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Claire

@chirila.bsky.social
788 followers 593 following 851 posts

Prof of linguistics. 🇦🇺/🇺🇸; Australian languages, historical linguistics, Voynich Manuscript

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Prof. EAGZ @emmmilygz.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
#linguistics
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Christina Proenza-Coles @proenzacoles.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
"She asks us to examine the cumulative cost of systems that extract more from some people while returning less."
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HiPhiLangSci @hiphilangsci.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Interested in learning more about Jones’ role in the pre-history of comparative-historical linguistics? Then the very first episode of our podcast is just what you need! 🎙️ hiphilangsci.net/2019/12/31/p... #Histlx
hiphilangsci.net
Podcast episode 1: Pre-history of comparative-historical linguistics
The first series of the History and Philosophy of the Language Sciences Podcast looks at the history of modern linguistics. We begin in this episode by examining the pre-history of comparative-hist…
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Society for the Study of Evolution @sse-evolution.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Nominations are due Wednesday for the SSE Lifetime Achievement Award! The initial nomination form is brief; full nomination packages will be requested for select nominees. Learn more: www.evolutionsociety.org/society-awar...
Background image: A gold trophy on a table scattered with gold star confetti. Text: Society for the Study of Evolution, Lifetime Achievement Award, Nominations due September 30.
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Which is why they're trying to build one near my mum's place but they already have water restrictions every summer???
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Lisa Messeri @lmesseri.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Worth noting that some of these ideologies are empirically grounded and others are, like, not. So while this might be helpful in putting many players on the same stage, it doesn't do justice to the unequal epistemological credibility of the different stances nor the unequal political economy.
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Lisa Fagin Davis @lisafdavis.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Just got around the watching the #Voynich = moonwater + menstrual blood TikTok and while I am all for the possibility of the manuscript having been written by women for women, the video's interpretation of the images really doesn't work.
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Whoaaaaaa just looked at some of the voynich posts on Instagram and I'm going to need safety goggles and a drinking buddy
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
We know what men do when they want to hide women's magic in book lore. They cut out bits from pages. They blacken over words. They burn the authors. They don't write it down in a unique writing system
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
I'm not on TikTok or (much) on Instagram so what I've seen about the recent Voynich "solution" comes from comments here. As @lizfischer0.bsky.social and @keptsimple.bsky.social and others have pointed out, women have been studying the MS for ages!
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Terfs can keep the skibidi away from the voynich manuscript
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Multilinguo @multilinguo.app · 22/09/2026
Europe has 4 unrelated words for beer. Germanic split: *beuzą → beer / Bier (borrowed as bière, birra) *aluþ → ale / öl Slavic *pivo (from "to drink") → пиво Celtic *kurmi → Latin cervēsia → cerveza, cerveja. Welsh cwrw kept it native. multilinguo.app
THE QUESTION section. Large ember-red BEER wordmark, ochre-gold ALE, ink-black PIVO, wine-purple CERVEZA stacked vertically. Hook: Same drink. Four unrelated words. Why four ways?TWO GERMANIC section. Header: Germanic didn't agree with itself. First proto-form: Proto-Germanic *beuzą "the brewed drink" → EN beer, DE Bier, NL bier. Later borrowed onward into Romance and beyond: bière FR, birra IT, μπύρα EL, bira TR. Second proto-form: Proto-Germanic *aluþ "ale" → EN ale, SV öl, DA/NO øl, IS öl. Borrowed into non-Germanic neighbours: olut FI, alus LT.SLAVIC + CELTIC section. Header: Slavic named the drink. Celtic named the mix. Two more roots, unrelated to Germanic and to each other. Proto-Slavic *pivo (from *piti "to drink") → RU пиво pivo, PL piwo, CS pivo, UK пиво pyvo. Slavic called beer the drink, straight from the verb. Celtic *kurmi (from PIE *ḱr̥h₃m- "soup, mix") → ES cerveza, PT cerveja, CA cervesa, CY cwrw, BR korev. Latin borrowed the Celtic word as cervēsia and passed it to Iberia; Welsh and Breton kept it native.THE BEER MAP section. Header: One drink. Four unrelated roots. Full comparison table across four IE root families plus non-IE outliers. Germanic *beuzą: EN beer, DE Bier, NL bier, FR bière, IT birra, EL μπύρα, TR bira. Germanic *aluþ: EN ale, SV öl, DA øl, NO øl, IS öl, FI olut, LT alus. Slavic *pivo (the drink): RU пиво, PL piwo, CS pivo, UK пиво. Celtic *kurmi (beer): ES cerveza, PT cerveja, CA cervesa, CY cwrw, BR korev. Non-IE outliers, unrelated: HU sör, EU garagardo.
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Lieven Vandelanotte @lieven.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
🐦🐦
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Abigail Goben @hedgielib.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
📚
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
This is an amazing story and beautiful work! Gives me hope that the Berndt collection may be playable
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David J. Peterson @dedalvs.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
We’ll share more at some point, but for those curious about our #conlang work in #ProjectHailMary, I did a video overview about how a musical conlang could work for my YouTube channel a while back. This kind of points the way, so to speak. youtu.be/Tc8oneLuL0I
youtu.be
The Art of Language Invention, Episode 5: Musical Conlangs
YouTube video by David Peterson
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Arkansas Archeology @arkansasarcheology.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
We'll have two booths at the Cane Hill Harvest Festival this weekend talking about archeology. In particular we'll be talking about the Cherokee syllabary printing press type that we excavated there. We'll have some stamps that kids can try out! Come visit us. (Photo by the History Colorado Center)
Worn metal letterpress type blocks of varying sizes lined across a narrow composing strip, showing reversed letters and numbers used for traditional printing.
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Ruth Arr @wrooth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Join us TOMORROW to learn about using photogrammetry and structured light scanning to create 3D models of Indigenous heritage pieces currently cared for in museums. We'll hear from members of this collaborative project from Alaska Native communities and the University of Missouri.
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Quinn Daedal @quinnanya.me · 16/09/2026
This manifesto for #MultilingualDH is wonderful, sharing here with link.
zenodo.org
Manifesto for Multilingual Digital Humanities
We, digital humanists of various linguistic backgrounds, have assembled the following manifesto based on our conviction that: 1.  Humanity is inherently multilingual.2.  As social beings, we constantl...
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
It doesn't look like @diachronica.bsky.social is showing up in the #linguistics feed but we are here
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William J.B. Mattingly @wjbmattingly.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
One of the fun things about LLMs is we can use their greatest weakness in OCR/HTR (their non-determinism) to be their greatest strength in identifying potential errors. The same model running over the same image multiple times shows where divergence (errors) appear. Blog and app coming soon!
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Dr Rory MacLellan @rorymaclellan.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
A more party-trick medieval spell is to make bread 'dance': "Take quicksilver (i.e. mercury) and put it in the dough in the middle of the loaf, then put it to bake and it shall leap about. Likewise, put the quicksilver in a hot loaf of bread and it shall leap about." #medievalsky
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Prof. Nicole Holliday @mixedlinguist.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Students asked me how to get rid of AI Overview in Chrome, and this method has worked for me so here's a PSA! It's SO nice to not have to scroll past that nonsense! tenbluelinks.org
tenbluelinks.org
How to Turn Off Google AI Overview and Set "Web" as Default
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SBS Australia (unofficial) @sbsaustralia.nzcow.com · 15/09/2026
📢 Australia's pre-colonial population estimates were shaped by a figure from decades ago. A new study suggests it was far too low.
sbs.com.au
How a 100-year-old population estimate may have got Australia wrong
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Example in the wild of a language ideology that the way of writing a language is part of that language, and therefore only some languages can have writing???
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
They might be gyoza
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Jessi Grieser @jessgrieser.com · 09/09/2026
A linguist would like to enter the chat but all the other social sciences have convinced themselves that just knowing language is the same as knowing linguistics....
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Chanda Prescod-Weinstein 🌌 @chanda.blacksky.app · 08/09/2026
Accusing AI critics of not doing the reading is funny because usually it’s AI users are the most likely to have not done the reading So what now then
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Lisa Fagin Davis @lisafdavis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This was an INCREDIBLY fun podcast to be part of! Medievalism in games and media of all kinds (LoTR! GoT! D&D! RPGs! TTRPGS!), and the fictionalization of the Voynich Manuscript in games, novels, and other venues. Loved this discussion! pnc.st/s/the-manicu...
pnc.st
The Voynich Manuscript: Understanding the Untranslatable with Lisa Fagin Davis
The Voynich Manuscript has been a curiosity and mystery for hundreds of years - what can its strange history teach us about worldbuilding? This week, we’re joined by Lisa Fagin Davis, one of the world...
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Mary Gillis @marygillis.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Anyway, if you're pro-AI and think all anti-AI people just haven't used it enough to give it a fair chance, know that I've given it a fair chance. On a daily basis. And I've found it to be a creepy little liar bot that's only marginally usable once you strip out the cultspeak.
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Melanie Mitchell @melaniemitchell.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Hey @ericlipton.nytimes.com 👋 AI is not “evolving” on its own. *People* are choosing how to build it. *People* are choosing how to train it. *People* are choosing how to run it. Maybe the problem is that they are the *wrong people* to make these choices.
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Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 08/09/2026
I'm Canadian and this is accurate
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KJ Charles @kjcharleswriter.com · 06/09/2026
If you're wondering why authors are getting so rabid here: First Anthropic stole our books. Then we got denied compensation because of US unjust copyright law and publishers failing to meet their contractual obligations. Then publishers and agents apparently claimed author shares. Now this.
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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
The Bucket of Infinite Owlets is an underrated magic item in D&D
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Benjamin Dreyer @bcdreyer.social · 05/09/2026
"Wispr Flow is supposed to make writing effortless and magical." Writing is not meant to be either effortless or magical. Hope that helps.
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Claire @chirila.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
I just got my Anthropic confirmation. Someone I had never heard of was listed as a co-author on one of my books. Do check your statements!
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Janne M. Korhonen @jmkorhonen.fi · 03/09/2026
#AI can translate the Voynich Manuscript too
A screenshot of Google Translate screen showing machine translation of "Voynich manuscript" to Finnish, "Voynichin käsikirjoitus"
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Kilu von Prince @kilinguistics.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Language Science Press is supplying the world with free and open, high-quality linguistic research. This is only possible because a wide range of libraries world-wide subscribe to this open-source publisher. Does your library support LSP? Ask your librarian how you can help.
langsci-press.org
Funding | Language Science Press
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Kathryn C-K @kathrynck.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
And another paper out! This one (& the special issue it's in) really should be titled "Yes, NSF REU sites do a lot of good, you motherfuckers" www.elon.edu/u/academics/...
elon.edu
Current Issue: PURM 14.2
PURM 14.2 (2026): Federally Funded Undergraduate Research Programs: What is at Stake Letter from the Guest Editors Claudia Scholz, Ph.D. Director for Research Development, University of...
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Simon Willison @simonwillison.net · 28/08/2026
My LLM cliché highlighter is up to 38 patterns now tools.simonwillison.net/llm-cliche-h...
Screenshot of a writing-analysis tool showing paragraphs of text with phrases highlighted in two shades of yellow, brown circular "3" badges, and a black tooltip overlaying the first line reading: "No X, no Y" chains · 3 "no" items. The visible text reads: We r[obscured by tooltip]nd up. No sign-ups, no downloads, no hassle (3) — just paste your text and start writing. Everything runs locally in your browser. The reviewer read the draft twice. Did not flinch, did not blink, did not reach for the red pen (3). That's the whole review, honestly. Don't call it a rewrite — call it a rescue. The improvement is real, and it's not subtle. That loss is worth naming. Sit with that for a moment. The gains were modest, but that's not nothing. You already know the answer, of course. Consistency is the entire game, and the punchline is that nobody wants to hear it. The entire pitch is one sentence long.
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
lol
A wikipedia page's recent edit history, all within the last half our or so, of people changing Lake Ontario's name to Lake America and then fighting over it, with one parenthetical reading "aint no one calling it that" highlighted
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Sāmapriyavasuḣ @avzaagzonunaada.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
This is so cool! Probably the best I have gotten to understand Semitic as a complete outsider to the field. Hope I get to someday teach something like this on modern Indo-Iranian. :)
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Siobhán McElduff @siobhanmcelduff.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I think people believe that if a book was widely used and printed in the past it survives in multiple copies, at least some of which will be stored in a library somewhere. But there are many things like school books that were widely printed on the 1700s and 1800s and of which we have no copies.
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Australian National Dictionary Centre @ozworders.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Our 2026 annual appeal is asking for your regional Australian English terms. And no, it's not all about potato scallops vs potato cakes. history.cass.anu.edu.au/centres/andc...
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Danny Robb @inverting-vision.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
On August 26, 1966, readers of the NYT woke up to the first photo of the Earth from the Moon on the front page. Here's a thread about how the Lunar Orbiter team retrieved it from film on a spacecraft orbiting the Moon, showing the reconstruction process back on Earth. 🧵(1/12) 🗃️🔭 #photography
A screenshot of a headline and image from a newspaper. The image is fairly low quality, but shows a crescent earth to the left, suspended in blackness, next to the limb of the moon taking up most of the right side of the image. Across the image are horizontal stripes. The headline at the top reads "How the Earth Looks from the Moon". The caption reads "Photo taken by Lunar Orbiter when it was 27 miles from moon, right, shows the earth covered by a white cloud. horizontal orientation lines were added to the picture after it was received at a tracking station near Madrid"
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Laura @tutusntinyhats.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
I feel like there should be an annual holiday in Dolly's honor, which people celebrate by giving books to kids and/or donating to groups that give free books to kids.
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The thread o’ tweets @threadotweets.bsky.social · 17/11/2024
WenzlerPowers: 

Dolly Parton writing “I will always love you“ and “Jolene“ in the same day is mind blowing.

It’s like if da Vinci finished the Mona Lisa then turned around in the same day and wrote “Jolene“
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Trip Kirkpatrick @triplingual.myatproto.social · 26/08/2026
L-R, top to bottom 1. www.rollingstone.com/music/music-... 2. www.wkyt.com/2026/03/05/k... 3. www.ms.now/opinion/doll... 4. mynorthwest.com/local/imagin...
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 25/08/2026
I have really enjoyed the experience of reading story after story about how good and selfless and beloved a recently deceased famous person was
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Renée Graham 🏳️‍🌈 @rygraham.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Today is a reminder that you want to live a life where people gush about all the good you left in the world instead of a life where people are making celebratory playlists and chilling champagne for when you die.
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