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

Hot take: way more things at universities should be done by lottery. Why the need to write rec letters and personal statements for small internal fellowships all the time? What is the benefit? Is the point just sustaining the illusion of meritocracy?

Tech guys six months ago: haha yes we’re cutting all this WASTEFUL spending by eliminating medical research and USAID Tech guys now: yes I think taxpayers will be excited to bailout my non consensual pornography machine

Amazing roast: "Always use the word “forgotten” in your title. Do not draw attention to who is doing the ignoring or forgetting. If you mention “genocide,” intimate the reasons are about “tribal tensions” or “rivalries,” or even better, “hatred”. Emphasize the lack of thinking (in them, not you)."

actually they should abolish California

virtue signalling is good actually

I agree! I really appreciated this debate between Willem Sleegers (author of the replication study) and Jake Quilty-Dunn (who disagrees with him about what the replication study shows bsky.app/profile/will...

I'm not sure what I think about any of this, but this thread includes excellent (and heated) discussion that is a must-read for anyone interested in the psychology of irrationality and belief revision.

Seeking submissions to the 2026 edition of the APA Studies on LGBTQ Philosophy! The topic is Resistance and Solidarity. 2-3-paragraph pitches for essays and other creative philosophical formats due (to me) by Jan 30, 2026. More details on p. 36 of the doc. Spread the word!

I'm so stoked about this project!

Finding with supreme displeasure that even in-class handwritten exams include what looks like AI slop (plausible-sounding claims that have little to do with the right answer). Hypothesis: they study by consulting ChatGPT, which misattributes views day and night, not by checking course materials.

Loving the fact that "gerrymandering" is named after one specific guy named Gerry, who, despite being against the practice, signed a bill that redistricted Massachusetts in 1812. One of the resulting districts supposedly looked like a salamander.

Love to see the spineless UC administration obeying in advance and scrapping the President's Fellowship, a 40-year-old program for diversifying the faculty with close to 100% tenure rates, under the excuse of "budget crisis". It costs 7.4 million a year, out of a budget of 10.8 billion (0.07%)

The President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, PPFP, has been a jewel in the crown for faculty development and recruitment at the University of California for years and the results have been an expanded faculty with almost 100% tenure rates — unprecedented success.

Last week, my Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction class covered an older paper about “social translucence” where they explain how the design of online systems shapes the norms & behaviors w/in those systems. But the framework they create can be applied more broadly, eg to our political moment.

Buying a copy tomorrow to frame it

A draft syllabus for philosophy of cognitive science. Thoughts, comments, and suggestions appreciated! (The redacted one is a banger paper that I refereed that's not out yet but is accepted and should be out by next spring)

genuinely beautiful that new york elected a muslim lefty mayor the same day that dick cheney died

Mamdani cracks 1M votes, the first NYC mayor to do so since John Lindsay in 1969

Breaking.

On this beautiful morning in Astoria, I cast my ballot for our city and our future. I hope you will too.

Go watch Jafar Panahi's "It was just an accident". A gripping meditation on the absurdity of life under authoritarianism and the value of revenge. Incredible use of humor at the service of deep seriousness. (Unlike US "serious" films, it makes room for deep ambivalence and trusts us to think.)

Some charts for those who don't know the extent of the US public (and private) investment in research (particularly in biomedical research) compared to other countries and institutions. The destruction of the US' scientific institutions has global implications.

Okay I’m reading it now and, no surprise, it suuuucks in exactly the ways you would expect.

🚨 New piece out at @thejop.bsky.social w awesome @cvargiu.bsky.social & D Garzia If incivility means breaking norms, & norms are person- and context-dependent, *does incivility even exist*? In the stage-2 registered report we investigate what drives perceptions of incivility tinyurl.com/4h5u4y8y

Just had the thought that every time you check the status of your manuscript they should administer a little shock but like... ......... ...how would that be different?

Are you interested in topics related to conflict and intergroup relations *broadly construed*? Come join us as a postdoc in the Dispute Research Research Center! This position is up to 3 years, comes with your own research funding, and a phenomenal network of past DRRC postdocs.

Buildings look the same, cars are all in boring colors, songs all sound the same, all branding uses similar fonts, teenagers are well-behaved... This post gives a grand unified theory of homogenization! www.experimental-history.com/p/the-declin...

1. We ( @jbakcoleman.bsky.social, @cailinmeister.bsky.social, @jevinwest.bsky.social, and I) have a new preprint up on the arXiv. There we explore how social media companies and other online information technology firms are able to manipulate scientific research about the effects of their products.

A haunted house for academics but every room is just another committee you have to serve on before you can leave.

So thrilled & grateful to be part of this! My essay, “The Cisgender Tipping Point,” subjects being cisgender to the kind of scrutiny often confronted by trans people. What do we know gender to be if we treat trans ways of doing gender as paradigmatic? (Spoiler: The answer is not gender identity.)

I am hiring PhD candidates to study the psychology of attention & technology use at @tilburg-university.bsky.social. We're looking for motivated & curious scholars with expertise in cognitive psychology and statistics, and offer a friendly work environment with great terms & benefits. tiu.nu/22989

Want to read some rad queer philosophy, in the form of short snazzy personal essays? Check out the most recent issue of the APA Studies in LGBTQ+ Philosophy, cheekily titled "Make philosophy queer again!" which I've edited! 1/

woo! this weird little paper (‘moorean skepticism’) is now forthcoming :) i argue we should see descartes as a social epistemologist and moore as a particularly pessimistic kind of skeptic. you can check it out here: philpapers.org/rec/TILMSW

Remember when we used to worry about social media because of the kinds of social links and social comparisons that thrived there? Well, it turns out that the key problems had been identified in the 80s by critics of TV: loneliness and amusing ourselves to death.

In my first collective flat in Berlin, there was a sign in the kitchen that said in German: “All will end well. For whom, though, is not yet clear.”

Tonight I can't get this poem out of my head: Once, when I was in a glut of pain, I said to a friend Just take an hour and imagine this is happening to you. She looked straight ahead and said, I don't want to. (Ellen Bass, Experiment in Empathy)

As I read more about attention while teaching a class of over 300 students who don't want to read the syllabus, I am ever more strongly convinced that email is the real villain of the internet.

This is a big one! A 4-year writing project over many timezones, arguing for a reimagining of the influential "core knowledge" thesis. Led by @daweibai.bsky.social, we argue that much of our innate knowledge of the world is not "conceptual" in nature, but rather wired into perceptual processing. 👇

🚨🚨🚨Blockbuster paper out today! Bear with me as I explain why this one is so important. 🤔 The *economic* anger about immigration is based on the false notion that immigrants take jobs or lower wages. A major misunderstanding behind this view is that immigrants only increase the supply of labor.

Call for papers: Ian Hacking and the Philosophy of Psychiatry. Deadline: 1st February 2026. Guest editors: Şerife Tekin and Jonathan Y. Tsou. Submit your work! think.taylorandfranc... #philsky #philpsy #philsci

Today I discovered a great set of BPA resources for early-career philosophers on publishing, grants/fellowships, and job apps, with loads of sample materials like cover letters, research statements, etc. Do share with those who might find these useful! bpa.ac.uk/resources-fo... #philjobs #philsky

This database of political deepfakes is really interesting! It suggests that deepfakes are more often used for satire that doesn't aim to even *look* real - instead of to trick people into believing false things.

For anyone working in Cool Philosophy (social philosophy intersected with M&E), this looks like a fantastic opportunity! philjobs.org/job/show/30010

This article is now published open access here: doi.org/10.1093/aest... See below for a thread summary with lots of pretty pictures! #philtech #techethics