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lingprof.bsky.social
LingProf
@lingprof.bsky.social
730 followers 1K following 160 posts
Supporting democracy defenders. 🇺🇦 💙 And nerdy academics. Preferably both simultaneously.
#DueProcess #speechscience #science #BoolaBoola #✌🏻#vaccineswork

The people who ban books are NEVER the 'good guys.'
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justinwolfers.bsky.social
It's too easy to be distracted by the economic story of the day. The more important story is of our system fraying: The rule of law is decaying, Bribery spreading, crony capitalism normalized. It won’t show up in next quarter’s data, but when our kids try to build their lives.
November 15, 2025 at 5:46 PM
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rtommccoy.bsky.social
🤖🧠I'll be considering applications for PhD students & postdocs to start at Yale in Fall 2026!

If you are interested in the intersection of linguistics, cognitive science, & AI, I encourage you to apply!

PhD link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_...
Postdoc link: rtmccoy.com/prospective_...
Top: A syntax tree for the sentence "the doctor by the lawyer saw the artist". Bottom: A continuous vector.
November 14, 2025 at 4:40 PM
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jessicacalarco.com
We have progressed from data collection to data analysis.
My 11-year-old sitting with her pile of Halloween candy, sorting it into a bar graph
November 1, 2025 at 12:31 AM
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coloradofoic.bsky.social
"Anythink Libraries, which serves residents in Adams County, is launching free access to roughly 300 banned and challenged titles and documents for anyone in the state."
Coloradans will soon have free access to banned books via their smartphones
The new Freedom to Read Collection will be available for free to anyone over the age of 13 through the Palace Project app — no library card required. The app's arrival also comes as litigation over a ...
www.cpr.org
October 3, 2025 at 2:43 PM
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apnews.com
More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year.
Anti-science bills hit statehouses, stripping away public health protections built over a century
More than 420 anti-science bills attacking longstanding public health protections – vaccines, milk safety and fluoride – have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S. this year.
bit.ly
October 25, 2025 at 8:00 PM
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aclu.org
BREAKING: A court ordered the Department of Defense to stop censoring educational materials discussing race and gender in schools on military bases.

Books removed from the schools must be returned to the shelves immediately.
October 20, 2025 at 7:35 PM
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politico.com
California will start selling low-cost insulin in January, becoming the first state to bypass Big Pharma with its own supply of the expensive drug.
In shot across Big Pharma's bow, California will sell its own insulin
Delivery of the state-branded drug makes good on a longstanding promise by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
www.politico.com
October 16, 2025 at 3:58 PM
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sherylnyt.bsky.social
FULL STORY HERE: Emails began flooding CDC inboxes late Friday night announcing dozens of layoffs. HR people brought back from furlough to oversee the RIFs. Disease detectives, entire Washington office, global health, injury prevention, MMWR staff among those hit.
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/11/u...
Trump Administration Lays Off Dozens of C.D.C. Officials
www.nytimes.com
October 11, 2025 at 4:49 AM
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lenasun.bsky.social
Among other RIF notices at CDC:
—Center for Forecasting and Analytics;
—all of CDC Washington
—Office of Human Resources
—National Center for Injury Prevention and Control 3/4
October 11, 2025 at 12:49 PM
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lenasun.bsky.social
NEW: @CDCgov hit hard by massive firings that several staff describe to me as a “bloodbath.”
Among those RIFd:
—leadership of the center for immunization and respiratory diseases;
—leadership of global health center
—leadership of the measles outbreak response; 1/4
October 11, 2025 at 12:49 PM
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jeffroushwriting.bsky.social
For Monday of Banned Books Week, we explore the Comstock Acts, enacted in 1873 and 1909. While we tend to think of this federal law today in terms of efforts to restrict access to birth control and abortion medications, they originally targeted literature as well. (Thread)
KFF Donate Q What Are the Origins of the Comstock Act? In 1873 - at the behest of anti-vice crusader, Anthony Comstock - Congress enacted a law banning the interstate mailing and receiving of "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" writings, or "any article or thing designed or intended for the prevention of conception or procuring an abortion." In 1909, Congress enacted a similar law banning the use of express company or common carrier (such as FedEx or UPS) to mail "any drug, medicine, article, or thing designed, adapted, or intended for preventing conception or producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use." These laws came to be known collectively as the Comstock Act. The scope of what constituted obscene or lewd material was far broader at the time, and in the late 1800s and early 1900s, the Comstock Act was used to prosecute a wide array of violations. How the Comstock Act became inactive for books • Passed in 1873: The original Comstock Act made it illegal to send "obscene, lewd, or lascivious" materials through the U.S. mail, which was interpreted to cover a broad range of publications, including anatomy books and classic literature. • Obscenity standard narrowed: Over decades, court rulings progressively narrowed the scope of what is considered legally obscene, limiting the act's reach. Key Supreme Court decisions, including Roth v. United States (1957) and Miller v. California (1973), established a more precise definition of obscenity, making it much harder to prosecute the mailing of books. • Free speech protections: Subsequent First Amendment challenges further protected free speech rights, rendering the Comstock Act obsolete for censoring non-obscene publications. As a result, the mailing of most magazines and books is now considered common and legal. • Modern focus is different: Today, enforcement of the Comstock Act's obscenity provisions is focused almost exclusively on child and violent pornography.
October 7, 2025 at 2:22 AM
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mychal3ts.bsky.social
There have been two hosts in the history of Reading Rainbow. The Legend of Literacy, LeVar Burton! And... me, Mychal Threets, a librarian 🥹🤯

I am a reader, a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow made us believe and see we belong in books, we belong everywhere ✨

youtu.be/e7es7qdWVnU
Smiling Mychal with hands raised wears an outer space shirt in a library. It is a still from an episode of Reading Rainbow. LeVar Burton smiles with hands behind his head as he lies down on a colorful pile of books. ENEMY PIE book rests on his chest.
October 1, 2025 at 5:51 PM
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mychal3ts.bsky.social
🎶 Take a look, it's in a book 🎶

🥹 After nearly 20 years... Reading Rainbow is returning to motivate, help, and encourage kids to become avid readers with new episodes, new friends, new projects, and of course... new books! Make sure to follow the rainbow 📚🌈

#FollowTheRainbow
September 29, 2025 at 3:06 PM
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rasushrestha.bsky.social
🚨Turing Award winner Richard Sutton argues that LLMs are a dead end of sophisticated mimicry:

www.theneuron.ai/explainer-ar...

#AIsky #AI #LLMs
Mimicking Intelligence Isn't Achieving It So, at the heart of the conflict are two opposing paradigms: the data-hungry, imitation-based approach of LLMs and the experience-driven, goal-oriented world of Reinforcement Learning (RL). Sutton, a founding father of RL, argues that LLMs are about "mimicking people." They learn to predict what a human would say, not what will actually happen. Sutton’s critique cuts to the core of how learning happens, and his view is radically non-human-centric. He believes the fundamental principles of intelligence are shared across all goal-seeking animals, famously stating, "If we understood a squirrel, I think we'd be almost all the way there" to understanding human intelligence. The complex imitation and language we see in people, he argues, is just a "small veneer." The real learning process is evident when you consider a squirrel. It has innate goals: find nuts, navigate its environment, avoid predators. It doesn't learn to leap between treacherous branches by perfectly imitating a mentor or following instructions. It learns through a messy, high-stakes process of trial and error. Its own actions and their direct consequences—a safe landing or a dangerous fall—are the only feedback that matters. It is learning purely from the consequences of its interaction with the world. Sure, you might get some tips from your parents, but you eventually have to do it yourself (using procedural learning). LLMs, in Sutton's view, skip this essential step. They have no goals, no body, no direct experience. They are given a massive library of human-generated text and learn the patterns. This makes them incapable of being "surprised" by a real-world outcome that violates their predictions, which is the very mechanism of true learning. Observe the world, make a guess, take an action, get feedback, update world view, figure out what went wrong, make new guess, take new action, judge results. Did you get rewarded or no? Rinse and repeat.
October 2, 2025 at 12:34 AM
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lytagold.bsky.social
this is a relatively new and bizarre argument in the history of book bans btw—conservatives have rarely if ever operated from the position that libraries are “government speech” (?) they’ve almost always argued on the grounds of obscenity and the public good
October 1, 2025 at 8:59 PM
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penamerica.bsky.social
U.S. Faces ‘Expanded and Escalated’ Book Censorship, PEN America Reports www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/... via @publisherswkly.bsky.social
U.S. Faces ‘Expanded and Escalated’ Book Censorship, PEN America Reports
PEN America has released its annual report on the book banning crisis in K–12 public schools, naming the top five most banned titles and authors. PEN found censorship increasingly routine; Florida, Te...
www.publishersweekly.com
October 1, 2025 at 4:39 PM
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unitedhumanists.bsky.social
Read more: www.facebook.com/share/p/1F6K...
October 1, 2025 at 1:43 PM
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cbchang.bsky.social
It's ✨ academic job application season ✨ & I hope you'll consider applying for and/or spreading the word about CityU's ongoing search for faculty in computational linguistics, psycho-/neurolinguistics, & experimental linguistics: open-rank and rolling!

www.cityu.edu.hk/hro/en/job/c...

#langsky 🐦🐦
CityU's logo with tagline: "Innovating into the Future"
September 28, 2025 at 1:54 PM
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napaaqtuk.bsky.social
Comment period ends on Monday for a proposed rule change that would terminate student visas after 4 years. It also puts limits on exchange visitors and reps of foreign media, and shortens the length of time at the end of the visa from 60 days to 30 days.

www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...
Establishing a Fixed Time Period of Admission and an Extension of Stay Procedure for Nonimmigrant Academic Students, Exchange Visitors, and Representatives of Foreign Information Media
Unlike most nonimmigrant classifications, which are admitted for a fixed time period, aliens in the F (academic student), J (exchange visitor), and most I (representatives of foreign information media...
www.federalregister.gov
September 27, 2025 at 12:18 PM
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alexwild.bsky.social
NSF GRFP is out, but they’ve unexpectedly made 2nd year students ineligible.
giantmolecular.cloud dr℮w @giantmolecular.cloud · Sep 26
It does seem like they have barred 2nd year graduate students from applying. This is devastating, I've been preparing my applications materials for MONTHS and now they all have to get binned...
This means individuals in the following statuses at the time of application are eligible: Undergraduate in the final (senior) year of a bachelor’s degree program Bachelor’s degree-holder with NO enrollment in a graduate degree program (non-degree graduate coursework allowed) Individual enrolled in a joint bachelor’s-master’s degree program with at least three undergraduate years completed First-year graduate student in their first graduate degree program with less than one academic year completed in the degree program (according to institution’s academic calendar) Individuals enrolled in joint bachelor’s-master’s degree programs are considered graduate students. For GRFP, joint bachelor’s-master’s degrees are defined as degrees concurrently pursued and awarded. Not be a current NSF employee.
September 26, 2025 at 4:41 PM
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lapubliclibrary.bsky.social
Due dates will be adjusted if the the rapture does indeed happen tomorrow
September 22, 2025 at 9:46 PM
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stevenstrogatz.com
The New York Times Learning Network is going to be publishing four lessons over the next four weeks on Tuesdays, based on my Math, Revealed series from a few months ago. Here's the first installment: www.nytimes.com/2025/09/16/l...
Teach Taxicab Geometry With Steven Strogatz and The New York Times
www.nytimes.com
September 16, 2025 at 4:13 PM
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javierapfeld.bsky.social
New cures feel sudden, but the seeds were planted decades ago by basic scientists.

Which seeds will turn into cures? Unpredictable looking forward, a straight line looking back. 🧪🧬 🧵
Huntington's disease successfully treated for first time
One of the most devastating diseases finally has a treatment that can slow its progression and transform lives, tearful doctors tell BBC.
www.bbc.com
September 25, 2025 at 1:39 AM
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erictopol.bsky.social
Great to see: The Vaccine integrity Project rolls out this week www.wsj.com/health/healt... @mtosterholm.bsky.social
The Doctors Building a Public-Health Universe Outside the Government
A growing contingent of physicians and policymakers are breaking away from federal health guidance under Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
www.wsj.com
September 24, 2025 at 3:13 AM
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weissmann.substack.com
What does this tell you about the Trump administration’s health policies? Everything.
luckytran.com Dr. Lucky Tran @luckytran.com · Sep 18
IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.

The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.
Map of Regional Public Health Coalitions Northeast Public Health Collaborative (Blue) West Coast Health Alliance (Yellow)
September 18, 2025 at 7:11 PM