Steven Phelps

Dos paleontólogos de prestigio de EEUU ya trabajan en Catalunya: 'Con Trump, estudiar la evolución humana se ha vuelto tabú' Los investigadores, anteriormente afincados en Nueva York, son los primeros en incorporarse al ecosistema científico catalán gracias a las becas ICREA y al programa de captación Catalunya Talent Bridg...

El miedo de los científicos en USA ha llevado a 'maquillar' proyectos para sobrevivir a la censura y los conflictos ideológicos. Investigadores extranjeros temen perder el estatus legal, no poder regresar al país tras estancias de campo, y deportaciones
www.elperiodico.com/es/sociedad/...

Patterns of Behavior It is hard to imagine, by their very name, the life sciences not involving the study of living things, but until the twentieth century much of what was known in the field was based primarily on specim...

My source on this btw is the wonderful history of Tinbergen, Lorenz and ethology "Patterns of Behavior" by Richard Burkhardt.
press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...

I've found it very difficult to get the text of the papers he published in German, arguing for sympathy between evolutionary thinking and National Socialism. Do you by any chance know where I could find them as pdfs?

I think you can read his evasiveness as opportunistic too. I think he did eventually refute the Nazi positions but far too late. None of this meant to excuse or rehabilitate him. Taking an abhorrent political position motivated by self interest as well as racism doesn't excuse the racism.

He was clearly sympathetic with Nazi ideas. His worries about the dangers of "domestication" extended to cosmopolitan people (Jews, presumably). And he was gleeful at the annexation of Austria. But he was also deeply ambitious and frustrated by his inability to gain a permanent position.

The warmongering & global destabilization - NATO, Greenland, Panama, Ukraine - aims to precipitate the suspension of law. Vance, Musk, Thiel et al see the advantages of an authoritarian regime as exemplified by China & think they can do it better. They imagine we'll be better for it. Trump agrees.

The secret to happiness.

There's a dramatic contrast between him and his close colleague Niko Tinbergen, with whom he shared the Nobel, a Dutchman who was active in the resistance.

He was clearly sympathetic to Nazi eugenics, but of course he claims not to have known what was going on in the camps, and minimized his role in the psychological testing.

There was a NYT op-ed that protested 1973 Nobel. Also his Nazi-era papers were not listed in his Nobel CV. His joining of the Nazi party is widely viewed as opportunistic - he was desperate for a faculty position. Not exactly a redeeming reason.

Millions of full-time workers are struggling to afford a place to live. Here’s why The skyrocketing cost of living has left millions of people struggling to afford a place to live despite working at full-time jobs or a number of part-time jobs. Journalist Brian Goldstone, author of ...

Tonight was the final broadcast of PBS News Weekend due to federal cuts.

Appearing on the show in November was a highlight of my year. The team was incredible to work with, and I was deeply grateful they covered this issue with the care it deserves.

Public media at its best. Very sad to see it go.

Photo of a fragment of a clay tablet shaped a bit like a diamond. Although it is only a fragment, the cuneiform text on it is well-preserved. There is a vertical line down the centre which indicates it once had at least two columns. The colour is reddish brown

“Do not bend your neck for that which cuts necks.”

A Sumerian proverb, as relevant today as it was thousands of years ago.

"Have Your Best Baby" Four parallels between cosmetic surgery and polygenic embryo selection, two competing definitions of "eugenics," and one short excerpt from my forthcoming book

I wrote about Nucleus Genomics' "Have your best baby" ad campaign and Kris Jenner's "best version of myself" facelift, the parallels between embryo selection and cosmetic surgery, and competing definitions of "eugenics"

kathrynpaigeharden.substack.com/p/have-your-...

Magic Johnson was the grand marshal of the Rose Parade today, and as someone who remembers his November 1991 HIV announcement: if you had told anybody that day that he would be alive and healthy 34+ years later, I don't think they would have believed you. Medicine and research—they work.

ICE plans $100 million ‘wartime recruitment’ push targeting gun shows, military fans for hires An internal ICE document shared among immigration officials details plans to use influencers and geo-targeted ads to rapidly hire thousands of deportation officers.

New: We got an internal ICE document revealing its $100 million ad plan to bring in 14,000 new hires: deals with "tactical" influencers; ads to gun & military buffs; and geo-targeting phones around NASCAR races and gun shows.

A "wartime recruitment" mode with paramilitary branding: wapo.st/44QrP5j

Unlocking Avian Secrets: How Tiny Biologgers Are Revealing the Hidden Communication of Carrion Crows - Earth Species Project Lightweight biologgers and ESP's machine learning tools reveal the hidden vocal world of wild carrion crows, capturing over 127,000 calls from quiet murmurs to long-distance signals.

🐦‍⬛ New paper in Animal Cognition covering our carrion crow project with partners at @Univeristy of Leon.

52 mini-biologgers were deployed on wild carrion crows in Spain — capturing 127K+ vocalizations.

🔗: www.earthspecies.org/blog/unlocki...

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I cannot tell you how angry I am right now. I can tell you that I tried to turn that anger into some constructive use. A Pox on Fools is intended to give the rest of us ammunition with which to counter the tsunami of bullshit that is MAHA.

www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/808113...

The faction of the GOP that pretends to like Jews to send them to hell is at war with the faction that wants to skip the "pretends to like" part.

Giving dead fish fMRI.

I sat on this draft for three months and sent it out to my coauthors yesterday who for some reason still haven't returned it.

We're half a decade into studies finding that improving airflow in classrooms will reduce disease transmission enormously, and that bleaching surfaces etc. does very little. And yet nothing changes. Waves of flu and colds wash over schools, and the schools pretend it's an act of God.

"Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. "When you look up the stage directions, it says, 'Exit Ariel.”

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

Genomic Investigations of Spoken and Written Language Abilities: A Guide to Advances in Approaches, Technologies, and Discovery Purpose: The aim of this tutorial is to show how the rise of molecular technologies and analytical methods in human genetics yields exciting new ...

Advances in genomics are giving exciting new perspectives on biology of speech, language & reading. My latest peer-reviewed paper is a tutorial, guiding readers from different backgrounds through the history of the field, current state-of-the-art, & where we’re heading. A taster in this thread.🧪
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I am recruiting graduate students to my genomics-focused lab in EEB at Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Please spread the word if you know any students with an interest in a computational focus to genomics research! evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

Data questions myths about multiple wife marriages, men and violence A new study analyzing 84 million census records reveals that polygyny does not increase the number of unmarried men. In many societies where polygyny is common, men are actually more likely to be marr...

Brunel's press release about our (@hggaddy.bsky.social @anthrolog.bsky.social) recent publication, showing that high levels of polygyny don't necessarily lock men out of the marriage market

www.brunel.ac.uk/news-and-eve...

I will be pinch hitting for Adi Nair at this awesome social neuro minisymposium today. Come say hi! #sfn2025

50 Reasons Why Everyone Should Want More Walkable Streets From making you live longer to making cities more resilient: If you want a reason to make your city more walkable, it's in here.

“Someone with a 1-hr car commute needs to earn 40% more to be as happy as someone with a short walk to work. On the other hand, if someone shifts from a long commute to a walk, their happiness increases as much as if they’d fallen in love.” #CityMakingMath

50 reasons to want more walkable cities.

I use a couple of pretty dated sources. Let me look at my syllabus and see if there's something I recommend.

Estimation and mapping of the missing heritability of human phenotypes - Nature WGS data were used from 347,630 individuals with European ancestry in the UK Biobank to obtain high-precision estimates of coding and non-coding rare variant heritability for 34 co...

Heritability found? Time to update my lectures on heritability, GWAS & polygenic scores. Anyone have good recommendations on an up to date overview of missing h2?

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Stopped by the always amazing @texasbookfest.bsky.social and ran into @michaelerard.bsky.social, whose new book I've been dying read.