I thought for a moment that this was celebration in Oxford, to mark the news about @wiglet1981.bsky.social getting the Wykeham Chair.

Another lyrebird performance – watch for the critter himself, hopping off his branch at the end.

Please share!! I'm hiring the first two (of four) postdocs for my ERC project on AI and science!!

So good—and so true! 😂 ❤️ #BrexitBrokeBritain #ImmigrationIsGood

Immigration make Britain brilliant

Lucky you! :)

Thirty years ago I went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with a philosopher I’d just met, apparently as dull as me. It turned out he’d known the Sex Pistols.

Please consider this. c.org/vK7pMcmkQk

An earlier but quieter lyrebird, for comparison.

Lyrebirds in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney (sound on).

From the silver lining department.

A few months back, I wrote a nice thing about an Australian architect who, back in the 70s, started thinking about how to build without obliterating the environment around his structures. It's now live over at The Guardian.

wow — the preprint host, arxiv, is banning authors for a year if they submit papers with hallucinated citations 🤖

TWO great jobs in History and Philosophy of Science at Sydney! Rank from Lecturer (Assistant Prof) to Assoc Prof. Particularly interested in candidates working in the areas of early modern science, or science or medicine in Asia, or Indigenous knowledge systems... #HPS #STS #histstm #histsci

To the Finland Station!

The right answer seems to be: “Yes, you can make a difference to the truth or falsity of some of those perceptions, with respect to the parts of their futures that still lie in your own future.”

81 years ago, World War II ended in Europe. 8 May marks Germany’s defeat and its liberation from the inhumanity & tyranny of the Nazi regime. Germany was then given a new chance – to develop into today’s democracy, firmly anchored in the EU & NATO. I am deeply grateful for this.

It was wrong when the media did this to Ed Miliband when he was leader and it is wrong to do this to Polanski. Genuinely have no idea how awfulness like this gets past editors… It’s really not that hard to criticise policies or politicians without being antisemitic.

There used to be a shop in Sydney with a sign saying “Ears pierced while you wait”. The wags would say, “I don’t have time to wait, can I pick them up this arvo?”

NEW: I’ve written a call to arms. Journalists are being murdered in unprecedented numbers by a Western ally that operates with total impunity. Enough. Publishers & editors have failed us. But if we can’t speak up about this, what is journalism even for? open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

Another Monday morning in the Blue Mountains.

This message from the past seems relevant.

Telling friends about the search engine I use instead of Google: Ecosia. They hadn’t heard of it, so I thought I’d better the spread the word. It’s based in Germany and uses profits for environmental projects. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecosia

It looks like there was even video, though I have mislaid the link. In any case, while I think of it: for those intrigued by the offhand reference to entanglement, Bell & selection, here's the latest version of @huwprice.bsky.social's paper that I was gesturing at philsci-archive.pitt.edu/29428/

This photo of the device just turned up on my feed. Imagine a brick in place of the ashtray.

New stripped-down version of my argument that Bell correlations are selection bias. I have tried to get rid of all the philosophy from previous versions. If you find some hiding in the cracks, please let me know! 🙂 #philsci #quantum #philsci

And another one, Professor Alexandrova! I was hoping you meant Bernard, but yours is a different Williams. Will reserve judgement on how interesting till I know more.

This cause is close to my heart - please sign: petitions.getup.org.au/petitions/le... @getup.org.au

One of my Sydney colleagues was convinced I had a walk on part in the final scene – I told him they used a stunt double. You can see him around 0:58 in this clip. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyrh...

Jack Smart would always fall asleep in seminars, and then wake up and ask a question. Once Frank Jackson, in the chair, said “That question was asked and answered while you were asleepm Jack”.

Meanwhile, here’s an indication of the state of play in the real world – a recent DARPA program.

In autumn they harvest the pink.

Nice piece @georgemusser.com. What about metascience playing things too safe? This piece was rejected by two referees for a special issue *on Gatekeeping*, because they thought our criticisms of the handling of cold fusion were too one-sided. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Reviwer 2's report below. #philsci #metascience

Extinction of the human species: What could cause it and how likely is it to occur?' by Professor Seán Ó hÉigeartaigh (University of Cambridge), on Wednesday 6 May at 6pm UK time. cassyni.com/events/AKmfE...

Surprising discovery here – I thought that Brandom had a beard.

They had some of these at my son’s first school. The sign on the tank said “Axolotl (Latin for Mexican Walking Fish)”.

My attention has been drawn to this delightful image.

“Show me the logical form of this” – Sraffa

What about one of Hitler’s balls being in the Albert Hall? Was that fake news, too?

Welcome @hpscambridge.bsky.social!

In a 1965 paper on super-intelligence, I J Good estimated the economic impact of an ultra-intelligent machine. Noting that JM Keynes' value to the economy was put at £100billion, he suggests ASI might be good for a million times that – a ‘mega-Keynes’. But there’s a catch: ‘The sign is uncertain!’

This reminded me of a quip from Jerry Fodor. “Why is Manhattan real estate so expensive?” “You’re paying for all those counterfactuals.” I used this is in a talk once, pointing out that if antirealists were right about counterfactuals, Manhattan real estate would be a giant Ponzi scheme.

TEN post-doc openings at the Leverhulme Centre for Anthropocene Biodiversity. Yes, you read that right. TEN.

Man Who Threw Molotov Cocktail At Sam Altman’s Home Claims He Was Following ChatGPT Recipe For Risotto https://theonion.com/man-who-threw-molotov-cocktail-at-sam-altmans-home-claims-he-was-following-chatgpt-recipe-for-risotto/

Very flat whites this morning, presumably.

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/a... "One woman told officers as she was being carried away: “You could be on your way catching real criminals.”

Hey gang! Exeter’s looking for a 4-year postdoc in philsci & AI. Sweet gig at a great place - share around :D #philsci #philjobs www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DRD641/p...

Safely in the mountains category.

For any ‘retrocurious’ people out there... I’m giving a free online talk next week, a new big-picture foundations talk I’ve been developing: “Retrocausal Quantum Models; 10 reasons to take them seriously.” Monday evening in the US; Tuesday late morning in Asia/Australia. sciforum.net/event/MWQDW2...