Computational linguist specializing in #NaturalLanguageGeneration with an interest in linguistic complexity.
Advanced Research Fellow at #UniversityOfAberdeen, living in #Edinburgh
Publishing under David M. Howcroft
More personal at @_dmh
It's probably worse to be a fascist who loves the fascism than a sheepish accidental "I don't really believe in any of this" fascist ... but the later is more tragic in some ways. More depressing.
Especially if it's someone I wanted to admire and respect ... once. Or god forbid myself.
And the minority who really wants this nonsense is counting on a lot of people just going along with it even though we "don't really like it much." History records actions not the contents of your heart.
"The #Forkiverse makes all of this visible...unfolding in real time. We are watching a community take shape, with excitement, disagreement, and inevitable growing pains. Whether or not it fixes the internet is almost beside the point...in the Fediverse, community is not abstract. Community matters more than algorithms....It is intentional, contextual, and deeply shaped by where you choose to belong. And there is space, even if you have too many faces." https://maho.dev/2026/01/the-forkiverse-experiment-and-why-instance-choice-matters/
@researchfairy One of my favorite alternatives is "absurd"
When designing a crowdsourcing experiment, I estimate task duration (ideally using a pilot study) and set payments based on the living wage in my area (e.g. 12.5 GBP/hr). It's not a perfect method, but it simplifies thinking about the ethics of adequate pay for participants.
What do you do?
The scraping of Spotify by the shadow library, Anna's Archive, has made it into Private Eye, where the hypocrisy of Spotify - which originally was a pirate scraper site - is brought to light.
😐🫸 "is it free software?"
😎👉 "does it free people?"
1/ At bargaining yesterday, @ProPublica management said that they should have 100% discretion to replace workers with AI and would not commit to labeling future AI-generated content.
Finished these delightful "glittens" over the weekend. I call them my ninja turtle gloves.
Collaborators make all the difference in your experience as a researcher. I have been blessed with some great collaborators. Talk to people whose ideas you like, follow the energy of excitement at a shared idea, see where it takes you.
@researchfairy how often do you think about the romulan empire
Concept: A Firefox plugin that replaces "Roman" with "Romulan" in all instances
Trying to write more. Wrote about prayer in my life.
@ieeespectrum
I thought the "I" stood for international?
@Gargron
#INLG2025 main conference starts with not one, not two, but three keynotes today! We'll hear from Minlie Huang, Iryna Gurevych, and Verena Rieser (@verenarieser) as well as oral and poster sessions for accepted papers.
Update: a few hours before the deadline, we reached the goal!!!
This week, the #Python Software Foundation rejected a $1.5MM NSF grant, due to a requirement that the PSF abandon diversity work.
So I joined forces with Python folks (@offby1, @petrillic, @amethyst) and we're matching up to $12,000 of donations to the PSF. 🧵
Hey, so as a veteran and incident responder I need to warn you to pay attention to something in America.
The human brain is resilient. While you’re watching kids get dragged away from the parents and people being beaten in the streets, you’re accumulating trauma but also being desensitized.
Reminder that I administer the "some NLG people" Discord server for researchers and others interested in #NaturalLanguageGeneration / #TextGeneration. DM me if you want an invite link :)
Today we've got two more workshops at #INLG2025 and the continuation of #VLSP2025!
Meeting today are LLMs for Medical Reasoning #LLM4MedR and #AiWolfDial!
The nominal capacity of this seminar room is 25, I believe. The diagram shows the CO₂ levels with just 9 persons in the room. How is this considered acceptable?
