This only shows that the right-wing suckers who thought UATX was anything other than a political monument to the right (rather than something less partisan) only reveal themselves as right-wing, suckers, or both. The call is coming from inside the house, idiots. www.politico.com/news/magazin...

Big Ted hit the sauce a little too hard last night.

John Travolta is doing an amazing Nicholas Cage impression, and Nicholas Cage is doing everything he can to make it impossible for John Travolta to do a Nicholas Cage impression. 10/10 no notes.

Don’t expect any further rewards or handclaps. This is how normal people are all the time.

No more reboots until the cowards in Hollywood reboot Face Off send tweet

Unrelated to Richard's casual observation... We all are going to have to brace for the fact that some of our colleagues - esp some influential ones at fancy schools, as well as some very talented ECRs - are going to *turn nazi* in the coming years. Some won't surprise us. Many will.

This is D&D stuff. It's so on-the-nose. If I needed to let an adventuring party know that someone is black-and-white evil, I'd have the rogue find this in their pocket.

This ought to be a huge national news story. But the quiet dismantling of a key sector barely registers outside HE. Maybe someone will care when the local economies that Unis sustain start to go bust too. Important story from @patrickjack.bsky.social & @timeshighered.bsky.social

Great piece: slate.com/news-and-pol...

Never, in a million kabillion years, when I decided to say "screw it" to mainstream philosophy and started writing about the philosophy of games, could I have imagined that this road would take me down to having the goddamn NY Times profile me and my new book. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/b...

Here's a tuesday hot-take. Academics are not unusually bad at writing. I'd bet a small sum of money they're probably better than most other professions. It looks bad because there's *so much of it*, and because it often requires *expertise* to understand.

There are so few reasons to do a PhD. The main one is you *want* to do a PhD. But if you're using an LLM to do just about any part of your PhD (especially other-facing text or work), you're *not* doing a PhD.

I watched 'Bugonia' last night, and it was 98% of an excellent movie. The ending was so bad it ruined the movie completely. The ending is so bad I cannot recommend watching the movie. Unless you stop at this exact moment: When he enter the cupboard.

📢 Talk announcement bringing together @brunelcce.bsky.social and CCN research centres! 📢 Dr Conrad Hackett (Pew Research Center) joins us on 📆29th Jan, 2-4pm to unpack the latest global religion survey and how it diverges from Pew’s influential 2015 projections 🌍📊 Open to all! 🔓

Until about the age of 5, children think that birthday parties *make* them older, and not that they symbolically mark age. I don't know if similar work has been done on trophies or other symbolic awards, but I'd wager money that it, too, holds. ... funny that this should occur to me just now...

My partner is streaming BBC today, and she says *every single ad* has been for military recruitment.

ANCIENT REPTILIAN BRAIN - It's the *world*, Harry-boy. And you're *made* of it. Every day you're out there you make more of yourself from it. I'm afraid you can't be *unmade* now.

For reasons that are geniunely unrelated to current affairs, I was reading the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And... well... they're resonant. It will literally take 3 minutes to read this. www.un.org/en/about-us/...

Have you actually *read* the World Values Survey? Oh my god. This is an *incredible* mess. And... just wow... Tthe questions reveal some incredible beliefs alien to most "WEIRD" minds*. (Putting the US to one side, for the moment).

There's only one version of this AI I will accept

Behold. The Peppermint Butler clock After many weeks of prototyping, printing, designing, and reprinting. It is complete. (Though there are some teeny weeny tweaks to make).

I've been at my current institution for a little over two-years. My informal grace period has ended, it seems. I've published enough that the spambots and journal editors have all updated to my current institutional email address. My inbox is as messy as everyone else's now.

Happy new year! I wanted to share my new Python package called chatter that streamlines the process of applying AI/ML models to animal communication 🦜🦇🐋🐵👨‍🌾 masonyoungblood.github.io/chatter/

2 year Postdoctoral Research Fellow opportunity at the University of St Andrews on my project "Aesthetic Values and the Social Dimensions of Science" www.vacancies.st-andrews.ac.uk/Vacancies/W/... #philosophy #philsci

🚨 Postdoctoral Opportunity for Female Scientists🚨 The University of Vienna is awarding at least 20 fully funded 4 year postdoctoral positions to outstanding female scientists Interested? Get in touch via direct message careers.univie.ac.at/en/postdoc/e... #MicroSky 🧪 #PostDoc @univie.ac.at

The Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Toulouse School of Economics offers jobs for Postdoctoral Researchers with a PhD in psychology, cognitive science, anthropology, or related disciplines. Deadline for application: January 23, 2026 www.tse-fr.eu/groups/depar...

I was in a science museum today, and something was described as 'moving at the speed of an hour hand on a clock', and I simply cannot understand what that means. Maniacal.

I know a woman from grad school, and she's something of a mummy-influence/researcher now. She's aussie, and the big aussie grant is the DECRA. And she's kind of turning her last-minute application to the DECRA into content for her audience. I have very mixed (leaning neg-) feelings about this.

Fun fact: the advice here is relevant to any goal. You want to work out more? You want to have a more fulfilling romantic life? You want to get a new job? Or even something seemingly small: you want to watch more more movies / stay up to date with the news / dress better.

My career is built on scholarship of rituals. I focus less on that now, but it's still my firmament. What are your new year's rituals? I'm not a believer, but I will do a Tarot draw. Also, living in Scotland and celebrating Hogmanay, I learned about 'first footing', which I will do tonight.

Putting aside the obvious issues of LLMs, it's quite remarkable that the most obvious and daily example of corporate big data applications are recommendation algorithms. And they're invariably: "You recently bought a sewing machine. Would you like to order the same sewing machine again?"

It's very fun that academics will use all the $5 words, instead of simply saying 'git gud'.

When I learn that my partner hasn't seen a specific movie, I'm rarely a "Oh my god, you have to watch [x]!" kind-of-guy. ... but tonight I learned she hadn't seen Jaws. So... we have to watch Jaws.

It's never a bad idea to put googley eyes on machines.

Having never worked in the US, it seems wild to me that students can do this at all.

My new lab in Singapore is seeking a full-time RA to help investigate how exploratory cognitive states shape environmental representations (cognitive maps). The position is funded until late 2027, and comes with a postdoc-level salary package. Please forward! careers.sutd.edu.sg/job/Singapor...

My partner made a custom 'guess who' for Christmas :)

Cultural Evolution paper alert 🚨

➡️New article out⬅️ The Fate of Behavioral Modernity by Andra Meneganzin @andrameneganzin.bsky.social Free reading link: rdcu.be/eUOUH

Couldn't see it at all. Then read the comments, and it resolved perfectly.

Utterly discrediting. Maybe for the marketing hacks this is fine, but for scholars? I wouldn't trust their actual panel data anymore.

Our paper on the ☀️ "summer slide" 🛝 is out now @pnas.org! www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Summer slide is a replicable phenomenon across diverse datasets that's more than "forgetting" school material in vacation months, but effects of socioeconomic inequality are ➡️ 7x bigger! ⬅️ #PsychSciSky #DevPsy 🧵👇

I've been wrestling with two quite influential theory papers recently. In fact, for a number of years. But recently I've been really trying to unpack them, and work out where they hold and where they don't. In both cases there is a shocking absence of empirical evidence.

Hey @andrameneganzin.bsky.social, this is such a great paper on why defining, capturing, and (most of all) analyzing the emergence of 'behavioural modernity' still is such an important topic link.springer.com/article/10.1.... Congrats.

The Department of Psychology @uzh-ch.bsky.social has an open position for a tenured Lecturer (Research) «Psychological Data Management and -Stewardship» jobs.uzh.ch/job-vacancie... #psychjobs

One of the really powerful use-cases of AI/LLMs is the ensure that no human is responsible for the claim of an LLM. It absolves liability. University leaders are great at dodging responsibility. So why can't game recognize game? Surely they see that LLMs are a tool of obfuscation. Why embed it?

You can do this right now: Think of a person who wrote a paper you love, whose work influenced or helped you, or has made your professional life better. Search up their email address. Shoot them a quick email of thanks. It means so, so much. This is a rough time of year, share some joy.

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

Want to make nice graphs with me, starting next year? I'm hiring for a position at the University of Witten/Herdecke. uni-wh.softgarden.io/job/61280592...

Officially out! In this review, Aaron Chuey and I discuss how existing work on ToM mostly focused on a single individual’s mental states (e.g., what Sally thinks). Extending ToM, we argue for ToMS—an understanding of how multiple individuals communicate and influence each others’ minds. t.ly/u4rtb