Ergative Absolutive

Bookshop is having an Anti-Amazon sale, with cheap e-books and free shipping for print today and tomorrow:

bookshop.org/lists/ebook-...

praise me, yea, for I have washed my office fork. I don't know when such an occurrence last occurenced, but it was not this academic year.

Generative syntactician/psycholinguist/phonologist

Printed sign on a wooden door that says 'we are recording screams and torture noises today (10/4). Don't call the cops.'

Good Morning, World.

A map of Gaza made up of various styles of Hebrew text. Around the border of the piece is the English translation of the Hebrew. On the bottom right is my signature, in the form of olive branches. The text is in blue, green, red, and black. -- Maimonides states “there is no greater mitzvah than the redemption of captives.” And who are the captives? They are the Palestinians in Gaza, held hostage by foreign powers and by their own government, who has not had elections since they came to power. They’re held hostage by an Israeli government that has empowered that government holding them hostage and has not tried to redeem them. Then there are the Israeli civilian hostages taken into Gaza by terrorists. The blue letters in the main territory represent each of those people, with the letters taken from their names. The calligraphic representations of the name of God (YHVH is not here) are also blue, to represent anyone else not accounted for. The colors come from both the Palestine and Israel flags. In black are the borders of the blockade. In red, the translations of the verses calling for the redemption of captives. In the cursive writing is the verse of Amos, “let justice well up like waters.” The only just end to this war is a redemption of both Israeli AND Palestinian captives. Put redemption is as intertwined as the letters making up the territory. There is no peace for either of us until there is peace for both of us.

Closeup of the print, showing in greater detail my signature. It is made of olive branches and says "Seek not vengeance and bear no grudges - love peace and pursue peace," in Hebrew and English. It is in green and blue. Red text is around the edge: "Do not harden your heart or close your hand, do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor, One shall not oppress them with exhausting work in your presence."

Close up of the blue and green Hebrew text that makes up the land of Gaza. Around it, stylized like barbed wire, is additional Hebrew text. Part of the sea blockade border can be seen, in block Hebrew. Red English text cuts through it.

"No Greater Mitzvah"

This work is a stylized map of Gaza, under siege and blockade by Israel and Egypt for almost 2 decades. The title refers to Maimonides’ insistence that “there is no greater mitzvah than the redemption of captives.” More in alt text.

My article "Data is not available upon request" was published in Meta-Psychology. Very happy to see this out!
open.lnu.se/index.php/me...

Screen cap of parodic version of William Blake's "The Tyger" that begins: Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright (Not sure if I spelled that right) What immortal hand or eye Could fashion such a stripy guy? What the hammer that hath hewn it Into such a chonky unit? Did who made the lamb make thee, Or an external franchisee?

In honor of National Poetry Day, the greatest parody rewrite of all time:

This, recall, is the fake quote.

It was a good teachable moment.

I don't think those particular two learned the lesson, but the other students were struck!

Two -- the two who whisper together when others are talking -- tried to argue that AI was like a research assistant, and once the major error was corrected, it was able to accurately and precisely quote the correct information in the main source.

A few used AI to evaluate the AI output, which I think misses the spirit of the exercise, but, to be fair, I did tell them to evaluate the output using whichever tools they liked.

In a class of 9, about half seemed reasonably on-board with my 'this sucks' message. One even asked for a copy of @steverathje.bsky.social 's paper on sycophancy, which popped up on my feed just in time for me to incorporate it into the class! (Thanks, Steve!)

None of them observed that the 'supporting quote' was fake. Not even the student who actually read the whole source paper!

None of them actually checked up on the other citations, or whether those 'summaries' were accurate, or whether those citations actually existed.

I did my 'Why AI sucks' seminar today. Most of the students figured out the major error in the sample AI material I gave them.
#academicChatter

I feel like my culinary life is a wild see-saw between 'You mean I can just make that *myself*??' and 'You mean I can just walk into a store and buy that *ready-made*?'

Logo with the words 'GLINTS: Glasgow Lab for Intersex, Non-binary and Trans Studies' in coral text on a purple background.

We're starting a new 'ArtsLab' (research network) in trans studies at Glasgow! It's very exciting and I hope that in time we can become a real centre for research in this field. Find out more - including details of our upcoming launch event - on our website: www.gla.ac.uk/colleges/art...

Some phonetician wittier than I am could make an absolute banger of a joke about doughnut holes.

Realm of the Elderlings Project: The Rain Wild Chronicles, Book 1: Dragon Keeper The character arcs are familiar, but it's all in service of building something new   We are on to the fourth subseries of this fantastic sag...

Hello, friends! My journey through Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings continues! We are now on the Rain Wild Chronicles, and you can read on Nerds of a Feather about how the character arcs are a bit recycled, but in service of querying what it takes to build a society:

#fantasy #bookReview #amReading

divination too expensive? should have gone to haruspexsavers

Like this bizarre race between catastrophe and utopia.

And don't forget the race between climate scientists saying, 'remember how it was so much worse than we thought last year? Well, this year it turns out to be even worser!', while energy researchers report, 'yup, renewable energies continue on their exponential growth curve!'

Post a fictional comedian who definitely would accept an invitation to the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

here! dailyotter.org

My favourite part of writing lecture slides for a new course is going into my 'Daily Otter' email archive (there's a mailing list I subscribe to), and selecting which otter I shall use to illustrate the agenda/section headers/questions slides.

#academicChatter

It looks like it's designed to help insert some sort of flexible tube? The tube could fit inside the inner groove of the needle and be held in place by those little prongs, and the rigidity of the needle helps guide the tube into place.

Is it a tool for inserting a catheter of some sort?

I think the phenomenon of the wig + two camera angles is a fascinating development in the history of art. It's a product of the social media era and the constraints of being a single person with a single video-making phone, and from writing + acting alone complete brilliance can result.

'Short sleeper' is a desireable thing in a child? This was definitely written by a person who either doesn't have children or made their spouse take care of the night shift.

Praat.

Ooh, my copy just arrived in the mail today!

This feels like all of those spam journal invitations I keep getting.