Pavel Iosad
@anghyflawn.net
Linguist | Cànanaiche @schoolofppls.bsky.social. Migrant | Neach-imrich: 🇷🇺➡️🇳🇴➡️NI➡️🏴. Tin whistle tragic | Droch-chluicheadair na fìdeige. 🇺🇦.
Pinned
Pavel Iosad
@anghyflawn.net
· Apr 14
Phonological Drift and Language Contact | Phonetics and phonology
www.cambridge.org
My soon-to-come book with @cambup-linguistics.bsky.social now has a page with a cover and everything! It’s been almost a decade working on it, and more than that in some form, but it’s finally almost here. 🧵 www.cambridge.org/gb/universit...
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
No matter how tough you say times are, there’s always enough money in the banana stand to pay an external consultant to scope ‘academic efficiency opportunities’ www.theferret.scot/consultancy-...
‘Nousferatu’: the notorious consultancy advising Edinburgh uni amid 'huge' cuts
Scotland’s largest university has turned to Nous Group at the same time as it is making savings that could lead to nearly 2,000 job losses. Staff say they were misled about the extent of its work.
www.theferret.scot
November 30, 2025 at 9:44 AM
No matter how tough you say times are, there’s always enough money in the banana stand to pay an external consultant to scope ‘academic efficiency opportunities’ www.theferret.scot/consultancy-...
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
The “protection, skills and study route” looks like a move to cherry-pick the refugees who look economically useful while driving the rest away. Rather like the post-war trawl of refugee camps for workers, while abandoning the most vulnerable.
November 17, 2025 at 7:33 PM
The “protection, skills and study route” looks like a move to cherry-pick the refugees who look economically useful while driving the rest away. Rather like the post-war trawl of refugee camps for workers, while abandoning the most vulnerable.
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
“Four years ago, we suffered an earlier redundancy programme that we were told would secure the future of the university. That clearly was not true."
#UKHE
www.leicester.news/university-o...
#UKHE
www.leicester.news/university-o...
University of Leicester moves forward with plans to cut 150 jobs
A 'large number of staff' across several schools could be impacted
www.leicester.news
November 5, 2025 at 8:02 AM
“Four years ago, we suffered an earlier redundancy programme that we were told would secure the future of the university. That clearly was not true."
#UKHE
www.leicester.news/university-o...
#UKHE
www.leicester.news/university-o...
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
Naomi is I think bang on here. I have said many times to many people that AI is like any other technology shift: it changes jobs and how we work. Naomi builds on that (and expresses it much better), and lands on "learn the skill of discernment". Do read this.
I wrote this yesterday about what to tell young people who are worried about what work will be in the age of AI:
naomialderman.substack.com/p/preparing-...
naomialderman.substack.com/p/preparing-...
preparing for the working world in the age of AI
or: seven things to tell your kids when they ask what they should study now, or what the point of studying is
naomialderman.substack.com
November 4, 2025 at 9:47 AM
Naomi is I think bang on here. I have said many times to many people that AI is like any other technology shift: it changes jobs and how we work. Naomi builds on that (and expresses it much better), and lands on "learn the skill of discernment". Do read this.
Why Edinburgh needs proper cycle infrastructure and can’t rely on railway paths.
Cycling from Meadowbank to Polwarth on a dark, windy, wet evening. I’m a confident, experienced cyclist but I didn’t fancy either the wind on exposed Regent Rd or the goodwill of drivers in Princes St and Lothian Rd.
Cycling from Meadowbank to Polwarth on a dark, windy, wet evening. I’m a confident, experienced cyclist but I didn’t fancy either the wind on exposed Regent Rd or the goodwill of drivers in Princes St and Lothian Rd.
November 3, 2025 at 6:50 PM
Why Edinburgh needs proper cycle infrastructure and can’t rely on railway paths.
Cycling from Meadowbank to Polwarth on a dark, windy, wet evening. I’m a confident, experienced cyclist but I didn’t fancy either the wind on exposed Regent Rd or the goodwill of drivers in Princes St and Lothian Rd.
Cycling from Meadowbank to Polwarth on a dark, windy, wet evening. I’m a confident, experienced cyclist but I didn’t fancy either the wind on exposed Regent Rd or the goodwill of drivers in Princes St and Lothian Rd.
There is a certain type of person proudly belonging to what they called the ‘scientific-technological intelligentsia’ in the Soviet Union, which can read very positively (as in the Strugatskys’ Monday Starts on Saturday) but can also be negatively polarised into… well, this
Nothing can prepare you for the factual basis behind this 'wokeness gone too far' anecdote.
October 29, 2025 at 10:35 AM
There is a certain type of person proudly belonging to what they called the ‘scientific-technological intelligentsia’ in the Soviet Union, which can read very positively (as in the Strugatskys’ Monday Starts on Saturday) but can also be negatively polarised into… well, this
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
Damn, if only 'hard men of Gondor' with their hollowed out, atrophying state, obsessed with the glories of the past and which was only saved from defeat by the actions of those it claimed to protect, could teach us anything...
October 29, 2025 at 10:20 AM
Damn, if only 'hard men of Gondor' with their hollowed out, atrophying state, obsessed with the glories of the past and which was only saved from defeat by the actions of those it claimed to protect, could teach us anything...
Very good and normal!
Literally one of the greatest soft power brands on planet earth driven into the ground by successive British governments that embrace failure, decline and irrelevance.
on.ft.com/3Wq1XIT
on.ft.com/3Wq1XIT
British Council ‘selling everything it can’ to survive
Cultural body plans more job cuts, sale of assets and closure in 35 countries to stave off ‘financial peril’
on.ft.com
October 28, 2025 at 11:35 PM
Very good and normal!
Big school is exactly right, and is ultimately the source of the rot. Academics think they’re there to produce new knowledge and transmit it, *along with how to generate it*, to perpetuate the cycle; everyone else thinks they’re there to teach bigger school.
'Proposals to reform assessment and the way teaching quality is measured risk standardising university curricula and treating institutions like big schools, critics have warned.'
'Big schools' does rather appear to sum up DfS's conception of universities, sadly. 1/3
'Big schools' does rather appear to sum up DfS's conception of universities, sadly. 1/3
Risk of ‘standardisation’ as ministers mull progression measures
Universities would look to ‘game’ new metric for testing learning gain, critics warn, with external examination defended as ‘best we’ve got’
www.timeshighereducation.com
October 27, 2025 at 8:11 AM
Big school is exactly right, and is ultimately the source of the rot. Academics think they’re there to produce new knowledge and transmit it, *along with how to generate it*, to perpetuate the cycle; everyone else thinks they’re there to teach bigger school.
Completely insane but an inevitable consequence of ‘benefit fraud crackdown means act first, mop up later, ideally not at all’ and the usual ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and oh wasn’t there something else? it’ll come to me I’m sure’
NI parents caught in UK crackdown lose child benefit after travelling via Dublin
NI parents caught in UK crackdown lose child benefit after travelling via Dublin
Exclusive: new anti-fraud system fails to account for fact many return to country via airport in Irish capital
Parents in Northern Ireland have had their child support payments stopped as part of the UK government’s crackdown on alleged benefit fraud simply because they returned from a holiday via Dublin airport.
So far 346 families have had their benefits frozen, an investigation by NI online newspaper, the Detail, shared with the Guardian, has discovered. Continue reading...
www.theguardian.com
October 26, 2025 at 9:57 AM
Completely insane but an inevitable consequence of ‘benefit fraud crackdown means act first, mop up later, ideally not at all’ and the usual ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and oh wasn’t there something else? it’ll come to me I’m sure’
Timeline cleanse.
October 21, 2025 at 10:33 PM
Timeline cleanse.
Child benefit, which is available to people earning well above her ‘contribute more than you cost’ boundary, is also sponging off the state apparently! Jesus Christ.
Here Lam explicitly sets out her proposal - which is official Conservative Party policy - to deport long-standing legal permanent residents who have *ever* claimed any benefit, including the state pension or child benefit (even if the child is British), or who earn less than £39K.
October 21, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Child benefit, which is available to people earning well above her ‘contribute more than you cost’ boundary, is also sponging off the state apparently! Jesus Christ.
Did the thing, with the aid of nurse Vlad from Homiel. Maybe that’s enough contribution to not get kicked out?
October 21, 2025 at 4:46 PM
Did the thing, with the aid of nurse Vlad from Homiel. Maybe that’s enough contribution to not get kicked out?
Who are these people who come here and take more than they give? *goose meme*
“We welcome those who come to this country, legally, and give more than they take. We believe the right to stay here must not be automatic, but that those who play their part should be able to earn that right."
October 21, 2025 at 10:32 AM
Who are these people who come here and take more than they give? *goose meme*
Fascinated by the idea that the difference between someone she would kick out (with tears of great personal sympathy in her eyes) and someone she has a sacred duty to is the ability to pay a naturalisation fee (currently £1,605). Seems cheap for a sacred duty.
Lam has heard the charge that retrospective breaches of past promises to deport those who played by the rules are unfair.
She accepts it is unfair & has "great personal sympathy" for those she will unfairly deport.
She says she believes that fairness should apply to British citizens "alone"
She accepts it is unfair & has "great personal sympathy" for those she will unfairly deport.
She says she believes that fairness should apply to British citizens "alone"
October 19, 2025 at 10:15 AM
Fascinated by the idea that the difference between someone she would kick out (with tears of great personal sympathy in her eyes) and someone she has a sacred duty to is the ability to pay a naturalisation fee (currently £1,605). Seems cheap for a sacred duty.
Real talk, ProQuest now has AI summaries of dissertations on by default and every one of them I’ve seen has been in the bad space where it’s not in-depth enough for me, so I have to look at the text anyway, but entirely cryptic for a student not au fait with the stuff already. Who is this for?
I've received an 'exclusive' invite to try Nature's new 'research assistant', which will burn down a forest to provide a 'summary of the paper' I'm reading and I have SUCH exciting news for them, that's called an 'abstract' and the actual authors already wrote it for me, no forest-burning required.
October 17, 2025 at 7:59 PM
Real talk, ProQuest now has AI summaries of dissertations on by default and every one of them I’ve seen has been in the bad space where it’s not in-depth enough for me, so I have to look at the text anyway, but entirely cryptic for a student not au fait with the stuff already. Who is this for?
A-Level English is not an ESOL qualification, what are they even talking about.
October 14, 2025 at 1:28 PM
A-Level English is not an ESOL qualification, what are they even talking about.
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
Nicely put @kscanne.bsky.social! But boy do I hate things being worse than you thought they were ☹️ www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...
How AI and Wikipedia have sent vulnerable languages into a doom spiral
Machine translators have made it easier than ever to create error-plagued Wikipedia articles in obscure languages. What happens when AI models get trained on junk pages?
www.technologyreview.com
October 11, 2025 at 4:30 PM
Nicely put @kscanne.bsky.social! But boy do I hate things being worse than you thought they were ☹️ www.technologyreview.com/2025/09/25/1...
Completely correct. The UK assessment (and reassessment) system is a ratchet that ruins the lives of students that can’t keep up with the expected pace for any reason, and everyone pretends this is normal.
NEW on Wonkhe: What looks like efficiency in UK higher education often masks systemic injustice. Jim Dickinson explores how policies around reassessment quietly entrench inequality buff.ly/89mzFbe
October 10, 2025 at 6:21 AM
Completely correct. The UK assessment (and reassessment) system is a ratchet that ruins the lives of students that can’t keep up with the expected pace for any reason, and everyone pretends this is normal.
Curious case of context collapse. There is definitely stuff going on with attention, which, not being a literature academic, I can’t speak to in a very informed way. But the piece being cited is actually only tangentially about that, it’s about ‘[British] uni’s not what it used to be’.
October 4, 2025 at 6:07 PM
Curious case of context collapse. There is definitely stuff going on with attention, which, not being a literature academic, I can’t speak to in a very informed way. But the piece being cited is actually only tangentially about that, it’s about ‘[British] uni’s not what it used to be’.
In a Sofia pub… good beer, and these here horseradish crisps totally slap. What a concept.
September 30, 2025 at 6:48 PM
In a Sofia pub… good beer, and these here horseradish crisps totally slap. What a concept.
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
"The conditions that migrants will have to meet to gain indefinite leave to remain include being in work" then this is fundamentally - among other things - another attack on family visas. coming to the uk on a spouse visa means work is *not a requirement of entry*, so will labour be changing that?
Labour unveils ‘good citizen’ test for migrants seeking settlement
Foreign nationals will need to work, pay tax, volunteer and speak fluent English to qualify for settlement under Labour’s tougher rules
www.thetimes.com
September 28, 2025 at 11:12 PM
"The conditions that migrants will have to meet to gain indefinite leave to remain include being in work" then this is fundamentally - among other things - another attack on family visas. coming to the uk on a spouse visa means work is *not a requirement of entry*, so will labour be changing that?
Reposted by Pavel Iosad
Think I've just had my first encounter with LLM-fabricated language data. Some Indonesian paper mill journal just published a paper containing completely fabricated Siwi data, citing me as the source.
(It could have been made up by a human, but it looks like what you get when you ask ChatGPT.)
(It could have been made up by a human, but it looks like what you get when you ask ChatGPT.)
September 22, 2025 at 8:29 AM
Think I've just had my first encounter with LLM-fabricated language data. Some Indonesian paper mill journal just published a paper containing completely fabricated Siwi data, citing me as the source.
(It could have been made up by a human, but it looks like what you get when you ask ChatGPT.)
(It could have been made up by a human, but it looks like what you get when you ask ChatGPT.)
Looking forward to years of Discourse from people who don’t understand the first thing about naturalisation, dual citizenship and other such things.
September 21, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Looking forward to years of Discourse from people who don’t understand the first thing about naturalisation, dual citizenship and other such things.
One of the surest signals of complete disconnection from reality in this ~fascinating~ piece is the idea of a ‘university focused on modern languages’ in a marketised system. I’m pro modern languages but has the writer met British schooling, British parents, or British 18 year olds?
Britain’s zombie universities should put Schumpeter on the syllabus on.ft.com/46tIQC1 | opinion
Britain’s zombie universities should put Schumpeter on the syllabus
It’s time to borrow from the corporate crib sheets — and if all else fails, creative destruction is a force for good
on.ft.com
September 21, 2025 at 10:10 AM
One of the surest signals of complete disconnection from reality in this ~fascinating~ piece is the idea of a ‘university focused on modern languages’ in a marketised system. I’m pro modern languages but has the writer met British schooling, British parents, or British 18 year olds?