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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Te Ara Paerangi Com - Research Advocacy Capability @te-ara-paerangi.community · 2d

14 years ago Paul Callaghan gave this talk. It leaned in to the idea of making Aotearoa New Zealand a place where talented people wanted to live. Our government is hell bent on doing the opposite.
@nzscientists.bsky.social
#NZPOL

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

The Associated Press @apnews.com · 13h

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio insisted “no one has died” as a result of U.S. foreign aid cuts. In Myanmar, the grieving father of a 2-year-old boy who died after their food rations were cut calls such claims a lie.

Starving children screaming for food as US aid cuts unleash devastation and death across Myanmar

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has repeatedly said “no one has died" because of his government’s decision to gut its foreign aid program.

bit.ly

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 2d

Wow, a junk spam email written in Comic Sans from a .biz email address. It's like the 90s again!

two men are sitting on a couch playing guitars and dancing in a living room .

ALT: two men are sitting on a couch playing guitars and dancing in a living room .

media.tenor.com

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Katherine McDonald @katherinemcdon.bsky.social · 2d

When you study a language that has, say, 500 inscriptions surviving and someone out of the blue SENDS YOU FIVE MORE...! I don't think I've ever cancelled my plans faster than when Dan sent me these. So pleased everyone can read this wonderful publication.

Dan Diffendale @diffendale.bsky.social · 3d

If you remember last autumn when I was live-skeeting excavations at Rossano di Vaglio, the first report of that work has just been published (in Italian). Happy for it to see the light of day, and also very pleased to present five new Oscan inscriptions to the world...
🏺
#ArchaeologyBluesky

Rossano di Vaglio, santuario italico: cronaca e nuovi dati dalla campagna di scavo del 2024 | Quaderni di ACMA

acma-digitale.it

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 6d

“war on science” = Universities are slowly dying world-wide but I’m angry because a one time a woman told me to shut up

Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 8d

However bad you thought the whingefest “War on Science” book was going to be, it’s worse. The contributors are somehow the most ridiculous and among the most high profile scientists out there. If “cancel culture” were actually real, the former would preclude the latter, but nope 🤷‍♀️

shaun @shaunvids.bsky.social · 15d

video www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyU5...

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Pitt Rivers Museum @pittriversmuseum.bsky.social · 12d

Maori scholar, Makereti Papakura writing at her desk c.1910. The room is decorated with a mix of Maori & European mementoes whilst the rafters are painted with traditional kowhaiwhai patterns. Makereti will be awarded a posthumous degree in Oxford tomorrow, almost a century after she died in 1930.

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Los Angeles Times @latimes.com · 7d

Jane Goodall, the trailblazing naturalist whose intimate observations of chimpanzees in the African wild produced powerful insights that transformed basic conceptions of humankind, has died. She was 91.

Read more about her legacy www.latimes.com/obituaries/s...

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 7d

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 8d

We've got hundreds of signatures in five hours... but if we can cross 1000 by morning when I send this to NSF that'd be great. The stories from past, current, and future applicants in the comments section are hearbreaking. Keep up the pressure, and please please sign!!!

Daniel Bolnick @danielbolnick.bsky.social · 9d

NSF unexpectedly changed (at the last minute) who is eligible to apply for the Grad Research Fellowship, dropping 2nd year students. We started a petition to reverse this unfair change, Sign here:
laurenkuehne.github.io/grfpChanges/
and please spread the word!!!!

Petition to NSF to Restore Eligibility for the 2026 Graduate Research Fellowship Program Competition

laurenkuehne.github.io

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

John Mansfield @johnbasil.bsky.social · 9d

Social functions of language may drive faster change and faster diversification in some features.
Thanks to growing diversity in variationst sociolinguistics, I gathered studies of 63 languages from 28 families. Here I sketch some potential patterns
compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Linguistic Diversification and Rates of Change: Insights From a Diverse Sample of Sociolinguistic Studies

Language diversification and change can be studied using phylogenetic modelling of families over thousands of years, or by close observation of changes unfolding over a few decades at the community l....

compass.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 9d

Richard got my vote very quickly.

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 10d

Yes -- and this particular journal has all articles on jstor back to its inception. I can download the original version of the reprinted article right now.

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 10d

90s?

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 10d

is it strange for a journal to republish old articles from their archives?

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 10d

Paywall: www.afr.com/policy/healt...

Reddit version:
www.reddit.com/r/Anu/commen...

#AcademicSky #HigherEd #UKHE

Opaque, conflicted, overpaid: The shabby state of uni governance

A major senate report into the quality of governance at Australian universities has delivered a blistering attack on how they are run and overseen.

www.afr.com

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Mark Rubin @markrubin.bsky.social · 10d

Report on Australian Higher Education finds:

🔹️ Council members have no lived experience of universities

🔹️ Council members have COIs with consultancy firms

🔹️ Council meetings are closed affairs that lack transparency

🔹️ Leaders' exorbitant salaries could not be justified

One submission said leaders’ salaries could not be “justified by the quality of executive decision-making, nor by the scope of executive duties. The core business of a university – teaching and research – is co-ordinated virtually entirely by ordinary non-executive staff”.

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 11d

IF SIGN STILL HERE, STORM IS NOT TOO BAD 👍

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Matt Clancy @mattsclancy.bsky.social · 13d

New research by Pierre Azoulay, Danielle Li, Bhaven Sampat and me.

Earlier this year, the President’s budget proposed a 40% cut to the budget of the NIH. This motivated us to ask: what if the NIH had been 40% smaller?

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 14d

here's an AI-harm that popped up on my newsfeed this morning 😱: bsky.app/profile/404m...

404 Media @404media.co · 14d

The channel, named Woman Shot A.I, started on June 20, 2025. It posted 27 videos, had over 1,000 subscribers, and had more than 175,000 views, according to the channel’s publicly available data.

🔗 www.404media.co/ai-generated...

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 14d

yes, a lot of my non-english-as-L1 undergrad students are using english grammar checkers (i.e. grammerly) which is AI-fixing their text. They just want to write better english.

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Bethany Brookshire @beebrookshire.bsky.social · 16d

Some people think ChatGPT has a place writing things like news briefs, stuff written to a specific style and tone and, y'know, kinda boring.

So Science did a study.

ChatGPT failed.

Why? It got stuff wrong. "Also, extensive editing for hyperbole was needed." www.science.org/content/blog...

Can ChatGPT help science writers?

www.science.org

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 19d

Just deleted my account academia.edu

Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · 21d

If you’re on academia dot edu, let me suggest that you strongly consider deleting your account.

The new TOC from academia dot edu.

By creating an Account with Academia.edu, you grant us a worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable license, permission, and consent for Academia.edu to use your Member Content and your personal information (including, but not limited to, your name, voice, signature, photograph, likeness, city, institutional affiliations, citations, mentions, publications, and areas of interest) in any manner, including for the purpose of advertising, selling, or soliciting the use or purchase of Academia.edu's Services.

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 19d

www.scientificamerican.com/article/gene...

Languages Have Mixed through History. Our Genes Can Reveal How

New research shows that wherever human populations mix, their languages blend as well

www.scientificamerican.com

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Reposted by Simon J. Greenhill

Malte Elson @malte.the100.ci · 20d

Very happy to see this out. Use of LLMs to simulate study participants is something we'll see increasingly, if we want it or not. This paper is a super helpful guide to understand the impact of seemingly minor or unimportant decisions while doing so!

Jamie Cummins @jamiecummins.bsky.social · 20d

Can large language models stand in for human participants?
Many social scientists seem to think so, and are already using "silicon samples" in research.

One problem: depending on the analytic decisions made, you can basically get these samples to show any effect you want.

THREAD 🧵

The threat of analytic flexibility in using large language models to simulate human data: A call to attention

Social scientists are now using large language models to create "silicon samples" - synthetic datasets intended to stand in for human respondents, aimed at revolutionising human subjects research. How...

arxiv.org

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 20d

HEY GUYS Let's take money from basic science and use give it the outcome of basic science 🤡
#NZGovtAntiScience
www.nzherald.co.nz/business/ret...

Govt's $70m boost for AI

Funding will be over 10 years and will be rolled out in two phases.

www.nzherald.co.nz

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