The Trump administration is going after the NAS regarding its document on climate change. The top part of the announcement seems innocent but it is not. mailchi.mp/2510a51a95c0...

Great insights on the nature of fieldwork. The Anthropocene Anthropologist: Reflections on Bizarroland conradkottak.substack.com?r=1z3i8q&utm...

The Anthropocene Anthropologist: Reflections on Bizarroland | Conrad Kottak | Substack

Conrad Kottak, a cultural anthropologist, comments on contemporary issues. Click to read The Anthropocene Anthropologist: Reflections on Bizarroland, by Conrad Kottak, a Substack publication with hund...

conradkottak.substack.com

Benjamin Santer, 2026 Friend of the Planet Award recipient, writes about Trump's attacks on the National Academies of Sciences. thebulletin.org/2026/07/amer... #climatesky

American Nero: Why Trump is trying to burn down the National Academy of Sciences

Carnage in pursuit of power, revenge, personal financial gain, and ego.

thebulletin.org

First time: below the acknowledgement section of a preprint I read this morning, the authors noted the use of ChatGPT to enhance the clarity of the writing followed by their check for accuracy and a claim of taking full responsibility. Back in the day (yesterday) we acknowledged humans.

Another Trumpian attack on climate science. By scrapping NSF's OOI we become blinder to the impact of global warming which Trump denies but we also lose the ability to better predict major climate fluctuations such as the impact of El Nino, etc. that effect farmers, fishing stocks, etc. See link

Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System

nytimes.com

This will wreck US science. Sweeping new legislation is proposed: the government can cancel grants at any time, peer review is advisory, political appointees judge whether the research advances the president’ policy priorities, etc. Details here arstechnica.com/science/2026...

Proposed new US funding rules: We can cancel any grant at any time

Peer review now optional, political staff would screen grants for forbidden topics.

arstechnica.com

From well-placed NAS colleagues I have learned that the Trump admin is planning a 50% cut to NSF. One means will be the elimination of the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Directorate. Please write your representatives to work against this plan.

This piece synthesizes it all "The evolutionary origins of war and peace" encompassing cumulative culture, shallow and deep roots, multi-level societies, self-domestication, reactive-proactive aggression, coalitionary cooperation for war and peace, etc. Lots to think about doi.org/10.1080/0140...

The evolutionary roots of war and peace

When did war and peace first emerge in the human lineage? Are they deep-rooted in our evolutionary past or recent cultural inventions? This article integrates insights from evolutionary anthropolog...

doi.org

Message from a colleague. Rutgers posted this earlier than I was able to add the priority screening date (January 5), my lab will be hiring a postdoc to query issues related to evolutionary medicine (including behavior) and/or disability. www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/deta...

A very important study. Many figured that chimp warfare was adaptive. Now we have proof. Lethal displacement of a neighbor doubled fertility and even had a greater impact on survivorship. However, as usual we need more details as other questions emerge. www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

action.consumerreports.org/nb_20251117_... Scumbags. I saw a fake site for Pendleton wool company and reported it and they did nothing.

Hold Meta accountable for fraudulent ads

Facebook exposes users to 11 scam ads a day

action.consumerreports.org

On the efficacy of shamanism from Mike Jay's review of M. Singh's "Shamanism".

I just finished M. Singh's "Shamanism" and at the very end he notes this incredible anti-intellectual nonsense from our post-modern colleagues.

Well worth a close read and includes humans - Biological Reviews - Wiley Online Library onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Close encounters of the friendly kind: pacific between‐group interactions in primates

While intergroup conflict features prominently in the behavioural ecology literature, its antonym, intergroup peace, has been a rather neglected phenomenon until recently. Neighbourly relations and a...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/a...

The Most Wondrous Art in the World in 1,726 Objects

nytimes.com

Bonobo news: We found that females target males in 85% of their coalitions, that females occupy higher ranks compared to males when they form more frequent coalitions. ...female coalition formation is a behavioral tool for females to gain power over males. www.nature.com/articles/s42...

Drivers of female power in bonobos - Communications Biology

In mammals, documented female dominance is rare, but females can hold high status even with male-biased dimorphism. In wild living bonobo groups, female coalition formation best explains the observed ...

nature.com

Weird and irrelevant reference padding.

doi.org/10.1086/732036

Whoever alerted me to this response by Azar Gat to Michael Mann's "On War", THANKS. The takedown was systematic and exposes a certain blindness in sociology. networks.h-net.org/group/discus...

Although Cavalli-Sforza died in 2018 at the age of 96, here is a retrospective piece on his truly innovative contributions to the story of human evolution in joining archaeology and other human sciences with population genetics. Met him when I worked at NSF www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/b70f0d...

"the narrow bandwidth of ideas that Western academics often draw upon when formulating hypotheses for socio-cultural phenomena in other times and places"

Dancing Around Rituals of Gender

Dancing Around Rituals of Gender

inquisitivemag.org

Today's re-reading and noting a lovely photo of the Gunwinggu from Jon Altman's important work. They no doubt feasted for days and called in friends and relatives to join in

I know that you-all occasionally get this academic junk but the subject line in the email is so - I really don't know what to say "Great News! You are Highly Invited for Servicing as a Editor in Chief"

We could use more studies like this one by sociologists who are not afraid of evolutionary theory sociologicalscience.com/articles-v10...

Evolutionary Influences on Assistance to Kin: Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics

Article: Evolutionary Influences on Assistance to Kin: Evidence from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics | Sociological Science | Posted December 16, 2023

sociologicalscience.com

Mass editorial board resignation at the Journal of Human Evolution. Why? Elsevier the publisher of JHE has an enormous 24% profit margin. To increase it further they are cutting back copy editing and other human resources necessary for a well-run journal. x.com/markwgrabows...

Montaigne in "Of Cannibals" described Brazilian native Tupinamba visitors to France in 1562 and their assessment of French civilization

My profile image has been blurred because of "explicit sexual imagery". Dumb AI I suspect. The suspect link to my homepage has a bare chested Yanomamo woman with other bare chested men peering over my shoulder as I work on my computer. I have appealed. I hope I get a pass.

Excellent history of evolutionary anthropology as it relates to human behavior and culture. The take home point is that both human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology need to account for culture per se more effectively and intergratively. Open access at www.pnas.org/doi/epub/10....

Seems that it has a small chance of success but one can hope and hope it will lead others to effectively expose the collusion and exploitation: www.chronicle.com/article/a-ma...

‘A Massive Scandal': Does a Landmark Lawsuit Against Academic Publishers Have Legs?

“Gag rules.” Price fixing. “Anticompetitive agreements.” A new lawsuit seeks to skewer academic-publishing heavyweights, but experts have their doubts.

chronicle.com

Luke Glowacki just published an excellent critique on war among mobile foragers with a focus on the work of Fry and Söderberg inter alia. I have published my own reservations of their Science paper. But Luke's paper uncovered more problems. I had to change my lecture notes to include the following