Sweet Jesus: NBA star Steven Adams has joined the Iran-US propaganda war

thespinoff.co.nz/politics/21-...

This Is Just To Say

I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update

and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize

Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying

bsky.app/profile/patr...

Globally, songs and instrumental melodies are slower and higher and use more stable pitches than speech: A Registered Report Global collaboration by 75 researchers finds acoustic relationships between speech, song, and instrumental music across cultures.

Peer Community Journal example: doi.org/10.24072/pcj...

Science Advances example: doi.org/10.1126/scia...

(5/5)

E.g., we've used @peercommunityin.bsky.social to publish one article free (diamond OA) in @peercommunityin.bsky.social; for another we paid Science Advances $4k to publish (gold OA), and I think the value they added (e.g., soliciting companion perspective and press coverage) was worth it. (4/5)

But @peercommunityin.bsky.social provides peer review for free while allowing authors flexibility to shop those reviews at journals of their choice, who can then compete for the honour of publishing already-reviewed work. Authors can then choose to publish in journals providing most value for money.

Academics don't currently need journals per se - we need peer review that journals traditionally monopolised. This is why non-peer-reviewed preprint servers (and Bluesky etc.) can't currently replace traditional journals. (2/5)

Totally agree with @edhagen.net about the problem, but disagree with the solution. I think a more feasible solution is diamond open-access publishing, particularly via @peercommunityin.bsky.social and other initiatives that separate peer review from journal publishing. (1/5)

Congrats @masonyoungblood.bsky.social - very well-deserved!!

The Cultural Evolution Society is delighted to announce that Mason Youngblood (he/they) @masonyoungblood.bsky.social, Institute for Advanced Computational Science, Stony Brook University, is the recipient of the 2026 CES New Investigator Award.

Congratulations Mason on this well-deserved award!!

New special issue on "Cultural evolution of the arts" led by @sobchuk.bsky.social and @masonyoungblood.bsky.social confirms my intuition that this field has taken off in the past two decades, with a particularly strong representation from music!
doi.org/10.1017/ehs....

Geographically, yes, but NZ passport comes with Global North-style privileges.
See you soon! (Currently transiting in San Francisco)

Can’t wait to see you there! At Auckland airport now myself.
It is sad that many of us in the Global North have no idea what others have to go through that we don’t to get to the same conferences 😢. Very glad you were able to get through it though!

IMO the best current option is @peercommunityin.bsky.social. Won’t solve all problems, but it’s a start at liberating peer review from evil for-profit publishers!

IMO the best current option is @peercommunityin.bsky.social. Won’t solve all problems, but it’s a start at liberating peer review from evil for-profit publishers!

Cover for Drawing From Your Memory volume 1 by Shiki Kawabata

Drawing From Your Memory 1 is out! A story with a time-travel element that’s also a mystery is so down my alley, I’m beyond excited to be translating this. The mystery only ramps up from here, with some really sweet moments to ease the sometimes heavy themes. Stay tuned!

Good question Emily, and the reason is because this research is smoke and mirrors - there is zero justification for the wholesale deployment of linguistic assumptions in this work and to be frank I'm disappointed that @whysharksmatter.bsky.social isn't using more critical thinking before sharing...

A scientist drills a skull in search of ancient human DNA

Until now, scientists have identified only a few dozen variants that went through natural selection in humans in the past 10,000 years. A new study claims to find hundreds--maybe thousands. Here's my story on the provocative research, and the mixed reception it's getting. Gift link: nyti.ms/4tSJH9G

AI Studying Whale Songs Says It Thinks Whale Language Might Have Vowels Where linguists hear “vowels,” skeptics hear “clicks,” and whales hear… absolutely none of this nonsense.

Well, in brief, this paper addresses none of the original criticisms of 'vowel' and commits further egregiously wrong use of linguistic assumptions. Might as talk about the phonology of farts as far as I'm concerned! This nice satire sums it up 🤣 oddnews.com/article/ai-s...

Curious to hear reactions from other whale song researchers like @lrendell.bsky.social (thinking of his very critical reaction to previous similar claims from this team: bsky.app/profile/lren...)

Curious to hear reactions from other whale song researchers like @lrendell.bsky.social (thinking of his very critical reaction to previous similar claims from this team: bsky.app/profile/lren...)

The paper does not mention “music” or “human song” once, even though human song also uses vowels in complex ways and is probably more similar to whale song than language is. Still no evidence whale song is a “language”.

doi.org/10.1093/9780...

We have over 100 abstracts submitted already and are expecting a big spike in these last couple of weeks!

EPC/APCV are very rarely in NZ (last was 15yrs ago). If you're kiwi, this is a great opportunity for a nearby international conference. If you're not, this is your chance to see beautiful NZ :)

Opening slides from my "(Un)ethical Science" class, with Jeff Goldblum's iconic line: "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should"

I used this to open my "(Un)ethical Science" class yesterday. Asked my students if they knew where the quote was from. No one knew!!! 👴

1. In this paper, we included this word cloud of the top 200 words in the volume Man the Hunter. A reader wondered how could the top 200 words in a book with the title "Man the Hunter" include "woman" but not "man"? Doh!
🧪 #rstats #BioAnth #AcademicSky 🧵

Survey research is often interpreted as showing that belief in conspiracy theories can be surprisingly widespread, including belief in conspiracy theories that would be astonishing if true. For example, in The Atlantic we learn that “12 million Americans believe lizard people run our country”

bsky.app/profile/patr...

bsky.app/profile/patr...

For more rigorous similar studies, see massive literature on synchrony and bonding (e.g., by Rennung, Mogan, Bulbulia, Dunbar, Fitch, Tarr, Bowling, my lab, etc., most not cited here - for review, see doi.org/10.31234/osf...)

Sorry to be a party-pooper, but this is a low-quality study. Underpowered (two groups of 14 participants each), non-randomized, numerous statistical fallacies, doesn't cite key studies, etc.).
Also, says peer review history is available, but I can't find it...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...