2026. How it started. How it's going.

@tonychemero.bsky.social's new book is here. I can't wait to read it 🤗

Me, feeling exhausted, moody, and "off-target": Maybe I should just read a book. The book with its opening page:

Excellent — as always — post by @olivia.science on cryptogyny. Go read! 👉 olivia.science/cryptogyny/ And cite women! (and afterwards read: irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/15/%...)

"Always be a poet, even in prose." Charles Baudelaire

My goodness, that just made my day. Check out the September reading! Shall join if nothing jumps in by the3n and thwarts future plans. "Measuring the World: Olfaction as a Process Model of Perception" My chapter is available online for free: philpapers.org/archive/BARM...

"This is the week of hope." A sentence we all felt in our Hannah Arendt discussion group after listening to two of the greatest talks I've heard: @berondam.bsky.social & @darrickhamilton.bsky.social, two fellow fellows @rad-institute.bsky.social I am deeply thankful for having met and learned from.

Meute: Raw www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4jn...

Attended a talk by Ann-Sophie Barwich @smellosopher.bsky.social on science, embodiment, amor mundi (Arendt). It raised an interesting question for me: how does love for the world relate to analyses of embodied consciousness in institutional contexts? #phenomenology #embodiedcognition #enactivism

What we really need is a change in the publication/credit system. There are too many papers, fewer reviewers (with increasingly few remaining, biasing review), overworked editors, and journals holding up an artificial gatekeeper bottleneck and charging money for it. This is not about "quality".

Morning.

🧵 Trump administration AI policy is widely described as deregulatory. This description is misleading. What's happening is not the absence of governance but its rearrangement--intensive state intervention operating through mechanisms we don't typically call regulation. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Sitting since 4am on letters of support for student awards. If you feel like nothing is moving forward as chaos unfolds around you (it's that time of history on earth and life in the universe), and sometimes wonder, just a little bit, whether people around you, incl. your PIs notice & care. Yes :-)

The 70s and the 80s, man. Two different worlds and two terrific books.

Been having that drum motif in my mind all evening: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiNM...

On Loving the World: Revisiting the Scientific Image with Arendt and Haraway My upcoming talk at The Center for Philosophy of Science & the Department of Anthropology at Boston University, this coming Thursday, March 5th, 4-5.30 pm. (First Chapter of my new book project @rad-institute.bsky.social)

Imagine the kind of stuff Musk, Zuckerberg, and Bezos could do with their money, but don’t. They’re sitting on more money than they could ever spend in their lives Dolly helped fund one of the Covid 19 vaccines and gives away millions of books away to children every month. Mackenzie Scott…

"a Hippocratic Quantum approach to the ethics of biomedical discovery"

Ah yes, the smart bro that you find in a cognitive science department* who cannot think his way out of a box even with a map. But the older manchildren think he's got this air of brilliance around him. No results. But he reminds them just so so so much of themselves. *purely fictional scenario obvs

The ambiguous phrasing makes this: could be a) 120,000 students, faculty & staff getting access to ChatGPT, or b) ChatGPT getting access to 120,000 students, faculty & staff.

In case this got lost: "In providing access to all 120,000 students, faculty and staff, IU will be the second largest ChatGPT Edu rollout of all time for OpenAI." The exact dollar amount of the contract was not disclosed. today.iu.edu/live/news/46....

Imani Perry, fellow @rad-institute.bsky.social fellow, "Imagines a Better Future by Writing About the Past" time.com/collections/...

I am oscillating between zombie mode due to bizarrely extreme tiredness and pure nerd bliss due to new book arriving. I mean, look at that sexy mofo! #EEG (But I am going to bed. Before 8 pm. Seriously, this week...)

Big tech alternatives! www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

“I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw Or heard or felt came not but from myself; And there I found myself more truly and more strange.” (Wallace Stevens)

Sounds like the justification for program closures at Indiana University last year. Exactly the same. Departments were over years forced into changes that now are yielded against them to legitimize closure, or the thread thereof. Annually.

7pm. Not even 8pm. Been ridicolously tired af all afternoon. And heck yes, you bet I am going to bed now. Because I can. Adulting so hard right now.

Are #openaccess fees that some journals charge authors too high? The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the world’s largest research institution, reportedly thinks so and plans to stop funding some, a move that could shake up #scientificpublishing. @science.org www.science.org/content/arti...

A new preprint, co-authored with @johnwkrakauer.bsky.social: The Deliberation Taboo Cognitive science is, nominally, the science of thinking. We argue that the field has no theory of what thinking is and, even worse, that the topic has largely dropped out of focus. 1/ osf.io/preprints/ps...

Get a dog, they said. It’ll be good for you. Get you out more, they said.

@philipcball.bsky.social: "Edge culture intersects with the technofascist futurism of Silicon Valley libertarians, and laments about #MeToo, wokeism, and pushy feminists are a constant refrain in the email exchanges. Frankly it stinks, and it doesn’t end with Epstein."

Bad management has been the single most important factor every time I’ve been miserable in a job.

I'm imagining an instructor somewhere making a syllabus with chat gpt, assigning reading from books that don't exist But the students don't notice, because they are asking chat gpt to summarize the book or write the essay

Aren’t we lucky that universities haven’t gotten carried away with the hype and taken a careful approach to AI? Imagine if they had decided to push AI into our teaching and work life! All praise to our leaders in higher ed for not falling for hype, hallelujah and praise the goddess

Yup, it's snow, alright. The winds are rather impressive. I feel them sometimes a bit (rooftop flat, flimsy built). It sounds and sometimes feels a bit like being on sea. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I9D...

Bookmarked. Sounds genuinely interesting

Time to bring out this classic review by Nina Strohminger of McGinn's book on disgust: "Sometimes with books, as with farts, it’s better to just hold it in." Full text: www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uctytho/McG...

Meanwhile in the Northeast.

This is a huge deal, and the number of people I see pooh-poohing this as just a loss to a supposedly elite group sucks. A) most of the jobs that disappeared were the working-class ones; B) bye bye not just to local coverage but to arts, sports, everything that’s not tech/biz/politics/opinion/advice

The pope is better on this issue than a lot of university administrators right now. www.ncronline.org/vatican/pope...

More coffee is needed. Next chapter section of the book ahead. This one will feature La Nussbaum. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVyJ...

I'm with Shuringa: "The analytic style is highly ahistorical and acultural... Analytic philosophy tends to remain ignorant of large bodies of theory, particularly those concerned with culture, politics, anthropology, psychology,...." Review sounds like feelings were hurt.

For all those outraged by their universities’ embrace of AI, NYU’s full-time contingent faculty are poised to strike over issues that include AI

Signed. Join me. As an Alumni, this is utter BS: "If you have a minute, please sign this petition against the medium-term closure of the Archaeological Institute at Humboldt University of Berlin as part of the cost-cutting measures:"

From @gothamist.com : ““If you're just going to say, ‘Oh, I love the library,’ but you’re not actually supporting them, then that’s a real disappointment and, frankly, bulls---,” said Abby Emerson, a member of the NYC Public Library Action Network, or NYC PLAN. gothamist.com/news/taking-...

"Purdue has since warned faculty against speaking with the media."

Meanwhile in Indiana. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

"“Unfortunately, ease has never been a defining characteristic of learning,” he said. “Learning is effortful, difficult, and oftentimes uncomfortable. But it’s the friction that makes learning deep and transferable into the future.”"

February 21, 1993, died on this day aged 105 years, Danish seismologist Inge Lehman. She discovered that the Earth has a inner core announcing it in 1936 with the shortest title for a paper ever: P' - after the seismic discontinuity between core and mantle shown by the P-waves

What about all the trees burned, rivers flooded and species lost thanks to every random billionaire's dick-measuring competition of snake-oil ideas? Altman is implying people that unnecessary because they "cost" energy. He is grooming his audience for eugenics. Don't fall for this trash-heap.