For many years, this hawthorn grew alone in an open landscape. Now a young species-rich rainforest ecosystem is building all around. Nature loss isn't inevitable: it *can* be reversed, through rewilding.

Want to hear my thoughts on nihilism, wellbeing, metamodernity, AI and whole bunch of other stuff? Check out this podcast: www.youtube.com/watch?v=__tf... This is the part of Beyond Happy that I'm most proud but get to talk about the least.

Well-Being and Flourishing in Metamodernity (w/ Mark Fabian)

YouTube video by Brendan Graham Dempsey

youtube.com

YOU GUYS GOTTA READ THIS

Kathryn Tewson@kathryntewson.bsky.social · 3d ago

I have just been sent the transcript of a deposition my grandmother gave in 1977 while she was serving as an expert witness in a series of tribal rights cases and let me tell you, if nothing else this is proof that I come by it honest for every conceivable value of “it”

Hard to overstate how much of a threat leaders and public officials who actually govern and serve the people pose to those whose political careers depend on fomenting cynicism and delegitimizing democracy

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani@mayor.nyc.gov · 5d ago

Now this is the kind of trash talk we can get behind. We’re containerizing neighborhoods by taking trash off our sidewalks and allowing mid-size buildings to trade in their wheelie bins for a bigger, better, cleaner alternative: Empire Bins. It’s time to put a lid on it, New York.

New blog post: open.substack.com/pub/profmark... On eternity, care, intergenerational life, paternity leave, and oxytocin.

Lessons from week 1 of parenting

The view from dreamland

open.substack.com

7. The film centers Odysseus's guilt over his war crimes, but never shows us the POV of his victims, and instead glorifies the perpetrator for feeling bad about himself. I found this unsatisfying ethically and worse, imaginatively, because Damon's character is given only one mood (Troubled).

If the world bores you, look closer. There are unseen universes you might have missed. 🌿🤗

Why are all new cars so hideously unintuitive? Forget electric vehicles. Electric schmelectric. My next car money will go to the manufacturer that brings back physical knobs, car door handles, and a gear shift. Make cars… cars again. I don’t want to drive a tablet.

The basic problem with contemporary government is that vanishingly few politicians are interested in governance, only politics for its own sake.

Cassia Rowland@cassiarowland.bsky.social · 2w ago

Move increases the chances of a whole new ministerial team at MoJ, with Lammy widely expected to lose his role as justice secretary. The most damning thing is that by staying for two years, Timpson has become the longest serving prisons minister *for 15 years*. This level of turnover is so damaging!

it's quite an indictment on our politicians that so few want to stay with one ministry long enough to achieve anything. All Game of Thrones. I'm depressed to see Timpson go. He gave a shit and appreciated complex reality not just grinding ideological prejudices.

Cassia Rowland@cassiarowland.bsky.social · 2w ago

Move increases the chances of a whole new ministerial team at MoJ, with Lammy widely expected to lose his role as justice secretary. The most damning thing is that by staying for two years, Timpson has become the longest serving prisons minister *for 15 years*. This level of turnover is so damaging!

It's really depressing how much of 'media' is just people with incendiary, one-sided, edge-lord takes like Hasan Piker or Chris Rufo. And its super depressing how often the mainstream media fetes these people for clicks, and without even gutting them. Please help people to think better.

This is one of my all time favourite papers and I think about it monthly: academic.oup.com/wber/article... The World Bank did focus groups of 423 (!) Malaysians about their experiences of economic development. Fascinating nuances for wellbeing public policy enthusiasts.

Is There an Underside to Economic Growth? A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Malaysia

Abstract. This paper sheds light on a Malaysian paradox that may have lessons for the rest of the world. Despite high GDP growth with concurrent sharp redu

academic.oup.com

Hmm. Europe, Canada and Australia can once again win from this if we avoid being just absolutely bottom of the barrel stupid.

Ben Allen@evodynamics.bsky.social · 3w ago

Congrats we just made it impossible to come here for a PhD www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/16/m...

Basically an ad for a Google product, written by Google employees, presented as a scientific paper in Nature. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Accelerating scientific discovery with Co-Scientist - Nature

Co-Scientist is an AI system for structured scientific thinking and generates research hypotheses for experimental verification.

nature.com

This is exactly why they need to do it, I think. As a lesson that you can't just fuck with the British state, which everyone currently assumes that they can. I simply do not believe that all investment dries up because a couple of execs are denied a paycheck. Financial people do not have solidarity.

Jean-Luc Picard@voiceofpericles.bsky.social · 3w ago

If I remember correctly it is a fight they were scared off of because the shareholders and creditors threatened not to go ahead with other UK investments. Same as they were bullied by JP Morgan over their investments. Something Mandelson curiously advised JP Morgan to do to Gordon Brown in 2009.

it’s amazing how often the solution to endlessly multiplying pedagogical problems turns out to be restoring an actual pedagogical relationship between instructors and students

Benjamín Schultz-Figueroa@benjaminschultzfig.bsky.social · 3w ago

A really interesting piece on reducing AI cheating in the classroom from a Professor of English and former Dean of Humanities at University of Utah. The solutions? Smaller classes, lower teaching loads for faculty, and in-person classes.

I know people see Palantir as the APEX of contemporary Cyberpunk corporations, for good reason, but spare a thought for SerCo. Stitching together prisons & welfare services in a firm named "Security Company" is dystopian. Their intensely neoliberal operating schema is also very cyberpunk.

I've written a new post exploring a fascinating turn in education reform. After a period in which there was pressure for ever narrower approaches to education, today's pioneers are advocating for a holistic model, with schools at the centre of a thriving civic life. (1/n) medium.com/@jamestplunk...

How to grow tomorrows

What if schools were not just sites for delivering education, but societies in miniature? Thousands of chances to cultivate a better future

medium.com

This is how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a triumphant, dying ‘I told you so‘.

I have absolutely no argument with the fact that gametic sex is a profoundly important aspect of biology in anisogamous species. And yet it is but one manifestation of sexual differences, *all of which are equally biological*

Hi! I'm Danna. I love my job, my university, & my students. For 20 years, I've been teaching young leaders in politics & communication at UD. Our university has a celebrated *leadership* program, entire units dedicated to civic engagement, & freedom of expression. Which is why this is so upsetting:

I hate it when journals are bureaucratic about how articles are formatted (e.g. the article must have these sections and each must be x, y and z words). Just let me write the article in the form I and the peer reviewers think makes the most sense. What act like word limits matter online?

We need a War on White Collar Crime

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò@olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 4w ago

feels like a real landmark of impunity that major corporations are making federal crimes part of the interview process

It's incredibly complicated* but I think the truth about its utility in software is easily empirically: how many apps or suites that you use have become faster or better in any tangible way in the last 2-3 years? My experience is a net zero improvement, degradation in many cases.

Our department just announced a new Associate Professor position in quantitative research methodology 🇳🇴 One of the favorable qualifications is experience with open science practices + R/Python experience www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...

Associate Professor in Quantitative Research Methodology (302697) | University of Oslo

Job title: Associate Professor in Quantitative Research Methodology (302697), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Tuesday, September 1, 2026

jobbnorge.no

Guys, low 30s is not "extreme" temperatures. The British colonised Australia and they now handle tropical Queensland just fine. Your wifi is the same technology as the wifi in Africa and none of them are melting down. My sympathies but we can't cancel everything whenever the sun shines hard.

Though the commentaries are initially a lot to digest, absolutely this 👇. The Target Article model is sincerely one of the best ways of doing science; and actually uses the wonky incentive structure of academic publishing to encourage discussion and synthesis.

Dorsa Amir@dorsaamir.bsky.social · last mo.

On a personal note, this was one of my favorite scientific experiences to date; the BBS format remains unrivaled in its ability to stimulate fruitful discussion, and we are immensely grateful to the commentators who took the time to read & respond to our work.

I am hiring! A postdoctoral position (100%, 3 years, renewable) is available at the University of Potsdam. The successful candidate will contribute to research on education and the life course and to teaching. Application deadline: August 15, 2026. See: www.uni-potsdam.de/en/socedlico...

This whole thread is amazing. Like the final scene of Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust but in 2026 and non-fiction.

Laura Jedeed@laurajedeed.bsky.social · last mo.

This might be the end of the line, folks. My battery is at 6% and there's no getting out of this crush without passing out. This is my life now. Forever sweating through my rain-soaked shirt in the DC swamp, surrounded by MAGA I think we all knew this is how I'd go out Ave Maria begins to play