Happy freshers arrival weekend in Cambridge! Remember when people say to you ‘it’s important to get used to the culture of Cambridge’ they mean ‘if you don’t sharpen up your spatial awareness immediately you’re going to be run over by a bike.’
#cambridge #university

Language folks: help me coin a neologism, or tell me if this word already exists? I think a factor in the uptake of AI is that a lot of people have been taught to respect text as an artefact. A text that is long and detailed, perhaps with headings, is automatically seen as a thing that (1/n)

I often work with people studying machine learning, and have recently branched out to AI. And the quality of work is so different: basic instructions not being followed; submitted code that doesn’t run and has easy fixes eg incorrectly named variables. There’s an easy point to be made here, but 1/n

I read this yesterday and I hadn’t noticed and I’m still angry. How are people naming products this oblivious? (And I know the answer.)

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders?

Not only can basically no university lecturers or school teachers write a good exam, almost none of them can define in any detail what ‘a good exam’ means.

Words I want to exist 2: when a view is so magnificent that your awe at its beauty gets overtaken by an illogical sense of offence that nature can be so ridiculously extravagant. I suggest scener-rage /‘si:nəreɪʤ/
(with love to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.)

I absolutely love this poem by @holliemcnish.bsky.social – 5 in 6 boys think Andrew Tate is a prick

The best set of neologisms I’ve seen in a long time. Chatsident and GPTune are going straight into my vocabulary. #ai #linguistics

open.substack.com/pub/daviddun...

I think we can spare this one.

news.goodable.co/880714?utm_s...

I spoke to some international human rights lawyers at the weekend and found it clarifying. Here’s my notes - they agree with what you’re saying - organisations can still be trans-inclusive.

docs.google.com/document/d/e...

My husband has taught human reproduction and development to the Cambridge medics for over three decades. When people start banging on about "only two biological sexes" he starts with "which sex: genetic, hormonal, or gonadal"?

Biological sex is not binary. www.scientificamerican.com/article/sex-...

I’ve found it. The holy grail of social media. The account that should be followed by absolutely everyone of every background. @owlsintowels.org

Something that’s been bugging me for about a decade is that we don’t talk more about class as part of intersectional identity. It’s very easy to other people from minorities, but the majority of people are working class. There are lots of people who otherwise feel attacked in DEI conversations (1/2)

The world is a more equitable place for women in their 20s and 30s than it was for their mothers 🙌
Which do you rank most highly?

Just had a stay at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, and I’m in awe at how kind everyone was. Nurses, porters, radiographers, HCAs, doctors, all totally committed to helping me in the most human of ways to get through my fear, pain and illness. I heard a lot of criticism from wardmates, and of course 1/2

Of all the skills I thought my generation would be the last to have, I never considered ‘flushing a faulty toilet’. But I’ve taught it to three people so far this week.

Words I want to exist (with love to the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows): the feeling when, after spending time with one of the other physical manifestations of your soul, you leave and fall back into only being one consciousness. Gemisyncopy? Dimimorte?
#language