iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Scott Nelson

noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

look, it's really simple: either you're a spooky dualist, or you accept that liberty biberty is conscious

Reposted by Scott Nelson

Dave Karpf @davekarpf.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

HYPOTHESIS: repeat exposure to the LessWrong discussion boards is functionally indistinguishable from mercury poisoning.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Addendum: it does not spread *within* morphemes. It spreads morpheme-to-morpheme but if M2 has multiple TBU's it only spreads to the first TBU of *that* morpheme and blocks any further spread.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Reading Myers (1997) and Shona high-tone spread is so cool. It's non-iterative in the sense that it only spreads from one TBU to an adjacent TBU and no further within a morpheme but iterative in the sense that it can spread across multiple morpheme boundaries if each morpheme only has one TBU. Cool.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Planning my conference schedule for the fall. Anyone have any tips?

Screenshot of a Reddit post to r/academia asking “is it a bad look to use the pool at a conference?”

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Reposted by Scott Nelson

noam @noamchompers.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

if you believe the computational theory of mind, the artificial minds debate is like 'what if a *computer* could be.............. a computer'

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Party Down not being on the list at all is embarrassing.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Today is the day. Feeling very lucky to be able to witness such beauty in person.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Playing the Ken Stevens x-ray video in Phonetics class today which means I get to introduce a new set of students to the insane sentence, "I have put blood on her two clean yellow shoes." linguistics.berkeley.edu/acip/appendi...

linguistics.berkeley.edu

xraypage

A Course in Phonetics

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Me showing up to the functional phonology talk: “wait, where are all the functions?”

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Back on my bullshit and I really love doing phonology.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

If you’re doing bigfoot guys, I’d be happy to share the most insane emails I received from bigfoot guys who thought I, academic linguist Scott Nelson, was instead self-proclaimed bigfoot linguist and ex-military guy R. Scott Nelson

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Saw a guy at the gym the morning with a gigantic shin tattoo of Timmy from South Park and it has shook me to my core.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Saw a (shit)post that said Johnny Rzeznik from the Goo Goo Dolls was a Maoist and I've never wanted anything to be more true.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A student getting to 1 hert through backformation from hertz is the greatest thing that I’ve ever experienced in a classroom.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

99% of my followers got here from linguistics or related academic areas, but I just really want to music post all the time.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Last two minutes or so of “Secret of the Easy Yoke” by Pedro the Lion is the platonic ideal of electric guitar tone.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Oh, you think this phenomena must be accounted for by a specific theoretical construct? Here's an infinite number of different ways to account for it.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

The "uh" might be before Ratboys instead. Regardless, a funny clip.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Reading in the UIUC Humanities Research Institute newsletter that musical acts such as "Ratboys" are performing in CU this fall. I can't find it, but there's a clip of Bernie Sanders saying, "I'd like to thank the Ratboys for their, uh, music," after they opened up one of his rallies back in the day

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Looking forward to reading this (especially the discussion!). Kyle sent me an abstract version earlier in the summer and I’ve been thinking about it a lot since it relates to my 2022 SCiL paper. I also have my own response in something Eric Baković and I are currently working on!

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Reposted by Scott Nelson

Aaron Braver 🐧 @abraver.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

My article with @wmgbennett.bsky.social is finally out! We show that Xhosa speakers generalize the alternation of certain noun class prefixes to novel words based on root length—suggesting a synchronic pattern, rather than the fossilized remnants of a historical process. #linguistics

doi.org

On the productivity of length-based alternations in Xhosa noun class prefixes

Noun classes in isiXhosa are each associated with specific prefixes on the noun stem. Some of these noun class prefixes exhibit length-based allomorphy: they take one form before multisyllabic stem...

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

At our beginning of semester department event yesterday, I overheard an undergrad who I have never met say, “A fact about Scott Nelson is…” before quickly scurrying away. Starting my third year here which I guess means I have reached “the undergrads have their own lore about you” status.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

The ability to "react" to emails is a feature for babies and one of the reasons that I'm annoyed with Outlook today.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

Starting off my computational phonology class today by asking the hard hitting questions: what is phonology? what is computation?

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Watching someone I cared about get sucked deeper into the LessWrong/Bay Area rationalist expanded universe broke my heart but I had a huge jokerfying moment down the line when I found out about HPMOR.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

The production on “Bobby” by Phoebe Bridgers makes it sound like a pop country/contemporary christian song in the worst way imaginable.

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Reposted by Scott Nelson

Matt Goldrick @mattgoldrick.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

Open until filled (🚨🚨apply now!🚨🚨): Postdoc, speech acoustics and major depressive disorder, with me!, Northwestern Linguistics (working with folks in Psychology and Psychiatry). faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/matt-goldric...

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

I’m a bad poster because I’m a coward not because I’m a bad poster

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Some people are really just not born to post

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

A joke for maybe two people in the entire world

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

I know the lyrics to multiple Earth Crisis songs and wear a swatch X watch which means I am in fact the most substance free phonologist.

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Reposted by Scott Nelson

Hagen Blix @hagenblix.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

An editor from the economist telling @olivia.science that nobody confidently understands the difference between the human cognitive capacity for language and a corpus. Idk about you, but to me (as a linguist and cognitive scientist) this is absolutely hilarious

Olivia Guest, quoting Dr Katie Twomey: exactly 💯 on LLMs: they simulate the output we call language, not the cognitive capacity we call language!

Followed by Economist Editor Matt Steinglass saying "I am not sure that I or anyone else confidently understands the difference between those."

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Listen to Brian Eno’s Ambient 4 with headphones in a dark room without getting scared challenge

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Have you used it any capacity? Seems like it’s at the level I’ve wanted to give students who come with minimal math backgrounds. I’ve ended up just writing my own notes but this could be a helpful other resource

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

He uses lambda and not epsilon for the empty string which means he knows ball.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Levelt wrote an intro to formal language theory book???

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Reposted by Scott Nelson

Matt Goldrick @mattgoldrick.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Deadline Dec 1: Asst prof (tenure track), open area, ‼️NU Linguistics‼️ "an integrated approach to the scientific study of language, utilizing experimental, computational, and/or data-intensive approaches to inform linguistic theory and its applications" linguistics.northwestern.edu/about/open-p...

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Reposted by Scott Nelson

Darin Flynn @phono-logical.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Apologies but good phonology

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

The Illinois train routes are so stupid. I shouldn't have to go to Chicago to take a train from Champaign to St. Louis or Indianapolis.

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Scott Nelson @esseeohteetee.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

Yes! The corn’s reasonably high at this point but I’ll have to bike there soon and see what it’s like

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