Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin ✨ figured out what stars are made of ✨ when she was just 25. 🔭🧪 Her PhD thesis basically established the Harvard astro department — at a time when Harvard didn't officially allow woman students. I wrote this little profile to mark the 100th anniversary of her thesis:

I am quite excited to share a new preprint on the prospects for a 'metaphilosophy of science'—a second-order inquiry into the concepts, assumptions, aims, and methods that underpin philosophy of science itself. 👇📃 philsci-archive.pitt.edu/26661/ 1/3 #philsci #philsky #HPS #HPbio #metaphilosophy

Ive been reading public facing books around my research topic lately. I enjoyed this provocatively titled book (Bitch by Lucy Cooke). Butters, my rabbit, also gave it a 5/5… by trying to eat it. 🐇📚

What happens when the old contract between science and society no longer fits? This week, Prof. Heather Douglas unpacks the legacy of the value-free ideal, examines research ethics & funding — and proposes a new social contract for science. This was an illuminating conversation. Listen now! 🎧

This is an uninterrupted minute of Maruay the rescued tiger with his beloved ball..🥰😇 #bluesky

🐙 This Octopus shifts from deep to active rest while "dreaming" for #MicroscopyMonday. REM‑like sleep (color bursts and twitches) filmed in real time by Horst Obenhaus @octoscience.bsky.social‬, currently a 2025 Whitman Fellow at @mblscience.bsky.social. #NESM #Octopus #Neuro #SleepScience #MBL

#HPS #hpbio #evobio

Not at ISH this year sadly, but my disembodied Zoom face will live on explaining why Marc Ereshefsky’s species eliminativism changed how I think about pluralism and classification, May 23rd! Really happy I was able to talk about it. Check it out if you can! #ISHPSSB2025 #EliminationDomination

Hi folks! I’ll be graduating soon and wrapping up my time at UC Davis in September. I’m currently looking for work, so if you know of any openings or leads I’d be grateful if you passed them my way. Especially if it's in research, writing, editing, or policy work. Thanks so much!

"The fight for the freedom of Palestine, and the fight against anti-Semitism, go hand in hand, because injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." -- philosophy student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was abducted by ICE Monday during a citizenship interview.

It's out! And my wonderful co-author Chike Jeffers already has his copies. You can order it here: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

I got a chemo drug today, taxol, named after its plant Taxus brevifolia, or the pacific yew tree. It was used by Native Americans for various medicinal purposes. western scientists in the 20th century isolated its chemical compound and in 1990 it was approved as a cancer drug in 1993 1/

Synthese has a cfp for a collection on Feminist Logic, edited by Sara Ayhan link.springer.com/collections/...

Today I lost an NIH grant training clinicians to do research about intimate partner violence with perinatal women. More women are murdered in the perinatal period than die of obstetric complications. I didn't just lose a grant. We lost an entire cohort of people building careers to prevent that.

Lynn Margulis was born OTD in 1938. At 29, she published her theory that eukaryotes had evolved via endosymbiosis, after having it rejected by at least 15 other journals. #HPBio #Complexity #HistSTM 🧪#EvoBio #WomeninSTEM

I think it’s important to draw attention to small acts of courage and dissent (like this NYT ad and the message from the VT ski resort social media manager) that remind people of the range of possibilities for standing up, speaking out, and fighting back.

Ah, Target. I remember when you considered yourself to be a progressive Minnesota business. Be more like Costco.

I was interviewed by @msjpauly.bsky.social for @motherjones.com regarding that awful gamete size "sex" executive order. A bit of an explainer here of why the science is so bad, and why that's dangerous:

Yes, there have long been discussions about sex as a spectrum, not a binary. This is not new. Here's my review of a book about the medieval debate. www.academia.edu/83211724/Rev...

This Thursday!! (Jan 23, 6:30 PM)

Instagram cross-post, but here are my hopes for the next four years.

As a heads-up, “Price Gouging” is legally defined as raising the price of a thing (here, rent) by more than 10% over the pre-event price. If you see that happening in LA via, say, Zillow or somewhere, you can report it there, or(inclusive or) list it here: docs.google.com/spreadsheets...

Horrible photo, beautiful full moon night

The cool thing about philosophy conferences is they give you a taste of what it would be like to live in a walkable place near friends and people with similar interests with the leisure time to get to know people & think about stuff together all day.

Sometimes I’m writing about pluralism and thinking deeply about contextual variation in language. At other times I’m explaining to a guest that the jeans they bought 25 years ago are no longer available in the dye they want and getting yelled at. Life is a fantastic blend of experiences.

"our scientific representations are not, as many hoped in the heyday of logical empiricism, a super vending machine to which we can feed in facts about the questions we are interested in, turn the crank of logical derivation, and pick up answers that fall out." —Cartwright, The Tangle of Science

Sorry for delayed #PSA24 post, but I had such a good time presenting my poster. I got a lot of supportive and critical feedback. Really appreciate it. You can find it here!

One of my advisors, @cepaea.bsky.social ’s really cool talk on a bottom-up approach to thinking about land ethic policy and reflecting on Aldo Leopold’s insights at the #PSA24

Denise Hossom giving an excellent talk on the wild horse problem #psa24

I’m excited for my session this morning! #PSA24

In New Orleans for #PSA24. If any of you -especially grads - are alone, awkward, intimidated, or in need of a crew, let me know or come by and say hi! Us UC Davis grads are a friendly bunch, we will adopt you in. :)

I will be presenting my poster, Three-Context Sensitive Approaches to Biological Sex, at #PSA2024. Hope to see you there!

Sociological study of interdisciplinary research at UC Davis Philosophy has openings for 3 two-year post-docs in networks/bibliometrics, sociology of work, #philbio. Location open. Applications due by April 15, 2024, decision expected by June 1.  griesemer.net/call-for-pos...

A friend of mine, Danielle Williams, posted this article today on AI for the general audience. There's a really cool historical diagram in there. Check it out! theconversation.com/weve-been-he...

I will be at the #centralAPA in New Orleans if anyone would like to meet!