Evolutionary biology
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On the future of sex (& Emily Witt’s ‘Future Sex’).
Do-it-yourself, artistic, activist, maker culture … or sexual experimentation & psychedelic drugs? I know which future I’d prefer.
Breakfast of Champions, Burning Man, desensitization, Emily Witt, erotic art, extramarital daliance with consent, feminism, future sex, Gerewol, human evolution, human planet, hyperbolic optimism, James Joyce, Kilgore Trout, Kurt Vonnegut, Lydia Cacho, penis bone, polyamory, porn culture, pornography, responsible hedonism, Rodin, sexuality, Slavery Inc, Ulysses
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On human uniqueness and invasive species.
On evolutionary timescales, we are a slow-moving meaty wrecking ball. And our spread, apparently, resembles that of any other invasive species.
Adolph Lyons, animal cognition, animal teaching, Black Lives Matter, brain size, cooked food, excessive force, Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, homogenizing brains, human evolution, human extinctions, human migration, human migratory patterns, invasive species, Lyons v. Los Angeles, McCleskey v. Kemp, Neanderthal, neural circuitry, number of neurons in human brain, origin of knowledge, overcrowding, overpopulation, police chokeholds, quintet of hate machines, r-type population growth, racial injustice, sexual dimorphism, Stanford Graduate School of Education, starfish evolution, starvation, supreme court nomination, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, the plow brings misogyny, Trump supreme court appointment, u.s. supreme court
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On fish (and their similarities to us).
We so often denigrate the capacities of presumed others. It’s much harder to exploit those whom you know feel.
animal cognition, animal learning, animal models of human psychiatric disorders, Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are, brain science, Descartes was wrong, differences between life in water and on land, dogs, fish, fish feel pain, Frans de Waal, Jonathan Balcombe, leopard gecko, mistreatment of animals, neural plasticity, Project Prakash, racism, Sean Carroll, The Big Picture, the evolution of intelligence, the suffering of others, What a Fish Knows
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On Charles Foster’s ‘Being a Beast’ and battling the empathy gap.
If Charles Foster can learn, & care, what it’s like to be a badger, all citizens should be able to empathize with the experience of Homo sapiens from other ethnic backgrounds.
agricultural revolution, all lives matter, Being a Beast, Black Lives Matter, brains, Charles Foster, civil forfieture, common ancestors, Donald Trump, empathy, empathy gap, evolution, family first, faulty roadside drug tests, Hungary, incarceration crisis, injustice, Jeneen Interlandi, jeremy betham, John Oliver, living as a badger, natural selection, Neil Gaiman, neurological basis of empathy, Peter Singer, power racing, psychology, reading fiction develops empathy, river otters, Roma, swift, The View from the Cheap Seats, tofu, utilitarianism, vegan, vegetarian
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On attending a Black Lives Matter rally with dreadlocks.
I’m sorry if my appearance caused pain… but *not* attending would’ve caused even more harm.
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On Han Kang’s ‘The Vegetarian.’
Plants photosynthesize. Humans kill to eat. But I still think humans are pretty great.
anorexia, Being a Beast, biology isn’t destiny, bulimia, Charles Foster, chlorophyll habit, empathy, ethical eating, ethics of eating, Fiona Apple, Han Kang, humans evolved to be omnivorous, Naomi Wolf, Paper Bag, Queer, Rat Park, Stuart McMillen, The Beauty Myth, The Vegetarian, turning into a plant, vegan, veganism, why are more women than men vegetarian, William Burroughs, Yi Sang -
On unilateral reproduction.
We’ve identified some of the genes that allow Cape bees to reproduce without males … if human men don’t help more with the chores, will they be ditched too?
a world without men, birds and the bees, Cape bee, Frankenstein, game theory, golems, investment in children, Jane Ellen Harrison, just because something is natural doesn’t mean it’s good, Mary Shelley, mythology, parenting, parthenogenesis, reproduction, Wendy Doniger, Women Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts
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On octopus literature, a reprise: what would books be like if we didn’t love gossip?
Of all intelligent species I know of, only the octopus evolved its mind for purposes other than keeping track of gossip.
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On my own attempt to understand what motivates people to join the terrorist organization Daesh.
Kent Russell’s essay on juggalos helped me think about Middle Eastern terrorism.
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On crashing waves of violence and Paul Kingsnorth’s ‘The Wake.’
People are raving about the new film “Racing Extinction.” What might impending extinction feel like for those last few survivors?
ancient humans, Beowulf, CK Scott Moncrieff, distribution of wealth, economics, extinction, Homo sapiens, human evolution, inequality, land holdings, land rights, Marcel Proust, mass extinction, Neanderthals, Norman Invasion, Old English, Paul Kingsnorth, Sapiens, Seamus Heaney, Stonehenge, The Wake, Translation, wealth, Yuval Noah Harari
Frank Brown Cloud 