I wrote about the bizarre case of Herasight, the embryo selection company going all in on eugenics.

If you're an educator and feel anything from disgust to discomfort with AI please consider joining.

Belgian AI scientists are advocating *against* the use of AI in academia. “If independent thinking is no longer encouraged at university, where would it?” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Prominente professoren en onderzoekers luiden de alarmbel over AI in het hoger onderwijs. Ze verzetten zich tegen wat ze “de AI-hype” noemen en waarschuwen voor het verlies van kritisch denken, een kunst die vooral niet uitbesteed kan worden aan “best guess machines”. apache.be/2025/10/23/a...

> Among the signatories is Luc Steels, "the father of AI in Belgium." And he's not the only Belgian scientist supporting the resistance to "so-called 'AI' technologies." Apache spoke with Steels and co. "Universities encouraging students to use ChatGPT? I'm stunned" apache.be/2025/10/23/a...

If anyone missed this yesterday, might be worth a read

Ook in Nederland geven adviesraden, directies, colleges van bestuur e.d. handreikingen. Zie hier bijv de Rijksuniversiteit Groningen: www.rug.nl/about-ug/org... Ze zijn altijd onpraktisch, en gaan uit van een optimistisch mensbeeld: de student die 't gebruikt als "studie-tool", voor "zelfstudie".

Tijdens discussies over dit onderwerp worden we vaak geconfronteerd met dezelfde argumenten tegen een AI verbod in het onderwijs. Een lang draadje met tegenargumenten. 🧵

De opleidingscommissie van de Vakgroep Wijsbegeerte en Moraalwetenschap aan Universiteit Gent besliste om het gebruik van generatieve AI voor bachelor- en masterproeven te verbieden. Die beslissing wordt van hogerhand teruggefloten. UGent wil generatieve AI omarmen. apache.be/2025/10/08/u...

I'm happy to share our latest manuscript "Impediments to countering racist pseudoscience", coauthored with @gillianrbrown1.bsky.social @kztwyman.bsky.social & Marcus Feldman.

In a few weeks, I'll participate in the Refugee Walk, in support of @vluchtelingenwerk.bsky.social, a non-profit organization that helps refugees and asylum seekers. If you want to donate, you can use the following link. All proceeds go to Vluchtelingenwerk www.refugeewalk.be/teams/team-s...

Eind september doe ik traditiegewijs weer mee aan de Refugee Walk ten voordele van @vluchtelingenwerk.bsky.social. Financieel steunen kan via onderstaande link. Wie het team wil versterken is ook welkom! www.refugeewalk.be/teams/team-s...

i used my connections to pressure a major news organization to stop using a word that made my friend sad. and this, to me, is liberalism

I am proud to announce that the videos showing my replication experiments are now online! Here you can see the replication of Priestley's production of "nitrous air": /1

“Oligarchs attempting to shape policy to their advantage will benefit from the fact that few will have the attention span to track (…) policies in dull, technical fields; what a majority now wants isn’t investigation but a new video short owning the other tribe.” www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/o...

If your local anti-woke pundit is complaining about activist students "nowadays" and how it's all going downhill, remind them that in the 17th century, universities banned weapons and firearms in the lecture-halls because the Cartesians were trying a bit too hard to cancel the Aristotelians /1

Just to reiterate: What this administration is doing right now is orders of magnitude more dangerous for academic freedom and free speech than anything the right has spent the last 30 years complaining about.

“Discredited ideas on race, genetics and IQ have become staple topics of far-right online discourse” www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Vandaag werd ik geïnterviewd door Dieter De Cleene van @demorgen.be over de jammerlijke heropleving van rassenwetenschap. Door plaatsgebrek werden m'n antwoorden wat ingekort (geen kritiek, alle begrip), dus hier wat aanvullingen en literatuursuggesties. /1

My good colleague and friend Jip van Besouw (not on Bluesky) and I wrote a paper on 18th century fountains used for research and teaching in physics. It was fun stuff to colaborate on, including arguing for the use of the concept "pissing machine". /1

Een aantal jaren geleden schreef ik een artikel over de zogenaamde "science wars" in de jaren '90, wat er daarin misliep en hoe daar de kiemen werden gelegd voor de retoriek dat universiteiten overgenomen waren door "postmodernisme" 1/ www.ethiekenmaatschappij.ugent.be/wp-content/u...

Samen met enkele collega's schreef ik een stuk in Apache waarin we ons distantiëren van de associate van onze vakgroep met racistische pseudowetenschap en eugenetica. apache.be/2025/07/04/r...

If you agree with our 5 requests to our universities, please sign 🖊️ the open letter and don’t forget to confirm your email! ☺️🙏 openletter.earth/open-letter-...

Brilliant. Now if people ask why as a philosopher of science I'm interested in obscure details of historical chemical experiments, I can just enigmatically answer: "Remember the magnetic stirrer"

🧵1/ I'm happy to share my new article just published in the European Journal for Philosophy of Science: "Political philosophy of experimentation" 🔗 link.springer.com/article/10.1... #philsci #STS #politicalphilosophy

To get a sneak peek, here is some footage I made myself of earlier performances of the replication experiments: youtube.com/shorts/KfSSa... (1/2)

Today I was back in the lab, this time with cinematographer Adam Dens to film replications of historical chemical experiments. In this picture you can see us interviewing a vacuum flask to ask how he feels about being part of the production of "nitrous air" 1/3 #hps

New paper with Pieter Beck that just came out, in which we engage with Hasok Chang's interpretation of the chemical revolution. A limited number of free copies available in the link. #hps #histsci #philsci