Lauren Hall-Lew

Allow transgender women and girls back into GirlGuiding UK Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?

Sign the petition to allow trans girls and women back into Girl Guiding UK c.org/BzmspcT9HW

Historian of eugenics here. I don't normally like to retweet bad arguments, but this is such a fundamental misunderstanding of eugenics, I think it's important to point out. I don't have time to debunk all of the ways this is inaccurate, but I'll highlight a few things and then recommend some books🧵

Hey all,

The Onion is accepting applicants for our writing, video and graphics fellowships.

Fellowships last six months, pay well, and provide full benefits.

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Thank you to everyone who joined us at the University of Edinburgh on Friday for lively discussions on the linguistic, economic and social dynamics of AI. Planning will begin for our next event before too long, so please tag or message us with ideas for your preferred topic or location!

Blue to green gradient image with text reading, 'Centre for Technomoral Futures Blog: Text-to-speech voices as human remains, by Alice Ross, PhD Fellow.' There is a headshot photo of Alice – she is wearing a black and white polka-dot shirt, with a gold necklace. She has short brown hair with a red tint, and is smiling. 

Speech technology researchers are working to improve text-to-speech with the goal of accessible communication. However, TTS models are also being used to produce misinformation, deepfake pornography & more…

Read our latest blog post from @alice-ross.bsky.social, CTMF PhD Fellow ▶️ edin.ac/4re6En4

What a nice surprise to see this recent mention in my alma mater's newsletter 🥰 linguistics.stanford.edu/news/hall-le...

#linguistics #variation #sociolinguistics #corpora #books #Stanford #StanfordUniversity #StanfordLinguistics

The New episode of PPLS Perspectives is available now!

Maisy Hallam chats with Prof. Jenny Culbertson about how #technology, #AI, and global change are reshaping the future of language — and why #linguistic diversity matters more than ever.

Listen now: edin.ac/4r7axdA

To mark UK Black History Month we start the new season of PPLS Perspectives. PhD candidate Tony Baugh speaks with @proftjcurry.bsky.social — the 1st Black philosophy prof in Edinburgh’s 442-year history & co-chair of the University’s landmark race review. Listen here: edin.ac/4hfFk3u

So they're saying the sign worked

Irish woman with green card faces US deportation over $25 bad cheque Donna Hughes-Brown, who has lived in US since 1977 and wrote cheque a decade ago, being held in isolation by Ice

An immigrant had her green card revoked for writing a bad cheque for $25.

She had since paid it back.

She’s now languishing in a detention camp.

Yet we are letting child rapists go free. Even the ones who get caught get “community service”.

It was never about crime.

Alice Wong, disability rights advocate and wordsmith, dies at 51 Alice Wong, a transformational leader for disability rights and justice, who founded the Disability Visibility project to magnify disabled culture, died Nov. 14.

A nice obituary for Alice, who was going to be recognized as one of The Post 50.

I hate that we now have to live without this phenomenal woman.

#GiftLink

wapo.st/49WOdx1

Never forget the same people defending pedophilia have spent years trying to convince the public that drag queens and trans people are a threat to children.

It’s all smoke and mirrors to allow the real predators to roam free.

@verbingnouns.bsky.social yes!

I watched my grandmother completely transform due to CJD. It's brutal. And at present there are no approved prion disease treatments. The CJD Support Network is here for those who are currently being affected. #CJDAwareness www.facebook.com/CJDSupport

10 once-popular baby names that could be going extinct Once-popular baby names are rapidly disappearing, making them perfect picks for parents seeking something unique.

@superlinguo.bsky.social look, now we will be more unique. www.aol.co.uk/articles/10-...

Check out our new Interview series 🌟
In conversation with @lhlew.bsky.social, John Rickford reflects on his career in Guyana and the U.S. Through personal and professional stories, he shows how the personal and political are entwined in a life in sociolinguistics.

🔗

Insulin's High Cost Leads To Lethal Rationing Alec Raeshawn Smith was 23 when diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and 26 when he died. He couldn't afford $1,300 per month for his insulin and other diabetes supplies, so he tried to stretch the doses.

Before ACA, many Americans couldn’t afford insurance

Alex Smith was a diabetic who got kicked off his Mom’s insurance at 26

He made 35k a year which was “too much” for Medicaid, but not nearly enough to cover insurance premiums

He had to ration his insulin & died a month after losing insurance

Book Review: Inclusion in Linguistics - Lauren Hall-Lew, 2025

Not sure I've ever published something so blatantly personal -- and it's a book review, of all things! I even cited my mom's book! Here's to normalizing the practice of positionality statements. Thanks to the editors and authors for the opportunity. #inclusion journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

sociolinguistics / raciolinguistic ideologies / linguistic racism

Weather forecast: falling iguanas possible Tuesday morning.

Chance of a rain of lizards on Tuesday (real)

BSL is not for sale: a Deaf-led approach to AI procurement Today, the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge has published a new report, BSL is not for Sale: a Deaf-led approach to AI procurement.

"The UK urgently needs cohesive and foundational principles to guide policymaking in this field and agreement on these principles must be led by the Deaf community"

bda.org.uk/bsl-is-not-f...

via @bda.org.uk via @debrief.disabilitydebrief.org.ap.brid.gy

In her #NWAV53 plenary, King discusses an example of a juror being dismissed from the pool due to forestressing in the word police (so PO-lice), because the prosecutor claimed that the pronunciation showed animus towards law enforcement. And this is exactly why I study prosody!

This really hasn’t gotten enough attention this week.

@wired.com #ICE
www.wired.com/story/fbi-wa...

There’s not enough attention being paid to the fact that ICE deported a man in a persistent vegetative state

Or the fact that he was perfectly healthy when he was detained, and his family have no idea what was done to him to cause such a severe decline

He died shortly after being deported to Cuba

Oops, this was from #NWAV52!

Attention #linguistics nerds, the #NWAV53 live feed has begun!

They Tried to Smear Zohran Mamdani as an Antisemite. Voters Saw Right Through It. Mamdani’s mayoral victory in New York City means so much — including the repudiation of Islamophobic attacks and weaponization of antisemitism.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory means so much — including a 'fuck you' to the Islamophobic weaponization of antisemitism... @theintercept.com theintercept.com/2025/11/04/z...

The average US taxpayer spends $36 a year on SNAP

You know what they spend on corporate subsidies? $670

Poor and disabled people who need food are not the problem

If you’re angry about “your money” feeding people but not angry it’s giving tax cuts to the wealthy?

You’re doing their dirty work.

Logos: Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the collective Text: What do grassroots movements in Scotland need to thrive? Are you invovled in community organising or grassroots movement-building for social justice in Scotland? We'd love you to respond to our survey! Image: Four campaigners, holding megaphones and signs, one sign says: Take our survey! And be in with a chance of winning £50 in vouchers. Others signs say social justice and act now. At the bottom is the link to the survey

Looking for folk involved in community organising or grassroots movement building for social justice in Scotland!

If this sounds like you, please take a few minutes to respond to our survey! www.surveymonkey.com/r/26CCL2P

And please share with your networks 😍

The Academic Contribution Framework: a flawed, discriminatory response to a failure of management’s making — UCU Edinburgh The ACF is the mechanism by which management will size up workers for redundancy targets that we already know are arbitrary. The ACF is obviously bad. It will be personally devastating for many collea...

"Edinburgh is one of the wealthiest universities in the UK" and, yet, here we are. How? Why? Staff/students did not create this problem-- they keep the uni running through endless crisis. It's time for "leaders" to accept they have failed and step down.

www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/gacde2g...