I do think I need to get a copy of Walter Veit's "A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness" as soon as possible.

the "space enough to work" thing is important. I didn't have a clue how much time and effort having a kid takes, especially if you want to do it well (and we all screw up anyway).

But kids are awesome and _brutal_ on headspace/time to think.

Okay. So I have space to work again (see fiction)

Now, do I have enough space (i.e. is the kid old enough), that I can finally take a swing at the papers I've wanted to write?

What does doing philosophy as a middle aged dad with no institutional affiliation look like?

Damn. Cool as hell.

Thanks so much @specficnz.bsky.social <3

Got it ❤

"Don't stress the format of the story itself. I prefer a legible font, but as long as I can read it we're good."

Why so sensible though? :P

(I love this fwiw)

oh, thanks so much @ianli.bsky.social! <3
I so appreciate that - so glad it landed for you!

Last time I'll share this around for discoverability (then I'll shut it).

If you like stories about love and difficult choices, you might like this one.

I'm not quite ready to let these characters and this scenario go, so I'm writing a follow up atm. Hopefully ready to go by 2027.

babe, wake up, new form of mansplaining just dropped

Recommending what I consider a great recent philosophy essay for my writing group, I immediately thought of @add-hawk.bsky.social's "Value Capture".
A little search this morning reveals he has a book, "The Score", out this year!
Joy!
And it's available at my local indie bookstore - Instabuy!

Yeah, I've been thinking about the differences between writing communities lately, and I think @smokelong.bsky.social's "model" (for lack of a better word) is one that should be studied if you want to build dynamic, supportive, and growing writing communities. NB for short fiction these days.

Consider the extreme stupidity of doing this _from outside the united states_! Not only do you have the issues you point out but, further, the possibility that the US forces the providers to pull the plug for some arbitrary reason.

Worse than supply chain dependencies: Literal cognitive lock in.

Can never get over how tawdry the modern Right's view of Western Civilization is; nothing to build, nothing to aspire to, nothing even really to destroy or wage war against, just sullen resentment of their own children and seething hatred of the cities whose economics subsidies their regimes.

Nerds: This is basically an amazing open ended RPG set in important scenes in philosophical history.

Pedagogy nerds: This is like Reacting (to the Past) simulations but single player. And philosophy.

It’s not generic LLM generated but based on lots of research into academic and popular sources.

It's also indelibly linked to Achebe's "Things Fall Apart" in my mind as well as my first foray into Kafka, I read them all back to back. Great (but harrowing) few weeks of reading :)

Absolutely blew me away, as far as I can remember. It has been like 26 years since I read it though (probably about time for a reread).

I went to work straight after high school but I had a bunch of friends who went to Rhodes (this would've been in 1999) and they did "Nervous Conditions" in their first year Eng lit classes, so when they were done with the semester a copy of it found its way to me via sneakernet.

a computer generated image of a fire coming out of a cube ALT: a computer generated image of a fire coming out of a cube

🔥 Phano 16 up at www.phano.com 🔥

Bask in a stationary sunset, leap across the genre branches, man a cosmic outpost. Free to read:

- “Dark, Where the Sun Never Sets” by Yasmeen Amro
- “Gravity’s Rainbow, Star Wars and SF’s Identity Crisis” by James Machell
- “Inferno’s Rings” by Barry Charman

This is how I understand it, with a passing familiarity with the literature. So I'd say "yes, I guess so".

have zero NYT bestsellers and I was an English/Anthropology major who didn't graduate but even I know that the light source is an unshielded fusion reactor hanging in space about eight point three light-minutes behind Integrity.

So okay, Naomi, you're ill-informed.

There's not a day, literally, that I don't miss being involved in philosophy. If I was still in SA at this point (given my kid's age) I would be registered for a Doctorate again. Even good old UNISA would suffice. Anywhere I could be involved in the most interesting work in the world again.

I want to be able to meet a supervisor, like, 4 times a year to discuss progress, 4-6 years to do the research, and access to an academic library.

I read these kinds of papers and immediately want to go and do work in philosophy.

I need to find a cheap research PhD somewhere that'll let me be a distance student. NZ, Aus, or South Africa.

Trapped in the Present: Poverty and the Undermining of Prospective Agency Poverty has traditionally been conceived of as a state of deprivation. To be poor is to lack something essential to human flourishing. How that something is understood—in terms of welfare, resources, ...

I think that @jennifermmorton.bsky.social's research on the interaction of poverty and future directed agency is basically the most exciting philosophy I've read in years and should be read by everyone.

politicalphilosophyjournal.org/article/id/1...

A Recipe for the Living by Emmi Khor Short stories hand-picked from authors around the world. Submissions accepted. Humour, crime, sci-fi, fantasy, horror and everyday life.

Sharing a little hermit crab of mine that's just been published! Be warned: it's a modernised recipe if you try it out!
www.fictionontheweb.co.uk/2026/04/a-re...
I love that they invite readers to comment at the end.

#shortstories #flashfiction #literary #readnow #grief

“On Liberty” Now Officially Has Two Authors - Daily Nous An edition of On Liberty published this month is the first to officially name Harriet Taylor Mill as a co-author alongside John Stuart Mill. The new volume is edited by Piers Norris Turner (Ohio State...

This is actually awesome.

dailynous.com/2026/03/19/o...

Top University in Iran Bombed - Daily Nous Early this morning, Sharif University of Technology, Iran’s leading technical university, was bombed. As of the writing of this post, it was unclear whether the bombing was carried out by the United S...

A top university in Iran was bombed earlier today. The university "housed a Department of Philosophy of Science, an extraordinary effort to [build a] bridge between philosophy, science, and technology"

(but to answer your original question - yes, it bothers me. The least they could do is make it a prime number if they're going to make it nonstandard)

First 10 numbers in base 9.

also, for me, with stuff like this, I just consider change it to a different base - so 9 in base 10 is 10 in base 9.

Then it doesn't bother anymore :D