Jana Pithan

A screenshot from the long-poisoned social media site X. Sam Altman @sama writes: "Tonight, we reached an agreement with the Department of War to deploy our models in their classified network. In all of our interactions, the DoW displayed a deep respect for safety and a desire to partner to achieve the best possible outcome. Al safety and wide distribution of..." The rest of the post is not visible behind an info box reading "Readers added context: Government officials have contradicted Sam's claim, saying OpenAl will allow the DoW to use their models for "all lawful purposes". This could allow for uses Anthropic refused to engage in, namely mass surveillance tools and weapons systems with no human oversight."

Oh, look, the stupid plagiarism machine is now a stupid mass death machine.

oil painting La mujer barbuda/Magdalena Ventura con su marido; a bearded woman nursing her baby while standing up. Queer in/visibility in pink, plus a QR code to the conference website

Call for Papers, please circulate!

Ethics of queer in/visibility
Heidelberg, September 30 - October 2, 2026
queer-in-visibility.de

Keynote speakers:
J Calder
(Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder)
Anna Hájková @ankahajkova.bsky.social
(History, University of Warwick)

‘We could have asked ChatGPT’: students fight back over course taught by AI Staffordshire students say signs material was AI-generated included suspicious file names and rogue voiceover accent

This is outrageous.

Academics/universities consistently take the high horse and ask 'what are we going to do about students using AI?!' when there's literally universities teaching courses with AI generated slides... Like come on.

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

HI. It's me.

WE'RE READY TO LAUNCH. 2-4 Sept 2026. LavLang23.

Keynote Speakers
• Dr. Nikki Lane (Duke University)
• Dr. Kevin Guyan (UoE, School of Business)
• Prof. Erez Levon (Universität Bern)
• Dr. Stamatina Katsiveli (American College of Greece)
• Eddie Ungless (UoE, School of Informatics)

✨PUBLICATION DAY✨

Heute ist mein erster Aufsatz erschienen, der im Rahmen des Forschungsprojektes „Queer Theory in Transit“ entstanden ist. In diesem Projekt untersuchen wir Prozesse der Rezeption, Adaption und Übersetzung von Queer Theory in deutsche Kontexte.
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i have the transphobic author's name muted but i hope if you still somehow think it's okay to watch her shows or read her books or go to her theme parks you reckon with the fact that she is using your money to personally fund the groups that lobbied hard for the transphobic uk supreme court ruling

hey, who do I know who works on Irish in linguistics or who has a lot of Irish-speaking friends or email listservs or subreddits or whatever? I'm helping a student who wants to distribute a linguistics survey on/about Irish #linguistics! feel free to dm/email me!

"We know you may find news of how we plan to address these challenges unsettling."

"Consequently, we may see some courses that are not proving popular with students being removed from our schedule to ensure that our colleagues can focus their attention in other areas of teaching."

funny, the email I got today called it financial ""challenges"" and "see some colleagues moving to new roles, or possibly leaving the University"

Es braucht jetzt keine „Wir bauen die Mauer wieder auf“-Witze, sondern Solidarität mit all den Menschen, die in Gegenden mit rechtsextremer Dominanz leben und trotzdem ihre Stimme erheben.

Wir möchten das ändern und sammeln dafür jetzt Daten zu den Versandzeiten. Diese Daten können dabei helfen, strukturelle Probleme zu identifizieren und den Verantwortlichen Druck zu machen: www.auslandswahl.de/umfrage

Habe mal eine patzige Mail an mein Wahlbüro geschrieben, dass meine Briefwahlunterlagen immer noch nicht da sind und was genau sie vorschlagen, dass ich jetzt mache. Wird zwar nichts bringen, aber sie sollen sich zumindest schämen.

Oppressive governments love to arrest people for “speaking the wrong language”. The U.S. has no official language, but we’re about to see a lot of citizens detained for speaking Spanish. It’s linguist... TikTok video by Nicole Holliday

They arrested people for speaking the “wrong language” during the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, and Japanese Internment. Linguistic discrimination often precedes atrocities. www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8Yepy1V/

Today, in the journal #LinguisticLandscape publishes online its first article of 2025, written by @theresaheyd.bsky.social & @janapithan.bsky.social, looking at the voices attributed, via signage, to artefacts in the public space. The authors look at 'talking' milk cartons, bins, trains, and more!

Publication day: Voices in the Linguistic Landscape, our study on anthropomorphic objects and their first person pronouns.

If you are interested in theories of posthumanist sociolinguistics and/or pictures of talking trash cans, this is for you!

Point of Pride | Life-changing healthcare access for trans folks Point of Pride provides financial aid and direct support to transgender and non-binary folks in need of health and wellness care.

Hey, cis people with money: I just want to take this moment to point out that you, yes, you, right now, can directly help trans people get healthcare:

The money OpenAI is making when you use ChatGPT is funding the inauguration. On top of the catastrophic environmental cost, is it really worth it to save 2 minutes generating generic poorly-written text? (And don’t get me started on the others, especially Uber)

Phase Transition xkcd.com/3025

a sign in a shop window which reads "Harry Potter Author J.K. Rowling Never Visited This Shop"

a wooden sign in a café saying "HARRY POTTER WASN'T WRITTEN HERE" on it

my favourite flavour of Edinburgh signs

public trash can with signage: Empfehlen sie mich weiter!

bottle of sriracha mayo with label: I'm so vegan

can of orange juice: recyclez-moi

socks with label: "wash me without your black soks otherwise you'll be messing up my colour palette! (...) let the socks do the talkin'"

🎉 Accepted for publication:

"Voices in the Linguistic Landscape: Anthropomorphization of artifacts and the pronominal construction of speakerhood"

Co-authored by @janapithan.bsky.social and myself, to appear in Linguistic Landscape. Everything you ever wanted to know about talking objects!

Optimist: the cup is half full

Pessimist: the cup is half empty

Me: it is a matter of perspective

Reviewer 1: that’s a good point

Reviewer 2: you fucking idiot