Michael Erard

I'm always glad to see funders experiment with random draws. More should be doing it.

Join us today @cudanlab.bsky.social

for a lecture & discussion with

@oliviermorin.bsky.social
on "The evolution of writing & well-designed languages"

16:00-18:00 Tallinn time UTC+2 🇪🇪🇪🇺🌍
(5 hours from this post).

Details & zoom: cudan.tlu.ee/events/2026-...

Yes yes yes

good plan

No illusions: I'm toward the nobody end of the Somebody-Nobody spectrum. But my body of work has a nice shape, not everything is online, and most of it isn't stale because it's not tightly hooked to a moment.

thanks, that's very kind!

would it make sense for me to collect a bunch of my language pieces and publish as an e-book?

Or, under what conditions would it make sense?

Live your life in a way that no one can keep a tally of all the accusations you make that turn out to be confessions

Fossielvrij celebrating ABP’s decision to divest their fossil fuel investments in front of the ABP building. Photo credit to Fossielvrij.

Learn about the real-life court case that inspired All Will Rise!

The great people at @fossielvrijnl.bsky.social have been with us since the beginning, and we’d like to share why they’ve been so impactful to our journey.

🔗: www.allwillrise.com/dev-blog/the...

#IndieGame #GameDev #IndieDev

“How many of these gentle people have I helped to kill just by paying my taxes?" June Jordan, 1984

The recipient of a second-hand Nobel Peace Prize just started another war.

Despicable

Nielsen to announce that it will stop measuring viewership, in order to “align its core business with trends in the market,” in 3…2…

great research question.

I am embarrassed to say I know what Clan of the Cave Bear was about

Studying an emerging sign language won’t kill it – so what are linguists scared of? Some worry that studying a young sign language, which may have only a handful of users, introduces an outside influence that could alter its development.

A piece on sign languages from 2019, which I did for Mosaic Science (RIP).

A huge amount of reporting and careful navigating went into this, which I couldn't have pulled off without that year at the MPI.

www.weforum.org/stories/2019...

immigrant achievement unlocked: I was called a "Dutch linguist and historian" in a book review

too real

Katie Miller & • @KatieMiller g... Restoring entertainment to a shared common culture devoid of overt liberalism will make our country a better place. Our children deserve programming without a forced trans agenda. A win for consumers. A win for Americans. A win for our children. Josh Kraushaar & I @JoshKraushaar • 3h BREAKING: "Netflix Backs Out of Warner Bros. Bidding, Paramount Set to Win" hollywoodreporter.com/business/busin... 3:09 PM • Feb 26, 2026 • 102K Views

News, movies, TV: it’s going to be all right-wing propaganda all the time.

Sometimes, still, I can’t believe this is all happening.

Wanneer Gary Marcus zich hierover zo veel zorgen maakt, kunnen wij dat gerust ook doen! Hij is zeker geen doemdenker maar zeer realistisch in zijn benadering van de ontwikkeling en het gebruik van AI

Climate coverage is shrinking. We're expanding it. Announcing a new weekly video podcast!

Remember when CBS News laid off its whole climate reporting team last fall?

Good news: I've scooped up their former senior climate producer, and now she's making a podcast with me.

Sucks to suck, David Ellison!

Listen/watch/subscribe here:

on a yellow background, two rows of characters. on the top row are two quotation marks, then a similarly-sized icon of a swaddled baby. on the bottom row is an icon of a coffin, then two quotation marks

Somehow in the blur I missed the illustration that Ben Hickey did for the Economist review of Bye Bye I Love You. Great, huh?

Natasha C. 5.0 out of 5 stars Rich, historical, deeply personal and helpful Reviewed in the United States on February 22, 2026 Format: Audiobook Bye Bye I Love You is a rich book, from emotional, intellectual and practical perspectives. As part of the "sandwich generation" having precious babies myself, I do wish I could have read/listened to it before my elderly mother's simultaneous, years-long decline and passing. To my amazement, Erard probes many of the soul-searching, metaphysical questions I faced alone, including and beyond logistical complexities of communication during end of life care. Extensive global, historical and cultural research coupled with the author's own gentle, personal insights makes for an oddly compelling partnership of discovery and modern heartache.

if you haven't read Bye Bye I Love You yet, this is what you're missing

Thank you, I don’t want to join the esteemed board of your nephrology journal

John Davidson Gives First Interview and Explains Tourette’s Tics After Shouting N-Word and Other Slurs at BAFTAs: ‘I Felt a Wave of Shame’ (EXCLUSIVE) John Davidson's explains Tourette's tics and the BAFTA N-word incident in his first exclusive interview with Variety.

"Tourette's can make my body or voice do things I don't mean, and sometimes those tics land on the worst possible words." variety.com/2026/film/aw... #BAFTAs

Somewhere Alfie Kohn cheers

And it’s mainly a feature of written language and spoken sentences w a certain level of complexity. I recently learned that Dutch speakers switch back to SVO after a couple concatenated subordinate structures because it’s too difficult to track

Good grammar jokes in this thread. Sorry, my German speaking friends.

On the "hard right" as a euphemism, check out @gsamaras.bsky.social's excellent article

www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

i do not recommend cultivating this ability. go birdwatch instead or learn to name the wildflowers and native trees