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Johann-Mattis List

@lingulist.de
228 followers 148 following 113 posts

Linguist leading the Chair for Multilingual Computational Linguistics at the University of Passau. Working on computer-assisted approaches to historical and typological language comparison.

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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 01/10/2026
Mein Blogbeitrag im Oktober via @dehypotheses.bsky.social befasst sich diesmal mit der Frage von Privatsphäre, in Zeiten, in denen manche Menschen alles mit ihren Chatbots bequatschen und damit eigentlich auch die Privatsphäre anderer missachten. Von privaten Sphären wub.hypotheses.org/3615
wub.hypotheses.org
Von privaten Sphären
Lange Zeit war das, was man Menschen im Vertrauen berichtete, etwas, das mit relativ großer Wahrscheinlichkeit vertraulich bleiben würde. Klar, Vertrauen konnte missbraucht, Dinge weitergesagt werden,...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 21/09/2026
A preprint, presenting the database, has now also been shared with Humanities Commons. doi.org/10.17613/cjq...
doi.org
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 21/09/2026
The data is also freely available, shared with Codeberg. codeberg.org/digling/clips
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 21/09/2026
First version of the newly created Database of Cross-Linguistic Partial Colexifications (CLIPS) has now been published online. Common work with Katja Bocklage, Thanasis Georgakopoulos, Robert Forkel, and myself clips.digling.org
Logo of the CLIPS database with a directed network combining three nodes.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 16/09/2026
Why can't editors check if an articles conforms to open science principles before asking me to review it? Why should I always require to see the data? This is the editor's job, if they take open science seriously!
Text box with "Comments to the Editor" says: "Please do the extra work as editors and check before if these studies comply with Open Science principles, instead of outsourcing this to reviewers like me. It is your job as editors!"
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 11/09/2026
Mein monatlicher Blogbeitrag via @dehypotheses.bsky.social im September handelt von stummen Lauten im Englischen und Deutschen. "Von dummen Kämmen" wub.hypotheses.org/3589
wub.hypotheses.org
Von dummen Kämmen
Mit großem Interesse habe ich einen Artikel von John McWhorter gelesen, der sich ganz am Rande mit der Geschichte des Wortes dumb im Englischen beschäftigt (McWhorter 2026). Dieses Wort selbst hat ja ...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 02/09/2026
New preprint by Alžběta Kučerova, Carlo Meloni, and myself: "Naming variation across languages is shaped by shared histories, semantics and familiarity" doi.org/10.31234/osf...
doi.org
OSF
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Pat Savage @patrickesavage.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Boghossian et al.'s "Vanderbilt report" claimed "a deterioration in scholarly standards” in the humanities. What was their evidence? The companion reports have begun to trickle out. I argue that they show no evidence to support this claim. The report should be corrected or retracted: osf.io/ta6kg
Boghossian et al.’s (2026) critique of humanistic scholarship is itself bad scholarship and should be corrected or retracted

Patrick E. Savage1,2
1School of Psychology, Waipapa Taumata Rau | University of Auckland, Aotearoa | New Zealand
2Faculty of Environment and Information Studies, Keio University, Fujisawa, Japan

[This version dated August 28, 2026]

Abstract: Boghossian et al.’s (2026) “Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences” argues that humanistic scholarship has experienced “a deterioration in scholarly standards fueled by the substitution of political criteria for properly scholarly criteria”. I argue that their report itself represents low scholarly standards. Specifically: 1) it is primarily based on unpublished, unverifiable data; 2) the limited data that have been published (largely from unvalidated LLM categorisations) do not support the main claims of a “deterioriation in scholary standards”; and 3) the report unjustifiably generalises from a narrow set of examples (e.g., the cancelation of a panel on sex and gender by the American Anthropological Association) to make sweeping conclusions about global humanities scholarship. I describe counter-examples from past and present research in the humanities and the sciences by myself and others to show that biased and low-quality scholarship is not a new or unique problem for progressive humanistic research. While I agree with the authors that critical evaluation of the quality of academic scholarship (both humanistic and scientific) is urgently needed in today’s global political climate, the report’s strongest conclusions are not justified by their data and thus are not of sufficient quality to achieve their intended goal of helping university leaders to make policy decisions. I recommend it be corrected or retracted to resolve these issues.
Figure 2. Key data provided from each of the three internal disciplinary reports published so far do not demonstrate “a deterioration in scholarly standards”. A) History (Fleming & Wilentz, 2026), B) Literary Studies (Appiah, 2026), Sociology (Rubin, 2026). Y-axes have been adapted for clarity.Figure 1. Distribution of Boghossian et al.’s 10 coauthors by country, gender, race, discipline, and institution type. Sources: Boghossian et al. (2026) and Whitford (2026). Data and code available at https://github.com/pesavage/humanities.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 24/08/2026
Thanks for this very insightful comment. I am looking forward to following up on the discussion in future posts.
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Martin Haspelmath @haspelmath.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
What exactly is "colexification"? This was recently asked by List et al. (calc.hypotheses.org/9547) Here is my blogpost addressing this point: dlc.hypotheses.org/4439
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 19/08/2026
In our August contribution to our blog Computer-Assisted Language Comparison in Practice #CALCiP, we discuss The Ambiguity of the Colexification Term (with Katja Bocklage and Thanasis Georgakopoulos) calc.hypotheses.org/9547 doi.org/10.15475/cal...
calc.hypotheses.org
The Ambiguity of the Colexification Term
The term colexification has become an important concept in lexical typology in particular and linguistic typology in general. Surprisingly, it is not consistenly used by all scholars in the field. Ins...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 14/08/2026
Mein Blogbeitrag im August, via @dehypotheses.bsky.social, handelt vom Publikationswesen in der Wissenschaft und meinem Ärger darüber, wie schlecht die Websysteme sind, mit denen Verlage die Gutachten organisieren. wub.hypotheses.org/3559
wub.hypotheses.org
Vom Ablehnen
Ich habe heute ein wirklich originelles Gutachten für einen wissenschaftlichen Artikel geschrieben. Ich glaube, es ist das originellste Gutachten, das ich je geschrieben habe. Wenn das aber mit dem An...
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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
If most “readers” of scientific articles aren’t humans anymore, what does this to do the publication record? Really insightful and thought-provoking post by @omearabrian.bsky.social on how AI could impact scientific publishing. brianomeara.info/posts/ai_opt...
brianomeara.info
AI optimization – Brian O’Meara
Optimization of papers for AI parsing?
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 07/08/2026
So my recommendation is: do not review if you do not want to, but if you review, do not expect to have the power to prevent stupid ideas from being published. Rather try to make the research as transparent as possible, so that concrete problems can be identified by colleagues writing replies.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 07/08/2026
But what I can do is argue openly about things I consider as wrong. This is how science works. Specifically those fields of science, where it is less easy to be extremely sure about something, like linguistics. I have written about this before in a German blog post: wub.hypotheses.org/980
wub.hypotheses.org
Wer begutachtet eigentlich die Gutachter?
Das erste Gutachten für einen wissenschaftlichen Artikel, das ich schrieb, war schlecht. Ich fand den Artikel banal, ich ärgerte mich, dass die Autoren die Daten nicht teilen wollten, und ich empfand ...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 07/08/2026
I rather refuse to review them or see if I can reject them on other grounds. If data and code are missing, for example, I can say something is unscientific. But it is not my job to prevent articles from being published. If I reject them, the authors will just publish them somewhere else.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 07/08/2026
If some people claim that Basque is related to Austronesian, there's no real way to tell that they are wrong. So it is also not possible to demand their papers not to be published. As a result, my attitude towards papers as a reviewer is not to reject them if I do not like them.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 07/08/2026
I think one must admit and also make this very clear to oneself that scientific fields differ with respect to the consequences that objectively wrong accounts in research may have upon society. Historical linguistics is a field where consequences are minimal and divergent opinions are many.
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Asifa Majid @asifamajid.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
It's hard to believe that OECS has now published 200 articles!🎉 A huge thank you to everyone who has contributed to OECS—our authors, reviewers, readers, and fantastic section editors, and especially @mcxfrank.bsky.social frank.bsky.social and @hbaum.bsky.social Excited for the next chapter!
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 20/07/2026
Just appeared in the Journal of Language Evolution, by David Snee, Luca Ciucci, and myself: "Variation in language phylogenies may result from variation in concept translation" doi.org/10.1093/jole...
doi.org
Variation in language phylogenies may result from variation in concept translation
Abstract. Phylogenetic reconstruction in historical linguistics now typically relies on cognates sets assembled from multilingual wordlists. While more and
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 15/07/2026
A new contribution to our CALCiP Journal/Blog appeared today, looking at sound laws and how they can be described. Towards a Specification for the Formal Notion of Sound Laws calc.hypotheses.org/9435
calc.hypotheses.org
Towards a Specification for the Formal Notation of Sound Laws
Formal notations for the handling of sound laws in historical linguistics have been employed by linguists for a long time. So far, however, linguists have barely tried to describe their notation pract...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 15/07/2026
Mein Blogbeitrag im Juli via @dehypotheses.bsky.social handelt von Sprachgrenzen und deren Konsequenzen für sprachbasierte KI-Modelle. wub.hypotheses.org/3541
wub.hypotheses.org
Sprachgrenzen
Der KI-Boom hat etwas bewirkt, das man so nicht zwangsläufig hätte erwarten müssen. Er hat der menschlichen Sprache einen Boom beschert, nachdem diese durch den Boom von Internet und Onlinemedien mehr...
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FragDenStaat @fragdenstaat.de · 14/07/2026
Eine halbe Million Menschen unterstützen bereits unsere Petition. Gemeinsam machen wir klar: Hände weg vom IFG! Hilf auch Du, den Druck auf die Politik hoch zu halten & unterschreibe jetzt für die Informationsfreiheit & gegen Korruption: weact.campact.de/petitions/sp...
weact.campact.de
SPD, stoppt den Frontalangriff auf die Informationsfreiheit!
Wir alle haben das Recht auf staatliche Informationen. Seit 2006 müssen Behörden auf Antrag nach dem Informationsfreiheitsgesetz (IFG) Dokumente herausgeben – seien es Verträge, interne Weisungen oder...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 10/07/2026
www.nature.com/articles/d41... What I don't understand here: why can't editors enforce the right to share data upon publication? Why do I always have to remind them?
nature.com
Referees should exercise their rights
Peer reviewers should not feel pressured to produce a report if key data are missing.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 09/07/2026
Das ist vielleicht der geheime Plan des Ministeriums!
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 09/07/2026
Ja, die gibt es wohl auch nicht. Selbst, wenn man KI verbietet. Die andere Strategie, Aufgaben so zu gestalten, dass sie eben nicht im Rahmen von KI-Allgemeinplätzen bearbeitet werden können, kostet ja auch mehr Zeit, wobei ich Besinnungsaufsätze als Hausarbeiten schon immer nervig fand.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 09/07/2026
Was die Prüfungen betrifft, sind allerdings nur solche gemeint, die *nicht* in Präsenz stattfinden. Das wird irgendwie bewusst nicht klar genannt, wohl um mehr Aufregung zu verursachen. Es hat daher kaum Konsequenzen für unsere Kurse, da wir Hausarbeiten mit mündlichen Gesprächen (ohne KI) ergänzen.
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Anette Dowideit @antennedowideit.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
Behörden sollten transparent bleiben ... oder? Falls ihr es noch nicht gehört habt: Die Koalition plant Einschnitte ins Informationsfreiheitsrecht – also die Pflicht, BürgerInnen Auskunft über die Arbeit von Behörden zu geben. Wir von @correctiv.org haben eine Petition gestartet:
correctiv.org
Mitmachen: Ich bin für einen transparenten Staat.
Geplante Einschränkungen der Informationsfreiheit gefährden Transparenz und journalistische Kontrolle. Setzen Sie ein Zeichen und unterzeichnen Sie jetzt.
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Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦 @sobchuk.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
📣 I'm hiring! Two positions (PhD student & Postdoc) in my ERC project Macroevolution of European Literature. Let's study the cultural evolution of literature using massive data 📚📈 📍Frankfurt | Apply by August 15 Details: www.aesthetics.mpg.de/en/career/jo... Please repost to help spread the word!
Job announcement of two positions at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt: postdoc (Macroevolution of European Literature) and PhD student (Computational Literary Studies). Successful candidates will be affiliated with the research group Cultural Evolution of the Arts.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 23/06/2026
Mein Blogbeitrag im Juni, via @dehypotheses.bsky.social behandelt die Rolle von Genie und Wahnsinn in der Wissenschaft. ... und Wahnsinn wub.hypotheses.org/3496
wub.hypotheses.org
… und Wahnsinn
Die Wissenschaft ist berühmt für das Zelebrieren des unorthodoxen, zügellosen und ungehemmten Denkens, welches so eckig und kantig und klobig ist, dass es in keine normale Schublade passt. Das Genie k...
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langscipress.bsky.social @langscipress.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
Language Science Press has published 300+ books in the last 12 years. Every 3 years, our funding has to be renewed. We need 100 institutions giving us €2000/year to continue our operations in 2027. Please visit langsci-press.org/knowledgeunl... for more information and talk to your librarian.
langsci-press.org
Funding | Language Science Press
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 08/06/2026
New contribution to our #CALCiP Journal/Blog by Anja Krišto: calc.hypotheses.org/9392 doi.org/10.15475/cal... Integrating Croatian into Concepticon: a Corpus-Based Frequency Mapping of Croatian Vocabulary
calc.hypotheses.org
Integrating Croatian into Concepticon: a Corpus-Based Frequency Mapping of Croatian Vocabulary
This study presents a Croatian frequency-derived wordlist mapped to Concepticon concept sets, based on the most frequent nouns, verbs, and adjectives extracted from the hrWaC web corpus. The resulting...
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Martin Haspelmath @haspelmath.bsky.social · 07/06/2026
"CLDF Meta" (meta.clld.org) links to data from over 800 CLDF datasets that have been released on Zenodo (e.g. WALS, APiCS and Grambank). There are links to data on over 9000 languoids, e.g. 98 entries on Ambulas (to take a random language). Great work by my colleague Johannes Englisch!
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 20/05/2026
Mein Blogbeitrag im Mai, via @dehypotheses.bsky.social handelt vom Warten, sowohl vom Warten von Gegenständen und als auch vom Warten von Wissen. wub.hypotheses.org/3450
wub.hypotheses.org
Vom Warten
Vor Kurzem habe ich ein Interview mit Stewart Brand gelesen (Klein, 2026), in dem dieser unter anderem auch von seinem Buch Maintenance of Everything sprach, welches vor Kurzem erschienen ist (Brand, ...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 17/05/2026
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... This is the original study. NYT only refers to it.
science.org
The evolution of infant-directed communication: Comparing vocal input across all great apes
Human infants receive more directed communication than other great ape infants, indicating that it evolved alongside language.
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 04/05/2026
New blog post by Frederic Blum in our #CALCiP Journal / Blog out now. "How To Visualize Language Polygons with QGIS (How to Do X in Linguistics 15)" calc.hypotheses.org/9287 doi.org/10.15475/cal...
calc.hypotheses.org
How To Visualize Language Polygons with QGIS (How to Do X in Linguistics 15)
This tutorial shows how to build beautiful maps using polygon data of language distributions and the geospatial software QGIS. For this purpose, I show in the first part how to extract a list of Glott...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 30/04/2026
New paper by Robert Forkel and myself in #JOHD just appeared: Extending CLDF -- Towards a Type System for Cross-Linguistic Data doi.org/10.5334/johd...
doi.org
Extending CLDF — Towards a Type System for Cross-Linguistic Data | Journal of Open Humanities Data
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Annika Tjuka @annikatjuka.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
📣 New blog post! Introducing the web app for the Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications 4.0 🌐 (with @lingulist.de and Robert Forkel). We also discuss the future of CLICS. calc.hypotheses.org/9261 PDF here: doi.org/10.15475/cal...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 29/04/2026
This month, in our #CALCiP blog / journal, we introduce the CLLD application for the fourth version of the Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (with @annikatjuka.bsky.social and Robert Forkel). "CLICS⁴ as CLLD Web Application" calc.hypotheses.org/9261 PDF here: doi.org/10.15475/cal...
calc.hypotheses.org
CLICS⁴ as CLLD Web Application
The fourth version of the Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications (https://clics.clld.org) was published last year. Now, we launched the accompanying web application that presents the data for in...
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rgyalrong.bsky.social @rgyalrong.bsky.social · 28/04/2026
panchr.hypotheses.org/4024
panchr.hypotheses.org
L’étymologie de 天 then “ciel” en chinois archaïque
Le caractère 天 then apparaît dès les jiaguwen sous cette forme, représentant un personnage se tenant debout avec une tête soit carrée, soit consistant en plusieurs traits horizontaux. La prononciation...
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Martin Haspelmath @haspelmath.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Version 1.0 of the Grammaticon is now online! This has been in the making for over eight years. Quite a few of the entries are still preliminary, but I hope to expand and improve it over the coming months and years. Comments are welcome! An intro text is here: dlc.hypotheses.org/4316
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 22/04/2026
Finally out, so we have new space for new ideas now.
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Annika Tjuka @annikatjuka.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Database update 🌐 We launched a new version of CLICS 🚀 - the Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications clics.clld.org The paper introducing the new version is available here: aclanthology.org/2025.iwcs-ma...
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 21/04/2026
Mein Blogbeitrag im April geht auf die Idee ein, von offener Forschung endlich auch zu offener Lehre an Universitäten zu gelangen. "Offene Lehre im universitären Kontext" via @dehypotheses.bsky.social wub.hypotheses.org/3421
wub.hypotheses.org
Offene Lehre im universitären Kontext
1 Ausgangssituation Die universitäre Lehre, wie ich sie bisher erlebt habe, widerspricht den Grundprinzipien der offenen Forschung in vielerlei Hinsicht. Während das Ziel der offenen Forschung darin b...
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Advice for @erc.europa.eu : Prohibit the use of LLMs for grant writing. Let applicants sign a declaration that they have not used such systems and that the text is written by them and them alone.
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Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 20/04/2026
Love this clear-headed idea for ERC — @erc.europa.eu please take note. Innovative work requires independent minds. A policy like this would send the signal that the funder values clear thinking over automated thoughtlessness, quality over quantity, earnest novel work over mediocre rehashings.
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John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
I'm hiring! 2 x postdocs in Cognitive Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics, to work on the cultural history of Australia and Papua. More details in link below, and please do repost or share elsewhere! www.isle.uzh.ch/en/jobs/post...
isle.uzh.ch
Postdoctoral Researchers (x2) in Cognitive Anthropology, Archaeology and Linguistics
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Mark Dingemanse @markdingemanse.net · 10/04/2026
'Ah but you're cherry-picking excellent writers. Surely the average person benefits? I myself found it useful this one time' No. None of us benefit from dragging down the level of writing to some lowest common denominator. Have some self-respect. Be ambitious. ideophone.org/find-your-ow...
ideophone.org
Find your own voice: against LLM slop in academic writing
Writing is thinking. The writing process is the most neglected part of our job. We spend millions on fancy equipment…
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 07/04/2026
🤣
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Johann-Mattis List @lingulist.de · 04/04/2026
Yes, #ScientificReports, with my background as a linguist interested in the evolution of languages, I will of course gladly review your paper on photovoltaic systems in 10 days, expect it in 5 🫡
Screenshot of an email that reads: Invitation to review "Research on a High-Reliability-GuidedHierarchical Dynamic Optimal Scheduling Methodfor Photovoltaic Systems"

Should you accept to review this manuscript, your report would be due within 10 days.



Dear Dr List,

We have received a manuscript for Scientific Reports that we think falls within your area of expertise. Our reviewers are integral to ensuring we have the highest-quality publication. 

We would greatly appreciate it if you could let us know if you are available to review by accepting or declining the invitation link below.
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