Language, development, and language development. Assistant Prof at Brown. PI of the Brown Language and Thought (BLT) Lab.

Providence, RI
Joined April 2018
Every year I read a lot of grad school applications from accomplished people that don't give me the info I'm looking for. It feels like a major hidden curriculum thing. So here's (my opinion on) how to write a great Statement of Purpose/Research for a PhD program. 🧵 1/
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The Trump administration is claiming that they can pay El Salvador to imprison anyone, and once the person enters Salvadoran custody, no matter how illegal it was to get them there, there is nothing any judge in the United States can do to order them to bring the person back.
The gov't's arguments against returning Abrego Garcia should make your blood run cold. The gov't claims if it can ship a person to a foreign jurisdiction, they're gone. There's no limiting principle. It can make these arguments for intentional renditions of U.S. citizens. 1/
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If you identify as a Jewish member of the academic community, and are appalled by the actions being taken in the name of defending this community, please consider signing this letter (which can be done anonymously) and also sharing it with others: forms.gle/prnRbq69a6YNDu7N6
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An open letter, to push back against the pretense that harming universities somehow serves the cause of fighting antisemitism. Wherever you are on the political spectrum, if you identify as part of the Jewish community, please consider signing. forms.gle/prnRbq69a6YNDu7N6
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Replying to @robertgraham
Thank you for the layman's term explanation. If it really was Ukraine, the only logical thing would be for Elon to sign a ceasefire immediately, give them half of Twitter, make sure he says thank you and wears a proper suit.
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Action, not just words. Britain stands with Ukraine, today and always 🇬🇧🇺🇦
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I used to admire @mtaibbi. I don't know how he still acts like his one big issue is government censorship while he shrugs at WaPo and LATimes pulling their Kamala endorsements because their owners feared Trump. Or at ABC settling a suit to censor Stephanopolous. Or at CBS...
Would you believe that Jim Jordan and House Republicans today -- February 12, 2025 -- are holding *another* hearing about the Twitter Files, a fake scandal from two years ago? They are! Complete with rehashed testimony from Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger and everything.
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One of the many stupid things about this very stupid discourse: the data on usaspending.gov has been publicly available for years. Anyone could have looked up the cost of the government’s politico pro subscriptions in 2024 or 2022 or 2020.
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Roman Feiman retweeted
🚨 BREAKING: Trump's DOJ just killed its elite anti-corruption unit, our sources say. The Kleptocracy Initiative - famous for seizing Russian oligarchs' yachts and prosecuting the $4.5B 1MDB fraud - was quietly disbanded last night.
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Conservatives warning about George Soros but make the footage Elon Musk
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I see a lot of people want to throw out 230 years of constitutional government and replace it with an authoritarian dictator because they have big feelings about the budget and can't be bothered to work through Congress. That will surely work out well.
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It is absolutely a constitutional crisis. The president has zero legal authority to "shut down," defund, or otherwise cripple a $50 billion agency. Audit it, identify unnecessary expenditures, draft reform or rescission proposals, and then go to Congress to PASS A LAW.
I don't mind cutting USAID significantly, but - focus on it is a missed opportunity to look for more impactful fiscal prudence measures in larger budget items - the process for it is a genuine constitutional crisis. Pass👏 a 👏 law! 👏
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Roman Feiman retweeted
WTF is Elon talking about? It's not a crime to know who is controlling the US Treasury. It's a crime to hide it.
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Roman Feiman retweeted
A private citizen with unfathomable wealth and deep ties to the Chinese government has, with his cronies, seized control of the government and is canceling congressionally apportioned spending based on his whims.
Key source of Musk’s power in government: he seems to have the ability to put career staffers who resist his team on administrative leave. Essentially, bulldozing over whoever defies him
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“Chair Khan’s tenure will be remembered as a watershed moment in the fight against corporate concentration — and her legacy will long outlast her time at the Commission,” says @nhegde "Our nation and economy owe her an enduring debt of gratitude."
Today is Lina Khan's last day at the FTC.
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Please stop reporting your colleagues for violating the president’s DEI executive order.
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Roman Feiman retweeted
Most important thing we do here is trace some history, reminding us a line can be traced to modern neural nets/AI from basic science research. Not in engineering but in linguistics and cognitive science. Much of that fundamental early work funded by the (currently paused) NSF.
Language Models learn a lot about language, much more than we expected, without much built-in structure. This matters for linguistics and opens up enormous opportunities. So should we just throw out linguistics? No! Quite the opposite: we need theory and structure.
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Roman Feiman retweeted
The crisis is here. Dems will win by making this fight about impact on people’s lives. The GOP wants to fight on “federal funding.” They’re not attacking “funding.” They’re attacking veterans, kids who need school lunches, people battling cancer, workers trying to unionize.
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Democrats, stop talking about the illegality of the grant EO. get on Fox News and start screaming: “TRUMP ENDED MEDICAID” “TRUMP KILLED CANCER RESEARCH” “TRUMP AXED FARM SUBSIDIES”
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Many Palestinians in Gaza are posting this photo to expose Hamas's manipulation of camera angles to overstate/inflate its supposed level of support. I said repeatedly that Hamas is going to pay, manipulate, & herd young men & boys into "victory" celebrations & hostage handovers.
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