Nicole Holliday
@mixedlinguist.bsky.social
Assoc. Prof of Linguistics at Berkeley. Language, identity & prosody, esp. in politics & human-computer interaction. Trivia person, marathoner, coach. LA & the Bay! No one is illegal on stolen land. Views are my own.
https://nicolerholliday.wordpress.com
https://nicolerholliday.wordpress.com
WHOSE JOB, MOTHERFUCKERS?
October 27, 2025 at 12:37 AM
WHOSE JOB, MOTHERFUCKERS?
All day, Berkeley has been sending emails about what we should do if we or our students are unsafe. But apparently Zuckerberg waves a wand and we’re all supposed to breathe a sigh of relief. A disgusting display of corruption, and irrefutable proof that none of this is about “crime”.
October 23, 2025 at 6:56 PM
All day, Berkeley has been sending emails about what we should do if we or our students are unsafe. But apparently Zuckerberg waves a wand and we’re all supposed to breathe a sigh of relief. A disgusting display of corruption, and irrefutable proof that none of this is about “crime”.
This is just another higher ed hit piece, but I was dinged in my tenure case for not recording my classes. I don't record them for pedagogical reasons, but also because I don't want to go viral & receive death threats for saying that black people also deserve rights. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/u...
October 14, 2025 at 1:07 PM
This is just another higher ed hit piece, but I was dinged in my tenure case for not recording my classes. I don't record them for pedagogical reasons, but also because I don't want to go viral & receive death threats for saying that black people also deserve rights. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/u...
This is Reddit now, with the stupid “AI summary”, which is precisely the opposite of what people go to Reddit for. Thanks, I hate it 😡
September 19, 2025 at 5:58 PM
This is Reddit now, with the stupid “AI summary”, which is precisely the opposite of what people go to Reddit for. Thanks, I hate it 😡
People who went to grad school are incapable of making concise signs…we just wanna use too many damn words!
September 1, 2025 at 6:32 PM
People who went to grad school are incapable of making concise signs…we just wanna use too many damn words!
Begging someone to do a linguistic landscape study of the differences in signs between suburbs and cities. In Pasadena it’s always like “Protect national parks from oligarchs and kleptocracy” and in DTLA it’s always like “Fuck ICE” 😆.
Happy Labor Day!
Happy Labor Day!
September 1, 2025 at 6:14 PM
Begging someone to do a linguistic landscape study of the differences in signs between suburbs and cities. In Pasadena it’s always like “Protect national parks from oligarchs and kleptocracy” and in DTLA it’s always like “Fuck ICE” 😆.
Happy Labor Day!
Happy Labor Day!
This is a photo of me and Rocky in Columbia Heights in July 2020. We went to SO many parks that year; I did CrossFit outside almost every day for 6 months. And we never felt unsafe in DC until Jan 6, 2021.
August 26, 2025 at 2:15 AM
This is a photo of me and Rocky in Columbia Heights in July 2020. We went to SO many parks that year; I did CrossFit outside almost every day for 6 months. And we never felt unsafe in DC until Jan 6, 2021.
Who could’ve seen this coming!?
(Literally everyone who has ever researched “Speech AI”)
(Literally everyone who has ever researched “Speech AI”)
August 16, 2025 at 12:58 AM
Who could’ve seen this coming!?
(Literally everyone who has ever researched “Speech AI”)
(Literally everyone who has ever researched “Speech AI”)
Ooo a banner day over on TikTok, someone has unfollowed me because I am insufficiently politically neutral, in a time when the president tries to overturn the constitution daily.
Stay mad, Nazi apologizers!
Stay mad, Nazi apologizers!
August 14, 2025 at 1:44 AM
Ooo a banner day over on TikTok, someone has unfollowed me because I am insufficiently politically neutral, in a time when the president tries to overturn the constitution daily.
Stay mad, Nazi apologizers!
Stay mad, Nazi apologizers!
Cool work by @charlottevaughn.bsky.social describing different types of museum-based linguistic research, including @planetworddc.bsky.social, and reminding us that this work helps the community understand what scientists do!
August 2, 2025 at 10:07 PM
Cool work by @charlottevaughn.bsky.social describing different types of museum-based linguistic research, including @planetworddc.bsky.social, and reminding us that this work helps the community understand what scientists do!
Minnie Quartey Annan tells us about understanding the communities she worked with in DC, and shares some of the metrics that help us understand community concerns and points of entry for different neighborhoods.
August 2, 2025 at 9:40 PM
Minnie Quartey Annan tells us about understanding the communities she worked with in DC, and shares some of the metrics that help us understand community concerns and points of entry for different neighborhoods.
Essential work by @betsysneller.bsky.social on what sociolinguists owe to communities and how their team has implemented the principle of linguistic gratuity in their ongoing MI Diaries project!
August 2, 2025 at 5:43 PM
Essential work by @betsysneller.bsky.social on what sociolinguists owe to communities and how their team has implemented the principle of linguistic gratuity in their ongoing MI Diaries project!
Another reason humans are infinitely better than "AI": it can't keep up with language change. Urban Dictionary bests Gemini every time!
Gemini's definition of wireback:
The term "wireback" is not a recognized or established slang term. It's likely a misspelling or a misunderstanding of other terms
Gemini's definition of wireback:
The term "wireback" is not a recognized or established slang term. It's likely a misspelling or a misunderstanding of other terms
July 31, 2025 at 7:31 PM
Another reason humans are infinitely better than "AI": it can't keep up with language change. Urban Dictionary bests Gemini every time!
Gemini's definition of wireback:
The term "wireback" is not a recognized or established slang term. It's likely a misspelling or a misunderstanding of other terms
Gemini's definition of wireback:
The term "wireback" is not a recognized or established slang term. It's likely a misspelling or a misunderstanding of other terms
The other day, an interviewee told us that here in Memphis, some people call this place “K-Rodgers”. Linguistic innovation remains undefeated here!
July 14, 2025 at 12:49 PM
The other day, an interviewee told us that here in Memphis, some people call this place “K-Rodgers”. Linguistic innovation remains undefeated here!
Searched my photos for July 2024, and turns out I was very much alive, climbing a wall for my husband’s 40th birthday celebration!
July 13, 2025 at 3:04 AM
Searched my photos for July 2024, and turns out I was very much alive, climbing a wall for my husband’s 40th birthday celebration!
The media breathlessly covering Trump’s downfall, photo metaphor edition.
July 4, 2025 at 4:28 PM
The media breathlessly covering Trump’s downfall, photo metaphor edition.
Circumstances are bleak, but I was lucky to donate blood at the Red Cross today. No matter what else is happening, someone in the U.S. needs blood every 3 seconds. You may not be able to save democracy today, but you can save a life! And if you donate before 7/15, you get these cool Goodrs!
July 4, 2025 at 12:35 AM
Circumstances are bleak, but I was lucky to donate blood at the Red Cross today. No matter what else is happening, someone in the U.S. needs blood every 3 seconds. You may not be able to save democracy today, but you can save a life! And if you donate before 7/15, you get these cool Goodrs!
A major danger of LLMs is that humans are SO predisposed to attribute knowledge to any entity that uses natural language fluently. We cannot imagine that a machine that outputs natural-seeming speech/text doesn't have cognition. Brilliantly articulated by @emilymbender.bsky.social et al. (2021).
![Text generated by an LM is not grounded in communicative intent, any model of the world, or any model of the reader’s state of mind. It can’t have been, because the training data never included sharing thoughts with a listener, nor does the machine have the ability to do that. This can seem counter-intuitive given the increasingly fluent qualities of automatically generated text, but we have to account for the fact that our perception of natural language text, regardless of how it was generated, is mediated by our own linguistic competence and our predisposition to interpret communicative acts as conveying coherent meaning and intent, whether or not they do [89, 140].”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:uj2g526vwfe3qnpuskjexeyp/bafkreiappchidtcrrumnegykz4uq6chvznuu6fg4pbutw5y7yjaab2iczu@jpeg)
June 17, 2025 at 3:33 PM
A major danger of LLMs is that humans are SO predisposed to attribute knowledge to any entity that uses natural language fluently. We cannot imagine that a machine that outputs natural-seeming speech/text doesn't have cognition. Brilliantly articulated by @emilymbender.bsky.social et al. (2021).
A totally peaceful day in DTLA and suddenly they’ve declared unlawful assembly because the cops got bored and started tear gassing people. Disgusting.
June 15, 2025 at 12:10 AM
A totally peaceful day in DTLA and suddenly they’ve declared unlawful assembly because the cops got bored and started tear gassing people. Disgusting.
Saw a sign at a protest today in Pasadena that made me want to cry. These are the kids the government is terrorizing.
“Para mi padre que llegó sin nada y me dió todo”.
“For my father who came with nothing and gave me everything”.
“Para mi padre que llegó sin nada y me dió todo”.
“For my father who came with nothing and gave me everything”.
June 13, 2025 at 1:43 AM
Saw a sign at a protest today in Pasadena that made me want to cry. These are the kids the government is terrorizing.
“Para mi padre que llegó sin nada y me dió todo”.
“For my father who came with nothing and gave me everything”.
“Para mi padre que llegó sin nada y me dió todo”.
“For my father who came with nothing and gave me everything”.
They called us hysterical when we said they were Nazis. Now they’re unapologetically doing Nazi stuff and using their exact language. We were just telling the truth.
![Wikipedia: Remigration is a far-right European concept of ethnic cleansing! via the mass deportation or promoted voluntary return of non-white immigrants and their descendants, usually including those born in Europe, to their place of racial ancestry, often with no regard for their citizenship or legal status. 21[31 It is popular especially within the Identitarian movement. 14]
[51 Some proponents of remigration suggest excluding some persons with non-European background from such a mass deportation, based on a varyingly-defined degree of assimilation into European culture. (61[7][8]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:uj2g526vwfe3qnpuskjexeyp/bafkreif6vondg4xdhso5pqcvn5rozirrqhgtwsoigr4z2kz3dideaoa67m@jpeg)
June 11, 2025 at 10:28 PM
They called us hysterical when we said they were Nazis. Now they’re unapologetically doing Nazi stuff and using their exact language. We were just telling the truth.
Los Angeles is full of peaceful people who simply want all of our children to be returned to us. All children deserve an education and a chance to grow up with their families. #GodmothersoftheDisappeared @cluejustice
June 10, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Los Angeles is full of peaceful people who simply want all of our children to be returned to us. All children deserve an education and a chance to grow up with their families. #GodmothersoftheDisappeared @cluejustice
Trump deployed the National Guard because protestors in LA were…buying bacon-wrapped hot dogs!?
June 8, 2025 at 11:32 PM
Trump deployed the National Guard because protestors in LA were…buying bacon-wrapped hot dogs!?
Best sign I saw today: Los Angeles is in Spanish for a reason. The only people ruining the city are the gestapo kidnapping our neighbors.
June 8, 2025 at 10:29 PM
Best sign I saw today: Los Angeles is in Spanish for a reason. The only people ruining the city are the gestapo kidnapping our neighbors.
Let me be clear. I’m going to a protest to protect the rights of my neighbors who have been kidnapped without due process by the government. But also, I ran a marathon relay in Griffith Park this morning. LA is by no means a “war zone”; don’t buy the propaganda!
June 8, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Let me be clear. I’m going to a protest to protect the rights of my neighbors who have been kidnapped without due process by the government. But also, I ran a marathon relay in Griffith Park this morning. LA is by no means a “war zone”; don’t buy the propaganda!