Natasha Warner

Linguist at University of Arizona (phonetics, psycholinguistics, language revitalization). Languages other than English that I especially enjoy working with are Japanese, Dutch, and Mutsun. Outside of work I'm a total trekkie. I don't own a car and bike everywhere. I teach in the Our Whole Lives program. Pronouns: she/they

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nprofile1qqs88x5upvwnppjss2n42neygtng7zaj4x2a8qmp86qkzezw7r2hu7gpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerfw36x7tnsw43q95uy2e

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Last Notes

2026-11-02 18:41:22 UTC

I just went to a zoom meeting on university-approved uses of AI for department heads. I made it through the first speaker's presentation, but once we hit the Q&A, I hit "leave meeting" and ran. Argh. The first question was proposing an ethically inappropriate use of AI. The second question confused traditional ASR with generative AI and really just needed help on a basic computer skill. That was as much as I could take. #AcademicChatter

2026-08-17 03:05:37 UTC

I enjoyed seeing this happy little piece of rock art today. I think it was made by a friend of mine. #tucson
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2026-08-13 04:08:45 UTC

I hardly ever re-watch TOS because I can't stand the gender stuff anymore, but I wanted to go back and review what Sarek was like before the whales movie and before TNG and Discovery. Sarek was one giant, total, irredeemable jerk. Toward both Spock and Amanda. "My wife, attend!" Wow, I'm glad they didn't keep on depicting Vulcan as that patriarchal in later shows. After the surgery, Sarek refuses to thank Spock for saving his life, then puts down Amanda for being a hysterical woman. She just laughs it off and shows him more affection. Ick, ick, ick. In Spock's angry conversation with Amanda about not being able to give up command to save his father, oh sure he doesn't express emotions, sure. I'm really glad the series eventually showed Vulcans and Sarek as being a lot more nuanced than this. Interesting though that in this episode everyone pronounces his name as /sarək/, whereas in Discovery Michael at least calls him /serək/. I guess we can put it down to her being a non-native Vulcan speaker. Throughout the series, it remains a question just what Amanda is getting out of this relationship that makes it worth everything she had to put up with, both from Vulcan society and from her husband. And boy, 1960's depiction of women on TV is mostly terrible. #StarTrek #StarTrekTOS #StarTrekTNG #StarTrekDiscovery

2026-08-10 21:11:49 UTC

I'm a university faculty member in Linguistics, and I just got an email from a high school senior who wants to come shadow a linguist for 20 hours before Oct. 15 for a school-required project. We've actually done this before with this school, and I'm delighted by high school students who want to learn about linguistics. However, the students apparently aren't allowed to miss regular class time in order to do their shadowing project. So they're only free to do 20 hours of profession shadowing on weekends or after 4 PM weekdays. How does the school think this will work? If you want to shadow a nurse or a grocery store evening manager, maybe this works. But what if the students want to become K-12 teachers? It also doesn't work for academic jobs--while we do plenty of work at night and on the weekends, watching someone answer email for 20 hours would be boring, not to mention that they're answering email from home. I don't get how the school thinks this would work. Anyone else have experience with high schoolers shadowing jobs? (The previous time we did this, we happened to be running a weekend conference, and took the student along to that. Otherwise, they have to have a day off school while we're in session.) #AcademicChatter

2026-08-07 04:30:00 UTC

That was so much fun! Does anybody know where to find the Klingon lyrics for Total Eclipse of the Heart? I need to see those lyrics! I don't think I can transcribe them from her singing. I wouldn't have expected to enjoy a show about everybody getting drunk, but I did. I like the unpredictable, off-the-wall humor. Poor Pike when they get back! I'm not sure I get why each character subconsciously chose what they wound up with for their "journey," but that was fun! #StarTrek #StarTrekStrangeNewWorlds

2026-08-06 05:44:38 UTC

Continuing with my renewed hobby of sewing baby clothes this summer, I just finished this little 3T set with turtles on it for the toddler of one of my grad students. Only two more 1T sets to go, and I will have caught up to all the babies born in our department since I gave up sewing a few years ago. I didn't make any obvious spatial rotation mistakes on this set. We're going to pretend that the puckering along the sleeves is an intentional little ruffle, and not because this is cheap super-stretchy fabric that maybe was supposed to be ribbing in the first place. Two of the turtles on the shirt are swimming on from the edge of the shirt because that's how much turtle was available on the piece I cut the appliques from. I'm kind of pleased with that idea. #sewing Tagging @nprofile…fmlh so she gets to see the turtles.
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2026-08-01 07:01:03 UTC

Tonight my son is out of town, but his partner came over for dinner anyway and brought both dogs. Last night I spilled a whole bunch of popcorn on the floor, so I got to spoil the dogs even more than usual, and they cleaned the floor right up for me! We got to pet the absolutely most relaxed dog. I'm delighted that my son's partner will still come over for dinner even if he's out of town. #dogs
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2026-07-23 06:57:06 UTC

I just finished re-watching Discovery season 3. Wow, that season covers a lot of ground! From Michael crash-landing on some planet alone 930 years in the future and having to make her way, through locating the origin of the Burn and being ready to rebuild the Federation. With a lot of adjustment and 4 or so major new characters (Book, Adira, Gray, and the admiral) gained along the way, plus wrapping things up with mirror Georgiou. The tiny scene at the end with newly Lieutenant Sahil is surprisingly one of the most moving for me. I really think this season is one of the best in Trek ever, because neither the characters nor the viewers know what's out there. #StarTrek #StarTrekDiscovery

2026-06-23 05:19:55 UTC

I just finished re-watching s2e14, the end of season 2 of Discovery. The first time I watched it, I thought there was an awful lot going on in one episode, and I had a hard time following all the plots at once as they ran down the hallway with time suit pieces. Now, I still think there's a whole lot going on, but I really love this episode and end of a season. Among various other wonderful bits, I love snarky Commander Nhan and how well she gets along with formerly-Empress Georgiou. I don't think we knew enough about Nhan before this episode to predict that. Losing Admiral Cornwell hit me hard for a fairly minor character. I really liked her: the fact that a psychologist gets promoted to admiral, and how she functions as a woman in command. And that she's older and not aiming for conventionally pretty. I really appreciated the emotional scenes between Culber & Stamets, and between Spock and Michael. They even had a decent reason why Spock and Michael should spend that time talking instead of just going already, since Discovery's shields weren't up yet at the time. For the sake of their parents, I'm glad Spock stayed behind at the last minute. I had forgotten how much Klingon language usage was in this episode, when L'Rell shows up, talking with Tyler, and I always enjoy well-done Klingon language lines. Both those actors are really good at it. I loved having Kaminar with Siranna in the lead, along with the Klingons under L'Rell's command, turn up to save the day, and I enjoyed that that wasn't at the last minute. The Kelpians have come a long way, and it's nice to get confirmation of that before we head off to the future. Georgiou is already showing some signs of the character development she's undergoing by being around people with ethics. I like how it sets Pike and Spock up for the issues about the direction of their lives that they're going to have to deal with in SNW. There are a few things I don't like about this episode, like the whole premise that they have to send the data into the future to save life in the galaxy and that's the only solution, or the fact that they count on that future suit technology working on the first try, or how much it relies on "destiny," but I'm happy to overlook those for the sake of this excellent, if rushed, episode. I really love the development of Michael and Spock's relationship throughout this season, especially. We don't get very many well worked out sibling relationships in Trek generally. #StarTrek #StarTrekDiscovery

2026-06-21 07:03:54 UTC

I'm re-watching Discovery season 2, and I just love how Michael and Spock's relationship is changing throughout this season. Also, Spock saying "I like science." Earlier int he season, Spock is furious at Michael, Vulcan emotional control be damned. Now I'm up to episodes 11-12, and it's so interesting to watch them both acknowledging the other's emotions and trying to support each other within their emotional limitations. Then Amanda talking with Michael by subspace as her remaining mother-figure, and then Spock walks into the room, and Amanda saying "Take care of each other. I love you both." What a moment for her seeing her two problematic children actually functioning relatively well together, and what a lot of complexity in a very simple line. #StarTrek #StarTrekDiscovery

2026-06-10 05:33:40 UTC

I still wear an N95 mask when I'm indoors at work, at the grocery store, etc. I don't mind being the only one with a mask, and I don't generally get any pushback. The other night I was working at a public outreach event indoors at a museum, wearing my mask. One attendee was holding his baby, and I started talking to the baby, saying "I bet I look funny to you because of my mask." The father responded "You look safe." That was a way more positive reaction than he might have given. #Covid #mask

2026-06-06 05:29:27 UTC

Yesterday the U.S. Department of Defense or whatever they call it now decided that my religion isn't a possible religion, along with a lot of other people's religions. I'm a UU. This won't have an impact on my personal daily life, but as a member of a minority group religion, I definitely do notice it. I normally try not to mention religion on social media, but I don't see my own students on Mastodon, so I guess it's OK. Here I am, and I'm still a UU. #UU #UnitarianUniversalism #religion

2026-05-20 00:59:10 UTC

I found the photo I really wanted to find for @nprofile…z0je You have to look kind of close to see the cat here (bad lighting), but this was taken ~1922. That's my grandmother and her older brother, who died not long after of complications of whooping cough. And there they are holding a cat. #Cats #CatsOfMastodon
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2026-05-17 23:58:04 UTC

I spent most of last week in Philadelphia for a conference, and the place I happened to stay was on the border of Chinatown. It was fascinating, as well as delicious. Some of the restaurants and bakeries take cash or Venmo, no credit or debit cards. They skipped right over that stage, I guess. There are lots of businesses labeled in Chinese and English that are not restaurants or grocery stores--it's clearly a real community, with in-home healthcare companies and lawyers and construction companies and stuff, not a tourist destination. The grocery stores have lots of items where if you need to ask what it is, you probably don't belong cooking it, so it's labeled only in Chinese or not at all. It's also clear though that the future survival of Chinatown there has been in doubt more than once, and that maintenance on the more historic buildings is lacking. I only read up on it on the Wikipedia page, but that was enough to add interesting context. I'm so glad I happened to land there. Also, travel to so many cities is a huge benefit of academia for me. #Philadelphia #immigration #AcademicChatter

2026-05-17 23:42:58 UTC

@nprofile…fmlh I took this picture of horses for you in Philadelphia. One might not like that they are having to work for the Philadelphia police, but they were beautiful horses, and they clopped along the street nicely.
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2026-05-17 23:17:21 UTC

The other evening my son and his partner came over for dinner and brought _3_ dogs (their usual 2 plus one they're petsitting for a family member). They improved my mood so much! The two younger dogs like to play-fight and moved too fast for my phone to catch anything but a blur of fur and a wolf-like mouth. The older one is happy to just let me pet her and feed her snacks. Apparently the dogs like visiting my house. I feed them snacks, pet them at length, and have a fenced back yard for them to run in, so it makes sense, but I'm pleased to hear they like visiting. #dogs
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2026-04-26 02:34:46 UTC

Spent part of the day trying to persuade my stepfather that he doesn't need to move every bit of detritus from his whole life to his room at the assisted living. It's hard enough getting rid of my mother's stuff (she died 6 years ago), it's harder trying to persuade a living elderly parent that he doesn't need to keep his 6th grade history report or all his non-working computers he used to play fun games on. I can imagine that for him it feels like his life won't have been meaningful if the mementos get disposed of. He's had his giant jar of pennies over at the assisted living for 4 months and hasn't tried sorting them even once. He's not going to actually do these things, but he can't admit that. In the meantime things at work feel very, very negative for the future, and the world is burning as is usual lately, with very direct impacts on some people I care about. I'm feeling pretty hopeless. Anybody got any tips for separating an elderly person from stuff? #eldercare

2026-04-20 05:53:41 UTC

Things I love about Tucson: murals. I passed this one the other day. #Tucson #Arizona
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2026-03-30 04:18:34 UTC

My brother and I took our stepfather's 40+ year old Atari and Commodore over to his assisted living, and got at least a couple games working on the Atari. These computers have moved to at least 3 states and several more houses/apartments than that. Just seeing them there will make my stepfather happy because it makes him think he'll play them in the future, but I'm hoping he actually will. #eldercare #computers
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2026-03-30 04:01:38 UTC

Today I was over at the assisted living that my elderly parent lives at. One of the residents tried to set me up (for a date) with one of the employees. She started off the conversation with "Are you married to a woman?" For context, I'm nonbinary, but female-presenting. She went on to say she thought I would be really good with one of the women who comes to work there. I had to disappoint her by telling her I am married, to a man, and I plan to stick with the person I'm with. I thought it was a really sweet conversation, and I'm pleased that an elderly nursing home resident, possibly with dementia, not only has no problem with gay relationships, but wanted to set me up with somebody. Sometimes I forget that people now in their 80's may well have been hippies and may still be open-minded hippies at heart. My husband also thinks it was a sweet conversation. #eldercare

2026-03-09 06:18:26 UTC

Has anybody figured out the grammar of Jay'Den's phrase in the family ritual, SoS jIH batlh SoH? I'm getting a string of 4 nouns/pronouns, 'mother me honor you.' batlh is a noun or potentially adverb sort of thing, not a verb, so it's not "you honor me." jIH and SoH are not possessive pronouns, so it's not "your honor" or "my mother." Klingon can definitely string nouns together, but I'm not clear on what to do with 4 in a row and no verb. Ideas? #StarTrek #linguistics

2026-03-05 06:57:23 UTC

Jake in DS9 season 1: "Studying alone on the computer... it kind of gets boring sometimes." Keiko O'Brien: "You know, I've never actually been a teacher, Commander..." So Star Trek, or at least DS9, presents self-guided asynchronous online learning without a class cohort as ineffective, but then decides a teacher with no training is good enough. Of course this was written before there was asynchronous online learning, although there were correspondence courses by mail. Prodigy showed the kids either successfully using unsupervised asynchronous online learning or failing to learn from it, depending on the personality of the kid--Dal didn't do so well with it most of the time. What they had was basically like watching educational Youtube videos, just well-made ones (go, Dr. Erin!). Naomi on Voyager seems to get one-on-one tutorials from an expert in every subject. They could have done that on DS9 too, but maybe didn't have enough personnel hours available in the chaos of taking over the station. I'm just finding it interesting to think about informal education in Star Trek. #StarTrek

2026-01-30 04:38:49 UTC

Happy Threshold Day! I'm hoping there's some fun new fanfiction on the subject. #StarTrek #StarTrekVoyager

2026-01-30 04:36:13 UTC

I just watched this week's new episode, and loved it! This was a truly excellent episode. I loved that Reymi stopped being a bully and a jerk long enough to truly help Jay-den with his fear, and how he did it. I'm glad Jay-Den and Mir recovered their friendship at the end. I absolutely loved Lura Thok's talk with Jay-Den, where she completely changed his perspective on the things his family had done. I really like the solution Jay-Den came up with about the planet, and that he was the one to sell it to the Federation. I was a little worried that Starfleet might not be able to hit the right balance on losing the battle on purpose while being believable and not having casualties. I think the Klingon leader grinned when they showed up and threatened him for encroaching on Federation territory--a small, Klingon grin while facing away from his crew. I was thinking Chancellor Ake and the Klingon leader would find a way to spend the night after that battle together. Maybe they did. I'm really glad that Trek revisited a well-known species we haven't heard about since 800 years ago (Klingons) and the outcome for them was not the obvious one. Who expected the Klingons to be in diaspora, living in refugee camps, and down to 8 houses, on the brink of extinction? Not me. I was really pleased that when Jay-Den started talking about Klingon culture, he started pronouncing names in good Klingon pronunciation. And Lura Thok pronounced the name "Klingon" as tlhIngan, as it should be. If we're not going to get serious amounts of Klingon language (tlhIngan Hol) like in Discovery, at least people can get coached to pronounce a few words well. That was an excellent episode. #StarTrek #StarTrekStarfleetAcademy

2025-12-22 04:11:04 UTC

I still love this movie, especially the ending--the whole ritual on Vulcan thing, and "Forgive me, my logic is uncertain where my son is concerned." But it just hit me that we know Amanda is still alive at this point, she's on Vulcan, and she doesn't appear anywhere in this ritual, unless she's just standing on the side someplace with a hood on. It's all about Spock and Sarek's relationship. I wish they'd let Amanda at least be there, rather than making the mother an afterthought. But I still love so many things about this movie. #StarTrek

2025-12-22 00:39:22 UTC

Tucson people, just in case you didn't know, if your AZ income tax is going to be over $495 (single) or $987 (married filing jointly), you can donate up to that amount to Casa Maria soup kitchen, which is a fantastic organization that feeds people very efficiently, and get that money right back in your tax return. Casa Maria is needing to feed a lot more people than usual lately. Do not consider me as a source of tax advice if there's any question. Brian, who runs Casa Maria, is getting older. They're also working on converting old hotels into housing these days. They also meet needs for clothing, showers, vaccines for people and dogs, and advocacy with the city. I used to volunteer there, and was constantly amazed by how Brian keeps a complete inventory of which food is where and needs to be used by when in his head, and gets it out to the community, both housed and unhoused. https://casamariatucson.org/ https://azdor.gov/tax-credits/credits-contributions-qcos-and-qfcos #Arizona #Tucson

2025-12-19 20:00:24 UTC

Question for people with sewing expertise: my adult son bought a second-hand red jacket and would like me to add letters to the back to make it look like in the photo. The jacket has a few layers of fabric. I'm debating between 1) use a seam-ripper to open one seam of the back and try to get enough room to hand-embroider the letters onto the outer layer, then sew the seam back up; vs. 2) buy pre-made letter appliques and iron them on, no ripping out seams, but the store-bought letters probably won't be the same font/color etc. He'd like it to look as much as possible like the photo, but I don't want to ruin the jacket. I used to do lots of embroidery, so that part is OK. Advice? #sewing @nprofile…6me3
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2025-12-16 05:19:56 UTC

I teach a little 1-unit undergrad seminar on Klingon language, and at the end of the semester I do an optional movie-afternoon with the students and we watch Star Trek. This year, only 2 students showed up (it is finals after all), and neither one is a Trekkie, but both really enjoyed the class. I asked what they wanted to watch, and they asked for something known as an especially good episode, easy to understand without too much background. I picked Year of Hell from Voyager. By about 5 minutes in, these two young male students were exclaiming about Janeway "She's a total badass!" They loved it. Both said maybe they'll go binge Star Trek over break. OK, I think I've achieved my goal. Oh, they also learned some linguistics and Klingon/tlhIngan Hol. #StarTrek #StarTrekVoy

2025-12-11 07:07:00 UTC

Re-watching DS9 s1e3 Past Prologue. I kind of love watching Sisko and Kira yell at each other, even though I have a hard time with anger in real life. I love that they allowed a Black man to be angry--no anger translator needed for Sisko. I love that he doesn't hesitate to tell people off, either in a subtle way (a quiet "I stand corrected" to the Gul who claims he's not threatening the station) or in a loud way (chewing Kira out about divided loyalties and violence). But I also love that Kira yells right back. She's in a new job with a new boss who has access to a lot more resources than she does, and she doesn't take that into consideration at all, she just states her real opinion. Loudly. #StarTrek #DS9

2025-11-27 23:23:38 UTC

Did you read XKCD yesterday? It's an exceptional one. Well worth the time peering at the screen from close up to see all the panels. https://xkcd.com/3172/ #xkcd

2025-11-23 05:09:27 UTC

Despite all the weird and problematic aspects of this episode, I really like the scenes where Data tries to figure out how much detail people want him to convey when they ask him questions, and the bit where Picard apologizes for telling him he was babbling. Looking at this through a modern lens, this seems so clearly to be about neurodivergent people. Of course Data is literally neurodivergent, it makes sense, and I'm really glad they put that apology in instead of just making a joke of his behavior. On a separate topic, Picard here argued that the prime directive requires him to follow local rules, but another of his laws requires him to protect his own people, and when he decides to beam the whole group up without a resolution for the local legal situation, he decided the prime directive wasn't the most important of those two. i think Trekkies should give Janeway a bit more of a break on potential prime directive violations. She had at least this reason in most dubious cases, usually more. When male fans criticize her for supposed prime directive violations, I can't help but think it's a gendered reaction, since Picard overtly states here that he's going to opt for his other rule over the prime directive. #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG

2025-11-20 05:53:29 UTC

Today I wore my Star Trek jacket to work for my Klingon class, because the weather is finally cool enough to wear a jacket. What surprises me is how few double-takes I got walking around campus all day and attending non-Trek-related meetings. I concluded that most people don't watch enough Star Trek and that my boss, the dean, is very tolerant of my idiosyncrasies. I think my students appreciated it. #StarTrek #AcademicChatter
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2025-11-18 06:04:10 UTC

A very, very early example of Mile O'Brien must suffer! Poor O'Brien is stuck in a hallway between these two very contentious delegates from unusual, violent species! O'Brien (like everyone) looks so young. To think, the writers didn't even know yet that there was reason to make him suffer. #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG

2025-11-16 06:06:50 UTC

Re-watching Where No One Has Gone Before. The obnoxious fake engineer says "as the power grew, I applied the energy asymptomatically" but the subtitles show "asymptotically." The latter was surely the intention. The guy is incompetent, but not incompetent enough to mix up engineering and medicine. What a funny mistake for them to have left in. Also funny how similar those two words are even though they have different stress patterns and even different numbers of syllables. #StarTrek

2025-11-10 05:07:08 UTC

I walked in Tucson's All Souls Procession tonight, where people carry signs to remember loved ones they've lost and wear colorful lights in the darkness. And walk a couple miles across town together by the hundreds at night. It's an amazing event, but it's also a mixture of some uncomfortable things. It's not Dia de los Muertos, but it's clearly close, and it's a little too White for comfort, but it's also a very, very real ritual, and one hears Spanish and sees Spanish names commemorated, as well as a lot of English. Both the Hare Krishnas and a conservative Christian group walk in the procession and make their music loud enough to try to take over, while other conservative Christian groups stand on the side and harangue people for participating in something they see as celebration of evil. I wish none of these groups tried to use someone else's ritual that way. It feels very real in a way that few community rituals in the U.S. do despite those groups. Tonight I walked remembering my nephew who we lost very young a couple years ago, and thinking of several other people. It's both contemplative and musical and chaotic. A footnote: I love Tucson's free public transit for getting over there, just hop on the bus, no problem. Free since 2020. #Tucson #Arizona #AllSouls
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2025-11-07 06:55:22 UTC

I'm re-watching TNG and am on S1E1 Encounter at Farpoint. Everyone is so young! I paused it and googled actors' ages at the time. With the exception of Picard (47), everyone was in their 30's, from Geordi (30) to Beverly and Data (38). I'm not counting Wesley, obviously, who was of course very young. I guess Q was 39. Riker looks like a baby version of himself. I loved that they included crotchety ancient McCoy, although I had a very hard time with him addressing Data as "boy," which seems not OK. Despite the things that are bad about this episode, I really enjoy seeing how they tried so hard to both create connection with TOS in subtle ways, and make it clear that this happens a century later, with different people and different expectations. I've thought before that they were using TOS-style musical flourishes at the close of a scene as you go to the commercial break, which they got rid of within a season or so. Making new Trek was a pretty daring thing to do at that point, really. I was a freshman in college when it aired and immediately found a group of close friends who watched it together in the dorm TV common room. One went on to be an astronomer, too. #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG

2025-11-06 03:12:10 UTC

Today in my Klingon class I played the class a clip of Uhura translating Klingon. Then I told them about Nichelle Nichols, about what a hero she is, how she almost quit but stayed on TOS because MLK told her to, how radical her presence was in 1966, and about the work she did for NASA later. The students were very impressed. I hope they spend a chunk of time tonight googling Nichelle Nichols. #StarTrek

2025-10-26 22:37:50 UTC

On an off chance, has anybody here ever worked with the Sango language? Or with Krahn? I'm looking for a paragraph or so of text with English translation, ideally in the writing system in use in the language community. Please let me know if you've ever worked with one of these. #Linguistics #AfricanLanguages

2025-10-21 06:15:34 UTC

I'm re-watching Emissary. What a brilliant episode! "It is not linear." I had forgotten how much I loved Kai Opaka, the way she has one foot in the mundane and the other in the celestial temple, even though she's never been there. A leader of a post-colonial just-liberated state in chaos, who figures out political strategy while doling out wisdom and counseling to a foreigner who just turned up. Plus all the good stuff with Dax and with Chief O'Brien trying to fix Cardassian computers and saying goodbye to Picard. I like the scene early on where Sisko talks with Picard and he's just shaking with rage. But a while later we get the scene where Picard, the captain of the flagship of the Federation, takes the time to go say goodbye to his transporter chief, who clearly didn't think he was worth the captain's time. It's interesting how clearly the victims hold Wolf 359 against Picard, since he was under alien mind control at the time. My favorite part in this whole brilliant episode is the prophets unintentionally giving Sisko excellent counseling on loss. #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9

2025-10-19 23:31:14 UTC

The other day I got to pet our student's darling dog, Delilah, and Delilah wanted to lick my face. A lot. The pictures might look like I'm crying, but I'm not, I'm laughing. I took off my glasses, put one hand over my mouth, and let her lick to her heart's content. Thanks to @nprofile…6me3 for the photos! #dogs
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2025-10-19 02:57:03 UTC

We had several great #NoKings protests in various locations around Tucson today. The one I was at stretched for a mile, along both sides of the road. It may not even have been the main one. I'm all for joyful protests full of hippies of all ages wearing unicorn costumes or tie-dye! In addition to the usual themes, there were a lot of signs saying "Swear Her In" referring to our unseated house representative, Adelita Grijalva. #Tucson #Arizona
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2025-10-12 06:11:25 UTC

Re-watching this episode, which I mostly enjoy. But boy, Chapel is a jerk to Spock! It also really bugs me that whatever organization oversees the "fellowship" program she goes on, they apparently have no HR policies about being in a relationship with your supervisor whatsoever. Or the two of them just ignore those policies. What Korby describes, the romance plus Chapel rapidly becoming an equal in their workplace, presumably bossing around others when she's the newly arrived intern and the boss's girlfriend, seems really unethical. However, I love Spock's line to Korby: "Dr., if one of our intellects could bestow immunity, I am confident it would not be yours." What a good insult! #StarTrek #StarTrekSNW

2025-10-04 06:25:33 UTC

University of Arizona continues placing signage in Native American languages on buildings. This week we had the unveiling of the sign from the Yavapai/Apache Nation on the main building of the School of Business. #IndigenousLanguages #UniversityofArizona #Tucson
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2025-10-03 05:33:27 UTC

@nprofile…97dd OK, I mentioned the other day that maybe we other Trekkies could ask you questions about details. In Under the Cloak of War (SNW s2e8), at 39:06 in when Pike is reading M'Benga's service record on a pad, what can you read of it? My screen's resolution isn't good enough. Somebody on the internet says that it mentions "Mobile Armament Starfleet Hospital"--is that in there? I'm looking for solid evidence of how much of this is referring to MASH.

2025-09-30 05:22:12 UTC

I just finished re-watching Generations. One thing really bugs me about Picard's experience in the Nexus, and yet I think the writers got it exactly right. The children around the Christmas tree are an abstraction of perfect children. His imagined wife is an abstraction of a wife. (As much so as the Doctor's initial holo-family on Voyager before B'elanna's edits.) Here the Nexus has handed Picard what he's most been wanting, a loving family, and rather than getting down on the floor to play with the kids with their new toys and actually experience _being_ a parent, he's sitting outside the group waiting for these abstractions of kids to come up and politely thank him for the gifts he didn't even watch them open. He probably doesn't even know the names of any of the kids other than René, the only one who isn't an abstraction, and that doesn't bother him. I think the writers got this right, since real Picard had not had kids and had hardly interacted with any, and certainly didn't know what parenting is like. At that moment in his life, after the loss of real René, what he wanted was the abstraction of a family, not a real one, and that in itself is sad to me. #StarTrek

2025-09-30 05:11:28 UTC

How many times, in what episodes/movies, has Trek used the plot about a wonderful, heavenly, perfect place where you can live out your life or live forever, but the trick is it isn't real? I just re-watched Generations, and the Nexus is all about that. The original pilot of TOS, The Cage, is about that. Voyager's Bliss is pretty similar, although they wouldn't have gotten to live in their happy unreality very long. Surely the writers have used this a few other times, since it seems to be such a Trek-like theme. In what other episodes did this happen? #StarTrek

2025-06-13 04:40:33 UTC

I'm re-watching Workforce. People online often comment that brainwashed Janeway in this episode was carefree and relaxed, without the burden of being the captain. I don't see it. I'm 6.5 minutes into the episode including the opening sequence, and brainwashed Janeway is a submissive people-pleaser, desperate to be good enough to keep the job and desperate not to be caught doing anything wrong. She doesn't look carefree or relaxed to me at all. This desperation to be good enough to keep the job fits with the backstory the brainwashing gave her, that she escaped bad circumstances to get there. Yes, she dates and moves in with a guy, but she's not carefree. Also it's sad how for a Trek female captain in the 1990's to have a romantic interest, she has to be brainwashed first, while male captains had quite a few relationships. I mostly do like this episode, though--all the characters completely failing to recognize each other. #StarTrek #StarTrekVoyager

2025-06-12 07:15:11 UTC

I'm re-watching The Void, and I love Janeway! I still want to be her when I grow up. Would that it were as easy in real life to vow to stick to one's principles and find ways to make one's principles solve the problem. As a linguist, I think it's really funny that Seven, devising a totally new communication system for a non-verbal alien, creates a system where all the distinctions are between different pitches of sine waves. Perceiving this language beyond the first two words (higher, lower) is going to require perfect pitch or a computer with pitch detection. Still, it's fun to see Trek show development of a new language in real time. I enjoyed the scene where Tuvok and Chakotay gang up on Janeway (but defer to her in the end). #StarTrek #StarTrekVoyager #Linguistics

2025-06-09 04:06:18 UTC

I don't generally post about religion on social media, but I'm proud of my church for the sign out front right now. #UnitarianUniversalist #Tucson
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2025-05-31 05:45:25 UTC

I just finished _The AI Con_ by @nprofile…gd2c (Emily Bender) and Alex Hanna. It explains what's going on with over-hyped claims of what AI can do (or surely will be able to do by next year, right?) in a lot more depth than I had been familiar with. It covers the harms to real live current people, including some harms I hadn't known about before. It's surprisingly readable for a tech topic. In combination with current politics, the situations described in the book did get a little overwhelming, but the final chapter does give suggestions of immediate things we can do about it. I was pleased to find out my local independent bookstore stocks it, and I was able to go right over and buy a copy. I definitely recommend this book. https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-ai-con-how-to-fight-big-tech-s-hype-and-create-the-future-we-want-alex-hanna/22044744 #AI #AcademicChatter

2025-05-29 19:30:36 UTC

Adult quail and 4 babies in the front yard. I couldn't get a decent picture, but they're so beautiful, and the little babies just skitter around! #Tucson #Arizona

2025-05-26 20:33:45 UTC

I just finished reading _Chinese Characters Across Asia_ by my friend Zev Handel. It's written for the general public, and I think it would be interesting for anybody, whether they've ever studied anything about Chinese characters or not. Good, easy-to-follow explanations through a big chunk of history! #Linguistics #UniversityofWashington https://bookshop.org/p/books/chinese-characters-across-asia-how-the-chinese-script-came-to-write-japanese-korean-and-vietnamese-zev-j-handel/21441707

2025-05-26 19:27:42 UTC

Every year when we do our mandatory anti-discrimination online training, it requires us to click (twice, on the same question) saying that yes, it's OK to discriminate on the basis of a job candidate having a non-native accent in their English, even though the question implies that the candidate's English is probably just about proficient enough for the job. For the second year in a row, I just attempted to find out which office controls this thing, and wrote to them to ask them to change or delete this question. This time I offered that the Linguistics department will be happy to write them some better questions that actually teach about linguistic discrimination based on either racially-coded dialect or non-native accent. Last time I got a response along lines of "the question reflects what the law says." We'll see if I do better this year. Credit to @nprofile…43t4 for pointing out to me last year how the question implied the L2 speaker's English actually was good enough, rather than not good enough, for the job. #Linguistics #Sociolinguistics

2025-05-24 00:24:36 UTC

A video from my university about how research training affects students. I love that 2 of the 3 students who are showcased are women of color, one of them a Navajo student who talks about her son saying "my mom's a scientist!", and about the impact of the research on safe water for her community. #AcademicChatter #Tucson #Arizona #UniversityOfArizona https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyqEtfZ39kQ

2025-05-12 04:20:46 UTC

Julia Ward Howe, 1870, proposing what eventually became Mother's Day. We may think differently about gender now, but what a quote. It sounds to me like she really didn't trust men to prioritize anything else over war and victory. "Arise, all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
“Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says, “Disarm, disarm! The sword is not the balance of justice.” Blood does not wipe out dishonor nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each learning after his own time, the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace." #MothersDay #Feminism #Peace

2025-05-05 03:58:54 UTC

Back after the terrible fire in Hawai'i I made a small donation to the Hawai'ian immersion school ʻAha Pūnana Leo. Today they sent me an annual report. What I love about it: most of the articles are in Hawai'ian! Some may not even have an English translation! There are also lots of wonderful photos of kids learning things in Hawai'ian, but what I really love about it is that they just use the language, even for the business report part. #linguistics #IndigenousLanguages #hawaii

2025-05-03 21:12:57 UTC

The May Day march here in Tucson was so much fun! And big, thousands of people I guess. There was a small marching band with melodicas and saxophones, there were very creative bikes, there were babies and kids and dogs, and it generally felt like a huge marching party. #protest #Tucson #MayDay
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2025-04-07 05:47:22 UTC

Today I went to the Tucson Symphony's performance of Carmina Burana, which was fantastic. It gave me lots of happy memories of one of my favorite high school teachers, who taught us a few of the songs in Latin class. I think he chose the safest-for-teaching-to-minors songs, but I'm still kind of amazed he could teach that. I also studied Middle High German later, and I love that a few of the songs are in that. Today's concert had English subtitles going across a screen over the stage. It was funny to hear the audience giggle quietly as some of the subtitles came across. This piece is like 85% about sex, I think, and maybe some season ticket holders didn't know that? I don't think I've ever heard it live before, and it was really wonderful music. #Tucson #ClassicalMusic

2025-02-21 05:45:54 UTC

Tucson just renamed a park to be named after a Tohono O'odham leader instead of after that one bad guy. Apparently it passed unanimously. Hooray! #Tucson #IndigenousLeaders https://www.kgun9.com/news/community-inspired-journalism/westside-news/christopher-columbus-park-renamed-to-honor-tohono-oodham-educator

2025-02-04 01:27:07 UTC

Did anybody call your members of congress today and get incredibly choppy audio on the voicemail message? Like so choppy you can't even tell if you can leave a message? I'm in AZ and got this at both senators' offices, local and DC. A friend in Washington state did too. If a real human answers, it seems to be fine. #uspol

2025-01-21 06:21:21 UTC

I just re-watched Only a Paper Moon, which is surely among the best Trek episodes ever. Besides all the obvious wonderful parts of this episode, like taking mental health seriously, I also really liked the props they used to make it look like 1962. When Vic tucks Nog in under a blanket, the blanket has that fake satin ribbon along one side. My grandmother had those blankets, and I think my mother still had some when I was a kid too (in the 70's). They didn't just stop at clothes and hair styles and music on this. I loved the bit where Nog asks "where's your computer" and Vic hands him a pencil and says "It's 1962, what do you want?" On the clothing, I loved the shot where Vic is wearing a Mr. Rogers-style cardigan. I really want Star Trek to come back to the topic of hologram sentience sometime. Vic is sort of three-quarters of the way there, but not fully. The Doctor on Voyager starts as a regular hologram, but becomes a person, with the occasional danger of what happens if he has to be re-set to defaults. Vic describes himself both as a lightbulb and as "smarter than the average bear." When they leave Vic's program running so he can have a holographic life, does he eventually get upset by realizing that the holographic people around him aren't real, don't have long-term memories, and can't interact with him as equals? I assume sentient holograms would fall under the synth ban when Federation history gets that far, but I'm not sure if we've been told. If all you have to do to make a hologram sentient is start with a detailed human-like program and then let it run for a year or so, that seems like a tremendous amount of ethical responsibility. For example, should or shouldn't the Doctor have continued to let his holographic wife and surviving son run until they became sentient? But creating sentient people who can't leave the room is pretty questionable. On second thought maybe the Trek writers were right not to explore this further. Back to the mental health parts of this episode, I love the part near the end when Vic realizes that he's started using Nog to meet his own emotional needs instead of to help Nog, and that he needs to be the grown-up in the room and shut the program down. For a semi-sentient hologram, that's emotionally powerful stuff. #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9 #StarTrekVoyager

2025-01-05 06:57:16 UTC

I love so much about this episode, especially all the interactions among the Sisko family members. (Except the part where Ben starts shaking his father in anger, definitely not that part. Even though his father did lie to his child about who Ben's biological mother was.). I love the teasing between Jake and Ben, and the way both Jake and Joseph are watching out for Ben. This episode also seems like the start of the gradual crescendo all the way to the end of the series: big scary ominous things are coming. And yet it's a great episode on its own. We get to see Joseph Sisko's restaurant, we get to see Ben Sisko playing piano, and we get to see them all just being a family and getting more time together. Go, young adult Jake, knocking out the violent cult member in one blow! And then Ezra walks in at the end! And everybody's going to Tyree! And Joseph and Jake no longer doubt about the Emissary or the Prophets or see it just as Bajoran religion. But most of all I enjoyed seeing the Sisko family together. it's good to see that Starlet apparently grants leaves of absence pretty easily for major emotional distress, just because the officer says they need a leave. In a post-need society, they would have to, wouldn't they? Or no one would stay in Starfleet. I would like to think that with the longer lifespans that medicine allows the characters, they could take lengthy leaves to go try something different for a few years, or to do family stuff, and not have to give up their Starfleet careers permanently. #StarTrekDS9 #StarTrek

2024-12-30 04:32:15 UTC

I just re-watched Profit and Lace, where Quark has to pretend to be a female, and incidentally learns why sexual harassment in the workplace is a problem. Despite all the problematic bits of this episode, I love a lot of things about it. I love that they snuck in a line about pockets in women's clothing (good for profit!), clearly aimed at our own society. Leeta discovering that Rom is actually good at picking up on female mannerisms is fun. Since Trek has done so badly on issues of workplace sexual harassment so many times, this one might actually be one of their most, uhm, respectful (???) successful (???) treatments of the topic. Quark does change his behavior toward his female employee at the end. I mean compared to Sisko telling Odo to relax and enjoy being sexually harassed by an authority figure (Lwaxana Troi), and compared to everything Beverly and Deanna went through in TNG. Hmmm. Anyway, I enjoyed it. Especially the line about pockets. #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9

2024-12-06 01:27:44 UTC

I just went over to an informal gathering of university department heads, and I had been worrying about how to help a grad student find dental care they can afford and how to get info to grad students about where the affordable dental care is. I asked the other heads there if they've run into this issue, and if they had ideas. They hadn't and didn't. They dropped the topic quickly. They wanted to talk about important people who had important meetings with important administrators, and what those administrators said, instead. I don't feel like I belong with these people. #AcademicChatter

2024-08-02 03:59:40 UTC

I'm enjoying Star Trek Prodigy Season 2 so much! (No spoilers.) They're building such interesting and beautifully drawn worlds, imagining so much with bits and pieces of Trek canon as the starting points. The season's plot arc is great, and I continue to love the characters. I enjoy the kid-oriented jokes too. I really hope enough people watch this to get a third season. (We're watching at 2 episodes/week and just got through s2e8.) #StarTrek #StarTrekProdigy

2024-07-27 22:06:42 UTC

I just cancelled my NY Times subscription out of aggravation at how they slant everything against Biden or Harris and for Trump. They asked, and I told them at length why I was cancelling my subscription (without taking it out on the customer service representative). OK, what do people suggest reading instead to get general news that at least tries to cover the whole country, and to check whether something I see online is true or not? #NYT #NewYorkTimes

2024-07-02 11:53:46 UTC

Hmmm, I wonder if the ~40 people who followed me when I posted about Noam Chomsky's health (refuting the inaccurate news about his supposed death) are going to be disappointed when they find out I mostly post about Star Trek and the spectrogram reading Gramle puzzle. #StarTrek #gramle #linguistics

2024-06-18 22:05:13 UTC

Noam Chomsky has not died (or passed on, choose your verb). I am his department head, and I texted with his wife an hour ago. The rumors and fuss in the media and social media are not helping him or his family, they're adding stress. Before you post something, please consider that he and his wife are human beings, and post with thoughtfulness. #NoamChomsky #Chomsky #AcademicChatter