I wrote this essay to correct recent obituaries of Craig Venter, which overstate the significance of his human genome sequencing work, repeating the hype and exaggerated promises of his own self-promotion, which was designed to fuel speculative investment in his biotech companies

I took the quiz. Turns out I'm not very right wing at all! Check yours: moryscarter.com/vespr/starpl...

time for this again

feeling so old when you peer review a paper that tries to sell as novel that someone else argued and published twenty years ago

A statement from Exeter UCU branch @ucu.org.uk - please share far and wide.

up with embodied, in vivo, in voce exchanges and encounters. up with physical inscriptions, or even clay (h/t @johannawinant.bsky.social). down with digital writings and media.

They're saying the quiet part out loud now. Jenny Maxwell, head of education for Grammarly/Superhuman: “We’re doing a huge pedagogical upheaval in education,” she said, calling it a “burn it down moment. We’re just in the early stages.” Burn down higher ed without any plan to rebuilt. Gift link.

Whoever wants to know, but it REALLY helps to go out running or to hit the (hotel) gym when traveling across time zones at any time of the day and night

Come on, Bangladesh! Helping to get drugs into bodies! "Reverse-engineering breakthrough medications in defiance of patents on intellectual property."

For in-person participation or online auditing, please register here:

This week! The reason I am in Sao Paulo right now. This should be a super stimulating and interesting meeting. The programme and location matter to the scholarly conversations and directions we want to explore.

Had a proper Sunday off work for the first time in ages, loving São Paulo’s spirit, but today: Monday work deluge regardless of where!

I am a structuralist enough to know that it will make zero difference which Labour politician will be the next PM but what matters is to keep Reform out; and for that, the true revolutionaries are the Tory voters who voted Labour to achieve precisely that

this is the (nor)way

US gvt need to break up Space X or prevent merger with Tesla before it’s too late for political disaster (wishful thinking but still needs to be said)

Brazil 🤍🤍🤍🤍🤍

Hot off the trade policy presses: "USTR Announces Initiation of Section 301 Investigation of Germany’s Persistent Underpayment for Innovative Pharmaceutical Products" This will be a fun and controversial one! Tagging @jamielove.bsky.social @hyoyoonkang.bsky.social

US industrial policy in sum "Make IN America" but Made BY South Korea Chips, Cars, batteries, solar panelsShips....all made by leading Korean firms www.csis.org/analysis/str...

“I will bankrupt Elon Musk” winning slogan for 2028

a beautiful butterfly just flies over and rests on my handbag

Signs it is summer: - butter is collapsing - arms & legs are exposed - coffee is iced - bees are busy - washing dries rapidly - 99 with a flake - vintage stamps are curling - happiness levels up - pencils wilt - all the berries - daylight at 5am

fascist/right-wing europe fully normalised. european parliament today.

It’s hard to believe that one giant human Ponzi scheme of Musk will be too big to fail with everyone piling in for a share. It will be the US version of East India Company of get rich quick by plundering this and the outer world and making laws to justify the imperialism.

all these things can be true at the same time: 1) acknowledge China’s lead in green tech; 2) be critical about CCP state capitalist authoritarian party rule; 3) be critical of state capitalist US empire, esp under Trump; 4) not be racist against Chinese(Asian perceived people)

carlo ginzburg's lectures felt the opposite of reading off an "AI" assisted/written script. they felt alive, because we genuinely didn't know where he would end (up). what an intellectual regression we are living through right now...

RIP Carlo Ginzburg. Being in one of his lectures was being taken along for a wild, delightful ride into worlds unknown where the smallest details of the things you would normally overlook appeared magnified and logical.

Always slightly bemusing to baffling when people invite themselves, subtle or not

At the end of the term I asked my college creative wriing students to submit anonymous thoughts on AI. No real surprises: Mood ranges from resignation to despair, capitulation from embittered erosion of standards to total, feelings of betrayal from deep to furious. 1/

book // love

It is a strange thing to feel the apprehension or even fear of expressing dissent in the air around you. There are so many little things where that manifests itself, implicitly or explicitly. Didn’t know that the space of potentialities, even the ones that may never materialise, is a palpable one.

Slight pang of nostalgia as I finally cancelled my World of Interiors subscription that I started during covid-19 as a euphemistic analogy to those years of confinement to the interior.

Places that are good right now? Can’t think of many, if any

This should be on the news every day. Impossible to see how the UK or other Western countries can claim to hold the moral highground in international politics when this is how a government treats dissent.

Very proud to be publishing @ajbwells.bsky.social's ingenious piece on Banjo Paterson, 'the best-known and least-liked poet in Australia'. Please read and share widely!

Today is the tenth anniversary of Jo Cox's murder by a white supremacist on her way to a surgery in Birstall in her constituency whose ethnic diversity she praised in her maiden speech to the Commons. Her murderer shouted "Britain first" as he shot and stabbed her to death.

Members of Peter Thiel's private society. Names I didn't expect to see: Kaja Kallas (EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs) Bob Jain (Founder and sponsor of Phenomenal World) Jens Spahn (German CDU politician, loser)

it is rare and peculiar pleasure to know that there are people who seem immune to capitalist market and investment-return thinking in their lives and somehow manage to float above it, with difficulty, but still

2 #HPS faculty positions @ U of Sydney "We are particularly interested in candidates working in areas of early modern science, or science or medicine in Asia, or Indigenous knowledge systems. Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor in History & Philosophy of Science" Sept 1st deadline #PhilJobs

Dill. I love all other herbs, but I don't know what it is about dill.

okay but what if a 10-year-old thinks moby dick is better than middlemarch, what then. where are they supposed to go

Am ill and requested some vitamins, and kiddo adds a chocolate bar without being asked. One rare parental success moment.

My teen: “what is bluesky?”

Body break down after finishing teaching and marking - haven’t had this in long

It would be very funny if in addition to its base of academics, socialists, boomer MSNBC viewers, Brazilians, and anime nerds, this site were to welcome thousands of British 15 year olds

"DoorDash has patented a system that lets companies offer promotional deals based on how stressed you are" www.youtube.com/watch?v=2erh... @moreperfectunion.bsky.social find opposition to bans on surveillance pricing being funded by big tech (Amazon) but also restaurants (McDonald's)

would be amazing if china's green energy and economic prowess could be a democratic one but alas it really isn't

A generation of children confined to exclusively posting on LinkedIn, humbled to share that they have been recognised as thought leaders in vertically integrating your mom's supply chain.

Entirely related, because nobody does effective policy around tech. Nobody.

rather than 16 year olds, they should ban 60+ from social media, especially youtube and facebook

The sheer level of illiberalism from the government is galling - on teens, on protest, on speech, on immigration, on private business. It’s like they did securonomics but forgot the economics bit.