If you often feel tired, the problem may not be the quantity of sleep you get, but the quality—and there are quite a few ways in which you may well be interfering with it. Check out this TED-ed video to see if you recognize any: youtu.be/nn42RC1zT_A

“What gets measured gets done”—true, but incomplete. Eventually *only* what gets measured gets done. And if what gets measured does not quite align with your actual goal, trouble looms. @add-hawk.bsky.social’s The Score cautions about gamifying everything: bit.ly/44SCGvy

Biases can be seen as errors that hamper cognition, or as functional tendencies that are necessary for cognition. Gigerenzer offers a perspective of this apparent contradiction, arguing biases are functional in large worlds with substantial uncertainty: buff.ly/701MdP9

Finding weighing up whether the end justifies the means for one of your endeavours (or to judge someone else’s action)? No worries—if you’re not too bothered with being consistent, there’s a quick way to a convincing answer: the Moralization Gambit. buff.ly/MowJEnK

is there a biological reproduction/longevity trade-off—ie do mothers die earlier the more offspring they’ve had? In animals this seems so, but in humans, genetics, environment and societal factors complicate matters. New historic research sheds light: buff.ly/0LEAkff

Ananas als topping voor een pizza? Voor sommigen prima, voor anderen een gruwel—een voorbeeld van de regels die onze keuzes en ons oordeel over anderen bepalen. Toch zijn het de uitzonderingen die we erop maken die ons kenmerken. Mijn @apache.be stukje: buff.ly/pTxD76a

Our propensity to anthropomorphize AI chatbots is nothing new—we seem to be wired to humanize animals, vegetables and objects based on the presence of one or more of three factors: eyes, movement and language: buff.ly/AV8Al1s

Always wanted to know what it’s *really* like to be on board the ISS—the home in space for a select bunch of humans for over 25 years? Tour the International Space Station in this fascinating new NASA walkthrough video: www.popsci.com/science/iss-...

How do ordinary people—in the Czech republic—see Philosophy? A couple of—Czech—philosophers conducted a survey: buff.ly/BuaYlMW via @dailynouseditor

If you’re anything like 99%+ of people, you suffer from awkwardness—initiating and sustaining a rewarding conversation at a social event is the one thing everyone believes they’re *worse* at than average. @mastroianni.bsky.social offers some really useful help: buff.ly/nfHw5jw

Give me the chemical definition of ‘organic’ any day—an undergraduate course in organic chemistry left its stamp. Unfortunately the term has been appropriated by other interests and is being misused accordingly, writes Josh Bloom: buff.ly/gRxeEY7

Paternalism determines the divisions among different behavioural science perspectives. @casssunstein—who arguably has a horse in this race 😎—juxtaposes •coercive paternalism (mandating) •libertarian paternalism (nudging) •antipaternalism (boosting) buff.ly/nZ2QU64

Humans play—and not just little humans. Play shapes the social brain, and is likely rooted deep in our human neurobiology, explains Cas Holman—and neuroscience research shows it helps construct and refine many of the higher regions of the social brain: buff.ly/5XTSsg5

Blogged: The Moralization Gambit Weighing up means and ends is really hard. We want to see ourselves (and come across!) as principled, but all too often it's the ends, rather than the means, that drive our judgment. No worries - there is a quick fix: buff.ly/tyrdEA5

Our personality influences how long we live, systematic review and meta-analysis of longitudinal data by McGeehan et al suggests: •Neuroticism → increased risk of premature death •Extraversion and Conscientiousness → reduced mortality risk buff.ly/id08Zvt

Folk wisdom urges us ‘not to scratch that itch—it will only make it worse’. But as so often, it is bad advice—@neuroquest reports on neuroscience research that concludes the opposite is true. Scratching an itch and holding an injury do provide relief: buff.ly/liDWNSu

The sound of underground When scientists put sound sensors into the ground, they couldn’t believe their ears. Life in the soil was thought to be silent, but it is anything but. Soil bioacoustics offers new ways to study life underground: buff.ly/VBePQCT

A Christmassy library anecdote illustrates how overruling late return penalty rules reveals a librarian’s kind nature. Other, less noble, exceptions to the rules we follow reflex our values too, though. ICYMI, last call for my post, Overruling rules: buff.ly/F5CkUtJ

Demanding perfection from algorithms is perhaps too much, but accuracy sounds a reasonable expectation. But what do we mean by that—always approximately right, or usually very close, but occasionally wide of the mark? Laypeople and experts differ: buff.ly/cSUJYI3

Are our beliefs the result of gullibility or of skepticism, or perhaps of Bayesian reasoning? None of them, argues Rob Kurzban. “We’re all thugs, just waiting for the chance to attack whoever or whatever gets painted with an accusation.” buff.ly/MaMTERr

Contrary to earlier findings that levels of intolerance toward ideologically dissimilar and threatening groups are generally higher among conservatives, research by Brandt et al suggests that liberals and conservatives are equally intolerant: buff.ly/AOCOx2u

‘What are you thinking about?’ ‘Nothing.’ Could be we don’t want to share our thoughts—but maybe that is exactly what we felt. Such mind blanking is genuine and puzzling, and challenges our understanding of consciousness, writes @thomasandrillon.bsky.social: buff.ly/37aSPDO

“I thought we were just friends!?” A sadly common instance of confusing friendliness and romantic interest—with a clear gender bias: male overestimation and female underestimation of the other party’s keenness. How does this bias emerge and evolve? buff.ly/Y0pFgXL

Longitudinal research by Leal et al suggests participation in collective action moralizes individuals’ attitudes by politicizing their identity and enraging them towards the (immoral) outgroup, which in turn predicts sustained movement participation: buff.ly/8ev5HiC

“Since [Year]” is more than a decorative element on a label. Research using brain scans suggests such indications of longevity signal quality to consumers: buff.ly/xM6cDNK Via @psypost.bsky.social

There is no evidence that animals can read. But they can recognize and decode symbols, a kind of precursor to a cognitively more complex ability: buff.ly/G6YsYrK

🎶We are the robots… Research suggests around two thirds of our behaviours are initiated by habit, and as much as 88% are done in an automatic way—a lot more than earlier estimates: buff.ly/HL1umSY

The information abundance that surrounds us not only makes the availability bias worse—anything can easily come to mind… only now it’s algorithms that determine wat will. But it also introduces the UNavailability bias—what you don’t see, doesn’t exist: buff.ly/Ifmi9Wy

Earlier, @lionelpage.bsky.social argued against absolute moral truths. Here he explains how morality can be relative—operationalized as contractarianism—without being moral relativism, subjectivism, and a range of other -isms. A veritable tour-de-force 👏: buff.ly/uqbgcZa

Does picking up the phone boost the mood of the under-50s? Or is there a measurement bias at play when surveying people about their wellbeing by phone vs by online interview? Research by Blanchflower et al suggests it’s the latter: buff.ly/J0jVcko

Who doesn’t aspire to be happy? But wanting to be happy too much can be counterproductive and lead to disappointment. And trying to act happy, in particular, is not a good idea: buff.ly/aMcT757

How do people view the responsibility for inequality? @caseylewrey.bsky.social and @tanialombrozo.bsky.social used a dual-axis framework (moral/causal and retrospective/prospective) to review what current research suggests for each of these 4 categories: buff.ly/ZJEyOcU

We follow numerous rules—to steer our behaviour (and judge others’), from “don’t be evil” to “pineapple is (not) acceptable as a pizza topping’. But every rule can have exceptions—and it’s the ones we make that reflect our true principles: buff.ly/F5CkUtJ

Als we in de rij staan hanteren de meesten van ons onwillekeurig de regel ‘voorsteken = niet OK’—zeker als het anderen betreft. Maar zouden we nooit een uitzondering maken—voor onszelf, dan toch? En dat verraadt wie we echt zijn. Mijn @apache_be stukje: buff.ly/pTxD76a

Examination of the drains of a Roman fort in the North of England reveals the soldiers were plagued by diarrhea-causing parasites that still make us ill today—roundworm, whipworm, and Giardia duodenalis: buff.ly/EqWlxfv

Enough already with the uninformed populist nonsense about mainstream economics from people who really ought to know better, thought sociologist Tibor Rutar. And he wrote this riposte: buff.ly/1G5sZ5m

Many of us would frown on anyone jumping the queue—except if it’s us doing it ourselves, because when we do, we evidently have a good reason. A tale of rules and exceptions: buff.ly/F5CkUtJ

Research by Gangadharan et al with Indian farmers (n=3000) suggests that, in a social dilemma game, individuals are more likely to follow advice when it comes from high-status or in-group advisors—even if the advice diverges from prevailing norms: buff.ly/0C4ir1Y

Regels alom: ze sturen onze beslissingen, en we hanteren ze om die van anderen te beoordelen. Maar het zijn niet de regels die we volgen die onze identiteit prijsgeven, maar de uitzonderingen die we erop maken. Mijn eerste @apacheb.e stukje van 2026: buff.ly/pTxD76a

The biggest advantage of extremism is it makes you feel good, because it provides you with enemies, all the badness in the world is in them, and all the goodness in the world is in you— John Cleese… in 1987. It’s explanatory clarity is as fresh as then: youtu.be/5mU5ef-zFyw

Contrary to common wisdom, the medium is *not* the message. Great creativity in messaging does not start from the medium. When you’ve got your message, you’ll have the appropriate medium too: Dave Trott has quite the anecdote to illustrate: buff.ly/yzEHahy

Research by Weinschenck & Dawes suggests genetics plays a larger role in shaping children’s political engagement than family socialization—specifically the sense of responsibility to stay politically informed, vote and contact politicians: buff.ly/gfQ3lV0

We approach, and observe, the world through countless rules that steer our own decisions, and our judgment of those of others. But our identity is revealed not in the rules we hold high, but in the exceptions we make to them: buff.ly/F5CkUtJ

The last 10 years of our life fly by faster than before. The reason is not that we remember less—it is cognitive decline, research by @marcwittman.bsky.social et al suggests: buff.ly/og3Rh6c

Strictly come dancing… for *real* stars The plasma waves in this binary star system are a sight to behold: buff.ly/G699zW0

Appealing to someone’s authority is fine, but it would be good if you were also aware of their mistaken views and conclusions. David Friedman looks at the errors of a much-cited authority in Orwell’s Mistakes: buff.ly/uVMNEhl

Pleasure doesn't equal happiness. But it’s a logical fallacy to infer *suffering* therefore does—which might lead to fetishizing suffering, seeking masochistic misery as supposedly essential to flourishing, argues @philosophyminis.bsky.social. There’s a better way: buff.ly/nZS6qlq

Aristotle discovers why democracy (kind of) works (or worked): buff.ly/r5EIUqH

Ticket resale makes the final allocation to consumers 5% more efficient, research by Phillips & Sorensen finds, but at higher market prices, with 1/3 of the efficiency gain lost to rent-seeking through leveraging excess demand in the primary market: buff.ly/mQ86fKn

Research by Kordsmeyer et al finds moderate positive correlation for facial and bodily perceptions of attractiveness, health, and physical dominance, for both ♀ and ♂ ( ‘one ornament hypothesis’); but no significant associations with vocal judgments: buff.ly/bhRRp61