38 thousand times

The major European postdoctoral fellowship, the MSCA, had around 17k applications this year—up from 10k last year, thanks to the evisceration of science funding in the US. Only 1610 people received support. This is what brain drain sounds like

Please take the time to read what the children detained in Dilley wrote me in their own words: www.propublica.org/article/ice-... 10/

this is public humanities

I really enjoyed the article shared by Michael Erard below. Nice to see people actually studying the link between language and typing, not just claiming handwriting is magic. It also supports the idea that language is embodied, which I mention in my own article here: www.patreon.com/posts/144043...

I'm sorry the guy changing the rules on the fly is named what

As soon as Trump said he was “de-escalating” in Minneapolis the press took it at face value and rolled back its coverage even though ICE continued to rampage the city. Now, because Susan Collins said they weren’t going to conduct operations in Maine, the same is happening there.

Scientists studied students in Ahmedabad to see if living in a city with so many languages makes the brain "sharper" at focusing and memory. #language #research #multilingual www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

surprised to discover that neurolinguistic programming is still out there, morphing, evolving how many of you linguists out there have endured lectures, i mean, sales pitches, at parties when the interlocutor discovers what you do

Trump’s Big Loser Energy, and Other Tales From the Annals of Political Messaging talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trump...

that thing where you're lucky enough to spend most of the day doing the last combing out of a magazine piece drunk on flow if you don't know this pleasure I'm sorry if you want machines to take this pleasure from people like me fuck you

I am not going to repost the vile and racist image that Trump posted last night of President & First Lady Obama because it is beyond disgusting. Trump is a vile racist as is every Republican that continues to support him. I don’t want to hear mumbling from Mike Johnson or stoic silence from Thune.

1. When you're negotiating for your position, ask about these rules and expectations. 2. If somebody tells you something, get it in writing. 3. Expect that immigration rules will change during your stay. 4. Get a handle on your (white) American privilege and don't expect it to protect you.

If you’re an American academic or scientist now working abroad ANYWHERE, check your local immigration rules and work like hell to get everyone in the family permanent residency. Don’t depend on your job for your visa!

Write it down. Tell the story of this time in your own words. All too soon, people will try to re-write history, their own complicity in these horrors will be scrubbed away. But take a pen, take to the keyboard. And write. Remember for the rest of us.

I'm aaaalmost prepared to say that i regret my earlier stance on cursive writing, after viewing handwritten messages on a card from professional folks that looked disconcertingly juvenile. but we have bigger problems, right? that's why i say aaaalmost

and in first word news...

"Audiences see him meet a 'death yell' teacher to practice his last words." Damn, I wish I'd thought of that for Bye Bye I Love You. www.reuters.com/lifestyle/fi...

They can remove the museum exhibits and erase the websites, but people will remember and teach their children the truth. We saw what we saw. I will remember and teach mine and make sure they do the same. This knowledge will never be erased, and the fact that they erased it will never ever die.

🚨 New: We built a visual tracker of the warehouses ICE is targeting across the US. Working off an idea from @actualkatherine.bsky.social, we’ve mapped active searches, canceled deals, and linked state property records. Explore the map here: tinyurl.com/ICEWarehouse...

My god I look good on Teams

a realization: it's less about HOW you tell the story that grabs people. it's what you tell the story ABOUT. that guy in Michigan yesterday gave a 2 minute speech. no animation, no vertical video whiz bang. just him talking. what an impactful performance

the Long Civil War, the Long Cold War, and the Long Emergency all walk into a bar

we need a word for the heightened perceptual awareness for scammers and phishing, gained by close brushes with disaster I hate this

"Minnesotans cooperate because of the cold weather" is a sort of environmental determinism that I tackled in my one and only Pacific Standard (RIP) piece 10 years ago psmag.com/news/can-a-t...

We have just published the first translation in #Yucatec #Maya on @globalvoices.org @globalvoiceslingua.bsky.social!!! A story from Eastern Europe originally written in English and already translated to Español, বাংলা, Français, русский, Ελληνικά, عربي, Malagasy, 繁體中文, 简体中文, 日本語:

Hello, looks like independent publishers should beef up our books coverage. If you're into the idea of joining the @flaminghydra.com collective and writing a book review each month (800-2000 word range), please send us your ideas and some clips to [email protected]

With WaPo locked into a death spiral, CBS effectively an arm of state news, and public media facing massive budget cuts, it's more important than ever to follow and support independent media.

Incredible. They destroyed a great newspaper because they hated the people who actually paid for it and read it so much that they'd rather scrap the paper if they couldn't get Tucker Carlson's audience bsky.app/profile/maxt...

very powerful. the moment where the audience murmurs because they get it—wow

So excited to see the Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language come out!! Here is my chapter on Experimental approaches to sound symbolism: academic.oup.com/edited-volum...

Are female economists treated differently than males in academic seminars? These authors wanted to know whether gender shapes how scholars are treated when presenting research. So they built a massive dataset of 2,000+ economics seminars, job talks, and conference presentations from 2019–2023...

the best birthday present you can give a child is allowing them to pop you in the face with a pie

A snowflake in tactical armor is still a snowflake Get some therapy, chump With a person. not a bot

"I’m still enthralled by the subjects I studied," a reader wrote to me, "even though they are irrelevant to my work." He said that his son, who went to a large university, "sadly lacks that enthusiasm." What room is there, anymore, for enthusiasm? Cost and professionalization has stamped them out.

Maybe using redcap logic brain and stylish magazine writer brain in the same day will stave off dementia…

"It is not the task of the University to offer what society asks for, but to give what society needs." (Edsger W. Dijkstra: www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ewd13xx...)

being a writer with a day job IS the job, and it's weird

"Minnesotans cooperate because of the cold weather" is a sort of environmental determinism that I tackled in my one and only Pacific Standard (RIP) piece 10 years ago psmag.com/news/can-a-t...

Vilis Kasims remembers "growing up bilingual", with two mother tongues – Latvian and Russian – and an even more complicated heritage, rooted partially in the autonomous Moldovan region of Gagauzia, where multiple languages are spoken deepbaltic.com/2026/02/03/o...

New episode, first of 2026!! 🎉🎙️ A deep dive into metaphor with @sflusberg.bsky.social! Metaphors delight, provoke, captivate, shock, and galvanize us. What does it say about the human mind that we simply can't escape them—and frankly don't want to? Listen: disi.org/the-aura-of-...

Thinking about whoever said that by accepting a meal from people and then arresting them ICE agents broke a cultural taboo that was invented by, like, the first humans to set up a tent

great profile, @sirosenbaum.bsky.social

"The one screenplay he wrote that he most wishes someone would make is called The Hanging Tale. It’s a Scheherezade Western: A man is on the verge of being hanged, and they ask him for his final words. He starts telling a story — the story becomes the bulk of the film."

from the last word discourse beat: at least according to today's Google News Alert, it's shifted from Renee Good's last words ("I'm not mad at you") to Ross's last words to her.

How well do LLMs understand African languages? www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

This piece is quite moving. "Systems don’t fail randomly. They fail in ways reflecting how they were designed. Sometimes the only people who can see that design are the ones broken by it who survived with enough institutional access to name what they saw." www.publicbooks.org/displacement...

Foreign language learners show a kinematic accent in their co-speech hand movements. New paper by Hans Rutger Bosker & al. doi.org/10.1162/OPMI.a.321

This is one of the slides from my upcoming book talk at Barnes & Noble in the U District, Seattle (this Tuesday, 5:00pm). I often use the English ampersand as an example to help those with no knowledge of Chinese understand how Chinese characters function in Standard Written Chinese.