iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Did this come across your timeline?

Map of New York state with driving directions from Troy to Albany, with caption "The most confusing part of The Odyssey is how this took 10 years."

Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

I was the second person at my polling site to get one today. I watched them open the bag that the BoE had given them 🏀💙🧡 #knicks

NYC early voting sticker celebrating the Knicks

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

As it turns out, word length was not significant in your results, Eleanor, but frequency was! (Chodroff and Wilson 2017, JPhon :)

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

And then a huge Fuck Ice bike ride passed our group. So glad New York is stepping up. #ICEOut

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Just heard a reading of the 4th Amendment at the People’s Filibuster by the Public Theater, right after someone gave me this whistle to put on my keychain. I hate this timeline so so much.

A whistle given to me at the Public Theater’s People’s Filibuster event

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

Even Sliwa was at the parade in the Village

Curtis Sliwa in the NYC Halloween parade

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 18/10/2025

I assume NYC should be thanking Portland for introducing blow up aliens, animals and characters to the resistance #nokings

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

Did they not see Kaʻiana in **Chief of War**?

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

The ambiguity of this headline is pretty great. Have we reached the singularity, and this is the only actual proof?

Headline at Wired.com: "Hundreds of Google AI Workers Were Fired Amid Fight Over Working Conditions"

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

The irony, of course, is that the “phonetic way to say umami” is [umami].

The chili crisps from Oo'mämē, the phonetic way to say umami, come in 4 global versions — Chinese, Moroccan, Indian, and Mexican.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

The Onion piece that will be shared on social media forever and literally never disappear for New Yorkers.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

A very New York and satisfying part of the #NoKings protest was being able to scream “Don’t rank Cuomo!” to thousands of people in one spot

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 10/05/2025

What happens when all of the avocados at the store are overripe? This is a burning question I’d love a podcast like @hyperfixedpod.bsky.social or @planetmoney.bsky.social to tackle sometime 😂🥑

Huge pile of overripe avocados at Wegmans

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Another big crowd in NYC today. And I didn’t get a pic, but we chuckled at the most NYC-specific sign yet: “We don’t want any kings…especially ones from Queens” @50501newyork.bsky.social

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

I love this news! Linguistics is a small field with few citations, but my most cited paper is an application of smoothing spline ANOVAs to ultrasound images of tongue shapes. GAMMs have taken over to some degree now, but SSANOVA was indeed a huge step forward even for linguists! 🎉 to Grace Wahba!

Google scholar entry for a paper called "Comparing tongue shapes from ultrasound imaging using smoothing spline analysis of variance"

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

When you get to Madison Square Park, the dance party is there to greet you #handsoff #nyc

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

Getting to Bryant Park on the subway was as crowded as the DC metro in 2017 for the Women’s March. It’s raining and gross, but NYC has *turned out* #HandsOff

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 29/03/2025

What a perfect 80° day for the #TeslaTakedown Global Day of Action in Manhattan. Seems like the whole town is out here today! #StopMusk

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Perhaps the best thing about this #TeslaTakedown protest in Manhattan is that the NYPD have completely blocked the dealership to keep protestors out, but it also keeps any potential customer out too 😂

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

I wonder if the impending language imperialism will force Hawaiian Airlines to get rid of the ‘ōlelo Hawaiʻi captioning.

Hawaiian Airlines welcome video with both English and Hawaiian language captioning

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

Here's a distraction today. There's a coffeeshop near NYU called ˈneɪ.bər.hʊd. That's even what Google Maps lists them as. And they're *so close*! I prefer /ɚ/ myself, but I'd have accepted /əɹ/, if only they hadn't used the trill /r/ instead. Gonna be hard not to refer to them as "neighbo/r/hood" 😄

Cup from a coffee shop called ˈneɪ.bər.hʊd

Google Maps entry for coffee shop called ˈneɪ.bər.hʊd

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

LOLOLOL not a chance 😂 My job title is “phonetician” and as such, I’m qualified to inform you that there is precious little phonetic overlap between “racist” and “Trump”. (🎁 link) www.nytimes.com/2025/02/25/t...

While using Apple’s automatic dictation feature to send messages on Tuesday, some iPhone users reported seeing a peculiar bug: the word “racist” temporarily appearing as “Trump,” before quickly correcting itself.

The message blip, which was replicated several times by The New York Times, provoked controversy after appearing in a viral TikTok post, raising questions about Apple’s artificial intelligence capabilities.

An Apple spokeswoman blamed the issue on phonetic overlap between the two words, and said the company was working on a fix.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 22/02/2025

LOL the cops showed up late to the Stonewall protest and then decided to put up barricades around us long after it got crowded.

Barricades at Stonewall Protest Feb 22 2025

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 18/02/2025

Much as I dislike linking to the Atlantic, this is a gift link and lays out a likely goal pretty clearly. But ending like this inevitably raises the question "OK, so how *do* we block regime change?". Actually practical suggestions are welcome.

None of this is inevitable. Much of it will be unpopular. The old idea that public servants should serve all Americans, and not just a small elite, has been part of American culture for more than a century. Rule of law matters to many of our elected politicians, as well as to their voters, all across the political spectrum. There is still time to block this regime change, to preserve the old values. But first we need to be clear about what is happening, and why.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

The second paragraph in this clip is the faultiest conclusion to the preceding paragraph that I could possibly imagine. It's not the justice system that needs to catch up, dummy, it's the city's social services.

“We’ve been saying for a long time that when mentally ill people shelter in the subways, it’s bad for them, bad for riders, and bad for the system that failed to provide proper help," said John McCarthy, the MTA's chief of policy and external relations, in a statement. "As this study shows, there’s no question this societal problem touches transit and has changed the nature of crime underground."

"That’s precisely why the justice system needs to catch up with the MTA, which put cameras on every train and in every station, and the NYPD, which surged officers and is making arrests," he added.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

NIH study sections were paused last week, today NSF panels are pausing. And NYU sent out this email today. We all know how "temporary" these measures end up being (ahem, much like NYU put up "temporary" barriers to block access to publicly used plazas last year that are--surprise!--still there)

Notices of Cancellations of Federal Grants

Over the weekend, NYU’s Office of Sponsored Research (OSP) received notification from the US Department of State of two grants being terminated. The only reason given in each instance is that “the award does not meet the agency’s priorities.” We have reached out to the affected researchers, taken required steps, and offered support. It is certainly possible, if not likely, that more such notices will come.

The research activities of our scholars are central to NYU’s mission. The University values its faculty’s scholarship immeasurably and views these developments with the utmost seriousness, especially the sudden grant cancellations.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Every 3-4 years I get to repost this pic of my son (many years ago now) during a headturn preference study for some of my colleagues in psychology. It now lives in my slides for when I teach methods for studying infant language acquisition of sounds.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

I hate this product name. Do they want us to say [gudəlz] (‘noodles’ with a ‘g’)? I will never, and I bet no one else will either. Actually, I’ll never say anything at all because I will never buy this product.

A Mac and cheese product called “Goodles”

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 10/12/2024

Back on the other site, I used to periodically search "vocal fry" to see what the kids are saying about it. So I did it here too, and this thread is social media gold

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 09/12/2024

After seeing this in a deli, I let myself ponder this name for a bunch of days before finally giving in and looking up why little nuggets of peanut butter coated in coconut are called Chick-O-Stick.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

This is a real banger of a "trivia item" on IMDB about the movie Messy

It was asserted that the name Messy was taken without permission or consent from another film. That film, the original Messy, was written and directed by an African American filmmaker, but as no one owns the English language, this allegation was false.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 06/12/2024

Like when I asked Microsoft Designer to make me a piano-themed birthday cake that says "Very Happy Birthday Todd", and this is what it generated.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 03/12/2024

Ahahaha, that's funny, because if you go to Forvo and click on babsrock's pronunciation, she definitely has final [t]. But rdbedsole, in contrast, has nice voicing into the closure. forvo.com/word/wicked/...

Spectrogram of the word 'wicked' indicating a final voiced [d]

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Since the term appears to have started with architecture in Herat and Kabul, Poppy Palaces also shows up. But narcotecture is just a better word IMO :)

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

I went to the Met yesterday and was very into this Mexican poster from the 1940s advertising a course of study in linguistics (among other options)

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 26/11/2024

LOL a reader accidentally pressed The Ethicist's buttons and he defends linguistics (🎁 link below) www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/m...

I’m a high school senior. As a good student with strong extracurriculars, I’m applying to a few of what are considered top colleges. My dream school is one of them, and the major I intend to pursue is very competitive; choosing it might make it more difficult to get in.

I have considered applying instead as a linguistics major, because I have a stronger background in that field, especially with the extracurriculars I have pursued. I do love linguistics (I founded the Linguistics Club at my school), but it is not my passion, and if I got in somewhere for linguistics, I would switch to something else.

In fact, you should be prepared for the painful possibility that — once you discover how rewarding college-level linguistics can be — you might actually want to major in the subject. Rather like somebody gently letting down a suitor, you’re saying that you love it but you’re not in love with it. I’m not convinced that you know enough about the wildly various work that’s currently going on in the field to judge whether it will get its hooks into you. No shame in that. You’re hearing from someone who went to university to study medicine and ended up writing a dissertation in semantics. One critical thing we can learn in higher education is what it is we most want to learn.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 25/11/2024

So much to catch a linguist's attention in this.

A coffee shop window with the text "When they say they love you in a New York accent"

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 23/11/2024

Wow, this is some totally esoteric naming, even for Trader Joe’s.

Avocado’s Number Guacamole from Trader Joe’s

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 18/11/2024

This is maybe the first time I've seen even the basic statement "The Korean word for no begins with a b sound" wrt 4B. I know I'm being pedantic, but considering that there isn't really /b/ in Korean, we could have called this movement anything in English! 4 Noes would have been fine! Oh well 😂

Since the election, women in the United States have been coping with the second administration of Donald Trump by looking into a movement that originated in South Korea: something called 4B. As the Instagram user @4bworldwide put it a few weeks ago, “Life begins for women when we start to center women.” The account’s name references the 4B movement, which is so named for followers’ commitment to the “4 Noes”: rejecting heterosexual marriage, sex, childbirth, and dating. (The Korean word for no begins with a b sound.) The movement started in 2019 in South Korea in response to an increasingly misogynistic culture that South Korean women feel constrains their rights and devalues their personhood.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 16/11/2024

I feel for people visiting NYC this weekend who are trying to make sense of this service change that is bonkers even for people who live here 😂

Sign in NYC subway explaining confusing service changes on the Q train

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

When I was in Montreal this summer, we ate at a diner in a town outside the city. I’m not sure anyone was consulted before putting this English-French portmanteau on the menu.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 11/11/2024

Last night I walked by the Thai place with my favorite name in NYC (because it's in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood...) I might have posted...ahem, elsewhere...years ago, but thought I'd share again.

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 08/11/2024

It's Friday, and attention may be flagging, so feel free to opine on whether "meat from plants" is a reasonable statement.

Impossible Ground Beef package, with the tagline "Meat from Plants"

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

Descobreix vs. descobrix; m'hi apunto vs. M'apunte

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Lisa Davidson @lisabdavidson.bsky.social · 04/11/2024

They're not exactly the same! Some examples:

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