For our recent paper - on naive humans reinventing how to shape early stone tools - we did sth unusual and sth (hopefully) useful: We included an FAQ section in the supplementary material New methods may benefit from such FAQ's being included. [available at ars.els-cdn.com/content/imag... ]

Linux may strike fear into the hearts of many, but Ubuntu works out of the box and the tiny learning curve is offset by the absence of bloatware and AI. You can even partition your hard-drive and dual boot if you need windows. It's very easy to do.

This actually makes sense. My brother (in Australia) regularly posts racist shite from these rags, long before I've even caught a whisper of the narrative. As far as he's concerned, London has fallen.

People who "write" (prompt) this stuff fall further in my esteem than if they accidentally posted the search terms they use for porn. Also, look at who he is citing. lol. I have no doubt that LLMs are doing better social science than *some* of us.

I seem to recall that this paper received some strong pushback a few years ago. Do I remember correctly, and if so, can anyone point me the direction of the critique?

Ha! Wonderful. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

My new computer just arrived, and yet I still have to work. How is this fair?

Met up with a friend last night at the Whiskey Society. 'Cask Strength' can really take you by surprise...

Does that say 'Operation: Epic Fury'. JD Vance named that. I'll put money down that he'll drop an 'Over 9000' reference in the next 3 months.

Got a new office chair. Quality of life improvement is visceral.

Spent like 18 minutes trying to rent a 30 year old movie on Amazon. Gave up. Hypothetically, it's faster to pirate that shit. Jus' saying.

Our institute is hiring 1. an assistant professor (with TT) for Social Psychology (focus: environmental psychology) ohws.prospective.ch/public/v1/jo... 2. an assistant lecturer (with TT) for Experimental Personality Psychology ohws.prospective.ch/public/v1/jo...

Ohhhh, so you do have ethical approval, eh? Didn't see that the first time round.

Some good thoughts. The distinction between LLMs and corporate LLMs is meaningful and important. As is 'private use'. I use Claude as a search engine quite frequently, because google sucks (and google scholar is only marginally better). Specifying quality of info and links makes it a useful tool

What?

I'm hiring again!! Two Postdocs in Philosophy of Mind (one ot two years), Centre for Philosophical Psychology, University of Antwerp - to work with me! Deadline: March 20, 2026 More info on PhilJobs

Deep into lecture writing, and I've had to briefly touch on attachment. This is your un-asked-for reminder that Harry Harlow was a sadistic monster. This isn't said often enough. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_H...

Pulling references for a lecture, and I just missed a very important milestone.

It used to be a pleasure when I was surprised by a student's clean prose. Even if that prose wasn't perfectly structured, it was nice to see a competence with words. Thanks to LLMs that pleasure has simply been replaced with a sideways glance.

Is this a thing? Does this happen to anyone else? I can talk and talk and talk just fine. But then, if I'm sitting down to record audio of my voice... I start burping! Am I breathing differently? I'm not anxious. I record all the time. What's happening!? Is it just me!?

Just updated Audacity. So far, not any *major* changes to functionality. But cloud storage and AI implementation? GTFO. Audacity was such a good, simple, do-exactly-what-you-need programme. Then it got bought out. Now I can buy Audacity Merch. Ugh.

I geniunely think every household should have a 3D printer. I've printed a lot of semi-useful knicknacks and other things, but today I solved a real and geniune problem (my cat has learned how to make water on the taps).

Times HE is really banking on LLMs and GenAI. Very disappointing. www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/take-...

I don't want to be flippant, but.... yeah, if there was a local skinhead bar and you popped in 'just for a pint' regularly, sooner or later you're going to adopt some skinhead attitudes. This isn't really an issue about algo's. Twitter/X isn't neutral in the way it once (ostensibly) was.

A cool opportunity to do PhD with Olivier Morin in Paris! I was supervised by Olivier in the past, and it was extremely interesting and productive. Don't miss!

I have a paper in which I dived deep into the world of prolific, examining best practices and overlooked considerations of psychologists. It took a long time to get through review for various reasons. And LLM's have just fucked it. It's not worth anything now that this new bomb hit the scene.

I responded to these people with questions. I got one round of answers which was unsatisfying. Then I noticed they didn't have IRB and yet they claim their doing a survey. They have no responded since. I'm pretty sure they're doing this work with IRB approval. Worth chasing them up?

Albo has it right: "Nothing to see here". We're a country proud of David Boon and Shane Warne. I was in Oxford when Bob Hawke died, every aussie in town ended up at the Turf Tavern where he set his drinking record. Anyway, it's pretty funny. She's wasted. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

About £3200 per student, on average. For just two to three months rent, and you're going to cause another 100 people at a single university to lose their jobs. Courses will close over this. Absolute fucking ghouls, and I won't apologize for saying so.

Surprisingly good advice for D&D, too.

Legitimate question: Why does it function like this? Not only is my inbox equally spammed, but to block this I have to login and engage in a multistep process? I am sure spam protection is far more complicated than I think, but *this* instance doesn't seem complicated.

I've been around students my entire adult life. First, as one. Then, as an educator. We can't treat students as a monolith. But students don't realize that they are participating in a vast tragedy of the commons. Every little act (or in this case, BIG act) chips away at the resource that is HE.

I'm writing lectures on my area of expertise. Many papers have been very influential in my thinking. As a result, I've scrutinized them deeply, and often found they have critical issues. And so I want to teach the stuff that influenced me... but I think it's broken. So I don't want to teach it..

Pretty close!

I pickled some cucumbers today. If it's proof of anything, it's that 'dad energy' is a state of a mind, and fully independent of one's parental status.

Are you in the UK (and even better, Zone 4) and you garden? I'm planning this year's garden. Naturally: garlic, onions, leeks, courgette, cucumber, berries. What could I add to the list for diversity? e.g., I grow one tobacco plant a year. And I have a great artichoke plant. Others?

I'm not much of a gamer. I certainly don't identify as one. But I did beat Grand Mother Silk yesterday. So git gud, n00bs.

Scene: An empty train carriage. The players: me, two others. Enter: Two players. Look around. Carriage remains empty. Action: Sits at same table. Proceeds to ask me to move my laptop 3 inches further away from them. -Based on a true story.

Happy birthday to Charles Darwin, patron saint of tired scientists, grumpy fieldworkers, and hating your own manuscript.

In recent interactions, Keytravel has met and exceeded my expectations* * for being a parasite on the underfoot of academia.

this is a level of complicity that had not occurred to me

The line that is the very thesis of Dunk is omitted, and yet we get Arlan schlong and diarrhoea? Anyway, parts of this are fun. But it should have been one movie. Go make one movie for each short story. I'd bet it'd be more profitable, too. www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/k...

Has anyone else been contacted by the 'UK government's Metascience Unit' with a request to provide feedback via a 'survey'?

oh my god. Make this a film. Get Aronofski to direct.

The Reductio ad absurdum of this position is to let players stay at home and to write '1' on a piece of paper, cross it out, smile, and write a '2'. Then repeat until they reach '20'.

Skimmed this this morning. Initially really provocative and interesting. My biggest concern is it's just one ape, and that ape is Kanzi. But it's so cool that this kind of research is being done at all. And the protocol isn't hard! Ape-people, do more!

'The Ear Park' by Department of Eagles (2008) is a perfect album. They never made a second. Ok, it's a 96% perfect album, because both the name of the band and the name of the album are bad. You'll know after the first song if it's for you. Try it.