Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected]

i study conversations‽ she/her | assistant prof @umsi | phd @CornellInfoSci | postdoc & ugrad @Stanford cs | spells as a canadian

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

I'm recruiting PhD students this year! If you'd like to work with me, please apply to the @umsi PhD program by December 1. https://t.co/AcfdPVeI5z

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

i am tisjune on all the socials i'm on and if you're lucky you'll find the one with the dog pictures

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

this is going to be the premise of the regular expressions assignment in my intro to nlp class

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

when you pull on a thread and the entire sweater unravels

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

i've started distinguishing in some mysterious way bn what goes on twitter vs mastodon. respectively: midnights, afternoons. midnights are "quick, say it before the feeling is replaced by stale attempts to say it." there's an off the cuff ness that feels not at home on mastodon.

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

this is about taylor swift.

you may have already figured this out,
but i just realised that midnights aren't (just) spans of time:

a midnight is a thought that floods your mind in the middle of the night

and midnights is a collection of midnights.

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

(but yes, in anti-hero, "midnights" the lyric does seem to be a time)

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

oh yeah, this is my pessimistic tweet about ai?

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

hotel art and airport bookstore bestsellers and elevator music

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

@yoavartzi @dan_fried @ChrisGPotts https://t.co/wbujirpVyE i have no idea who writes this blog but i would listen to their podcast

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

what does the discourse about meaning and understanding say about life in this city? something, of course, and at the same time, very little. the most helpful conversations have never revolved around these axes.

(as wittgenstein says: back to the rough ground!)

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

ever said a word so many times that it just becomes a sequence of useless noises?

this is how i feel about the entire nlp discourse on what "meaning" means.

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

consider the work done in and around nlp today: to explore and appreciate the nooks and crannies of this ancient city. or, to raze these nooks and crannies into a form that is recognisable and operable upon from afar.

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

sorry, just needed to get some sorely-missed quote tweeting out of my system

[Justine Zhang 🐘 @[email protected] @tisjune]

is there more to NLP than fancy apolitical curve fitting? 🤔