@mandercorn
Reading and writing about reading and writing, and thinking about teaching kids how to read and write, and the beautiful complexities of multilingualism and learning to read and write. https://languageandliteracy.blog
"This paper exhorts communication specialists to look beyond English language knowledge by providing evidence to disrupt the unsubstantiated belief that there are few assessment and intervention resources for supporting #multilingual children’s #speech."
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Time series plot depicting predicted Nino 3.4 region ocean temperature anomalies from the latest (Mar 2026) ECMWF ensemble. It depicts an extremely rapid rise in such temperatures, from modest negative anomalies to strong positive anomalies, by mid-summer 2026--indicative of a transition from weak-moderate La Nina conditions to moderate-strong El Nino conditions over just a few months.
Whew.
All signs are increasingly pointing to a significant, if not strong to very strong, El Niño event. I'll have more to say in coming weeks & months, but for now I'll just say that this is increasingly likely to become a major regional-to-global climate driver in 2026-2027.
Happy 6th anniversary to us!! 🎉🎉
Thanks for spending time with us, old friends and new! As we celebrate this milestone, we've launched a short audience survey to get your thoughts on the show (and its future).
We would be most grateful for your participation!
Link: forms.gle/AnJSopuX8Cho...
"Organizing by ordinary people to shelter immigrants in private homes represents an emerging, invisible front of resistance.
These are not seasoned activists. They are neighbors, like Jean."
www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...
📍For me, the big takeaway is this: the assumptions we make shape the questions we ask. Treat tracts as uniform highways, and they look uniform. Look along them instead, and striking, replicable patterns emerge. We hope this work advances how we study brain development. 12/n
This is a bombshell: "the Pentagon wanted the company to allow for the collection and analysis of unclassified, commercial bulk data on Americans, such as geolocation and web browsing data"
This kind of agenda echoes the defunded Total Information Awareness effort, post-9/11
## Overall Summary This storyboard comprises four illustrated panels created on textured, off-white paper, featuring simulated thumbtack holes in the corners. The artwork employs a realistic black ink drawing style combined with muted color washes in grey, brown, amber, and blue. Each panel includes messy, translucent grey marker lines that scribble or cross over parts of the drawings and text underneath, imparting a sense of a draft or edited proof. --- ### Top-Left Panel **Image:** The panel presents an extreme close-up of a person's eyes and nose, gazing directly forward. The skin texture reveals intricate details, including wrinkles and bags under the eyes, conveying age. **Text Below:** Handwritten in script: “We begin with a face, up close, uncomfortably. He’s surprised by how old he has become." --- ### Top-Right Panel **Image:** This panel depicts a crystal tumbler filled with amber liquid—likely whiskey or scotch—next to the disembodied head of a smiling, bearded man on a wooden surface. **Text Below:** The handwritten script states, “But while his constraints have grown, his savoring of what is in front of him has also increased." --- ### Bottom-Left Panel **Image:** An open silver laptop sits on a table, displaying generic data, graphs, text, and browser tabs to suggest ongoing work. **Text Below:** The handwritten note reads, “Even work was something he looked forward to after a healthy period of rest, always." --- ### Bottom-Right Panel **Image:** From behind, a man in a cable-knit sweater stands looking at a city skyline at night through a large window. A full moon glows in the sky, while small children's toys rest on the windowsill. **Text Below:** The handwritten script concludes, “We close with the man standing at his child’s bedroom window at night, the moon, a reminder of Nature, somewhere."
Overall Summary A detailed four-panel storyboard page presented on a sheet of textured paper, held with copper thumbtacks in all four corners. The artwork utilizes a high-realism ink etching style and watercolor washes, with translucent grey marker scribbles layered over parts of the drawings and text to create an 'edited draft' appearance. Top-Left Panel Image: An extreme close-up of intensely lined and wrinkled eyes and the bridge of a nose, belonging to an aged man looking directly forward. A large grey marker cross-out is integrated into the facial lines. Text Below: Handwritten in script: “We begin with a face up close, uncomfortably. He’s surprised by how old he has become." Top-Right Panel Image: A detailed cut-crystal whiskey glass filled with amber liquid and the solemn, bearded head of a man. The background contrasts a rigid geometric 'constraints' pattern with an organic smoky swirl. Grey marker is over the glass and man's hair. Text Below: Handwritten in script: “But while his constraints have expanded, his Savoring of what there is in front of him has also grown, commensurately.” Bottom-Left Panel Image: An open silver laptop with a clear screen displaying detailed interface windows, including an email client, text, and a graph. Grey marker lines scribble over the screen and keyboard. Text Below: Handwritten in script: “Even work was something he looked forward to returning to, after a healthy period of rest, while thinking about it, always." Bottom-Right Panel Image: A man in a detailed cream-colored cable-knit sweater viewed from behind, standing at a large window looking out at a detailed night cityscape skyline. A prominent full moon is visible. Grey marker is on the man's back. Text Below: Handwritten in script: “We close with the man standing at his child’s bedroom window at night, the moon, a reminder of Nature, somewhere.”
My original sketches and awful handwriting compared to a NanoBanana2 version.
#drawing #AI
Every anti-vaxxer I encounter seems to love weird unregulated supplements. They hate Big Pharma but they love Little Pharma, Big Pharma’s younger sibling who grew up without any adult supervision.
if you believe in any form of free enterprise at all, the idea that the Pentagon can not only cut off your contract but designate you a supply chain risk and prevent other companies from buying from you just because you won't build killbots for the government should be terrifying
It's not hyperbole to suggest that today we have a federal government that doesn't so much represent or resemble a federal administration as it does a family crime syndicate.
"...ultimately, when we reflect on language, the data we’re considering is ourselves."
#language #AI
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/from-atoms-t... #AI #Elements #Language #Lucretius via @mitpress.bsky.social
Cover of The Lancet:
@thelancet.com
www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...
This is kind of crazy. If associative learning--the cornerstone of intelligence--can occur without a single synapse or neuron, then that means intelligence is fractal.
That means the same principles of prediction and adaptation that we see in a human brain could be operating within a single cell.
A new paper dropped out on "Humans 40,000 y ago developed a system of conventional signs" www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....
Understanding the evolution of human semiotic behavior is a crucial (basic) scientific enterprise & really difficult, so kudos!
I have thoughts: 1/
1/ New paper in Communications Psychology: Against Frictionless AI. Led by my student Emily Zohar and @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social.
The argument: AI's greatest selling point is also its problem.
www.nature.com/articles/s44...
A photo of coronas glowing on the tips of tree leaves.
A photo of coronas glowing on the tips of tree leaves.
A new study published earlier this month in Geophysical Research Letters reveals how the tips of tree leaves burn with ghostly, ultraviolet sparks. These phenomena, known as coronas, had never been seen in nature—until now. 🌿 spklr.io/6042DI2EC
📸: William Brune
"The results reveal no structural differences between the affective space captured by nouns and adjectives in English, and very high semantic profile correlations between both grammatical forms for each emotion concept."
#language #English #research
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
New research suggests that 40,000-year-old Stone Age markings are as statistically complex as the earliest known #writing (protocuneiform). Human writing may have thus begun to develop back in the Ice Age -- and not through accounting, but through #art.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/ston...
Right, it's more of a fascinating potential than proof... But provocative if considered next to the ACTIVE study which does have the massive statistical power—over 2,800 participants tracked for two decades—around speed-based visual training
This made me think of a completely unrelated study on children at-risk for #dyslexia, which found that playing fast paced video games improved their phonemic awareness.
Both studies demonstrate a surprising achievement of all too rare "far transfer" effects.
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Well, now, this is very interesting -- we have heard quite a lot about how "brain training" is completely useless.
But this study finds that a specific aspect of #brain training -- cognitive speed training -- appears to stave off #dementia decades later.
#research
www.npr.org/2026/02/18/n...
Wow! This use of AI and the comparison between AI and human reviews (of a very nice paper!) is super interesting.
Alysa Liu telling 60 Minutes “I love struggling, it makes me feel alive” is a legit revolutionary statement from a Bay Area native in a time when copious amounts of time and resources are being put toward convincing us to opt out of experiencing struggle, friction and self-actualization
#Reading and #writing rely on a common set of foundational skills. Oral discourse and lexical literacy skills are the mediating factors. Handwriting is uniquely related to writing quality but not to reading #comprehension.
#research
www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Big paper release! ConversationAlign - methods for computing lexical and affective alignment between interlocutors in dyadic conversation transcripts. Open Access in Behavior Research Methods. link.springer.com/epdf/10.3758...
While sequential bilinguals initially appeared to outperform monolinguals on cognitive tasks, and heritage bilinguals appeared to underperform, these cognitive differences disappeared entirely once SES was controlled
They found "sequential" bilinguals generally came from families with higher parental education and income than monolinguals, whereas heritage bilinguals occupied the lowest socioeconomic status bracket.
New research using ABCD Study data (n=10,164) suggests the "bilingual advantage" in cognition might actually be an "SES advantage."
#Bilingualism #Cognition #Education
www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
