Rumor has it that Nature is also considering charging authors 'evalution costs' to submit papers.
They must be hurting for money: they've only published 101 Open Access articles to date in 2026.
This means Springer-Nature has gobbled up $1,281,690.0 of science funding this year.
#openaccess
"We are freeing Iran from religious fanatics".
A prayer for Trump in the White House.
Det pågår en katastrofal utsvältning och nedmontering av offentliga kulturinstitutioner i Sverige.
magasink.se/2026/03/mede...
new research on kava drinking and its role in cultural evolution by @vaclavhrncir.bsky.social, @scottclaessens.bsky.social and colleagues at @mpi-eva-leipzig.bsky.social and partner institutions!! well done!!
www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...
Viktor Orban is now 20 points behind in the polls - and so he has ordered the military to guard “key energy facilities” against a possible Ukrainian “attack.” Hungarians fear he plans a fake national security emergency or false-flag incident before the April 12 election
apnews.com/article/hung...
Dansk säkerhetspolis vill säga upp Palantir av säkerhetsskäl, när Gunnar Strömmer fick frågor om den svenska polisens användning av tjänsten viftade han bort det som konspirationsteorier www.dn.se/ledare/isobe...
Just published in Science, baby chickens show the bouba-kiki effect! In an accompanying Perspective, @bodowinter.bsky.social and I argue a broader, multimodal framework of iconicity is needed to illuminate the origins of language.
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Bored of Peace
This new paper in Science is also accompanied by a cool perspective piece by @mperlman.bsky.social & @bodowinter.bsky.social! #language #linguistics www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
“Humans across multiple languages spontaneously associate the nonwords kiki & bouba with spiky & round shapes, respectively...We tested the bouba-kiki effect in baby chickens. Similar to humans, they spontaneously chose a spiky shape when hearing a kiki sound & a round shape when hearing a bouba.”😲🧪
New study reveals hunter-gatherers in Europe’s lowlands held out 3,000 years longer than anywhere else, then their descendants replaced 90% of Britain’s population. #AncientDNA #HumanEvolution #Archaeology www.anthropology.net/p/the-wetlan...
Four years(!) after the chapter was originally written, the official publication is now live (pre-print has been out for some time though):
doi.org/10.1093/oxfo...
How can plurality be expressed with iconic forms across different modalities of human languaging?
#linguistics
Very late to one of the last #TidyTuesday of 2025: The Languages of the World (Glottolog)
Looking at linguistic diversity 🌍🌎🌏
Used this dataset to try out a personal theme package.
Code: github.com/borstell/tid...
#ggplot2 #DataViz #R4DS
Gulan Avci hoppar av två dagar efter 1,4-mätningen. Svårt att tänka sig ett mer effektivt sätt för en enskild riksdagsledamot att ytterligare försämra bilden av och läget för partiet.
Demographic shifts, inter-group contact and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification.
#linguistics
Trump's "Peace Council" and their democracy index score.
Found one! Before blocking it, I took a look, and - amusingly, but in hindsight predictably - it too looks like AI (my guess would be Grok, but I haven't properly compared rhetorical tics across different ones). Note how it reapplies the same template over and over again:
Breaking news and congratulations to the team, Sulawesi preserves evidence for the oldest art yet recorded, and strengthens claims for the early colonisation of Australia. At 68k BP this art is almost 30k years earlier than the accepted record for Europe. Bravo🏺🦣🎨
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
When they say „freedom of speech“, they mean „we will dictate what scientists can say“. Funny how that works.
This paper is batshit insane. It also (of course) has A TON of bullshit references that do not exist. Hey @springernature.com retract this AI slop and fire the editor that let it pass. There is evidently no review or quality assurance process in place at this journal.
Re: the AI slop paper shared by @thomaspellard.bsky.social and @lameensouag.bsky.social, I wrote to the editors — will update when I get a reply, and will be following closely what they do.
Key point is that we should hold the *journal* accountable for this mess
I have a few predictions...
1/n
Hey, did you know that Greek lost the phoneme /h/ because of secularism? You see, /h/ intrinsically symbolises the Creator. And hydrogen.
This journal is published by @springernature.com , and is hosted by @nature.com. How did this incoherent nonsense make it into print?
WTF?! 🫣 Is this a joke?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A religious quote, "primitive languages", and nonsense everywhere. Is Nature Humanities and Social Sciences Communications a scam journal?
I'd love to know who reviewed this.
It appears that Putin won't get Maduro for his collection of failed dictators.
LOL
The Iranian regime divides and isolates the opposition, writes Saeid Golkar, which is how it survives mass discontent. Also it has help from friends in China and Russia
open.substack.com/pub/persuasi...
It is unclear to me how much traction Glossa: a journal of general linguistics is getting on BlueSky. I am thinking of switching communication about new papers to LinkedIn, which gives better insight into the # of views garnered. Give us a like if you want Glossa to stay on the Blue side of things.
Something lovely for the weekend!
Beautiful blue glass beads from the late Bronze Age 💙
Ploughed up by a farmer in Denmark in 1885, analysis shows the beads were made in Mesopotamia, pointing to long-distance trade in luxury goods some 3,000 years ago.
📷 National Museum of Denmark
#Archaeology
