All posts
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On social norms.
Would you pull over for a fire truck on its way to fight climate change?
45, Amazon, Amazon rain forest, animal agriculture, anthropocene, Brazil, Brazilian politics, Brazilian presidency, carbon, carbon emissions, cattle farming, cattle ranching, clear cutting, climate, climate change, climate change caused by animal agriculture, climate change caused by diet, climate change caused by meat, climate denial, climate destabilization, climate inaction, climate instability, climate reparations, collective action, consumer action, consumer choice, cows, cows and climate change, cows and methane, Donald Trump, Eating Animals, environment, Environmental Protection Agency, environmentalism, EPA, ethics, extinction, extractive industry, farmed animals, farming, flooding, GBI, global warming, global wealth tax, guaranteed basic income, GWT, inhabitable earth, Jonathan Safran Foer, lungs of the Earth, mass extinction, meat eating, mining, morality, personal choice, personal responsibility, plant-based diet, PotUS, reparations, science denial, social norms, Trump, vegan, veganism, vegetarian, vegetarianism, We Are the Weather, wealth inequality
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On smuggling.
Prison admins must think it’s risky to accept books. But if prisons weren’t horrible, we wouldn’t have to send them.
abolition, abolitionism, biochemistry, biomedical research, book bans, book restrictions, books to prisoners, gang murder, gang violence, mailing plasmids, mass incarceration, Midwest Pages to Prisoners, Pages to Prisoners, poetry, prison abolition, prison abolitionism, prison book ban, prison book bans, prison book programs, prison gangs, prison mail policy, prison violence, research, research practices, scientific research, shipping plasmids, smuggling, smuggling DNA in magazines, Stanford, Stanford biochemistry, Sympathy for the Devil, violence in prison
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On auctions, politics, quantum computing, and waste.
All-pay auctions can make for a fun board game, but these same rules are *horrible* when used for politics.
auction, auction board games, auction games, auction theory, auction types, board game, board games, computer encryption, computer security, cooperative versus competitive board games, cooperative versus competitive games, encryption, Facebook, Facebook advertising, Facebook fraud, Facebook fraudulent political ads, Facebook political ads, Facebook political lies, fraudulent political ads, high speed stock trading, inequality, political contests, politics, quantum computing, security, stock market, wealth extraction, wealth inequality
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On Constantine Cavafy’s ‘Body, Remember,’ and the mutability of memory.
Would your life be better if you mistakenly believed in past triumph?
addiction, alcoholism, Aliki Barnstone, assault, beer, Body Remember, Boltzmann brain, brain, Brett Kavanaugh, CBT, cognition, cognitive behavioral therapy, consciousness, Constantine Cavafy, drinking problem, episodic memory, Exhalation, failed seduction, Flirtation, incarceration, jail poetry, jail poetry workshop, Kavanaugh, Last Gods, mass incarceration, memory, misremembrance, missed connections, mutability of memory, opiate abuse, opiates, poetry, problem drinking, recovery, recovery from addiction, Remember Body, risque poetry, seduction, sexual aggression, sexual assault, sexy poetry, sultry poetry, Supreme Court, teaching in jail, Ted Chiang, Truth of Fact Truth of Feeling, violative assault
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On Darwin and free love.
I suddenly saw a link between Erasmus Darwin’s belief in free love and Charles Darwin’s “Origin of the Species”! The only problem? The former was just slander.
affairs, Bargh, behavioral priming, behavioral psychology, brain soup, Charles Darwin, compulsary research studies, Darwin and free love, Darwin belief in free love, Darwin feminism, Darwin feminist, Darwin free love, Emmy Brockman, Erasmus Darwin, Erasmus Darwin evolution, Erasmus Darwin free love, everything from shells, evolution, evolution by natural selection, extramarital daliance with consent, extramarital daliances, Fara, free love, French Revolution, how many neurons in the human brain, I am a scientist, love, love life, many love, many loves, natural selection, neuron counts, Origin of the Species, Patricia Fara, plant neurobiology, plant poetry, Plants Neither Possess nor Require Consciousness, polyamorist, polyamory, priming, psychological priming, psychology research, publication bias, reproducibility crisis, risque plant poetry, romance, Science Is for Me, scientific bias, scientific misconceptions, scientific publishing, slander, supposedly pornographic poetry, survival of the fittest, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, teleological fallacy, teleological misconception, The Human Advantage, The Loves of Plants, theory of evolution, walking speed, was Darwin a polyamorist, was Erasmus Darwin a polyamorist
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On the ethics of eating.
It took violence and oppression to create our world … which we can recognize without perpetuating.
autotroph, carbon cycle, carbon uptake, chaos machines, diet, energy, ethics, ethics of eating, ethics of veganism, evolution, evolution of intelligence, evolution of life, evolution of neurons, food, food web, gene duplication, gratitude, heterotroph, human diet, legacy of oppression, legacy of violence, life, moral philosophy, oppression, origin of intelligence, origin of neurons, philosophy, plant competition, plants, prehistory of intelligence, prehistory of violence, the cost for us to be here, thermodynamics of life, trees, utilitarian, utilitarianism, vegan, veganism, vegetarian, why we can think
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On sexuality and freedom of choice.
If men were more helpful, we might not need to intimidate women with ghost stories.
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On meditation.
Meditating seems like it’s just blinking for more time … but more is different.
attentiveness, blink, Bob Roth, Buddha meditating, comparative mythology, comparative religion, focus, hallucinate, hallucination, history of religion, how to do mantra meditation, how to meditate, isolation, Jesus meditating, learning to meditate, long blink, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, mantra meditation, meditate, meditation, meditation guide, mental health, mental quiet, meth, methamphetamine, methamphetamines, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, mindfulness, mindfulness training, more is different, neopaganism, Odin meditating, origin of religion, pagan meditation, paganism, Pages to Prisoners, psychedelic, psychedelic meditation, religion, religions that meditate, Richard Feynman, sensory deprivation, sensory deprivation chamber, sensory deprivation tank, sleep, sleep deprivation, spiritual meditation, spirituality, stillness, Strength in Stillness, transcendental meditation, why meditate, why we sleep
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On white supremacist vegetables and watchful eyes.
There have always been watchful eyes on our farmers market — it’s down the street from the county jail.
45, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, Bastards of the Reagan Era, Bloomington, Bloomington farmers market, Bloomington fourth street festival, Bloomington Indiana, conservative, Donald Trump, executing drug dealers, family klan, farmers market, fourth street festival, hate, hate speech, high school, high school white supremacists, identitarian, Identity Evropa, identity politics, jail, jail poetry, jail windows, KKK, Klan, M.G., Market, norms of public discourse, norms of social media, poetry in jail, poetry reading, PotUS, prison, protest, public discourse, racial injustice, Reginald Dwayne Betts, right wing, right-wing terrorists, Sarah Dye, social media, social media outrage, spoken word tent, teaching in jail, teaching poetry in jail, teaching writing in jail, Terrance Hayes, terrorism, Trump, Twitter, unsafe spaces, what it's like to write in jail, white identity, white supremacist, white supremacist terrorists, white supremacists, white supremacists at the farmers market, white supremacy, you don't seem to want it but you wanted it, you don't seem too haunted but you haunted
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On the evolution of skin color.
Over thousands of years, our ancestors evolved. Epidermal melanin protects us from the sun. Seems reasonable. But contemporary racism throws a wrench in the discussion.
African ancestry, ancestry, Asatru, biology of human evolution, books to prisoners, brain evolution, chance in evolution, chance in human evolution, Denisovan, Denisovans, diet in human evolution, domestication, edda, epidermal melanin, evolution, evolution of agriculture, evolution of brain size, evolution of epidermal melanin, evolution of great apes, evolution of human brain, evolution of human intelligence, evolution of intelligence, evolution of skin color, evolutionary advantage, evolutionary pressure, examples of evolution, explanation of human evolution, farming, folate hypothesis, history of human migration, history of human race, Homo sapiens, Homo sapiens evolution, how long does evolution take, Human ancestry, human body plan, human evolution, human migration, human race, human species, humanity, Icelandic, Icelandic mythology, Icelandic poetry, impact of agriculture on human evolution, incarceration, jail, latitude and skin color, learning, mass incarceration, melanin, Midwest Pages to Prisoners, Midwest Pages to Prisoners Project, migration, migration and evolution, mythology, Neanderthal, Neanderthals, neo-paganism, neopagan, neopaganism, neural plasticity, Norse mythology, Northern European ancestry, Northern European evolution, Odin, odinism, outdoor rec, paganism, Pages to Prisoners, pre-christian religion, prehistory of agriculture, prison, prison education, race, racial disparities in the criminal justice system, racial injustice, racism, racist police enforcement, racist policing, random factors in evolution, religion, skin color, skin color evolution, starfish evolution, stickleback evolution, sunlight, teaching evolution, The Edda, The Poetic Edda, The Prose Edda, UV damage, Viking myths, Viking religion, what does melanin do?, what does skin color do, white supremacists, white supremacy, why do people have different skin color, why skin color
Frank Brown Cloud 