'Far too many of us today are so enamoured by the rhetoric about "freedom", we don’t realise that unlimited freedom for some actually means very little freedom for the rest of us.'

A massive new study of nearly 50,000 homes from 1,000 archaeological sites spanning 10,000 years reveals that wealth inequality was neither universal nor an inevitable consequence of population growth or progress.

I can’t help but feel that if we didn’t have to keep wasting energy arguing over things that should be common sense by now, we’d probably already be commuting on jetpacks powered by food waste or something.

Drowning people in constant, enraging noise is the whole point. You never get to step back and reflect and see the bigger picture because you're pulled too far under it all.

This idea that if you're ‘unproblematic' then you'll 'age well,' so often thrown at public figures (especially female, because, of course), is just a reheated version of the old belief that beauty equals virtue. And just as it was rubbish then, it's rubbish now.

A study of pre-industrial Swiss parish registers (Spa et al., 2025) finds that having older brothers reduced girls' chances of survival, while having older sisters had a positive effect on both girls and boys.

A recent survey once again claimed that marriage makes people — this time, women — much happier than their unmarried counterparts. But research tells a far less flattering story. Marriage’s impact on happiness is inconsistent, short-lived, and barely distinguishable from cohabitation.

Knitting is a technology, a science, and an art all at once. The same can be said for weaving, quilting, pottery, cooking, and countless other practices.

It’s predicted that women will soon control 38% of financial wealth in the US, 47% in Europe, and 39% globally, growing at about 8–10% per year. This surge is driven by ’the great wealth transfer’—a massive shift of assets, mostly from men to their surviving female spouses.

One of the key reasons people in high-income countries often forget how deeply interconnected we all are—with each other, the planet, every living thing—is because modern convenience keeps us largely insulated from reality.

It’s almost hard to believe this is happening in 2025, but at the upcoming surgeons’ conference in Poland, one of the scheduled ‘debates’ is literally whether women should be surgeons. Yet another reminder that the idea that women no longer face bias & barriers in the workplace is pure nonsense.

One fascinating new study estimated that providing decent living standards for *every* person on the planet would require just 30% of current global resource and energy use.

@katiejgln.bsky.social: "There’s a real danger in allowing our online environment to become so thoroughly polluted with digital sludge — and then rewarding people for pumping out more of it." A solid read on rampant plagiarism, AI slop and other "digital pollutants," and the pace of "the machine."

One rarely talked about cost of the relentless pursuit of beauty is its devastating impact on the planet. After the food industry, the cosmetics industry is actually the second-largest source of plastic waste globally—churning out around 120 billion units of packaging every year.

Amazing piece by @katiejgln.bsky.social. Wealth inequality is collapsing our world, while billionaires continue to exacerbate the problems their hoarding of resources creates.

In the 1970s, CEOs earned about 20 to 30 times what the average worker made. By the 1980s, that ratio had doubled to around 60 to 1. And by the 2020s, it skyrocketed to nearly 400 to 1. At this point, CEOs aren’t just getting a bigger slice of the pie — they’re eating nearly the whole thing.

A massive new study analysing the math performance of nearly 3 million children in France found that boys and girls start school with nearly identical average scores. Yet by the beginning of second grade, a significant gender gap in favour of boys has already emerged.

I find it increasingly absurd that, as a young-ish woman, I'm continuously nudged to do everything I can to prevent visible signs of ageing while also not even being sure there will be a liveable planet left to age on.

A recent study found that men who express deep nostalgia for ‘traditional’ gender roles were significantly more likely to hold biases against ‘nontraditional’ women — like working or childfree women. It was also strongly linked to misogyny and an acceptance of violence against women & trans people.

Gender norms aren't fixed truths that have existed in their current form since the dawn of time. Instead, they have continually evolved in response to the needs and goals of the societies that shaped them — and, more specifically, to the goals of those in power.

If only women voted in Poland’s presidential election yesterday, the conservative nationalist Karol Nawrocki wouldn’t have won - exit polls show that 54.2% of women backed centrist Rafał Trzaskowski, while 54.3% of men voted for Nawrocki.

Germany’s recent UBI trial showed, once again, that giving people an unconditional monthly income improves mental well-being, stress levels, sleep, and overall life satisfaction — all without reducing working hours. The myth that ‘free money’ turns people into couch potatoes simply isn't true.

This seems like a good time for a reminder that the Vatican is still the only country in the world where women have no direct say in who governs it.

A recent UK survey found that 76% of secondary and 60% of primary school teachers say they’re extremely concerned about the impact of online misogyny in their schools. We really can’t keep pretending that misogyny and other harmful patriarchal beliefs aren’t an active threat today.

If wealth and social status were the most important or attractive qualities to women, teenage girls would have posters of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and other billionaires on their bedroom walls. They don’t. If anything, people who idolise wealthy and powerful men seem to be predominantly other men.

She is the mother of our youngest brothers, the #French and the #strangers. She is the mother of our #dance paraphernalia, of all our #temples and she is the #only mother we possess." The Legend of the #Kágaba people. Full essay by the amazing @katiejgln.bsky.social over on medium [paywall]:

If you go out of your way to demonise and mock empathy, you really don’t get to demand it in return when the consequences of your own shitty beliefs and actions finally catch up with you.

The clearest example of something that’s only acceptable when you’re ultra-rich: taking government money.

If you can't tell the difference between education and indoctrination, then you have clearly only ever experienced the latter.

It's really not surprising there’s such an overwhelming amount of right-wing rhetoric flooding the internet. It’s easy to churn out content when you’re not concerned with accuracy or intellectual rigour or nuance. Quantity over quality is their whole strategy, and sadly, it's working.

To celebrate Women's History Month, I’m launching a short series that centres women in the story of humanity. In the first installment, I explore women's crucial, yet usually completely overlooked, role in shaping human evolution. thenoosphere.substack.com/p/what-if-wo...

The fundamental weakness of western civilisation isn’t empathy. The fundamental weakness of western civilisation is billionaires who lack it.

Instead of asking why women aren’t having children, we should ask why they would want to in a society that doesn’t value their bodies, their health, their time or their labour. thenoosphere.substack.com/p/why-blamin...

Ah yes, billionaires controlling the media and shaping the narrative to benefit themselves, what an absolutely unforeseeable turn of events.

Sassy void mode is definitely turned on tonight.

Among chimpanzees, some individuals adopt a 'thuggish' leadership style, holding onto power by hoarding resources and resorting to violence. But this approach rarely ends well, as chimps aren’t afraid to take collective action and overthrow their tyrants. thenoosphere.substack.com/p/are-we-doo...

In the UK, the last election before World War II was in 1935, and the next didn’t take place until 1945 after the war had ended. And this was far from the only time a democratic nation postponed elections due to extreme wartime conditions.

Oh yes, banning books, censoring words, and restricting press organisations definitely screams 'freedom of speech.' I just didn’t realise it came with so many fine-print exceptions.

In a world drowning in 'alternative facts,' baseless claims and noise disguised as news, our survival increasingly depends on our ability to focus — on what truly matters, on what truly affects our lives — and to recognise when we’re being led away from it. thenoosphere.substack.com/p/distractio...

Distraction Is the Whole Point by @katiejgln.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/thenoosp...

It’s crazy that being considered ‘radical’ these days is simply believing that life in society shouldn’t be soul crushing.

'Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all.' A spot-on observation by John Maynard Keynes.

I wrote about gender perception bias - the widespread tendency to overestimate women's representation in leadership, the workplace, entertainment, etc. - and how it can ultimately hinder progress toward gender equality. thenoosphere.substack.com/p/why-even-a...

I really think there should be a social media feature where any man who's ever harassed, mocked, or denigrated women online in any shape or form is automatically banned from posting the term 'male loneliness epidemic.'

The list of banned words for US grant-funded research includes, among many others, ‘female' and 'women.' This is really the rotten cherry on top of centuries of medical negligence and systemic bias against women and our bodies.

Recent studies suggest automation will hit male-dominated fields like construction, manufacturing, and transportation the hardest. Meanwhile, female-dominated sectors like education, healthcare, and social work remain far less automatable. thenoosphere.substack.com/p/how-the-fe...

Call me crazy, but if our idea of what good leadership is like wasn’t so tightly bound to ‘traditional’ masculinity norms —aggression, dominance, toughness, etc. - some of us would certainly not be so eager to let incompetent buffoons run the world.

I usually try to stay optimistic about people's ability to change their minds, but if someone can't see why the world’s richest man amassing even more control over the world’s foremost economic and military power is utterly insane right now, I doubt they ever will.

It’s fairly easy to cosplay as a ‘traditional’ woman and cling to rigid gender roles when you still have what patriarchy values the most in women—youth and beauty. But once that fades, all that’s left is the realisation that compliance was never enough to secure respect, only temporary approval.

In his 1820 play, German-Jewish poet Heinrich Heine warned, 'Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too.' You’d really think two centuries would've been enough for us to learn this.