iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Thanks! - just saw this (my social media capacity has basically collapsed!).

David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Thanks Elliot. I'll def read the paper properly at some point. I'm planning to write a more philosophically oriented critique of the Hopf stuff when I get a moment (start of semester right now!), so it should be very useful.

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

but i guess your system can be ported to a non-Hopf system

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I'm a bit skeptical about how good the Hopf stuff is as a model. It messes up no tampering, requires a move to hypermagmas for feature checking, needs an extra head function to even have a way of labelling, and lots of other complexities that are, I think, losses theoretically.

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Ryan M. Nefdt @ryannefdt.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

My Philosophy of Theoretical Linguistics (shorturl.at/l4i4G) @cambup-linguistics.cambridge.org is finally in paperback. It covers new territory and boldly goes... well, maybe not boldly. More like cautiously shuffles forward while clutching a notebook and hoping for the best. Discount below!

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

Hmm. My experience lately has been publishers (though not all of them) taking my beautifully typeset LaTeX document and turning the symbols, phonetic script, trees, etc into an unintelligible mess which I then have to fix. So definitely with Bronwyn on this!!!

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

‘It is young UK performers, and in particular those from a working-class background, who have been most hit by the loss of the EU for work and experience.’ www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

theguardian.com

‘Catastrophic for creative industries’: Brexit barriers shut UK actors out of EU jobs

Casting shifts to EU talent as paperwork delays and visa limits make hiring British crews less viable

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

wee poem that recently appeared in the 2026 Resonance Anothology. Thanks so much to the Resonance crew for selecting it! #poetry #snails #ritual

David Adger
Snail Ritual

You always moved the snails to someplace
safe, lifting them from flower pots and the path
of the wheelie bin, tucking them under vinca
where they'd pace their careful roads, waiting
for the wet dark to rise, like little gods of time.

Each morning as you dreamed your oxycodone
dreams, I'd leave our bed in a ritual I kept from you:
I'd dip an empty shell in the pond we'd dug together
and carry it to the silver birch to pour a libation
to whatever god would give us more time.

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 27/03/2026

Really sad news. Ronnie taught me at Edinburgh 1985-1989, and was one of the sharpest minds, most interesting thinkers, and kindest people I came across there. I'm very sad he's no longer with us.

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Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 13/03/2026

We've revamped the Futures of Language website! Read about the project, team, papers, and other news at futuresoflanguage.org Also, our weekly updates are collated in the Futures Library, a growing collection of short pieces on ideas & people that drive the project: futuresoflanguage.org/library/

Screenshot of Futures of Language landing page at https://futuresoflanguage.org, with tagline "Human interaction is too important to be left into the hands of merchants of hype."

Text continues: "We study artisanal and artificial ways of languaging to better understand language + technology, and to reimagine our linguistic futures."

Features a tricolour image of strands representing the three lines of work in the project.

Screenshot of Futures of Language library page with two recent posts. One by Samira Ibnelkaïd: Sara Ahmed & the Killjoy Ethics. One by Mark Dingemanse: The Stories we weave around "Technology".

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 14/03/2026

Mahmoud's policy itself is abhorrent, but it's also profoundly stupid in terms of the UKs long term interests

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Rachel Deering @racheldeering.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

A little marginalia. Dragonlet, Book of Hours, Paris c.1410.

Little red dragon with blue horns and golden wings, surrounded by gold foliage, illustration from illuminated MS.

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Rachel Deering @racheldeering.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

March Hares, Vicky Yeates, 2012.

Hares boxing surrounded with leaves, painting.

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 02/03/2026

we should also point out Oxbridge have the resources to hire people from other institutions who find their own institutions struggling to support SHAPE disciplines in a situation of falling enrollments. There's an old Yes Minister quip: we must protect Britain's great universities, ... both of them

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Pascal Mamassian @mamassian.bsky.social · 24/09/2025

A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue. The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea. From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt: arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...

An array of 9 purple discs on a blue background. Figure from Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt.

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Tom Roberts @tpgroberts.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

Hannah Spencer walking into Westminster, sucking her teeth, tutting, and muttering "tell you what, you've had some cowboys in here."

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Terri Windling @terriwindling.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

"These centuries-old connections between language and the environment challenge dominant views of how best to protect habitats. Scottish Gaelic’s vitality as a living language would surely suffer if fishing were to be curtailed, and much of the knowledge bound up in it...would be lost too."

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Ruth Graham @ruthgraham.bsky.social · 18/02/2026

I imagine it was extremely disturbing

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 19/02/2026

ah, the wonderful right-hand head rule!

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Simon Fisher @profsimonfisher.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

To accompany all those Bluesky science/academia #starterpacks, how about we also share introductions to the literature of our different fields. I present here a handy guide to main types of papers in the language sciences (inspired by the amazing @xkcd.com). #language #linguistics #science #academia

Comic depictions of the first page of research papers in the language sciences, with titles that include the following:
Just what the hell is a word anyway?
See how this single cognitive process or brain area or neural oscillation or gene explains language!
Based on the shapes of these old bones, Homo erectus could sing .... don't @ me.
A baby looked at one thing more than the other, now we know the secret to grammar.
If you think about it, every language is fundamentally the same, amirite?
We taught a load of undergrads a made-up language, lol.
On the staggering diversity of the many languages across the world.
Remember the thing you said only humans could do, here's a video of a monkey / dolphin / corvid / octopus / honeybee doing it.
I trained this AI with 80 billion tweets and it became head-writer for phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 17/02/2026

Hmm. Yeah I don’t think anything I said was particularly incompatible with your comment so I don’t think I did misunderstand. But I am skeptical you can factor out the language/reasoning stuff from the content given current architectures. I think you’d lose robustness in those areas

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 16/02/2026

agree hallucinate is a bad term (I was using it as it's what the authors use). Do you mean misunderstandings in the paper, or that I had misunderstood it? Or that because LLMs are language models, we shouldn't expect them to automatically have a connection with reality? If the later, I agree

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Jess O'Thomson @jessothomson.co.uk · 13/02/2026

We know the Code of Practice is wrong in law. But we need your help to make sure it gets sent back. Write to your MP with our quick and easy tool, here 👇

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

The most insane thing is that "British (and Irish) citizens who are also citizens of another country will be ineligible for an ETA, meaning they can no longer use a foreign passport to enter the UK."

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Mar Hicks @histoftech.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

When AI was added to a tool for sinus surgery: “Cerebrospinal fluid leaked from one patient’s nose. In another… a surgeon mistakenly punctured the base of a patient’s skull. In two other cases, patients suffered strokes after a major artery was accidentally injured” www.reuters.com/investigatio...

reuters.com

As AI enters the operating room, reports arise of botched surgeries and misidentified body parts

Medical device makers have been rushing to add AI to their products. While proponents say the new technology will revolutionize medicine, regulators are receiving a rising number of claims of patient ...

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 07/02/2026

Reading @tashwalker.bsky.social and @adamzmith.bsky.social ‘s amazing new book The Logbooks and this call to Gay Switchboard they quote had me in hysterics #lgbthistories

10 January 1993
Caller (w): 'Can you tell me about Clone Zone?'
Me: 'yes it's a shop selling everything from lycra shorts + underwear to leather harnesses + nipple clamps. Predominantly
gay boys but some women use it. Why, what do you want?' (thinks she's looking to buy a dildo)
Caller: Well I've just found an access receipt in my husband's pocket!'
！！：

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Omg. WTF is Happening? @lalahaenzy.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 03/02/2026

yeah, metonymic extension of word meanings via function does not imply an ontological shift (do submarines swim - not in English, but planes do fly!) There's also a confusion between simulation and theory which I think interacts with this

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National Trust @nationaltrust.org.uk · 29/01/2026

What we all need to see is a red squirrel in a power pose. You're welcome.

A red squirrel on the ground. It almost looks like it is in superhero pose with one front paw and one back paw on the ground. The other front and back paws are raised in the air, its head is forward ready to run towards the camera.

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

What makes it more challenging is that "convict" optionally takes "of Y" as a complement, so your brain reaches "convict", decides it's a simple transitive verb, does that long object, then has to reanalyse "convict". It's sometimes called a 'garden-path' effect. Ok, too much syntax for the morning!

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

I think it's: "who convicted [X] of murder", where X= "the policeman who kneeled on GF's neck". It's grammatical, but just very difficult to process because "of murder" is so structurally distant from "convict". bw, your friendly neighbourhood syntactician :)

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

Illustrations from the beguiling Clavis Artis, a German alchemical manuscript which claims to hail from the 13th century and have pages made from dragon skin: publicdomainreview.org/collection/c…

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Harry Turtledove @hntdove.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

One more time, syntax matters. I do hope the snake had a good time, though.

Photo of Lindsay Lohan with jungle background

Below, Entertainment--Lindsay Lohan bitten by snake on holiday in Thailand

Above, I don't understand how a snake even begins to organiseva trip like that.

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Dorothy Bishop @deevybee.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

I reckon it would be a good move for cinemas in the US to be showing the original Downfall film now. Magnificent film with huge relevance for today

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Dirk Puehl @wunderkammertales.eurosky.social · 26/01/2026

“When it draws near to witching time of night.” (Robert Blair) 🎨 Charles Livingston Bull #owlishmonday

A large snowy owl glides across a washed-blue night sky, wings outstretched and head angled downward as if hunting. Far below, a dark, blocky city skyline fades into mist, with scattered points of light suggesting windows and streetlamps. The contrast between the silent, ghost-white bird and the smudged urban haze gives the scene a quiet, watchful mood—night made visible as a single hovering presence.

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langscipress.bsky.social @langscipress.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

New blog post "Achievements 2025" userblogs.fu-berlin.de/langsci-pres...

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Alex Andreou @sturdyalex.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

I really understand very little about the current version of reality.

Sajid Javid: why I wouldn’t let people like my parents into the UK now.

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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

Same story over and over. These larpers - Kirkegard, Pesta et al - pumping out the same effluence with their strategy - exposed by @harryshukman.bsky.social + @hopenothate.org.uk - to normalise and spread scientific racism. They KNOW it's bullshit too. Read this: www.theguardian.com/world/2024/o...

theguardian.com

Revealed: International ‘race science’ network secretly funded by US tech boss

Group promoting ‘dangerous’ scientific racism ideology teamed up with rightwing extremist, recordings reveal

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 22/01/2026

This is great Andrew - I've been trying to do something at this level for my first year lings students in class, mainly to underpin later discussion of linguistics issues (and ethical ones) and found it quite a challenge, so this is really just so perfect, and very much needed. Thank you!

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Andrew Perfors @perfors.net · 22/01/2026

I just created a series of seven deep-dive videos about AI, which I've posted to youtube and now here. 😊 Targeted to laypeople, they explore how LLMs work, what they can do, and what impacts they have on learning, well-being, disinformation, the workplace, the economy, and the environment.

youtube.com

Part 1: How do LLMs work?

YouTube video by Andrew Perfors

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David Adger @davidadger.bsky.social · 21/01/2026

Do love some syntactic ambiguity in the morning

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Hetan Shah @hetanshah.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

You can find me in the Times flying the flag for humanities and social sciences in this story about changes to funding at @ukri.org www.thetimes.com/article/be92...

Hetan Shah, chief executive of the British Academy, said: "Whatever form it takes, whether foundational, mission-led or focused on innovation, research is vital to the UK's prosperity and international standing. The humanities and social sciences are central to this, helping us understand people, places and systems so new ideas can have real-world impact."

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Jonathan Coe @jonathancoe.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

I feel I should bang the drum for this post, which hasn't received the love it deserves. It helps to know that Jenrick's constituency is Newark.

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