One of the most ridiculous aspects of the academic copyright game is that publishers treat *tables* as distinct from normal text. Images, I get. Graphs? Ok, I can sortof see that. But tables? I have to specifically ask permission to use information that's in a table? Ridiculous.

Can the NYT call him racist yet? Or will David Brooks wag his finger that we don’t do that in America?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2w ago

Trump on El-Sayed: "His name is actually Abduladadalalalala. It's Adulbabababababa Mohammed Al-Sayed. So his middle name is Mohammed. So I was right. He's a jihadist."

NEW: In late 2024, FBI investigators had enough evidence to launch a sweeping bribery probe that could ensnare top lawmakers, including Sen. Susan Collins. Then Trump was reelected and eviscerated the FBI and DOJ teams handling public corruption probes.

The FBI Anti-Corruption Squad Was Circling Susan Collins — Until Trump Got in the Way

After the FBI caught a defense contractor’s CEO making illegal campaign contributions, it sought to launch a sweeping political bribery probe involving Collins and others. Then the second Trump admini...

propublica.org

For a while, a common dilemma in video game RPGs was "Who do you support, the problematic hypernationalists or the rootless cosmopolitan hypocrites?" and I think it aged poorly seeing how the past decade has pretty conclusively proven the correct answer is "sign up with RCH and get over yourself."

Proof of a literacy crisis: pundit Derek Thompson can't read the studies he quotes. This is about "self-published genre fiction ... primarily sold on Amazon" and not “the book industry.” Imagine looking at TikTok slop and declaring “the film industry” is being replaced by AI actors and directors.

El-Sayed: "My commitment to Jewish safety is the same commitment that I have to the safety of my own daughters. Because if there is one question of political philosophy that ought to animate us all, it's what would we do if we treated all our kids like they were all of our kids?"

I have a new paper out at Philosophy of Science. (Open access link below.) Briefly: Hasok Chang's main argument for his account of truth is that it makes truth "verifiable" in practice. I show that if that's right, errors are impossible. doi.org/10.1017/psa....

What use the Realist for a Theory of Truth? | Philosophy of Science | Cambridge Core

What use the Realist for a Theory of Truth?

doi.org

Good for Mike and Charlie.

Two Philosophers Win “Courageous Colleague” Award - Daily Nous

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has bestowed its Berkson Courageous Colleague Award on two philosophers. Those two philosophers are Mike Gregory and Charlie Kurth, both of C...

dailynous.com

I saw a very bad video on climate graphs a couple days ago, and since that's something I work on, thought that I should ... I don't know, make a blog post that maybe 20 people would see finals once were over?

We just published a paper in Geoscience Communication where we measure the impact of reading climate myth rebuttals available on our Skeptical Science homepage - a technically challenging research with some nuanced, complex results. sks.to/sksexperiment (1/n)

hmm

if someone is confused about trans rights or Pratchett’s support thereof, tell them to READ THEORY

Tomorrow's the last day to apply for our open AOS open AOC lecturer position at Clemson! philjobs.org/job/show/31125

We're hiring! Lecturer in Philosophy, AOS/AOC open, but should be able to teach courses titled "Logic and Critical Thinking" and "Science and Values." Applications due Mar. 30. philjobs.org/job/show/31125

We're hiring! Lecturer in Philosophy, AOS/AOC open, but should be able to teach courses titled "Logic and Critical Thinking" and "Science and Values." Applications due Mar. 30. philjobs.org/job/show/31125

We're hiring: 3-year VAP, AOS Phil Law, 3/3 load, application date Mar. 23. We're also searching for a lecturer who can teach logic and a research ethics-type class. I'll update when that ad is posted. philjobs.org/job/show/30989

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

✊

in case you're curious about how angry Minnesota is about ICE, it was -20 today

The new directive asks USDA workers in the agency’s research arm to use Google to check the backgrounds of all foreign nationals collaborating with its scientists. The names of flagged scientists are being sent to national security experts at the agency, according to records reviewed by ProPublica.

Trump Administration Orders USDA Employees to Investigate Foreign Researchers They Work With

The new directive asks workers to check the backgrounds of foreign nationals collaborating with the department’s scientists for evidence of “subversive or criminal activity.” Their names are being sen...

propublica.org

Another of my papers, "Stability, Robustness Reasoning, and Measuring the Human Contribution to Warming" is now online. This one gets in the weeds of the last decade-ish of research on the human contribution to warming to motivate a simple philosophical claim ... (1/2) doi.org/10.1017/psa....

"How do you assert a graph?" now has an issue -- still open access! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

How do you assert a graph? Towards an account of depictions in scientific testimony

I extend the literature on norms of assertion to the ubiquitous use of graphs in scientific papers and presentations, which I term “graphical testimony.” On my account, the testimonial presentation o...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

So this is obviously almost unbelievably stupid. But also, prediction: yes it will, it will just only approve those by companies that Trump likes. www.cnbc.com/2025/08/20/t...

Trump says U.S. will not approve solar or wind power projects

The president's comment comes after the administration tightened federal permitting for renewables last month.

cnbc.com

Wondering what I've been working on for the last couple years? (Probably not.) Wondering what philosophers of statistics even do? (I'm betting no.) Were you thinking to yourself: how would Deborah Mayo's project function outside a Neyman-Pearson setting? (Lol)

Brian McLoone, Steven Orzack, and Elliot Sober have a new paper out in which they argue (among other things) that I'm wrong about robustness. I think *they're* wrong, of course -- indeed, I think I addressed all their arguments already in the paper they cite. Unsurprisingly, they disagree!

Recently, I asked ChatGPT to write the intro to a paper in my style, because I curious how good it would be at imitating an author, and the best way to tell that would be by asking it to imitate the author I know best. (Don't worry, there's a punchline here. 1/3)

@lastpositivist.bsky.social · last yr.

I was reading about AI profiling so I did chat GPT on just a random picture (literally just screen-shotting my webcam) and, like, it basically gets me right in every detail - I'm even within the lower zones of its height and weight band estimates (I'm overweight lmao) so it called the low-info shot.

My article on classical statistics and the base-rate fallacy is now officially out at Philosophy of Science. The short pitch: classical statistics does not commit the base-rate fallacy, despite what some Bayesian philosophers have suggested. doi.org/10.1017/psa....

seeing takes about the aid institutions and their role in imperialism. correct. If someone said "investor-owned hospitals exploit the vulnerable to benefit shareholders" I'd nod. If their followup was "and that's why I'm turning off your mom's dialysis machine" I'd...have some followup questions

Nanjala@nanjala.bsky.social · 2y ago

But when it comes to cutting aid budgets no one says “let’s spend less money on Israeli or Egyptian military capacity”. Instead you want to start by taking healthcare and education away from people who have been made vulnerable by the structural injustices you create and benefit from.