…are not due primarily to lack of cleverness but to ordinary human causes such as greed, bias, folly, meanness, ignorance, ill-temper, lack of common-sense, lack of interest, lack of public feeling, lack of teamwork, lack of experience, lack of conscience, perhaps most of all to… 2/3

Something I like is Midgley’s (2018) critique of artificial intelligence - a couple of years before gen AI started to blow up. Here’s a good passage: “Why […] should anyone expect these extra calculative powers to make the difference that is needed? The confusions that now afflict human life… 1/3

Eu e a @MaribelMSobreira estamos a organizar um ciclo de leitura de As Origens do Totalitarianismo de Arendt em #Lisboa na maravilhosa livraria feminista Greta. Junta-te a nós! Mais detalhes e formulário de interesse aqui: cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/for...

Ah, Christmas eve, peak season for sitting by the fireplace and for abolishing the family

Made a new website! In addition to links to my writing, I added a bunch of course syllabi and teaching and mentoring materials that I hope are useful to others. carolinaflores.org

Periodic reminder to send us your coolest papers to this Special Issue on feminist philosophy of mind that I'm co-editing at Hypatia! Deadline is now February 9.

Love it when students write cool papers, Fall 2025 edition! (From my grad seminar on the attention crisis) 1/2 - Social anxiety is not just about beliefs but about deep-seated attention habits - Why is being mentally bored and physically engaged good for creative mind-wandering?

What is freedom? One common answer: it's the ability to choose according to your preferences. This book traces the history of this idea, with a focus on the objects and practices that got us used to that idea, from voting booths to 19th century dance halls to supermarkets. I enjoyed it!

This is so good it's not even a satire of US universities.

there's a certain logic to the idea that any mechanism of enforcing social norms is inherently 'carceral' and thereby objectionable. unfortunately, you quite literally cannot have a society without the enforcement of social norms. so, if you want a society (which i do!), you need to work harder

Tive o enorme privilégio de entrevistar a brilhante Susan Stryker para o @shifter.pt! Falámos de gentrificação, do aterrador momento político atual nos Estados Unidos, de vigilância, do ataque às pessoas trans, da organização política de que necessitamos agora... shifter.pt/2025/12/susa...

Short post about the concept of epistemic domination out today on the APA blog: blog.apaonline.org/2025/12/11/o... #philsky

Why is there such diversity in fictional stories, why do some become popular, how did they emerge and spread, and how do different story elements cluster together? Research by Dubourg et al explores the psychological drivers of storytelling: buff.ly/NzpsZfV

immigrants score the lowest on tests, but they also take all our jobs, while at the same time taking all the welfare and buying all the homes

What everyone writing about AI fakes back in 2020 failed to anticipate was how stupid their applications would be

Getting tired of literal machines demanding that I prove I am not a robot

Scientists recently combined the DNA of a cheetah with the DNA of a crab. Things went sideways real fast.

o meu artigo para Jacobin sobre reapropriar a nostalgia (e sobre o 25 de Abril), agora em português!

Not trying to burst any bubbles; but Spotify is over. They are airing ICE recruitment ads, the CEO has been investing in military/AI tech, they barely pay their artists; sometimes a percentage of a cent per stream, they promote “fake/AI artist” playlists, and there’s major concerns about data use.

I adored this piece on the softboi pragmatics of "lol", which I certainly indulge in lol

Did you know that there was a major trans and queer riot in the US 3 years before Stonewall? In 1966, trans women and drag queens rebelled for their right to hang out at the Compton Cafeteria in San Francisco, in a context of fast gentrification. Go watch this amazing documentary about it!

There has to be a term, concept for how the virtues of a free society fall apart in the face of nothing but advertising, soliciting, and propagating, and glorifying vice.

New paper in Science: In a platform-independent field experiment, we show that reranking content expressing antidemocratic attitudes and partisan animosity in social media feeds alters affective polarization. 🧵

Woke 2: Let's See If The Master's Tools Can Destroy The Master's House Or Not

Tudo a ler este ensaio do @joaogsr.bsky.social no @shifter.pt sobre a enshittification do Substack.

Where does the name 'Black Friday' come from? In 2018, a viral Facebook post claimed that the name derives from a day when slave traders sold slaves at a discount...which sounds right if you want to highlight the grotesque side of capitalism. The real answer... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_F...

I loved this episode of @thedigradio.bsky.social with @triofrancos.bsky.social so much! Incredibly insightful and intellectually courageous discussion of the geopolitics of the green transition and the tough trade-offs it involves - and an excellent reminder that technology *is* material.

There truly is no drug like 9 hours of sleep

Do you want to depend less on Google and move to more ethical options with better privacy? Now would be a great time to use Black Friday deals on - pcloud, for one-payment lifetime cloud storage - ProtonMail, for extremely functional encrypted email - no feeding your emails into an LLM!

"good scholarship depends on empathy as much as on evidence. Listening carefully to how ordinary people remember their lives under socialism isn’t an endorsement; it’s an effort to understand what they valued and why... the past is never as simple as our ideologies make it out to be."

I say this is the best philosophy substack.

It's world philosophy day: talked already to people in Portugal about why distraction need not be such a bad thing. Soon speaking with @floresophize.bsky.social and her group about the attention market. I do like our philosophy world sometimes!

Academics: what are your tricks for saying no to cool invitations without spiraling and feeling guilty?

"AI will cure cancer" - Bro, whose cancer will be cured? We still live in a world where many people die of malaria and other easily preventable and treatable diseases. Just another way in which AI fantasies are about serving an elite.

Interested in what exactly is the problem with attention markets? Go read this fantastic paper by @sebastianwatzl.bsky.social and Katharine Browne! They argue that attention markets undermine autonomy, without misleading appeals to addiction or thinking of attention as a resource.

Pressuring the admin can work!! (TLDR: Pipeline to hiring more diverse faculty restored after resistance from faculty and other community members.)

So hype that the faculty and staff of the UC system keep pushing their admin to be better

The extremely rad editors of @being.transinphilosophy.org have put out a call for pitches for the next edition of their zine! They are also hosting cool events at the Eastern and Pacific meetings of the APA (details on the website). being.transinphilosophy.org/cfp/

Wrote about what the real threat Grokipedia poses is + some suggestions for addressing it! Drawing on @brendannyhan.bsky.social's work on misinformation. (Lots more to say about erosion of epistemic standards, models of knowledge-production, etc.!)

The International Criminal Court is ditching Microsoft Office, saying it’s too dependent on US tech, in favor of Open Desk, a German open source alternative. The move comes after Microsoft revoked ICC head Karim Khan’s email access when he was sanctioned by the US for the warrant against Netanyahu.

The perfect reply to student grade complaints doesn't exi- (from Simone Weil, Reflections on the right use of school studies with a view to the love of God)

ever since I learned about three-cueing I've developed infinitely more patience for replies on social media. mfers literally do not know how to read. people are walking around conjuring random meanings into words they don't know, and they don't know a lot of words. it's crazy

Aesthetics friends! What is good on the pursuit of aesthetic individuality, and the development of aesthetic selfhood? I know @nickriggle.bsky.social’s stuff. But what else is good?

if you can’t see the aurora borealis tonight, here is a sewer tunnel which is a wonder in itself.

Do your hands talk when you do? 🗣️✋ Check out this @duke-university.bsky.social write up about my new work with my postdoc Esha Naidu (she is on the job market!) showing gestures reflect culture & identity—our nonverbal “accents” can shape interracial communication. trinity.duke.edu/news/talking...

Just learned that Simone Weil's first religious experience happened in Portugal (in Póvoa de Varzim, a fishing town in the north), where she was moved by the beauty of villagers singing hymns in a procession. That's an idea for a niche study trip once I've moved to Lisbon!

So enjoyed hearing @ruizhegoh.bsky.social share his work on the perception of silence on the latest episode of @vox.com’s “unexplainable” podcast! 🤫 #poopoo open.spotify.com/episode/6V2a...

Murdoch's "The idea of perfection" approaches philosophical perfection and you should go (re)read it now.

Finally heard of a good use for predictive policing! White Collar Crime Risk Zones, which maps where white collar crime is most likely to occur. It also proposes a facial recognition program based on photos of execs from LinkedIn. whitecollar.thenewinquiry.com