iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm sorry 🫂 I started listening to the songs and I wasn't able to stay sad long. So outrageous and funny and brilliant, and so much laughter in the face of pain youtu.be/RcJ9kJ1ryFg?...

youtu.be

Mighty Sparrow - Sparrow Dead

YouTube video by Patrice Yursik

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shy🎀 @shy.center · 27/09/2026

Lost one of my heroes today. Slinger Francisco, also known as Mighty Sparrow, passed away at 91. Trinidad's most famous calypsonian, always infusing his songs with sharp political wit and humor. A friend and influence to many, including Van Dyke Parks. Here he is performing "Jean & Dinah."

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

No Money No Love www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOY2...

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

If you don't know his music, do yourself a favour. The sweetness, the nastiness, the social commentary, the romance, the hilarity. So many bangers. Some of my favs, in my favourite Sparrow form - mixing filth with the sweetest melodies, and that voice / those voices: www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1A7...

youtube.com

G.B.T.V. CultureShare ARCHIVES 1993: MIGHTY SPARROW "A man in me bedroom"

YouTube video by CultureShare Studios

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I've watched this video so many times! Brilliant!

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Because it happened later in the Caribbean, the effect only fully started to be felt here more recently. In small islands, that can mean closing the only deaf school in the country

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

I'm with you (as someone who owns a tawa, but has only succeeded in making a mess)

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Wiki Education @wikieducation.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Our latest data shows that the percentage of our participants' Wikipedia articles flagged as being written by AI has decreased since we began interventions in mid-2025. Explore how we handle generative AI usage, why verifiability remains a top concern, and what comes next: wp.me/p4LBez-XMK

wp.me

Generative AI and Wikipedia: The last six months

In January, Wiki Education published a widely read blog post about our experiences with Wikipedia editing and generative AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot. It sparked lots of co…

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Any sign language linguists with views on projects around 'AI' based automated translation between signed and spoken langs? I think this is both terrible and unfeasible for the Caribbean, but I don't have much contact with sl linguists since the twitter exodus, and am curious about what others think

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Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I thought of my body as untrustworthy, an adversary. I often joked that I wished I had no body at all, was simply a brain in a jar. Without my body holding me back I could get a lot more work done. My journey out of that way of thinking is what follows in Mother Tongue buttondown.com/signs+wonder...

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Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Hiiiii, feel free to keep deaf people out of this! So sick of the condescension disguised as faux concern about how disabled people "need" AI. We don't. Autocaptions are almost always very bad, and then people like you use their existence to justify taking away actual accommodations that work.

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Michael Erard @michaelerard.bsky.social · 20/10/2025

Maybe this is a literary trope. Maybe people need that fantasy, that hope for a rainbow. I wrote BYE BYE I LOVE YOU because I believe people can find comfort in the real. This is how it's going to end. Probably in silence. Last words will be yours, not his. Also, terminal lucidity is very rare.

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Ugh...Would be very interested in what you find out. Speech Language Pathology is in the process of becoming a thing in the Caribbean. Really hoping that we can convince people to build the field here on more enlightened principles, rather than importing more ableism and audism.

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Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

Hey SLPs/Deafies/other people who deal with ASHA. I know for a while there was contention re: whether a deaf-signing person could give a presentation at ASHA in ASL or be a certified SLP. To what degree was that "official" policy, and is that still the case?

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Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Linguists will really say "the forbidden experiment" like people aren't performing it on the majority of deaf children in this country every day 💀

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

@davidmcgaughey.bsky.social On the off-chance that you weren't already aware, I felt duty-bound to draw your attention to Jasper Scarrott, darts player www.facebook.com/share/v/1Mkr...

facebook.com

Redirecting...

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 11/08/2025

Thank you so much for this! I've sent it round to colleagues at the University of the West Indies, and hope that it will help us to come up with our own position statement.

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Gerald Roche @geraldroche.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

I'd love to hear any feedback on this position statement we have developed. It aims to clearly communicate to students our approach to using AI, and the underlying reasons and motivations for our approach. Would you use something like this in your teaching? What changes would you make?

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Maartje De Meulder @mdemeulder.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

And besides—what about the pool of human translators, especially deaf translators, who see mediocre AI taking over work they can still do much better?

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Julie A. Hochgesang @jahochcam.bsky.social · 01/05/2025

In honor of the new home for #ASLSignbank, I thought it was time to give #Glossgesang a home on Bluesky. What's #Glossgesang you ask? Why thank you for asking! It's this: Always present signed language data in a visual format without relying solely on glossing

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Lina Who Lina How Lina… (侯詠絮) @linasigns.bsky.social · 02/05/2025

I’m constantly reminded of how deaf linguists esp. from the Global South, make a unique contribution to signed language linguistics especially when it comes to researching their own signed languages. Yet they are constantly denied educational opportunities in higher academia.

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 02/04/2025

Does anyone have any advice for how to develop better writing habits as a late-diagnosed ADHD academic? I want to write a book or two, but struggle enormously with the this kind of big task. How does one avoid either hyper-focusing for a week then burning out, or just getting overwhelmed? Help!

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 16/03/2025

Can anyone recommend research supporting the need for deaf children to have early access to a *community of signers*, including peers and adults, not just one or two signing teachers? Thanks!

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Sharing bc: 1. Fahimah did a great project, and I want people to know about the work Caribbean students are doing; 2. one of the people in the conversation we analysed died recently; and 3. Jon Henner gave us the most Hennerishly encouraging review ever. Thinking of Florence and Jon with gratitude.

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

So, languaging in the Bay Islands community is multimodal. This is not a visual language on its way to become a "fully-fledged tactile language." It's a "fully-fledged" multimodal language, in which people use different channels depending on the interactional context.

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

It is also clear that tactile methods are not just a last resort, to be employed when one's interlocutor is blind. We mention that tactile signing is often used when addressing hearing-sighted people. It can be used for stylistic and other reasons (which we hope to explore in a future publication).

Illustration depicting a conversation between two signers in Roatan. Both are seated. On the left, a deaf-blind man holds the right hand of his hearing-sighted interlocutor (seated on the right), and traces on her forearm with the index finger of his right hand. The caption reads "Figure 5. Use of the tactile channel with a hearing-sighted addressee (right)."

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

She documented a variety of ways in which the turn-taking was efficiently regulated, the most spectacular being the throwing of one's interlocutor's hands in the air to signal the end of a turn.

Illustration from the article showing a man on the right and a woman on the left, both seated. Both the man and the woman's hands are held up in the air. The caption reads "Figure 10. S2 throwing S1's hands into the air to end his turn."

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

This article was based on Fahimah's undergraduate project. She looked at how turn-taking is regulated in a conversation between two signers from the community. Both signers were deaf-blind, though one had some vision. She found visual and tactile techniques were used in the conversation.

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

There's very little work on the signing traditions that have come out of small communities with deaf-blind people in them, particularly outside the Global North. I know of three communities in the Caribbean where Usher Syndrome has been relatively common & expect there are many more internationally

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Deaf, deaf-blind, and hearing people have been signing in Roatan for over 100 years, using visual and tactile channels. Data for the paper come from a project I worked on with Kris Ali and Ian Dhanoolal with support from the Endangered Languages Documentation Project www.elararchive.org/dk0504/

elararchive.org

Documenting language across modalities: visual and tactile sign language in the Bay Islands | Endangered Languages Archive

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

Last year I published an article with Fahimah Ali called "Multimodal Languaging in a Signing Community in the Bay Islands of Honduras" about ways in which deaf-blind people in a small community use language. So here's a thread to get me started on here. muse.jhu.edu/article/928057

muse.jhu.edu

Project MUSE - Multimodal Languaging in a Signing Community in the Bay Islands of Honduras

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Sara Nović @novicsara.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Just write alt text ya weenies

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Ben Braithwaite @benbraithwaite.bsky.social · 16/01/2025

Thanks so much for sharing from TISLR. I was far too tired after SIGN10 to think about going, but it's lovely to follow a little on here!

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 16/12/2024

(Graeber 2015)

From David Graeber's book The Utopia of Rules: The promotion of college as a requirement for a
middle-class life . . . has resulted in the exclusion of the
non-college educated from professions of public influ-
ence. In 1971, 58 percent of journalists had a college
degree. Today, 92 percent do, and at many publications,
a graduate degree in journalism is required-despite
the fact that most renowned journalists have never
studied journalism.

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Rogelio Fernández Mota 🇲🇽 @rfernandezmota.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Lina Hou’s keynote, MIND-PING: Grammars and Epistemologies, challenges us to rethink multilanguage, knowledge, and Eurocentric Deaf epistemologies 🙌🏽 #Sign10 @linasigns.bsky.social

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@Shayterp @drhilltx.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

I'm slowly uploading pictures from #Sign10 in Trinidad for all that couldn't attend. It was worth all the effort to attend. #Sign10 invited the local deaf communities to attend the conference. I met so many people, think I left a bit of my heart with them in Trinidad.

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Rogelio Fernández Mota 🇲🇽 @rfernandezmota.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Nicky Macias’s presentation explores how embracing nonbinary focal sites empowers multiple identities and fosters inclusivity in multilingual sign languages #Sign10

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Rogelio Fernández Mota 🇲🇽 @rfernandezmota.bsky.social · 13/12/2024

Kris M. Ali’s presentation delves into the challenges of interpreting Queer and Trans sign languaging in Trinidad. #Sign10

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@Shayterp @drhilltx.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

I found motivation when I attended the panel discussion on the Deaf Caribbean Academic Network at #Sign10. I was empowered to see how the deaf academics used Video Diaries and in person meetings to help cope with inequities and inaccessibilities in education.

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@Shayterp @drhilltx.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Presenting was super fun at #Sign10. Thank you for allowing me to present my research on how deaf community members determined that African American English and culture can be successfully conveyed in ASL. (Thx hubby for the flowers!)

Dr. Sharon Hill presenting at Sign10 conference in Trinidad

Surprise flowers to Dr. Hill from Mr. Hill!

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Rogelio Fernández Mota 🇲🇽 @rfernandezmota.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Regional signs matter. Marina and Ricarde’s presentation on classifiers and intermodal contact in Puerto Rican Sign Language shows how diversity enriches communication and culture. #Sign10

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Rogelio Fernández Mota 🇲🇽 @rfernandezmota.bsky.social · 12/12/2024

Yarett Piñeiro Rodríguez's presentation “Attitudes to sign language naming and variation in Puerto Rico” highlights the importance of protecting Puerto Rican Sign Language and embracing its variations. #Sign10

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