So good at projecting an authoritative, distant, professorial image that after one class students are already replying to my emails with 🥰🥰 emojis

“In the asylum system, men transition from 17yo ‘vulnerable boy’ to 18yo ‘threatening man’ on their 18th birthday. This means: No housing, few support services & a perception—from everyone, even humanitarian workers—that ‘he’ll be fine on the street for a bit, he’s a man.’ He won’t be fine.”

I decided to start an open @semble.so collection to curate more examples/inspiration for "extreme citizen science": semble.so/profile/joel... cc @ronentk.me

The second edition of the Queer Analytic Philosophy conference will be in June in Santa Cruz, CA, right before SF Pride! Call for submissions (of pitches, papers, to chair or comment...) here! #philsky

Did you know the friendly teddy bear was once part of a the Great Replacement Theory? The fear was that “the fad for supplanting the good old dolls of our childhood with the horrible monstrosity known as the teddy bear” would lead (white) girls to not want babies. Race suicide!

By searching for "Colin McGinn" in the Epstein files (I was curious!) I came across this letter in which Joscha Bach gives this lengthy reflection on how prudish and moralistic people are about poor ol' Jeffrey Epstein. Lotta men just really in deep solidarity here. www.justice.gov/epstein/file...

Not much of a lesson from my personal experience, other than: it's okay to say no to potentially sketchy things. I've said no to a few of them; some probably harmless, some doubtless bad. Your integrity as a person isn't worth a few bucks or a few connections.

Had a wisdom tooth removed a couple of days ago, which means a "soft cold foods only" diet. So of course, I would now kill for crunchy foods, sour candy, hot coffee, and a glass of wine. Hard to believe that instincts this maladaptive were the best millions of years of natural selection could do.

📵 Opinión | Prohibición de redes para menores de 16 años: mala enfermedad, peor remedio. 🖋 @floresophize.bsky.social  🖋 @teclista.hortensia.social.ap.brid.gy  📷 @davidfsabadell.bsky.social   https://elsal.to/46260

Somebody should invent a socioeconomic system which is good at allocating resources

Wrote about why teen social media bans are a dangeous idea based on a moral panic and little evidence. (with Marta G Franco, who takes most of the credit for this :) )

Bayesians are like listen up FUCKERS, we SOLVED epistemology. And it turns out you can believe WHATEVER YOU WANT provided it’s not LITERALLY INCONSISTENT and you CHOSE THE RIGHT OPINIONS before LOOKING AT THE EVIDENCE AT ALL

Call me naive, but I am actually extremely disappointed that the global academic elite is an "odd intellectual club located on the dubious continuum between the seminar room and a sex-trafficking ring". Everyone at universities should do some really serious soul-searching about our culture.

Critica, the Latin American journal of philosophy, is seeking submissions to a special issue on social epistemology! For anyone interested in contributing, check out the details here:

knowledge norm of assertion in the wild

What’s a trip to the UK without brooding sensitively in a train while listening to The Smiths?

Why did antisemitism rise in Germany during the Covid pandemic? And why was this increase concentrated among political centrists, rather than on the fringes? doi.org/10.1017/S153... @kanol.bsky.social @wzb.bsky.social @uni-hamburg.de @politikuhh.bsky.social @socfub.bsky.social

Couldn't be more excited for the first PPE talk of the year, ft. the iconic Caro Flores (@floresophize.bsky.social) discussing "Moral Panics!" 📆: Thurs, Jan 29 ⏱️: 4:30 - 6 PM 📍: Senate House, Room 264 More details here: philosophy.sas.ac.uk/news-events/... Series info: elisewoodard.org/ppe2026

This paper by @liao.shen-yi.org and Zoe Brinner is such a helpful, clear primer on the central concepts in 4E cognitive science! Use it as your crib sheet on concepts like affordances, scaffolding, or niche construction + a fantastic list of recent work on hostile environments!

Making AI Catholic is the best way to solve the alignment problem

Reminder to send us your cool philosophy of mind papers!!

Giving two talks in a day this Thursday! First, discussing my paper on hermeneutical injustice with the Episteme group in Cambridge. Then I'll talk about moral panics (joint work w Lauren Lyons) at the fabulous PPE talk series (organized by @elisewoodard.bsky.social and @michaelhannon.bsky.social)

Like to imagine right before one of them said ‘if fascism is bad, then why has god remained silent on the matter?’

"If the totalitarian conqueror conducts himself everywhere as if he were at home, by the same token he must treat his own population as though he were a foreign conqueror" Arendt wrote this about mid-century totalitarianism, but it also sounds like it's about Venezuela to Minneapolis.

Why you should read a forgotten 80s bestseller about lesbian nuns - the reason is much more wholesome than you think. (Also truly living my best Catholic school girl life - I love @autostraddle.bsky.social and it's thrilling to get to write heretically for them!)

Please read this brilliant review by @floresophize.bsky.social www.autostraddle.com/what-we-can-...

Last term I tried an experiment: I walked into my Tech and Design Ethics class, admitted that I had *no idea* what to do about ChatGPT - so I would let them figure it out. As in: their first project was to decide and write the ChatGPT policy for the class. Here's what happened:

Audre Lorde in "Uses of the Erotic": "when we look away … we use each other as objects of satisfaction rather than share our joy in the satisfying, rather than make connection with our similarities and our differences."

For social media moguls, "the fact that relationships are irreducibly qualitative is a serious bug. So Zuck... incinerated all the qualitative elements by quantizing them, and then did math on the dubious residue that remained". And we fell for the trap by changing what we care about to match 1/

#PhilSky: Looking for recs of good recent work on epistemology and technology: the risks of AI, deepfakes, epistemic problems with recommender algorithms, etc. This is for an upper division course, so ideally stuff that is big picture and teachable. Self-recommendations welcome :)

I know I'm so late to the game but Maintenance Phase is so good! Love the debunking of bs science and stats on diet and health, the ethical clarity, and discovering that history is always even weirder than we suspect. www.maintenancephase.com

Portugal just had the 1st round of a presidential election. TLDR: round 2 will be between a foaming-at-the-mouth Trumpist and a centrist whose promise is to not malignantly destroy democracy, and who has as much personality as a cardboard wall (his slogan is "play it safe with your vote").

This is awesome. But also, I can’t wait for Wim Wenders’s Perfect Days: NYC!!

Today is National Thesaurus Day. Personally, we find these made-up holidays contemptible, abhorrent, nauseating, repugnant, and unpalatable.

Real talk: why aren't philosophers organizing to edit Wikipedia and create good, accessible, accurate primers on philosophical issues? It is such an obvious and valuable form of outreach. #philsky

Suspiciously asking my wife who's funding her anytime she criticizes me

Portugal is having a presidential election tomorrow (Sunday). It is a fairly unusual one, which is representative of how much the political landscape has changed in the country. Here is some quick context about it, in case that is of interest: 1/9

If you're looking for something warm to listen to for the darkest, coldest time of the year, check out this dj-set-meets-audio-essay (a whole new genre to me that I immediately crave) on belonging:

In the 1950s, ethnologist Konrad Lorenz observed that birds would select brooding eggs that resembled those of their own species but which were larger. The result: not taking care of their own eggs. These big eggs are a *supernatural stimulus* 1/4 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superno...

There’s a big story everyone is missing—but this article hits on it. We aren’t just seeing public health dismantled bc we’ve been taken over by conspiracy theorists and lunatics. What we’re really seeing is the giant, predatory, underegulated wellness industry come to Washington.

OK: I have a new favorite topic to teach in intro philosophy classes: lottocracy. Literally half my class followed me back to my office because they *couldn't stop talking about it.* Lottocracy is the argument that elections don't work, and that the best way democracy is through lottery.

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...

This paper looks so cool!!

It’s book release day! I’m back on social media! I feel slightly awkward about it because part of the book is about how social media transforms your motivations for communication! But honestly writing a book is lonely, weird basement-work, and now I want to talk to people about this weird jank.

File under "trans and gender diverse people have always existed": Just learned about femminielli, a third gender role in traditional Neapolitan culture. They were considered to bring good luck and were celebrated by the community. 1/2

brb you can find me at the gym lifting to 80s Yugoslav aerobic pop foxandhisfriends.bandcamp.com/album/yu-aer...

This looks like a fascinating study both of what gentrification is and also of the stakes of expanding the meaning of political terms!

It’s the North American publication day of my textbook written with @nmckeever3.bsky.social 🥂 www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Yesterday I completely finalized the chapter on how, according to Audre Lorde, we gain knowledge from feelings. Today moving on to chapter 4, on the erotic as a source of knowledge and power 🧄 The Unflinching Philosophy of Audre Lorde is gonna get done done.

In 1985, a compilation of about 50 testimonies of (former and current) lesbian nuns was published. It has largely been forgotten, but in its day a shocking 150,000 copies were on the market, and it was published in 11 countries. Here is why you should read it now. 1/