Every tech update now is like: "Great news, the word processor you've relied on for twenty years has learned to juggle! Is it good at it? No! Does it help in any way? Of course not! Has it made it insufferable to use? Oh, absolutely."

Another one of my terrific former students: tinyurl.com/Rey-Maktoufi

Kristi Noem didn’t approve FEMA rescue teams for over 72 hours after the Texas floods, following a rule she imposed that required her personal sign-off on any operation over $100K. This is inexcusable. She should resign.

If any vaguely traditional media outlet had done what Grok did today it would be all over. Regulators would come down like a hammer. Somehow, Grok will end up getting a pass. But this is not a user misbehaving on a channel; it was configured to behave this way by the platform owner.

🚨Second PhD chapter is out today! We show that elephants gesture intentionally to ask humans for food using many different gesture types! Check it out 👉 tinyurl.com/elephant-int... 🧵TLDR 1/16

A 2% wealth tax on UK's richest could have raised £160 billion in 32 years: “The top 40 families in the UK now own more wealth than 50% of the population, meanwhile 14.3 million people - including 4.3 million children - are living in poverty in the UK" www.kcl.ac.uk/news/wealth-...

Behavioral and Brain Sciences Call for Commentaries on Bard, Keller, and Leavens (2025)! www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

The James Webb Space Telescope has achieved a significant milestone by directly imaging exoplanet TWA-7b, a cold gas giant located 111 light-years from Earth! 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Here we show that the skill of following pointing gestures was easily trained in 44 adult chimpanzees. We speculate that reports of apes' poor pointing comprehension likely stem from their inadequate learning histories, not their evolutionary histories. dx.doi.org/10.1037/com0...

The new edition of 'Sense & Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour', co-authored with @kevinlala.bsky.social , is available! Get 30% off (promotion code ASPROMP8): global.oup.com/academic/pro... Ebook is available on Kindle. Thank you to Prof. Clark Barrett for the endorsement! 🧪

One of my favorite authors went to the military parade in Washington, DC.

𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄 𝗶𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗼𝗿 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼, 𝘄𝗮𝘁𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀. ✊🏻

The indefatigable Kim Bard, Heidi Keller, and I wrote a critique and remedy for Western-oriented developmental psychology. Call for Commentary Proposals will likely be out soon. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

TLDR: new paper headed up by @vestaeleuteri.bsky.social & with an awesome team, incl @andrearavignani.bsky.social , showing chimps have rhythm in their drumming & differences b/w east & west drum rhythms! www.cell.com/current-biol... But didn’t we know this already you ask? Well… 🧵1/16

Great thread here on an important new #bioacoustics study

'Covid data indicating low levels across the UK. ... In England, the Covid test positivity rate continued to increase slightly but remains at low levels. Meanwhile, hospital admissions for Covid decreased and are at low levels.' @bob-hawkins.bsky.social substack.com/home/post/p-...

😂

Our new paper is out! 🐒🔊 We compared two wild chimpanzee populations and found that individuals adjust pant hoot acoustics based on context (feeding vs. travelling). Most patterns are shared, but subtle community differences may hint at a small role for vocal usage learning. doi.org/10.1016/j.an...

Sure to be fascinating… find out more about @gillyforrester.bsky.social and her work here www.bps.org.uk/psychologist...

Cindy Blackman, US musician, widely respected drummer for Lenny Kravitz and Santana #WomensArt

Does excessive digital media use mimic ADHD symptoms? This editorial examines the rise of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in the digital age, suggesting that excessive digital media use may mimic or exacerbate ADHD symptoms www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

ScienceGrit (sciencegrit.com?srsltid=AfmB...) makes these mugs, which depict article abstracts with a figure from the paper. I gave this one to Jemma Forman when she passed her viva. I've also given these to former doctoral and master's students. These are top-quality mugs. Recommended by Dave.

Word of the day is ‘huff-snuff’ (16th century): a hectoring bully or braggart.

Vocal plasticity in apes. #bioacoustics www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My frequent collaborator @jevinwest.bsky.social worked with an exceptional team to develop an NRC report on the challenges of misinformation about science. That report is now available for free today. nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/2789...

We introduce process-based measures (i.e. fluency) of automaticity by developing a written version of the elicited imitation task that draws on keystroke logging. Read the paper here, Open Access www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Now published in Annual Review of Developmental Psychology. This is a review of what we know, and what we don't yet know. In it, I argue that the origins of our self-awareness must lie in interoception, and offer some thoughts on how social interactions might provide a mechanistic link in infancy.

This week my PhD student Monica Vanoncini defended her thesis. In her fascinating work she investigated mother-infant coregulation and its links with language development. She applied fancy methods simultaneously measuring physiological and neurophysiological signals in mothers and their babies. 1/2

While we pat ourselves on the back for joining Bluesky, the awe-inspiring @deevybee.bsky.social has handed back her FRS because Musk also has one. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"We cannot continue to participate in the social network feed of a man who proclaims the death of the media and therefore of journalists... X is a platform that no longer serves the public interest at all, but the special ideological and financial interests of its owner and his political allies"

🐵📢 I am recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to work for 6-months on our NSF-BBSRC project investigating the form and function of primate natal coats. Why are some🐒 babies🍊?! www.swansea.ac.uk/jobs-at-swan... Please pass on to potential applicants and get in touch if considering applying.

New PhD opportunity on social behaviour in the context of ecological disturbance with me, @mdekauwe.bsky.social, and others. Sept 2025 start, funded by NERC Apply by Jan 13. Project and application details: www.exeter.ac.uk/study/fundin...

Come join us as a post-doc on NWO project 'Multimodal Signalling in Face-to-Face Communication' 😃 at the Donders Centre for Cognition. Deadline 8th December! Dutch language proficiency required. ru.varbi.com/what:job/job...

We are currently advertising two fully-funded PhD scholarships to work on a new project preventing extinctions of Australia’s threatened mammals with ancient DNA. #sediments #aDNA #eDNA For further details, please see: scholarships.adelaide.edu.au/Scholarships...