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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us])

@asayeed.bsky.social
404 followers 107 following 551 posts

Thought leader, whose main act of thought leadership is to declare myself thought leader. Computational psycholinguist at the University of Gothenburg.

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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
apparently the mastodon svr I'm on isn't being well-maintained and therefore has a lot of spam accounts. What's a server that (a) has a silly and short name (b) is well-connected (c) still not too aggressive about defederation etc so that we can still participate/observe drama and trainwrecks?
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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 21/06/2026
‘Father’ and ‘dad’ are synonyms. ‘Figure’ and ‘bod’ are synonyms. But, a ‘father figure’ and a ‘dad bod’ aren’t exactly the same thing…
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ACL Rolling Review (ARR) @aclrollingreview.bsky.social · 20/06/2026
📢 ARR May 2026 cycle update We have published a blog post about the increased review assignments in the May cycle, what happened, and what comes next. Please read the full post here: aclrollingreview.org/may26-cycle-... #ARR #ACL #NLProc
aclrollingreview.org
An explanatory letter on the ARR May 2026 cycle
For the ARR May 2026 cycle, we had to make the difficult decision to increase the reciprocal service assignments for submitting authors. The reason for this decision was the substantial increase in su...
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Josephine beckbook.com Riesman @josie.zone · 07/12/2025
Anders Breivik's 2011 mass murder and accompanying manifesto represented, in retrospect, the true beginning of violent fascism's return to power in the West There had been precursors (Columbine or the OKC Bombing come to mind), but Breivik crystallized and unleashed a pestilence that now ravages us
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 13/06/2026
for a brief moment a few weeks ago I was using BlueSky more than Mastodon but now my social media usage has settled to X > LinkedIn > Mastodon > Bsky again. There are a lot of people I know on here but for some reason it still feels like a fifth wheel of social media.
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
naked admission that the point was always left-punching
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
it's R, obvi
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
huh
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Nikki DuCoté @raisedbyvalaya.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
"Just asking Questions" revealed to be "Just asking you to disappear"
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Juan Diego Rodriguez @juand-r.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
"This is what made Hinton’s speech so troubling. He presented mathematics as a low-hanging fruit, a “particularly easy” terrain for AI, because it is “a closed system with rules,” “like Go and Chess.” Yet Go and Chess aren’t ordinary closed systems. They are actual games with winners and losers.
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
wait what? huh. iykyk
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Dan Sohege @danielsohege.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Even by Labour's sickeningly disgusting attitude towards vulnerable individuals, this is a new low by Mahmood. Under no possible criteria could Afghanistan be classed as safe. Labour has already prevented Afghans from seeking asylum. This compounds the inhumanity. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
theguardian.com
Shabana Mahmood refuses to rule out sending back failed Afghan asylum seekers
Home secretary indicates Whitehall talks about returns programme, a move that would shock humanitarian groups
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Bruno Dias @brunodias.dev · 21/04/2026
Bluesky just sips from the intellectual lineage of crypto grifting, where you gesture meaningfully towards "decentralization" but really, 2-3 powerful players own everything.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
A society that runs on this stack doesn't stop holding elections, or debating, or running investigations. The forms stay, but what goes is their capacity to constrain power. The arc bends toward simulation, carried out in the language of defending democracy.
A diagram showing the VDA framework and the Arc of Democracy. At the top, three icons label the essential elements of democracy: Verification (tick), Deliberation (speech bubble), and Accountability (magnifying glass). Arrows descend from each through three horizontal bands representing the arc: Substantial (truth tested, voices included, power constrained), Performative (forms remain but substance is weak, rituals without consequence), and Simulated (appearance maintained but functions inverted: propaganda as verification, polarisation as deliberation, scapegoating as accountability). A vertical arrow on the left marks the arc's direction: improvements, decline, collapse. A column on the right maps counterpublics onto the same three states: functional counterpublics act in a substantial way, hollow counterpublics in a performative way, disordered counterpublics in a simulated way. The bands shift from grey through pink to red as democracy moves toward simulation.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Point 21 is the giveaway, some cultures produce "wonders," others are "regressive and harmful." Once you accept that hierarchy, you've quietly been given permission to apply different standards of verification to different actors. The form of verification stays, but the democratic function doesn't.
21. Some cultures have produced vital advances; others remain dysfunctional and regressive. All cultures are now equal. Criticism and value judgments are forbidden. Yet this new dogma glosses over the fact that certain cultures and indeed subcultures . . . have produced wonders. Others have proven middling, and worse, regressive and harmful.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Healthy accountability is triggered by evidence, points upward at power, and happens in public. Disordered accountability protects insiders and aims its punishment outward. What the document does is argue for the second while calling it the first.
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Eliot Higgins @eliothiggins.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Points 9, 18 and 19 go after accountability directly. Scrutiny of public figures gets reframed as a kind of cultural sickness driving talent away from public life. The problem becomes the people doing the scrutinising, not the people being scrutinised.
9. We should show far more grace towards those who have subjected themselves to public life. The eradication of any space for forgiveness—a jettisoning of any tolerance for the complexities and contradictions of the human psyche—may leave us with a cast of characters at the helm we will grow to regret.

18. The ruthless exposure of the private lives of public figures drives far too much talent away from government service. The public arena—and the shallow and petty assaults against those who dare to do something other than enrich themselves—has become so unforgiving that the republic is left with a significant roster of ineffectual, empty vessels whose ambition one would forgive if there were any genuine belief structure lurking within.

19. The caution in public life that we unwittingly encourage is corrosive. Those who say nothing wrong often say nothing much at all.
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Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 17/04/2026
Really? You're disagreeing with my extremely idiosyncratic take on a technology nobody understands?
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CJ @virmalised.us · 15/04/2026
While I think whale vocalizations are cool, and the inherent structure in them is even cooler, I am not sure that showing that they look like human stuff is nearly as interesting as the tendency for structure
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Patrick Monahan @pattymo.com · 15/04/2026
This “-maxxing” and “-mogging” stuff comes from an ugly place and has never been particularly funny. But what about if *I* adopt it, but ironically,
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lyndsay @magpie.tips · 13/04/2026
i agree. ducks ARE a good shape
fb marketplace listing of a northern pintail decoy. Priced a $400 the listing is titled Good Shape
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TheAHayKid @theahaykid.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
MULTIPLE ORBAN FAILURE
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Ankaret Wells @ankaret.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Politics has unexpectedly hit a special interest of mine so here is a quick rundown on the Avignon Papacy.
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
If you see this I implore you to quote skeet with an unusual image from your posting device without explanation. Still definitely use alt text, though.
ebike computer with the odometer displaying "6666"
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
so I don't understand luggage locks. airport security can open them and the key is readily available. why do suitcases even have them?
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New Mexico Man @newmexicoman.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Woman taking chicken eggs inside. Chicken taking baby to coop.
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Nancy A. Collins @nancyacollins.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
birdsrightsactivist has painted human babies and hidden them in the shrubbery.
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Vincent Carchidi @vcarchidi.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Universal Grammar? Sorry pal, I think people should have to work for their language
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lukelukeluke @lukelukeluke.bsky.social · 06/04/2026
Poetry fans when they hear a bell tolling for them: oh shit oh fuck
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Stef "inclusion is a human right" Christensen @wikisteff.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
If you poll populations, you find that his 5 dimensions collapse into just two: Harm reduction/Justice and Authority/Purity/Loyalty. These are correlated with "support for liberal values" and "support for conservative values", which are broadly independent ideas.
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
He's speaking his truth.
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DM Howcroft 🦔 @davehowcroft.com · 17/03/2026
your last meme saved is your moral philosophy
An orange cat sits on a forklift, the caption says "this cat does not comply with osha regulation..." bc he has no reflective clothing, he's not wearing a hard hat, and is sleeping during forklift operation
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 22/01/2026
your last meme saved is your moral philosophy (what happens to people who don't save memes?)
a strawberry holding a gun with the text "This is a strobbery"
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nanzhounoodles.bsky.social @nanzhounoodles.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
The conservatives correctly intuited a fairly materialist conclusion that reshaping the technological basis of society was dissolving the social categories that they hold dearer than profit or growth. Science and tech are actually turning the kids into blue-haired activists, which imo is great.
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Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Fortunately, no other sector depends on the energy sector, so this shock will be completely isolated
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
it's kind of a red flag when a businessman starts getting pissy at you after you politely pass on his product
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
why am I *not* getting this ad? Oh, I'm not on facebook
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Terrible Maps @terriblemapshq.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
Population per capita across the United States
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rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 15/03/2026
i think that the essential issue is that the Israeli electorate is psychotic to a degree the average American could not possibly understand
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Horatio Pornviewer @stuntbirdarmy.bsky.social · 08/03/2026
Claude is short for Jean Claude Van Damme. Are you saying Jean Claude Van Damme does not have consciousness? Because I agree with you.
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Anne Brigaudeau @annebrigaudeau.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
« D’après nos calculs, les Israéliens occupent désormais 61 % de la bande de Gaza. Chaque jour, ils déplacent les blocs jaunes et, au réveil, des habitants découvrent qu’ils sont du mauvais côté de la ligne, et sont contraints de se redéplacer » www.lemonde.fr/internationa...
lemonde.fr
Dans la bande de Gaza, l’enfer de la « ligne jaune »
Les Palestiniens vivant à proximité de l’axe derrière lequel l’armée israélienne s’est repliée sont exposés aux tirs des forces d’occupation et aux incursions nocturnes des gangs à sa solde.
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
spotted "herbeibomben" in Spiegel
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CJ @virmalised.us · 05/03/2026
Remember when we used to blame school shootings on violent video games?
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Jessica Ritchey @jmritchey.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
Mom, come pick me up, the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.
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Bo Thompson @gaudipern.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Poor families used to own my ancestors. Poor families benefitted from depressing their labor and drowning their communities after they were freed. Misdeeds often are financially attractive; it'd be pointless if they only offered moral compromises. Having integrity isn't a privilege, it's a choice.
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Sweden is a morning-people country but Stockholm always surprises me how early everything closes. Even Gothenburg seems to be awake at least an hour later, and it's the second city. Stockholmare really like their bedtimes.
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Asad Sayeed (also @asayeed[@zirk.us]) @asayeed.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
the pity is that Europe at least doesn't seem to have picked up any of the slack
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