and the Traitors and wonder which linguist they got a quotation from and realise it's you (but last year). www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I have no intuitions about this but maybe some other #linguistics people do?

Oh uni set up of Microsoft authenticator app which requires multiple sign-ins a day, how I have not missed you.

#linguistics Anyone have the answer?

I don’t know why anyone would admit to using AI. It’s like trying to pass off a microwave pizza as the real deal, only you’re bragging about how good you put the numbers into the microwave panel like that’s some sort of skill. It’s embarrassing. You should be embarrassed.

The times, they are too interesting 😬

I’ll take it but it doesn’t seem very appropriate for the world right now

HESA put the academic staff numbers in 23-24 in Essex at 1560, and given voluntary severence schemes it's likely to be lower now, so this is at least 2/3rds of all academic staff in Essex receiving risk of redundancy letters.

About a pair of trousers that came home from school all tangled after the Christmas show: I don't un-inside-out them because it would take too long #LinguistBabyPhotos (7ish)

This creater puts "reading levels" into perspective in a really helpful way, so sharing it here.

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

I'm not going to judge a book on its cover and blurbs, but I'm curious how grounded in sociolinguistic research this is given that it "Proposes a political agenda to resist the sticklerocracy and overthrow a world of word nerds" Anyone happen to know? www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/1...

And I did get to talk about the Rosetta Stone - yay!

Wish me luck as I try and explain Egyptian hieroglyphs in under five minutes for a kids science podcast. Am I hoping I get to talk about the Rosetta Stone too? Absolutely!

#OTD 98 years ago, William Labov (1927-2024) was born 🥳 He was a pioneering sociolinguist studying language variation, dialectology, but also AAVE. In 1966, Labov published his landmark study "The Social Stratification of English in New York City". #LinguisticBirthdays #Histlx

A little something I wrote for @theconversation.com about Wicked and prescriptivism theconversation.com/wicked-for-g...