Christina Easton

I was trying to remember someone's name. Google did not help me.

According to Google, there exist over 29 rights lawyers who are also philosophers, and they are all men.

But if you specify 'women', there's just ... Martha Nussbaum!

I only wanted 'bread'. Initially.

Context: Me winding down for bedtime with some mandatory University health and safety training.

But then why are they there?

Gandhi statue in Parliament Square, London. (Prioryman CC-BY-SA 4.0.)

For years I got Gandhi (who is 156 today, the International Day of Non-Violence) backwards. I thought he developed nonviolent methods to end British rule, but this gets the ends and means the wrong way round. It's rather that he had to end British rule to make space for nonviolence. (1/8)

Really super event from #LSEevents. Wish I could join after for the plant-based canapes!

Jane's answer: Probably not, but it could help us get closer to understanding them, whilst we retain a sense of the mystery that surrounds such animals.

I asked the panel about the organisms of the deep sea - could AI ever help us understand them, given how completely 'other' they are to us?

Aristotle's most important contribution and legacy

AI without ethical constraints is dangerous. We need to change the way people think about animals, if we're to use AI technologies well. #lseevents

AI use for "precision livestock farming" COULD be used to promote animal welfare, but more likely it'll be used for greater capital returns.

Due to continued human population growth increasing demand for animal products, most animals are not / will not be farmed in a way that involves any significant interaction with farmers or anything approaching traditional farming.

Jeff Sebo speaking at #lseevents

@birchlse.bsky.social asking if we could replace animals in scientific research with AI models instead.

#lseevents

"If we can understand animals better, we'll be able to relate to them better."

Jane Lawton explaining the value of using AI to decode animal communication.

#LSEevents

@birchlse.bsky.social explaining the priorities of the new Jeremy Coller Centre for Animal Sentience. I'm just so glad this work is being done - it is SO important.

#lseevents

This man, Jeremy Coller, is highly impressive! He describes himself as a "failed philosophy student" yet understands, and acts on, the value of funding philosophising about animal sentience. Humble, generous, and sensitive to the feelings of animals. #lseevents

Meat is a leading emissions source – but few outlets report on it, analysis finds Sentient Media reveals less than 4% of climate news stories mention animal agriculture as source of carbon emissions

Meat is a leading emissions source – but less than 4% of #climate news stories mention animal #agriculture as source of #carbon emissions. #Meat production alone is responsible for 60% of the food sector's climate #emissions. That's in part because ruminant… (1/2) www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Oh, I only just realised Grumpy Philosopher is you! 😅
Best wishes for successful picketing.

Got my Pure profile set up. Apparently my most important key word is... kitchen. Yes, kitchen. 🤣🤔

Now, that's not a reason to NEVER fly. But it's a reason to take it a hell of a lot more morally seriously. Come on people, there's just one earth and it's pretty fucked, can we just try and fuck it up a little bit less? /5

A return flight from London to San Francisco emits around 5.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent per person. That's more than twice the emissions produced by a family car in a year. /4

What makes that hard is seeing everyone else doing it, and regularly. (And when I say "everyone", I mean friends/family/fellow academics. Most of the world's population don't fly, which is why the fact it makes up 2.4% of emissions underplays what a difference it makes.) /3

In this time, have I still managed to enjoy myself, and progress an interesting career? Yes.
Have I missed out on interesting holidays and had to turn down free trips to universities in exciting places? Also yes. /2

It's now been over 5 years since I last got on a plane.

A thread about my feelings on this... /1

The Trump Administration Wants Pregnant Women to Suffer When ableism meets misogyny: Tylenol edition.

"I keep coming back to the fact that, for the likes of Trump... women’s suffering during pregnancy isn’t a bug. It’s a feature. It’s the proper order of things. It’s natural."

says @katemanne.bsky.social here: substack.com/home/post/p-...

YouTube video by Roundtable Could Germany bring back military conscription as it rebuilds army?

Here I am discussing what might be more or less fair ways to recruit soldiers into the military. www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2Mv...

I can't work out what to make of this as a promotional strategy for the Lib Dems.

Is Maternal Guilt a Cross-National Experience? - Qualitative Sociology Many working mothers in the US say that they feel guilty about their inability to live up to cultural ideals of the “good mother” embedded in intensive mothering discourse. Intensive mothering is reflected in and exacerbated by the country’s work-family policies. The United States is an outlier among Western welfare states for its lack of policy supports for families, assuming that childrearing is a private responsibility even though most mothers work outside the home today. So how do working mothers outside of the US experience maternal guilt? Does a more family-friendly policy environment mitigate these feelings of guilt? Using detailed accounts of four women drawn from a larger interview study of 109 working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States, I demonstrate how policy context does—and does not—make a difference in the experience of maternal guilt. A feeling of guilt helped to define “good mothers” across all four contexts. However, I found that public policy has a role to play in reducing maternal guilt in three specific ways: (1) by giving mothers more time outside of work, (2) encouraging fathers to complete more unpaid care work, and (3) distributing the responsibility and costs of childrearing more broadly.

"feeling guilty became an enactment of good mothering ... inducing them to work ever harder on their children’s behalf. Good mothers are never good enough because they can always try harder to meet their children’s needs."

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Is Maternal Guilt a Cross-National Experience? - Qualitative Sociology Many working mothers in the US say that they feel guilty about their inability to live up to cultural ideals of the “good mother” embedded in intensive mothering discourse. Intensive mothering is reflected in and exacerbated by the country’s work-family policies. The United States is an outlier among Western welfare states for its lack of policy supports for families, assuming that childrearing is a private responsibility even though most mothers work outside the home today. So how do working mothers outside of the US experience maternal guilt? Does a more family-friendly policy environment mitigate these feelings of guilt? Using detailed accounts of four women drawn from a larger interview study of 109 working mothers in Sweden, Germany, Italy, and the United States, I demonstrate how policy context does—and does not—make a difference in the experience of maternal guilt. A feeling of guilt helped to define “good mothers” across all four contexts. However, I found that public policy has a role to play in reducing maternal guilt in three specific ways: (1) by giving mothers more time outside of work, (2) encouraging fathers to complete more unpaid care work, and (3) distributing the responsibility and costs of childrearing more broadly.

"guilt serves as a regulating force in mothers’ lives"

link.springer.com/article/10.1...

BTW, the answer to the article title question is 'Yes!'