Just in case you needed any more reasons to support this crowdfunder, once things are up and running, I’ll be teaching a course on Marxist philosophy here: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/booksfromb...

This is unacceptable

Thinking of becoming one of those niche-construction people. I’ll go around pointing at things and saying, ‘You know what that is? It’s a niche’. It sounds fun.

Here’s some close ups of the print you could get either by entering the £10 prize draw or by donating £60+ to our crowdfunder: www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/booksfromb... Please consider doing so, we’re trying to bring the first radical bookshop in decades to Newcastle! If you can’t donate, pls share!!

True analytic philosophy has never been tried

Learning to read philosophy is a skill and someone is losing out if they only learn to read within one tradition or time-period. My undergrad had a two-year module dedicated to this. At Durham, we have a module called ‘Reading Philosophy’. I don’t get the impression that this is the norm though.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re formally modelling complex social phenomena (analytic) or poetically articulating the nature of alienation (continental), both are sound Marxist traditions.

Remember when Artemis II splashed down? That was great.

Given the number of different ways I could get so drunk that I wouldn’t know that I was drunk, I think it’s statistically safe to assume that I’m drunk.

New paper with Olivier Michalon. We ask whether transformers that separate syntax and semantics into parallel streams classify sentences better than single-stream models. They do not. We think this matters for how the autonomy of meaning and grammar should be explained. 1/6 doi.org/10.1080/0952...

I'm at the Mosque / I'm at the Cathedral / I'm at the combination Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba.

Politely requesting fish eaters to not wipe out all life in the ocean:

Cats hiding from the rain

Thinking of getting into stoic philosophy

This new book of essays on Real Patterns looks really great: direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edi...

Sometimes I want to tell myself that the anonymous accounts on here aggressively attacking left-liberals are part of a CIA plot to discredit Marxism but I know this isn’t true :(

Looking at the full moon tonight aware that somewhere in my line of vision is a spaceship with 4 people in it. Just a cool thing to know.

#Artemis II - The crew aboard the Orion spacecraft give us a recap from day 2 🚀🌕

I’d suspected it was Austin but couldn’t find it there. Turns out it’s in Sense and Sensibilia.

There’s a philosophy paper begins with the observation that philosophers often start their papers with bold, provocative claims before spending the paper walking back from them. Does anyone remember what paper this was?

This image of home just came down from the Artemis II crew. Taken after their translunar injection burn, there are aurorae at top right and lower left, and zodiacal light at lower right. Credit: NASA/Reid Wiseman

🎺If you can teach Introductory Logic, or the History of Philosophy (Ancient, Medieval, or Modern), then come and by my colleague! The Dept. of Philosophy at @tcddublin.bsky.social is looking for *two* Teaching Fellows (3 year posts). For full details, see: universityvacancies.com/trinity-coll...

Having to reread some of my own work for a thing :(

Fascinating documentary about what the Artemis II crew will be experiencing.: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNAH...

We’re going back to the moon this evening (to orbit). There are still people alive who were born in the time when horse-drawn transport was the main form of getting around. Ethel Caterham, living in Surrey, was born the year the first person flew across the English Channel.

The NASA livestream of the Artemis II launch is available here: www.nasa.gov

Ramberg is also a genuinely deep thinker and fantastic philosophical interlocutor (and also a fantastic non-philosophical interlocutor). I admire Bjørn more than almost any other philosopher I have talked to.

A Festschrift for Bjørn Ramberg has just come out and it’s full of fun looking papers for fans of neo-pragmatism

I’m such a sucker for this kind of narrative philosophy when done well. People arguing about whether ANNs need world-models for cognition, it’s just another front in the war between the Marburg Neo-Kantians and the Southwest school (and it’s essential the Marburg school win)

Paul North’s course on Capital Vol 1 (using the new translation he co-edited) has just been put on Youtube. It contains 19 lectures: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Who needs artificial intelligence when you have artificial clairvoyance? “The models describe and base their reasoning on multi-modal inputs, such as images, that were never given to them”.

It's my own fault for using ChatGPT as a search tool, but this really made me laugh. "...with an important nuance..." is sublime 🤌

“All the lore of the ages is due to irritation of the surfaces of a succession of persons”.

Tired: A human being is a featherless biped. Wired: A human being is a creature with a chin.

Love it when a paper says it’s presenting a philosophical theory and the theory is a four sentence definition of a thing.

Biblically-accurate trilobite

Just realised that I was wrong about something in a philosophy paper and that this wrongness will now outlive me in print.

I’m not sure I’ve seen any coverage of the Jack Reacher books, TV series, or indeed the private lives of the actors in the TV series, that hasn’t also felt the need to mention that Tom Cruise was too short to play the role in the films.

Getting read to explain the strong lottery ticket hypothesis by appeal to Rambo III.

Surely neuroscientists could save a lot of time by asking the philosophers who can imagine exact physical duplicates of their brains for details about what they are imagining.

Just stumbled across the tweet I’d saved from when the queen of England died. I hope the Germans are holding up okay.

in my head I pronounce it like σύνθεση (modern pronunciation), /'sinθesi/

si:ntɛz

So how are people pronouncing the journal Synthese? 1. sɪnθiːz 2. sɪnθe͡ɪs 3. sɪnte͡ɪsə 4. sɪntθeːs (Belfast version) 5. Mystery pronounciation

Another special issue on representation in cognitive science has come out (this time in THEORIA): ojs.ehu.eus/index.php/TH...

Good news: not just one open job, but two! Both are postdocs in philosophy of science/ML working with my @technomoralfutures.bsky.social co-Director Dr Emily Sullivan on issues in ML scientific understanding and explanation. Ads for a 3 year post and 2 year post are linked below, apply by 20 April

This is something W.H. Auden stressed in his review

Again, I'm feeling a great gratitude for all educators who make their teaching resources freely available online.