Is anything wrong with the Foucaltian approach? The history of human ideas? Things like psychiatry and sexology, despite the best efforts of sincere researchers in these fields, have scarcely been scientific. Foucalt's focus derives from the physician, Georges Canguilhem, who pondered disease.

It might be true. Not all fictional works, nor fictional genres, are equally descriotive or verbose

Id the ancestor the same as the descendant? When is the chicken, no longer the egg? (Or however you want to phrase it.)

Analytic philosophers of science be like... #philsci

Interesting informed proposal for a psychology of science. People who study causal learning, concept acquisition, updating of beliefs are already doing some of this. But this is more specific, including the idea of studying wellbeing in science, which i like a lot (especially if it covers illbeing!)

✅ 1. It defines "strains" above 99.99% ANI. Molecular biologists have traditionally used "strain" interchangeably with "colony" or "clone", and usually imply identical bacterial "individuals", often with completely identical genomes and implied identical phenotypes... 2/n

Whatever one thinks of Musk, is he wrong to moderate what is, essentially, a website and app that he owns?

Imagine a world in which we get what we deserve: a good death (I wrote the script for this BBC animation) www.bbc.co.uk/ideas/videos...

Today I watched a crocodile, playing with his food

As a child I always insisted, on looking inside a book, and not judging the book by its cover

How Neotropical in nature does the Geisetal-Messel fauna look these days? A new description of a second Geisetal Eoconstrictor species, has this European Eocene genus, the sister to Neotropical boas academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/a...

Its all a confusing mess and it still is. Interesting he predicted a Tubulidentata + Macroscelididae clade. Amongst other little details

Fertility vs longevity. George Williams meets UK Biobank. Here's my story of an old evolutionary theory meeting new data. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2023/12/08/s...

Kind of amazed to see ring-necked pheasants on the list of top prey species for domestic cats. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Were Neanderthals morning people? The genes of today’s early risers certainly point that way. Here’s my story. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2023/12/14/s...

Old familiar faces are not unique to us. Chimpanzees and bonobos show signs of recognizing ape acquaintances after more than 26 years. Here’s my story on the deep roots of long-term social memories. 🧪 Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2023/12/18/s...

'Pray the gay away' is ridiculous and odious, but the same religious therapy is used by Alcoholics Anonymous. Their activities are parallel, but curing alcoholism is universally seen as good. So no one criticises them for confusing religion with therapy.

"Our desire for life itself, for a habitable planet, is being hijacked, manipulated, and commodified for profit and paid for in blood" Utterly **blistering** piece on the UAE buying up Kenyan land to justify its fossil expansion

Only Catholics oppose conteaception, not mainline US evangelicals. This is the tired old 'womems bodies' narrative from the 1970s, plus alarmism to keep 20th century tripe relevant. The religious right are stuck in the Salem witch trials. Feminism is stuck in the 1970s.

It has professional assassins, necromancy, rigorous historiography, Machiavelli & Michelangelo’s sex lives, politically active nuns, Viking fish paste, Lucrezia Borgia, disability studies, Shakespeare, Kristina of Sweden the transgender king, & fresh reasons Nazis suck. What more could one ask for?

I've just arrived at Blue Sky and I have no followers 😞 what will happen if I post my awesome new blog post? Will anyone even see it? Maybe someone will take pity and repost me.

Today seems like a good day to clear out some of the PDFs on my desktop. Gonna start with "Some Philosophical Questions About Telepathy and Clairvoyance," by Professor H. H. Price: www.jstor.org/stable/3746086

This excellent paper by @harveylederman.bsky.social made me think that there are three philosophy topics which should be discussed together more than they are: - Multiple dimensions of value - Imprecise probabilities - Equilibrium selection rules A short thread to follow...

Given this basic observation about our instincts around the word 'moral' when applied to barren planets, I think it is reasonable to conclude that there are no mind-independent moral facts in the sense that there are no moral facts without minds.

Endophytic ancestors of modern leaf miners may have evolved in the Late Carboniferous; Richard J. Knecht, Anshuman Swain et al #paleontology #palaeontology 🧪⚒️ #paleobotany #palaeobotany #ichnology nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

A tiny footprint of a carnivorous dinosaur discovered in Villanueva de Huerva (Zaragoza) Descubierta una diminuta huella de dinosaurio carnívoro en Villanueva de Huerva (Zaragoza) #paleontology #palaeontology 🧪⚒️ #ichnology www.aragosaurus.com/descubierta-...

Geochemical extraction of ceratopsian remains from ironstone; Emily G. Cross, Clarence Surette & Carney Matheson #paleontology #palaeontology 🧪⚒️ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Diversity and taxonomy of the Late Triassic #sauropodomorphs (Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha) stored in the Palaeontological Collection of Tübingen, #Germany... Omar Rafael Regalado Fernández et al #paleontology #palaeontology 🧪⚒️ europeanjournaloftaxonomy.eu/index.php/ej...

As good a time as any to plug my commentary with @sefyfe.bsky.social in the American Journal of Bioethics: "The Moral Weight of Preferences: Death, Sex, and Dementia" www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

After decades of overly broad and inconsistent use, or abuse, and interesting byt problematic cultural baggage. Should the word shamanism really be applied, to anything except Siberian indigenous religious traditions?

Or: 'real fairies' or unusual foreigners, are interpreted according, to a pre-existing template?

The Vatican on Monday issued its most definitive permission yet for Catholic priests to bless same-sex couples, as long as those benedictions are kept separate from marriage, a decree that fully reverses a 2021 ruling — and that may deepen division over the open-door papacy of Pope Francis.

Correct. Ainu stories became subject themselves, to 'fairy euhemerism'

Its called fairy euhemerism, usually associated with MacRitchie. Its not really discredited, so much as immune to proof. At its root, its based on how neighboring people saw Laplanders, Ainu, and African pygmies. And British fairy euhemerists were localising a Scandinavian idea.

As with alt hist vs counterfactuals, its a question I think, how hardcore you wsnt the science to be.

Sounds interesting, butvhow much of tge inter-population variation is real? And how much is it our primate brains, attuned to recognise andcexaggerate, facial variation?

“By some estimates, scientists in the U.S. currently use roughly fifteen million animals for research, including mice, rats, cats, dogs, birds, and nonhuman primates.” www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

There are two claims about beliefs on the left that seemed to have entered conventional wisdom with zero evidence: 1) Victimhood is the prime status marker and 2) speech is violence

One imagines this won't be making it on to the front pages of The New York Times www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Yet pro-choice allows no exception; not for siblings, not for grandparents, not for husbands or boyfriends. For these people, every abortion qualifies as an enforced abortion.

Keeping with my current readings of archaeological finds in China, HDL 6 was discovered in southeastern China in August 2023. The jawbone and partial skull appear to resemble Homo Erectus in some ways but are hypothesized to be part of an unknown human lineage. 🏺 www.archaeology.org/news/11631-2...

🧪 anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

🧪 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

EU Commission opens proceedings against Twitter under Digital Services Act ec.europa.eu/commission/p...

I recently wrote a short piece for the American Journal of Bioethics on some of the legal implications of digital twins in health care. Fascinating technology. See it here: www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Great post on just how much thought and work goes into archival digitization projects peelarchivesblog.com/2017/05/31/w...

No, there are are no real Nazis, in America. (Or few, not in the Republican Party.) 'Christofascism' makes no sense, because National Socialism is unavoidably based upon an interpretation of Darwinism. You can't reconcile NS with Creationism, or certain other tendencies in the US right.