An absolutely devastating account of part of what is going on in Sudan. The RSF apparently funded by the UAE, where people go for sunny holidays ... (until recently anyway) www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

State-supported pogroms in Palestinian villages www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

DEMOCRACY REPORT 2026: Unraveling The Democratic Era? www.v-dem.net/documents/75...

Here is a PhD fellowship in one of the best places in the world to study cognition and culture. 1. Cultural phenomenon: writing 2. Cognitive capacity: to detect what is unpredictable 3. Mission: Show how (2) drives the evolution of (1) 😲 4. Methods: you’ll eventually master some powerful ones

"Social sadism"? Great quote (from Merton, R. K. (1972). Insiders and outsiders: A chapter in the sociology of knowledge. American journal of sociology, 78(1)), serious issue.

Wow! More effectively Orwellian than 1984 www.whitehouse.gov/j6/

Daniel Nettle: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NPu...

The cold-blooded, brutal grab of Palestinian land in the West Bank goes on in the shadow of the ongoing anihilation of Gaza. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Thom Scott-Phillips presents a novel analysis of people's spontaneous intuitions about sentence acceptability "grounded in theoretical and empirical knowledge from cognitive linguistics, cognitive psychology and evolutionary approaches to the mind." cadernos.abralin.org/index.php/ca...

25 year ago, Monsanto (acquired by Bayer in 2018) acting against public health and honest science www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

I agree: there’s a public health imperative to quickly expand the adoption of autonomous vehicles, which will save many lives. More than 39,000 Americans died in motor vehicle crashes yearly. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Not a topic on which I would normally post, but given that road traffic injuries are the leading cause of death for children and young adults aged 5–29 years (www.who.int/news-room/fa...), this is hugely relevant. Don’t Fear Self-Driving Cars. They Save Lives. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/02/o...

Thank you Ben Rhodes for this important column: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/o... Some exerpts: "If you believe a Palestinian child is equal in dignity and worth to an Israeli or American child, it is no longer possible to support this Israeli government while hiding behind platitudes about peace. ...

At last, the final publication in 'Cognitive Technologies and their Histories': the editorial introduction to the issue in TopiCS, by myself and @helenamiton.bsky.social. 4.5 years since our initial @cogscisociety.bsky.social panel. Free access! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Yuli Novak (executive director of the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem): "Demanding accountability from Israeli leaders isn’t just about the past, it’s the only way to challenge a system designed to repeat such violence." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Excellent: Modernity In Rhythm open.substack.com/pub/thomscot...

Join me in signing the #JewsDemandAction petition calling on governments around the world to impose meaningful consequences on the Israeli government, including appropriate sanctions, enforcement of ICJ and ICC rulings and warrants, and withholding of arms. jewsdemandaction.org jewsdemandaction.org

Cheyenne Dosso, Tiffany Morisseau, Christophe Heintz, Jean-Sébastien Vayre, A cognitive resource-rational account of epistemic injustice, The Philosophical Quarterly, 2025;, pqaf088, doi.org/10.1093/pq/p... Preprint in FREE ACCESS at philpapers.org/archive/DOSA...

osf.io/preprints/ps... Preprint: Jan Pfänder and Hugo Mercier "The rational impression account of trust in science"

Online Now: Complex technology requires cultural innovations for distributing cognition

An excellent but devastating piece on the Israeli assassination of the brave and beloved Gazan journalist Anas Al-Sharif: www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/o... This is on us in the US: our government could stop this with a single phone call. Call your reps to demand an end to US military support of Israel

“What name do we give to a policy environment that suppresses the arrival of new life?” www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Israel is carrying out a deliberate campaign of starvation in the occupied Gaza Strip, systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life. Read more:

🚨🚨 New preprint 📜 with Mathieu Charbonneau (@matcharbonneau.bsky.social‬): Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution (arxiv.org/abs/2508.04828). Feedback welcomed! #Evolution #Technology #Culture #OpenEnded #TechnologicalEvolution #CulturalEvolution 🧵: 1/29

From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?

My father, Manès Sperber, told me a story that terribly resonnates today: In 1420, at a time of persecution known as the "Vienna Gesera", Jews were banned from the city. Many were killed. Others were placed on rudderless boats on the Danube River and left starving.

Earlier this year, I made two trips to Sudan, where a terrible civil war has displaced 14 million people. The state is absent, international institutions are weak.Outside powers, motivated by greed and nihilism, have stepped into the vacuum www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Dans Marc Bloch, "L'Etrange Défaite" (Ecrit en 1940): "Je n’ai pas, je crois, l’âme inaccessible à la pitié. Peut-être les spectacles que deux guerres successives m’ont imposés l’ont-ils quelque peu endurcie.

Is mind-reading involved in ownership judgments? By @rekablazsek.bsky.social & @heintz-c.bsky.social onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Rashid Khalidi withdraws course on Middle East history, saying it's 'impossible to teach' given adoption of IHRA. 'Columbia's capitulation..is being done to cover up...the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia's leadership is now fully complicit' www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

And in the meantime, in the West Bank, Israeli settlers proceed with their own genocidal goals: www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

ABOUT SCALARS: Ira Noveck and I published in 2007 "The why and the how of experimental pragmatics: The case of scalar inferences" in _Advances in Pragmatics_ (N Burton-Roberts ed.), republished in D. Wilson & D. Sperber _Meaning and Relevance_ 2012, as ch 14.

Excellent article: "Tracking minds in communication" by Paula Rubio-Fernandez, Marlene D.Berke, and Julian Jara-Ettinger Open access at pure.mpg.de/rest/items/i...

youtu.be/2AcoQk1u20I?... An totally out-of-the-ordinary wonderful portuguese film directed by Pedro Pinho: "O riso e a faca", "Le rire et le couteau", "I only sleep in the storm", action taking place in Guinea Bissau, shown at the festival de Cannes, now showing in France.

Philosopher Helen De Cruz has died.

Well worth a read. www.bbc.com/news/article...

"Rethinking Ostensive Communication in an Evolutionary, Comparative, and Developmental Perspective" now published in Psychological Review psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

Gaza and Warsaw Ghetto: Compare www.theguardian.com/world/2025/m...

Valeria Giardino on cognitive artifacts: oecs.mit.edu/pub/bx21plqj...

Read to understand how: "The last two years of war have lain waste to the country. Over 150,000 people are estimated to have died. ... 13 million people have fled from their homes." newleftreview.org/sidecar/post...

‪Molly O’Rourke-Friel argues that, "when beliefs are formed and sustained by dialogical deliberation, the relevant justification-conferring process doesn’t occur solely within the cognition of the subject ..." www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

Do kids prefer to play with helpers? Our paper on children's trait attribution and partner choice is out! doi.org/10.1111/cdev... We wanted to know if kids, after observing other agents' behaviors, spontaneously (!) interpret them in terms of traits and choose cooperation partners accordingly. 🧵...

Excellent didactic historical overview

A year ago I linked to a paper by Deirdre Wilson and me entitled "Rethinking ostensive communication in an evolutionary, comparative, and developmental perspective." A much revised version has been accepted by Psychological Review. The preprint is available at osf.io/preprints/ps...

A new article by Stefaan Blancke on the role of reasoning in cultural evolution: link.springer.com/article/10.1...