My department's advertising for a tenure-track assistant prof position in ethnology with research focused on emerging technologies, governance or decolonial issues (geographical area open, with a pref. for Africa, E. Asia or SW. Asia). Deadline 2026-11-23. universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/...

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universityaffairs.ca

My department's advertising for a tenure-track assistant prof position in ethnology with research focused on emerging technologies, governance or decolonial issues (geographical area open, with a pref. for Africa, E. Asia or SW. Asia). Deadline 2026-11-23. universityaffairs.ca/search-jobs/...

Search Jobs - University Affairs

Explore the latest academic and higher education job opportunities on the University Affairs Jobs board. Updated daily, our job board features hundreds of teaching, research, postdoctoral, administrat...

universityaffairs.ca

Got a visit from the proof fairy this week for an article @lydiapyne.bsky.social and I have been working on for some time now! It's a critical perspective on nicknaming fossils in paleoanthropology. It'll be out in Early View soon, but until then, which one's your favorite hominin fossil nickname?

Got a visit from the proof fairy this week for an article @lydiapyne.bsky.social and I have been working on for some time now! It's a critical perspective on nicknaming fossils in paleoanthropology. It'll be out in Early View soon, but until then, which one's your favorite hominin fossil nickname?

Students who nod and smile during lecture when we try to make a point? Heroes

Cette plaquette de @julietalbot.bsky.social @alexandreklein.bsky.social est une redoutable synthèse à propos de ce que l’on pourrait peut-être appeler sans trop d’exagération « les vraies choses ». À lire de toute urgence.

A civilian geography professor was fired from West Point for pushing back after department officials barred faculty from teaching that humans contribute to climate change.

West Point professor fired after pushing back on limitations to teaching climate change, lawsuit says

Adam Kalkstein pushed back after department officials barred faculty from teaching that humans contribute to climate change, the lawsuit says.

stripes.com

There's no reason to keep supporting Amazon. You can buy books and stream elsewhere. It's just not worth it.

Joseph Cox@josephcox.bsky.social · 2mo ago

New from 404 Media: we solved which AI company is buying massive shipments of rare books, scanning and destroying them to train AI. We put an Apple AirTag in a rare book, followed it. It ended up at an Amazon facility. Its logo is a dinosaur ripping through a book www.404media.co/we-tracked-a...

"So what did the seer say to you?" "That I would be the first to do something incredible, and that historians would speak of me centuries later."

Andrew Curry@andrewcurry.com · 3mo ago

The man's skeletal injuries looked like a train hit him, but he died in 1304 CE. At #ppa26Berlin last week, @uniofbradford.bsky.social scientist Jo Buckberry concluded he was likely whacked by a flying boulder, making him the first confirmed trebuchet death in the archaeological record. @science.org

Many myths debunked in this paper. Paper finds that: -faculty partisanship has no effect on students -students ideologically sort into majors; majors don’t affect partisanship -faculty partisanship is uncorrelated with how left/rightwing course content is micah-baum.github.io/files/baum-e...

Library funding is tied to usage.

“Students are concerned that we’re going to be closed in two years, three years… They’re worried they’re not going to get courses they need because we don’t have the faculty to teach them.” I’m so sad to hear this about my former institution. But not surprised. chicago.suntimes.com/education/20...

Illinois Institute of Technology cuts 160 faculty and staff just before fall semester

University officials say finances have taken a hit from declines in research funding and foreign student enrollment. Faculty say leaders’ slow response and lack of transparency have deepened the crisi...

chicago.suntimes.com

New opportunity: fully funded PhD position within the Cluster of Excellence HUMAN ORIGINS Investigate experimentally the evolutionary significance of transformative Stone Age techniques in this project on cognitive demands, and explore the probability of their success. Deadline: 15 September 2026.

Great thread: This use of optimal foraging theory should speak to a lot of anthropologists/archaeologists. Widespread AI use in academia is unlikely to result in the hoped-for and oft promised economies of time, attention and labor.

Carl T. Bergstrom@carlbergstrom.com · 3mo ago

1. We—@eduede.bsky.social, @mjcrockett.bsky.social, Kevin Gross, and I—have a new preprint on the arXiv today, based on ideas that emerged during an @sfiscience.bsky.social workshop in November 2024: The unintended consequences of large language models as a labor-augmenting technology in science.

Local plumbers two steps ahead of every university administrator in america 👏

Metin Seven, Moon Child's dad 🌝@seven.eurosky.social · 3mo ago

The asshole administration is planning to remove the mining buffer around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. This is being done without tribal or expert input and the public comment time is incredibly, and cowardly short. Please comment to help try and save Chaco. www.koat.com/article/chac...

Chaco Canyon public comment period opens, as BLM proposes reopening 336,000 acres to mineral leasing

A new federal assessment could reshape the future of development near Chaco Canyon. Here’s what’s in the plan and how long the public has to weigh in.

koat.com

“Correcting a false belief is not like correcting a math error. It requires something closer to what clinicians call grief work. The person must let go of a version of reality that has been sustaining them…” That’s one doozy of an asymmetry! “Make stuff up” vs basically “extended complex therapy”?

Dr Emma L Briant 🇬🇧 in 🇺🇸 w/ 🐕@emma-briant.co.uk · 3mo ago

The Economics of Truth: Why Lies Are Free, Truth Is Expensive, and How to Change That pavisandhu.substack.com/p/the-econom...

Years ago, I got a tip: look into the human remains collection at the AMNH. The museum held the remains of more than 12,000 individuals from around the world, but wouldn't identify them. I identified many of the remains and published this piece: hyperallergic.com/a-new-york-m...

A New York Museum's House of Bones

The American Museum of Natural History holds 12,000 bodies — but they don’t want you to know whose.

hyperallergic.com

Hippos!

Nome@nome.bsky.social · 2y ago

You see, Pablo Escobar imported like four hippos for his private zoo in Hacienda Napoles in Columbia in the 1970s. And now... they're just free. Inbred cocaine hippos are just all the fuck over now. There were 50 in 2019. There were 170 in 2023.

As someone who has studied history, I am often comforted by knowing there have been far worse times than these. As someone who has focused on the lives of ordinary people when studying history, however, I am painfully aware that it doesn't have to be worse than this to really suck for most people.

One reason i think everyone should take an archaeology class is to internalise with tangible examples that there is no pure, natural past utopia and that antibiotics and vaccines are what stand between us and a 50% child mortality rate and scores of women dying needlessly during pregn and birth

Shaun Lintern@shaunlintern.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Leeds is now the subject of a major inquiry into maternity. I previously reported on its decade long pursuit of 'normal birth' ideology that saw it have the lowest number of caesareans while stillbirths and baby deaths soared to the worst nationally www.thetimes.com/article/f3af...

Fun fact about Colossal: they did *not* resurrect the dire wolf!

Rolling Stone@rollingstone.com · 5mo ago

The science start-up Colossal is making sci-fi real! After resurrecting the dire wolf in 2025 using 72k-year-old DNA, they're eyeing the woolly mammoth for 2028. The goal: "rewilding" to restore and stabilize modern ecosystems. Read: bit.ly/4tIXAqo

The Canadian Archaeological Association Meeting in Canmore was a blast, and my session on 'Combating Anti-intellectualism and Pseudoarchaeology through Public Engagement' went very well. Though it was only 4 papers, each presentation was standing room only, with lots of follow-up discussions. 🏺

I'm at a loss for words. Both for the statement and for the underlying idea that citations are basically window dressing meant to give random statements an air of academic credibility. Pathetic.

Dr. Holly Walters@manigarm.bsky.social · 5mo ago

I'm sorry, what? In writing my first monograph, I spent six weeks trying to track down a citation in TWO languages I didn't know. And good thing too, because the citation was wrong. That's scholarship. That's research. You know, the thing we're trained to do?!?

The kids are alright. I'm so glad we're seeing multiple graduating classes reacting this way to AI shills who present it as a fait accompli with zero introspection. Why you would even bring up AI in a commencement speech to begin with is beyond me.

404 Media@404media.co · 5mo ago

Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was booed throughout this commencement speech at the University of Arizona for his praise of AI. This comes just a week after another commencement speaker who mentioned AI was booed at a school in Florida. Read more: www.404media.co/ucf-ai-comme...

this graduation speech moment is notable, and her amazed shock at having failed to read the room feels instructive. when you're inside the bubble, you think everybody else is. but everybody isn't.

in case it is helpful, i have put together this list of resources for people who want to resist uncritical ai adoption in work or other aspects of life: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Questioning AI Resource List

Excellent summary of major problems with companies’ focus on AI written by expert in machine learning: https://ludic.mataroa.blog/blog/i-will-fucking-piledrive-you-if-you-mention-ai-again/ Another g...

docs.google.com

Sheffield’s archaeology department was second to none, world leading and internationally significant. All the things that universities purport to value. It was also full of good colleagues (which universities seem to value less, but is no less significant.) I’m sorry it is no more.

Orion🌈&sm9eb@sm9eb.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Very sorry to see that the last undergrad archaeology class at Uni #Sheffield was taught yesterday. The wanton destruction happening now in academia on both sides of the Atlantic will be widely seen as the violence it is one day. #SaveSheffield #SaveSheffieldArchaeology

Very sorry to see that the last undergrad archaeology class at Uni #Sheffield was taught yesterday. The wanton destruction happening now in academia on both sides of the Atlantic will be widely seen as the violence it is one day. #SaveSheffield #SaveSheffieldArchaeology