𝔾𝖗𝖆𝕧𝖊 𝕊𝖑𝖆𝕪𝖊𝖗𝖘 💀🧟‍♂️👻🎃👹

All I want in life is to persuade everyone, when encountering politics & culture, to ask, "why are we talking about this?" I mean that very literally: anything you encounter on your screens reflects a choice. Someone covered that, talked about that, rather than the many other things out there. Why?

International Phonetic Alphabet, spooooky edition!

Halloween is on the way!

Do you like the International Phonetic Alphabet but wish it was... spooOOOoookier?

I present...

The INTERRED⚰️national FANG🧛etic AlphaBEAST 👹
r.jyu.fi/IPAspooky

Free to use/adapt! (@creativecommons.bsky.social)

Repost or I will send zombies to eat your braaaaains. 🧟‍‍ 🧠🍽️

vertical

diagona/

horizonta__

no further questions

[19th Century Social Entrepreneur voice]:

"I've created an app called Light in the Dark so that child laborers can connect with each other and share resources about mining techniques."

Welcome to the capitalist innovation museum we got

- scam machine
- psychosis inducing machine
- weapons of mass destruction
- button you push that makes the planet hotter
- markets that intentionally starve people
- clothes that fall apart after washing them 1 time
- medicine you can’t afford

These 20 Apps Are Watching You—And You Probably Use Them Every Day You might use these apps every day, but have no idea what they collect. These 20 apps are quietly harvesting your location, contacts, photos, and more—here's what you can do about it.

A lot of the apps on your phone are tracking your physical location and selling that information to other companies. Here's a fantastic explainer from @pcmag.com about 20 of the most common apps that spy on you. Service journalism at its finest. www.pcmag.com/explainers/t...

JYU English seminars - 2025-26 2025-26

📢📢Next up in the @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social English seminar series!📢📢

Mon 3 Nov 2025 at 16:00 EET. Emily Harmer, @harm365.bsky.social:

'What is online abuse anyway? The case of women politicians in the UK'

See the abstract & register here. 👇 Go go go!
r.jyu.fi/engseminars2...

A travel pillow that sits around the neck and supports the head.

If you're painting a ceiling and having to look up the whole time, I have two words for you: travel pillow.

Work really hard and one day this can be you (followed by graffiti of a headstone that says “RIP worked really hard” on it

happy sunday, remember that you are completely expendable to your employer and that when you die they will forget you ever existed within weeks and easily replace you

Save the date! 📣 First International DeafTech conference, May 26-27, 2026, Vienna. www.deaftech26.eu

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

Stock reply to anyone complaining about singular "they" and pretending it's just about standards and not transphobia. If that's really their jam, they should get back into using "thou".
books.google.co.uk/books?id=YKQ...

Copying a quote verbatim but pointing out a spelling error is, academically speaking, a [sic] burn

Linguistics-related XKCD comics A list of linguistics-related XKCD comics Collected by Dave Sayers Note: all XKCD comics have a secret caption that appears if you hover the mouse over. http://xkcd.com/37/ (syntax!) http://xkcd.co...

I just learned about this useful list of language related XKCD comics. docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I read infuriating reports of incompetent, self-centred husbands on feminist Twit-ter: women juggling the lion's share of housework and childcare during lockdown alongside full-time jobs. I refused to be one of them. Simply claiming nonbinary identity isn't enough to opt out of sex-based oppression - we also have to radically shift the patterns of our lives. But despite the miasma of sexism that clings to housework like the bad smell around our unemptied food-composting bin, gender expectations are not why I clean more than Leo. I'm simply the able-bodied one. As I struggled with this I realised I had no models of domestic labour that weren't feminine. But why shouldn't housework be masculine? What could be more rugged and dad-ly than being strong and active, busting around looking after everyone's physical needs? It certainly keeps me fit - I'm more hench than l've ever been. Gender is a figment of consciousness, and I'm free to conceive of my role however I want.

“But why shouldn't housework be masculine? What could be more rugged and dad-ly than being strong and active, busting around looking after everyone's physical needs?”

- Halo Jedha Dawn, from their essay “Gender-Creative Parenting and Me” in Gender Euphoria

#transrightsreadathan #booksky 📚💙

Old floppy drive with printed label 'Works, but makes Sad Noises'

Got my performance review.

'Have a nice day': Normal.

'Have a nice week': Slightly less common, but sure.

'Have a nice month': Wait, is something bad coming next month?

'Have a nice year': Definitely something bad next year. Sounds like you may be planning it.

'Have a nice life': You are 100% actively planning my death.

On the subject of deliberately annoying GDPR/cookie notices, I use the browser extension 'Consent-O-Matic'.

It does all the cookie stuff for you, based on your preferences (see bottom right of gif).

Chrome: chromewebstore.google.com/detail/mdjil...

Firefox: addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefo...

This reminds me of those illustrations of elephants made by people who didn't know what elephants actually looked like and had to rely on written descriptions. www.uliwestphal.de/elephas-anth...

New Series: Deaf Studies and Sign Linguistics We are excited to be launching a brand new series: Deaf Studies and Sign Linguistics! In this post commissioning editor, Rosie, explains the series’ beginnings and what sort of research she&#…

This #InternationalDayofSignLanguages we're delighted to announce a brand new Multilingual Matters series - Deaf Studies and Sign Linguistics.

Read more about the series and find out how to submit a proposal for it here:

BAAL Language Policy group Welcome to the Language Policy special interest group of the British Association for Applied Linguistics. The Language Policy (LP) SIG provides a forum to discuss, critically engage with, and research...

Are you working on language policy?

Do you like Spain?

Then apply for the Language Policy Forum 2026 in Spain!

22-23 April, @ucm.es

Venue details, plenary speakers, abstract deadline and submission form on our website: langpol.ac.uk. Go go go! 👇

Trans rights are not the rights of a tiny minority, trans rights are everyone’s rights to self-determination, control of our bodies, and a society where opportunity and aesthetics are not restricted by sex assigned at birth

You should support and defend trans people because trans people are people

Thing is, to delete your account, you first have to log in, which requires accepting the awful new T&Cs.

BUT... it seems (best of both) you can just... leave your existing stuff there & just never log in again. Then your stuff remains just as (in)accessible and you don't sign your life away.

I used academia.edu for years because, though flawed, it was a way for scholars outside of EU and NA to access my papers. However, using my signature without my consent seems a bit too much even for me…

An authoritarian is someone who eats authors.

JYU English seminars - 2025-26 2025-26

📢📢Next up in the @uniofjyvaskyla.bsky.social English seminar series!📢📢

Mon 6 Oct 2025 at 16:00 EEST. Vlada Baranova, @uni-hamburg.de:

'Grassroots Initiative for Language Revitalization: Agency of Minority Speakers in Russia'

See the abstract & register here. 👇 Go go go!
r.jyu.fi/engseminars2...

A truck that has partially fallen into a river after the bridge below it collapsed.

How your email finds me.

Graph showing publication volumes for major academic publishers 2011-2020. Routledge's output was already the highest but still increased fivefold in that period.

Without comment on this specific book / authors, I would note Routledge was downgraded here in Finland for MASSIVELY increasing their publication volumes, apparently at expense of quality. I've also seen lots of anecdotes about declining editorial standards there.
julkaisufoorumi.fi/en/news/re-e...

Electronic road sign for a medical-dental center reads "FREE TEETH."

TEETH IS INNOCENT

Could be worse. A single key out of place spelling my name can leave me signing off as Fave, Save, Rave, and, of course -- since A is next to Caps Lock -- DaVE.

Have I done any or all of these? No comment.