Stefan Diemer

Advent season can be wonderful if you disregard the shopping frenzy and the end-of-year social circuit. I like the sense of contemplation and the contrast of the growing light and the dark outside. Advent calendars and wreaths have a long tradition here. On that note, a peaceful second advent!🌲⭐️

Here, it’s mostly churches - our (Protestant) town church had a beautiful harvest display: sheaves of wheat, apples, grapes, and (less glamorous, but regionally accurate) potatoes, leek, several types of cabbages, pumpkins & maize. Also, a large loaf of bread with “Danke” written upon it in flour

Thanksgiving is not a holiday in Saarland, but with ‘Erntedank’ we have a similar, if less secular, tradition celebrated in early October, in time for the Apple harvest in our region. Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃🌾🍎

This week brought the first snow of the season ❄️

The shape of things to come 🌲

Winter may be coming, but everything is better with ice cream from the best gelateria in town. Today, Lemon 🍋 and amazing Mozartkugel 🎼 from Passione del Gelato 🍨 🍁🍂

Finally made it to Kartoffelheld, the newest addition to our town‘s culinary landscape 😋🥔 Great food/superhero-themed menu - my „Bratblitz Würstenwind” loaded potato went perfectly with the late autumn vibes outside 🍂🍁

Science Night at the Environmental Campus! 🌛 Looking forward to seeing what our research fellows were up to! Agroforests for the climate 🌳 product liability ⚖️ 3D printing ⚙️ & why working with NGOs can make good economic sense 💶 - a tour de force through our disciplines 🎓

St Martin is back on this damp and chilly early November evening: horseback centurion in red cloak, kids with self-made lanterns, a brass band, and a huge bonfire in the old town 🎺🔥

Turns out Helsinki was voted as the host of the next International Conference on #Multimodality in 2027!

Thanks to @neous.bsky.social & the team for a fantastic #12ICOM and see you @helsinki.fi!

Look out for a call for papers next summer!

After a rainy week and a frosty morning Halloween surprises with some hazy sunshine in time for the All Hallows weekend 🎃 This calls for some extended summer vibes with lemon and Mon Chéri ice cream from La Passione del Gelato - best in town! 😋🍦

Is it a good or a bad thing that nothing much has changed here in the more that 30 years since I was a student? Now for my Sociolinguistics lecture I take some time to appreciate the splendid 50s design, including the quaint cubicle where the lecturers can get in the zone 😄🎓

Autumn colours 🍁

More apple picking (for storage), with an interested equine audience 🐴 All heritage varieties (from top): ‚Grüner Boskoop‘, (green, tasty & durable), ‚Kaiser Wilhelm‘ (sweet, traces of raspberry), ‚Roter Boskoop‘, (red) ‚Goldrenette von Blenheim‘ (complex, spicy taste) 🍎🍏🍎

Busy day making apple juice in the local apple press run by the town’s Orchard and Gardening Co-op. Apples are washed and pressed, the juice pasteurised (we keep some raw juice back for cider-making 🍺), then filled into 5 litre bags. 500 litres should last a while! 🍎🍏🍎

Apple harvest on Unity Day weekend ⛅️ Record crop this year, with almost 1000 kg for juice alone (our 80-year old trees carry amazingly tasty heritage varieties such as ‚Rheinischer Bohnapfel’ and ‚Kaiser Wilhelm‘), and half the trees still ripe for storage apple picking 🍎🍏🍎

At the local Amtsgericht (county court) today, built in 1912 when our town was a county seat in the Imperial Prussian Province of the Rhine. Admiring the grand architecture while waiting. A bit of a daunting atmosphere (intentionally, I think) but nice to see it still in use ⚖️🏛️

After our very succesful Corpus Linguistics 2025 conference hosted by @robbielove.org at Aston, CL is going on tour! Our next conference will be Easter 2027 in Hong Kong at HK Poly U. In summer 2029 we return to Europe when @michamahlberg.bsky.social will host CL at Erlangen!

Harvest is bountiful this year, with zucchini still going strong 🥒, hops ready for collection 🍺, and grapes 🍇 and apples 🍎 picking up that extra sweetness during the last warm days ⛅️

September, and the parish fair has come to town - also a timely reminder that summer is drawing to a close 🎡🍦🎠

Second call for papers for Digital P(a)lates: The Language of Online Food Practices at FU Berlin. Abstracts due October 1 #LanguageAndFood #CulinaryLinguistics

Lecture hall full of people

#ISLE8 opening about to start in this beautiful room of the university 🤩

Alas! no ISLE for me this year - thanks for keeping everybody in the loop back home! 🎓📚🐚

Haying done in the apple orchard, just in time before the weather turns autumnal 🍎🌂

Late summer in the apple orchard - looks to be a good harvest! 🍎🍏🍎 Summer apples Gravensteiner & James Grieve (lower left) are ready for apple pie and cider, autumn Kaiser Wilhelm & Croncels (upper left) still very tart, winter Boskop red & green (right) coming along nicely

Summer days 🌦️ Walk through old town and garden: Japanese rose (Ger. Apfelrose, „apple rose“, after the rosehips - in Japanese, similarly, hamanashi, „beach pear“), chicory (Ger. Wegwarte, „way marker“), and the glorious sunflower (unsurprisingly, Sonnenblume)🌻

The rainy weather has been good for the berry garden: redcurrant (Ger. Johannisbeere, ripe around St. John‘s Day), gooseberry (well-named Stachelbeere „sting berry“), raspberry (Himbeere „hind‘s berry“). All perfect for the summer dish Rote Grütze (berry porridge) - try it! 🍓🥣

Ready, set, go!
Pascual’s promising talk is live now!
#CL2025

At the final #CL2025 plenary, @perez-paredes.bsky.social encourages us to not think of either or AI & corpus linguistics but making the best of both worlds, highlighting e.g. the integration of LLMs into English-corpora.org www.english-corpora.org/ai-llms/

Final day of #cl2025. AI is a big topic today...