Frontwards causation

I had a paper on Hume on Miracles accepted by the _History of Philosophy Quarterly". It's got more history in it than most history of philosophy papers do. I try to make sense of an argument of Hume's by reading it in the sectarian context of the time. philpapers.org/rec/JACHOT-3

Me, reading a history book: "It appears we did not learn from history. Maybe in the next chapter we will learn from history."

A depiction of a Seljuk man, possibly used as a chess piece (12/13th century, Persia)

"Among the picks that a majority of adults described as either very or somewhat cool were science (87%), outer space (83%), reading books (81%), tea (65%), math (59%), sourdough bread (59%), country music (56%) and avocados (51%)." 😭 WE JUST WANT TO READ & LEARN SCIENCE & EAT AVOCADOS!

After news of Klaus Fuchs' arrest for espionage in February 1950, one of his fellow scientists, Edward M. Corson, wired him a message saying that he did not believe the charges. Fuchs wired back: "THE EVIDENCE WILL CHANGE YOUR MIND."

If you've ever thought to yourself, "I wish there were a theorist of ecological communism who also made great wallpaper," then I have an article just for you. doi.org/10.1177/1474...

Omg the auto captions for my lecture #medievalsky

Not the step-in wolf, but the wolf who stepped up

Stagflation www.economist.com/britain/2026...

I think about this comic all the time.

You never really forget how to misquote sayings. It’s like buying a bicycle.

I'm very slowly working through Grothendieck's Récoltes et Semailles (Reaping and Sewing), and one thing that makes it fascinating is he sounds precisely like a mathematical crank ("I could see the patterns people refused to talk about!") and yet he was the genuine article.

The conservative justices on the Supreme Court arguing that you can separate race and partisanship got me thinking about these maps. starkeycomics.com/2021/06/11/h...

ISAAC NEWTON: i have just discovered gravity EVERYONE ELSE: hey how come i can't float around anymore

Oxpeckers! On an impala!

At the Friday morning orchestra concert I just sat next to a guy who waited out a *forty-six-minute* piece of music in order to raucously boo it at the end. Incredible degree of commitment to being a hater

I'm brave enough to admit that I would, in fact, buy this the day it goes on sale or see it opening night. Yes, I would.

Mount Redoubt erupting on April 21, 1990, photo taken by J. Warren, USGS. It was the last of 23 major explosive events between December 1989 and April 1990 ...

No because that’s not what Crixk argued. That was, as he later put it, “Watson’s dogma” (DNA-RNA-protein) www.asimov.press/p/crick

Here's the open access official version: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

...the Marquis de Sade is "Sade", Alexis de Tocqueville is "Tocqueville". Fine, fine, I hear you say. But what about de Gaulle? Isn't he always de Gaulle? Yes he is. Because his "de" is Flemish. Different language, different rules.

'Pontificate' in the sense of speaking pompously and dogmatically is a twentieth century expression with an anti-Catholic etymology: speaking like the Pope

Bald eagles aren't endangered any more. They're a species of "least concern." I wrote this as a reply, but it works better as generic good news

A map of cognitive science and an encyclopedia to go with it

Texas A&M has suffered a great loss: the resignation of Dr. Martin Peterson. First Plato, now Dr. Peterson! Out the Door at TAMU....

TIL despite the opening sentence of “Reasons and Persons”, Derek Parfit did in fact *not* own a cat.

Gizmodo says 'poems' but I think it's lines. The press release says 'verses' because there aren't any spaces in ancient Greek, and the meter is how you figure out where the line breaks are

"Eating the retributive version of skittles" is a good line

Shows that there's even a lower bottom to the Crazification Factor than the 27% previously reported. I guess that's a bit of a plus. kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2005/10/lunc...

my new theory is that once you have a certain amount of money and wealth you start to go crazy and detach from reality. that number is different for everyone. for me it's $20

Practical reasoning

1. How many of your ship’s planks did you replace since your last insurance payment? 2. How many of your ship’s planks did you replace since you first took out your insurance policy? 3. Have all the planks of your ship been replaced? buff.ly/yZoe2Ke

Here is my best Habermas story. I am grad student waiting in LONG line for Habermas talk. There is a tall man waiting in front of me. Line moves so we are eventually visible to organizers, a woman looks over & makes horrified face. Runs out: "Prof Habermas! You don't have to wait in line!"

"All the kids in Springfield are S.O.B.s."

My paper, "Hume on the Prospects for a Scientific Psychology," was accepted by the Journal for the History of the Behavioral Sciences, which is nice. It's on section 1 of the first Enquiry, both as a manifesto for a future science and as a guide to the rest of the Enquiry philpapers.org/rec/JACHOT-4

3/3 Michelangelo's grocery list. Because even great artists have to eat! Especially on their birthday, and his is today.

Americans: we live in a fallen state—embroiled by sin, cheating, lying, and evil. You cannot trust anyone, not even those who claim to know you best Canadians: I love my neighbors and my friends!

please enjoy these classic Moon Tweets™

You might think that 'homo sapiens' means 'wise human being,' but, really, it's a human being with taste

A beer bottle at the bottom of the Mariana Trench preview.redd.it/a-beer-bottl...

Franz, Duke of Bavaria, your time has come

Scholarship

I sometimes worry our advertising material isn’t as welcoming as it might be

Friends fear he's had to look up something on this diagram again.

I was behind George C. Scott at the DMV

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin

Two things can be true. That's the first one. You're gonna want to choose the second wisely. Actually, hold up. Now up to thr... aww dammit.