Much of the empirical & theoretical landscape on #behaviouralmodernity has changed, and many think it’s high time we ditched the concept altogether. Here’s a minority voice in the choir: I’m skeptical that eliminativism is the panacea it’s often made out to be. 🔜 in Biol Theory #philsky #evosky🧪🏺

Unveiled by the buzzy startup Deep, Vanguard will let teams of scientists live and work on the seabed for a week at a time.

Spider Megacity just dropped. In Sulfur Cave, on the border between Albania and Greece, researchers have found the largest spiderweb in the world. At over 1,000 square feet, it houses over 100,000 individual spiders, mostly of two species. #science #biology subtbiol.pensoft.net/article/1623...

Work published today in @natbiotech.nature.com from Arc’s Luke Gilbert and Patrick Hsu labs presents a new way to insert large DNA sequences into the genome using engineered recombinases that don’t require DNA cutting or rely on the cell's repair machinery.

Great whites: “We are the scourge of the oceans. Fear us, ye humble sea creatures.” Killer whales: *chuckle “... indicating efficient ability by the mammals in attempting to induce tonic immobility in the prey and allow uninterrupted access to the liver for consumption.“ #science 🧪 #biology 🦈

2025 spirit animal: the upside-down jellyfish 🪼🙃 Find out about their amazing biology here👇 www.cell.com/current-biol... by Noémie Buratto& @elisjthore.bsky.social

Oocyte-like mouse cells made from stem cells even without the guiding signals from ovarian cells. Another step towards in vitro gametes. www.cell.com/developmenta...

not syndrome. imposter celebration. enjoying every day they don't kick you out and you get to mess around.

LLMs get brain rot from social media and content mills... "... continual exposure to junk web text induces lasting cognitive decline in large language models (LLMs)." #science #technology #LLM

My brain needs to make up its mind.

If humans could photosynthesize, we’d probably still forget to go outside enough to do it.

What Everyone Should Know About Fungi by Age 15 7️⃣ Mycorrhizal fungi help clean polluted soils by breaking down or immobilizing harmful substances. They act as filters, protecting groundwater & supporting healthier ecosystems. See the top 10 list (buff.ly/33Ov3UD) and follow for new fungal facts.

Time for some cool research. It's a Fungi World, Sycophantic AI, the Secret of the Bowhead Whale, and More #science #biology #technology

Are we surprised? "... when generating and evaluating resumes, ChatGPT assumes that women are younger and less experienced, rating older male applicants as of higher quality. " #science #technology

Nature research paper: Evidence for improved DNA repair in long-lived bowhead whale go.nature.com/4oNJSAG

This is an excellent, thought-provoking read

Carnivorous! Death-ball! Sponge! #science #biology #ocean #evolution #animal

First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

DNA from Napoleon’s 1812 army identifies the pathogens likely responsible for the army’s demise during their Russian retreat. www.cell.com/current-biol... Nicolás Rascovan & colleagues @currentbiology.bsky.social

Saw this essay circulating again during the AWS failure.

Preliminary results show that the current framework of "AI" makes ppl less likely to help or seek help from other humans, or to seek to soothe conflict, and that people actively prefer that framework to any others, literally serving to make them more dependent on it.

Who today is influencing science a la Big Tobacco or Oil and Gas? In our new preprint we show how tech companies like Meta are capturing research on their product, using mechanisms that subtly (or not so subtly) shape what science gets produced

Published today in @natureportfolio.nature.com Biotechnology, Laine Goudy, Luke Gilbert, Alex Marson, & colleagues report an epigenetic editing platform that safely reprograms multiple genes in human T cells without many of the challenges & risks associated with traditional gene editing approaches.

It has remained mysterious for millennia, but we’re finally uncovering the profound role the lymphatic system plays in everything from preventing dementia to fighting cancer

This is so cool!

"My world is not your world and our world is not a bat’s world. Well, that sounds dreadfully lonely. Fortunately, there tends to be enough overlap to find common ground. My world is not your world, but oxygen is oxygen and gravity works. Good start." On umwelts, growing brains, and psychedelics.

A silly little "choose-your-own-adventure" story I wrote about the classic transporter/mind upload questions about personal identity: open.substack.com/pub/cognitiv...

I feel like this explains a lot, actually *sigh*

Mireta wants to translate slime mold’s superpowers into algorithms that might help improve transit times, alleviate congestion, and more.

Fungal defense activated! "... the hindleg organ is covered with fungal hyphae that grow from the pores. Upon oviposition, the females transfer the fungi from the organ to the eggs, where the hyphae physically protect the eggs against wasp parasitism." #science #biology #zoology #insects

Lead poisoning... gave H. Sapiens the edge? "... lead exposure may have contributed to the impact of social and behavioral functioning during evolution, likely affording modern humans a survival advantage." #science #evolution #human #biology

Unsolicited writing advice, no. 154: Feed your writing daily. Feed it with fiction, non-fiction, news, games, theatre, films, art. Feed it with conversation. Feed it with experience. Feed it with curiosity. Don't expect to get anything out unless you also keep putting in.

"There's a point, around age twenty, when you have to choose whether to be like everybody else the rest of your life, or to make a virtue of your peculiarities." - Ursula K. Le Guin

Dinosaur tail (with feathers) in amber! Dinosaur! Tail! In amber! #science #biology #dinosaur

What a pleasure to contribute to this issue with an essay on... space bears! 👉 clarkesworldmagazine.com/de_winter_10...

I've had worse Monday mornings... #writing #science

What makes a novel timeless? "... bestsellers are longer, and include more punctuation, social words, and pronouns. In contrast, timeless novels feature longer sentences, more plural pronouns, more numbers and enumeration, and more food-related words." #science #writing osf.io/preprints/ps...

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

This goes for every day ending on -y.

Termite farmers. "... termites build a nest that protects the fungal comb, or “garden.” These insects are therefore driven to increase the yield of their garden by exhibiting behaviors such as garden feeding, habitual planting, altering the garden environment, and harvesting." #science #biology

Can synthetic biology help save endangered ecosystems? Our new paper with @vmaull.bsky.social explores how engineered genes can spread through soil microbes. We model how synthetic gene transfer can support biodiversity. @vdlorenzo.bsky.social @guimaguade.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

When a Blue Jay and a Green Jay have a baby, it's a... Grue Jay! (One for hybrid scholar @jenteo.bsky.social) #science #biology #animals #evolution

AI and human creativity, or a story about productivity, men of steel, and creative souls. #technology #culture #science

Hey! It's midnight on the east coast, so it's release day. Thanks to @undertow.bsky.social for being such a fantastic publisher. Thanks to family, friends, and fellow writers for their support. The short fic grind has ups and downs, but it's a blast. Fricken love what we do. Thanks for reading.

Orangutans are intuitive gym bros who track their macros! "... orangutans regulate protein and regularly switch between exogenous and endogenous nutritional substrates as preferred food resource availability declines." #science #biology #animal 🧪 🦧

*holds breath #science #health

RIP SoMe (as we know it). Great reflections by @jamesosullivan.bsky.social in @noemamag.com "The problem is not just the rise of fake material, but the collapse of context and the acceptance that truth no longer matters as long as our cravings for colors and noise are satisfied." #technology

Crazy discovery in ants 🤯🐜 One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants | Nature www.nature.com/articles/s41... "Males from the same mother exhibit distinct genomes and morphologies, as they belong to species that diverged over 5 million years ago."

In this piece for Aeon, I argue that, while nanotechnology is now a very real and mature field, a popular early vision of it was an example of what I am calling an "oneiric technology": a fantasy of the sort that Silicon Valley loves. aeon.co/essays/no-su...