Dinsdag verschijnt mijn boek 'Woord voor woord: de verleden tijd van taal'. Daarin vind je onder andere 70 grote infographics.

Vandaag is het tijd voor preview nr. 2: 'Een suikerreis':

Now I'm convinced. I'm replacing the thermostat housing on my ancient Audi. Of course, a little plastic doohickey broke off when I took it apart. And of course I can't find it on any parts diagrams. I have no idea what it's called so I can't look it up in the usual way. So I asked chatgpt. 1/2

great resource here from @ucbscholcomm.bsky.social: "Before you scrape and before you train…" update.lib.berkeley.edu/2025/09/02/b...

What is emergence? This is one of the most central ingredients of complexity, and a challenging one to formalize. Here's a paper by @seanmcarroll.bsky.social & Achyth Parola that attempts to classify different forms of emergence. @manlius.bsky.social @sfiscience.bsky.social arxiv.org/pdf/2410.15468

60,000+!

In my neighborhood yesterday #FuckICE

I warned about the Homework Apocalypse in 2023.

It happened roughly as expected. There is a world where AI & traditional education get along very well (mixes of active in-class learning, AI-assisted assignments & tutors, blue books), but it needs to be built. www.oneusefulthing.org/p/the-homewo...

As chair of a humanities department at a working class university, I feel this so hard...

I would gladly provide PhD-level services for $19,995/mo.

Of course it is not the most elite institutions with the most resources fighting back. It is those with the fewest resources who serve the most marginalized populations. For these institutions DEI is not an optional add-on but their entire mission.

Speaking of which: the largest public uni system in the US is facing collapse due to devastating (extremely blue) state budget cuts. Wish this got the same attention among fellow academics as how much Harvard skims off its $700 million in federal research funding. calmatters.org/education/hi...

Here's how stupid Trump thinks we are: he just dumped a bunch of valuable water from 2 federal flood control dams, wasting it into the Tulare Lake bed where it evaporates. None goes to LA, but he claims he's saving LA. Pissing on us and telling us it's raining.

Please share: Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California (CSU): "The Economics, Art History, Geology, Philosophy, Theater and Dance, Women and Gender Studies departments are slated for closure."
www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news...

People opining on LLMs, both pro and con, really need to go back and read some Malinowski.

Good news: I'm giving two talks at #LSA2025 in January!
Bad news: they've scheduled them back-to-back in two different sessions 😶

Anyone know how to get in touch with the organizers?