Simon J. Greenhill
LightNews LightNews
banner
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Simon J. Greenhill
@simongreenhill.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1K following 690 posts
I study how languages and cultures evolve. Primarily with phylogenies and other assorted computational methods. Based at @Biology_UoA. Never met a language phylogeny or a cultural phylogeny I didn't like. #phylolinguistics
Posts Replies Media Videos
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Don't worry the universities WILL make changes!

MENTAL HEALTH WEBINARS
February 12, 2026 at 12:24 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Good news everyone, I'm proud to announce
February 12, 2026 at 11:42 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Psst. Anyone wanna buy a flash drive with a slightly used copy of "Encylopedia of Language and Linguistics" on it? 🤯
February 4, 2026 at 2:05 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Good news everyone, _Nature_ has published 66 Open Access articles to date in 2026!

This means Springer-Nature has gobbled up USD$837,540 of science funding this year.

I'm sure we couldn't think of anything better to do with that money.

#OpenScience
January 30, 2026 at 12:53 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Giant Pandas are generally only found where SW Mandarin is spoken.

The Spatial Congruence Between Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca) Habitats and Southwestern Mandarin 🐼

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

#linguistics
Map showing the congruence of Giant Panda fossils and SW Mandarin
January 29, 2026 at 7:54 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Demographic shifts, inter-group contact and environmental conditions drive language extinction and diversification.
#linguistics
January 28, 2026 at 9:31 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
#nzpol So Judith Collins quits just as her BFF Kristi Noem starts getting impeachment threats. Coincidence?
January 28, 2026 at 1:50 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
I'll just leave this here.
January 28, 2026 at 1:49 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
"Cat-related slang and sentiment analysis: the CatSlang-SA dataset and model evaluation using social media posts" 🐈

doi.org/10.1007/s105...
January 26, 2026 at 9:09 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Hey #rstats is there a way to turn off the patronising testthat messages? They're not cute, they're extremely annoying.
January 20, 2026 at 10:05 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
🍾 Achievement unlocked: Appeared in my first AI hallucinated reference!
January 20, 2026 at 8:50 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Now this is a headline:
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
January 16, 2026 at 11:35 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Does Father Christmas Have a Distinctive Facial Phenotype?
"...Father Christmas has a distinctive face that can be discriminated from other adult men and elderly bearded men, lending weight to the widely held belief amongst children that he is a real person and recognisable anywhere"

#AcademicXmas
December 18, 2025 at 11:00 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
"Santa has failed to develop a community of true believers and cult. Nevertheless, Santa concepts approximate a successful god concept more closely than ... Mickey Mouse and the Tooth Fairy, in part explaining Santa’s relative cultural prominence"

doi.org/10.1163/1567...

#AcademicXmas
December 18, 2025 at 7:45 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
The Scandi Journal of Hospitality and Tourism asking the big questions. #xmas #santa
Will Climate Change Kill Santa Claus?
December 18, 2025 at 7:42 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
yikes.
Hello Reddit! I have a bit of a sad and unusual question. Last weekend, a horrific shooting took place at/near the university where I did my PhD. I am now living in another country on a postdoc, but I feel sad and angry thinking about the loss of life and the grief and anxiety that I expect my colleagues and friends there are still feeling. That town was my home for so long, and I have been thinking about it a lot. Yesterday, I unexpectedly received a request for more information from a search committee for a tenure track position, and the request asks for letters of recommendation. I feel conflicted asking my advisors for a letter right now (even in the best of circumstances, I hate asking for letters). The timing would be bad even without the tragedy, because it's the end of the year and the letters would be due in early January
December 18, 2025 at 1:19 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
A curated global dataset of social contact between diverse language communities

www.nature.com/articles/s41...
December 11, 2025 at 7:34 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Hmm 🤔
December 4, 2025 at 2:08 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Nov 30 2022 - the day the internet ceased being human only and started rotting under the weight of AI

tegabrain.com/Slop-Evader
November 27, 2025 at 1:31 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Fun #linguistic fact for World Linguistics Day:

If North America had the same linguistic diversity as New Guinea we’d expect Indigenous Americans to speak ~28,000 languages.
ANUs map of Papuan Languages.
November 26, 2025 at 7:33 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Sometimes tidyverse drives me mad by being too clever. Just spent 20 mins debugging this:
October 22, 2025 at 7:51 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
IF SIGN STILL HERE, STORM IS NOT TOO BAD 👍
September 27, 2025 at 8:38 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
Happy to see that all of DeGruyter's journals link clearly to "Safety and product resources".

Handy to have this so accessible in case, I don't know, you get a paper cut while flipping through the journal.

#academicpublishing
September 14, 2025 at 11:55 PM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
I'm reminiscing on how lectures used to be (instead of revising mine for next month)
Late 90s University lecturer starter pack
September 12, 2025 at 2:21 AM
simongreenhill.bsky.social
I got bored with the tired old tree visualisations you see everywhere and asked an AI to make me an exciting one.

Here is the Uto-Aztecan language phylogeny visualised in what it calls "space jellyfish" mode.

#phylogenetics #spacejellyfish
September 3, 2025 at 4:25 AM