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David Spurrett

@doctorspurt.bsky.social
2.3K followers 1.7K following 990 posts

Philosopher, working on evolution of mechanisms of action selection, and their variously situated subversion. davidspurrett.com

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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 9h
Sometimes The Onion really hit one right out of the park.
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Dr. Katharine Dickson @metaomicsnerd.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
theguardian.com
Trump and Hegseth want men to take risky testosterone boosters. It’s all based on shoddy science
Hoping to win back male voters, the Trump White House is pushing the regressive idea that one hormone could be a magic elixir of masculinity
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George Conway ⚖️🇺🇸 @gtconway.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
In a normal administration counterintelligence agents at the FBI would be investigating this photo. In this administration, the FBI director is in the photo.
Michael Weiss: Why, that’s Ali Abdelaziz is on the far left. Manages a lot of Russian, Belarusian and Chechen MMA fighters including Khamzat Chimaev, who is close to Kadyrov. Abdelaziz was an FBI informant until the Bureau dropped him because they suspected he was a double agent. Looks like Ka$h (far right) has forgiven and forgotten. These MAGA weddings are Mos Eisley cantinas for counterintelligence.
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 27/09/2026
another day, another bit of evidence that the scientists who willingly hand over proprietary information to AI firms may experience some consequences
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Dr. Damien P. Williams, dread portent down from a mountain cave @wolven.blacksky.app · 28/09/2026
So uhhhhhh… Apparently meta's muse "AI" is just straight up doxxing people to strangers on FB marketplace??? This has the potential to hurt so so many people, and I genuinely wonder how long before they roll out a fix for it.
Screenshot of a post from threads

matt.j.robb & 16h (€) So muse handled my Facebook marketplace today. Just found out it told people my address and agreed a lowball price and then they showed up without it even telling me until late tonight that it messed up.

Absolutely wild. 1/2

[Embedded image of a series of text messages from a meta muse "agent" given the call sign "Jarvis" (Parts of first message obscured by its logo have been replaced with brackets and ellipses and best guesses from context):]

Heads up, Usman is […] building right now for the MX Keys Mini [. He is sta]nding in front of the Shoppers Drug [Mart.]

$10 by e-transfer. The auto-reply told him to message when he's at your door.

10:28 PM Bad news on the MX Keys Mini pickup. Usman showed up at your building around 9:15 and waited, messaged a bunch of times, and nobody came down. He left angry at 9:38 and left a negative rating.

Worse, my auto-reply told him "Yep I'm here!" at 9:27 when you clearly weren't available, which is on me. That's a bad look and it made the no-show worse.

I've sent him an apology from your account owning it and offering to try again another day. But the negative rating is real, and I should probably stop the auto-replies from claiming you're home when I can't verify that. Want me to change the pickup replies so they don't promise you're there?

[reply, presumably from the threads user]: You gotta never do that ever again don't agree for pickup unless you check with me

[Response from Muse "Agent"]: You're right and I'm sorry. That should never have happened. It's locked in now as a hard rule: i will never […you]'re there unless you've explicitly […] that specific pickup. If someone proposes a time, I'll tell them I'll check and…  Screenshot of a tweet from Ray Wong @raywongy:
    Deleted Muse after seeing this post on Threads about how it told some Facebook Marketplace sellers the guy’s address and they showed up at his door

    Dangerous and creepy

    This would have been 1000x worse if the person was a woman
    4:35 PM · Sep 27, 2026
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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026
Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.
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Larry Glickman @larryglickman.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
The NY Times has repeatedly used the phrase “to heel” in reference to Trump’s crackdown on universities, implicitly clarifying that Trump goal is to establish dominance. And what exactly constitutes this “woke” ideology in higher education?
During the meeting, Mr. Trump repeatedly complained about his administration’s failure to bring Harvard University in particular to heel. The administration has been unable to hammer out a deal with the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, a central plank of his broader push against “woke” ideology in higher education.
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Interesting read, in which he acknowledges that one of the (few) examples used in the main Vanderbilt report as evidence for the hopeless politicisation of anthropology is, in fact, simply science working as it should www.chronicle.com/article/the-...
chronicle.com
The Harvard Anthropologist Who’s Skewering His Own Field
Joseph Henrich, an author of a divisive report about politicization in the humanities, says, “I knew it wasn’t going to make everyone happy.”
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Andi Zeisler @andizeisler.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
A woman was drugged, raped, and sexually trafficked to members of a fraternity. Two of the men involved were expelled. Five were given the opportunity to mitigate suspension by *writing an essay.* The dozens of other men who knew this was happening and said nothing? You already know the answer.
cornellsun.com
EDITORIAL | Cornell Won’t, We Will
The Editorial Board demands that Cornell stops protecting the alleged Chi Phi rapists through the University's opaque sexual assault policies.
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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 23/09/2026
after some in-depth discussions with my lab and also drawing on conversations on here, we've edited our new policy on AI usage in my lab feel free to adapt or re-use with attribution, or to reply to tell me how awful this policy is lol
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Pierre de Vos @pierredevos.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
William Shoki: "I have stopped asking whether South Africa has lived up to its idea. It plainly has not. What I want to know is what we would lose if the idea stopped organizing our imagination altogether." africasacountry.com/list/campaig...
africasacountry.com
Weekend Special, Sep 21: The idea of South Africa
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Melissa Nadia Viviana 🐸 @resistrebelrevolt.net · 18/09/2026
They really turned the internet into a distortion machine. Rendering it useless to sane people. Pt 2. This is fucking insane! & now AI will give inaccurate answers to questions we ask - because it's reading its own distortion slop. Worst. Timeline. Ever.
futurism.com
How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month
Brown Brothers Media is a media empire raking in millions of clicks with AI, fake writers, and plagiarism.
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los 🦦 @los-los.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Started a painting of Billy Idol in the style of Monet Monet
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I agreed to be involved in adjudicating a book prize and realised a while into the process that it was ages ago, back to grad school days, that I had so much of my reading decisions made by others. Also, it's a general humanities thing, so the pile spans a bunch of disciplines.
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BigFishStone @bigfishstone.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Women must suffer.
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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 16/09/2026
sort of just staring off into the middle distance at this lede
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
My Greek & Roman archaeology lecturer (the stupendous Anne Mackay) taught this myth with careful scepticism nearly 40 years ago. www.theguardian.com/science/2026...
theguardian.com
UK mathematician debunks myth around Parthenon’s optical illusions
Study challenges belief that temple’s curves were designed to correct optical illusions that would have ruined its clean lines
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vijay iyer @vijayiyer.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
The genocidal billionaire scammers of the tech world are totally not scamming us this time. They’ve learned true compassion and are now heroically rescuing humankind from the problem they claim to have created. They are speaking out of benevolence, and have no other motives. Lucky us! 🙄
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
This could help spin declining performance as a result of principled restraint. At least for a while.
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Terence Tao @teorth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A group of 25 Fields Medalists, including myself, have made a joint declaration on Math and AI: mathandai.org . We welcome additional signatories. See also this article in the Economist announcing the declaration: www.economist.com/science-and-...
mathandai.org
Declaration — Math and AI
Read the declaration and add your name.
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Dr Anke Marsh @ankemarsh.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Just so we are clear: The 83yo priest on the left is a terrorist. The balaclava-clad men on the right are protestors with legitimate concerns
A photo from the BBC of an older woman, with grey hair, being led away by police. A photograph of a line of men in black clothes and balaclavas blocking the port at Dover.
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HOPE not hate @hopenothate.org.uk · 05/09/2026
🚨 BREAKING: Patriot Platform, a new far right group launched by Tommy Robinson’s right hand man Daniel Thomas (AKA Danny Tommo) has blockaded the port and several roads in Dover. The masked men are from subgroups of PP, including Sussex, Essex, and South East Patriots Here’s all you need to know.
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The Boozy Bronx Book Club as the evening wears on: "Poor old Supply Chain Distributing sad tech systems Tracked a million ships in mono... Come on, Aileen Come on, Aileen"
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David Papineau @davidpapineau.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
We are hiring—a permanent lectureship in Ethics/Political Philosophy—deadline 15 Nov www.kcl.ac.uk/jobs/144566-...
kcl.ac.uk
Lecturer in Ethics and/or Political Philosophy | King's College London
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Lauren Dobson-Hughes @ldobsonhughes.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The US has assumed control of a global anti-abortion campaign, integrating into the State Department and US foreign policy goals healthpolicy-watch.news/us-assumes-c...
healthpolicy-watch.news
US Assumes Control Over Global Anti-Abortion Geneva Consensus Declaration, Affirms Religious Groups - Health Policy Watch
The United States has assumed the secretariat of the Geneva Consensus Declaration (GCD), a global anti-abortion initiative launched by Donald Trump’s
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
This result generalizes. It is only a matter of time before there is a performance of the Cowabunga Chorus. youtube.com/shorts/a8zP3...
youtube.com
Cowabunga, verse 2.
YouTube video by Bruce Eskesen
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Dennis Detwiller @drgonzo123.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Another fucking treasure gone.
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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Me, a US-based academic: I don’t care what any scholar believes, we all need to stand up publicly whenever someone’s academic freedom is threatened Me, continuing: also, the first time this has happened, motivating me to sign my first ever open letter, is in late 2026, to a race scientist, in Ghent
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Released only five months ago. youtu.be/cqlyUZL1yuc?...
youtu.be
In The Pines (feat. Dolly Parton)
YouTube video by Renée Fleming - Topic
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
I got around to watching "The Fall" (2006) which was hard to get until Mubi picked up the 4k restoration. It is extraordinary and gorgeous. (Unhurried, a bit weird, but with such total commitment to making the imagined story within the main one concrete and vivid.)
Poster from Tarsem Singh's 2006 Movie "The Fall".
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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
"Hon, you've barely touched your anus scampi"
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Museum of Twitter @museum-of-twitter.bsky.social · 22/08/2026
Tweet from Sandra Newman (@sannewman):

Once upon a time I was falling in love
Now I have the head of a hawk
There's nothing I can say
I'm a piece of Assyrian art

(image of stone slab art with a figure better described by the lyrics above)
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Make a band bigger Pentateuch
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
This is extraordinary and lots of fun. "As far as I'm concerned, the twentieth century, in its entirety, was a mistake."
Cover of Werner Herzog's "Every Man for Himself and God Against All: A Memoir" (image of Herzog in heat protective jacket holding protective helmet).
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
"I broke free of the seething mob and found my clothes upon the stone floor, whereupon I drew from my vest pocket several bags of glitter-powder I carried for such occasions."
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Chris @multiplicityct.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Did a little experiment since Pangram is in the discourse this week. First & second grafs of my dissertation chapter (written 100% by me): judged 100% AI. The two grafs together (no changes): judged 67% AI. Then I had Deft rewrite the first graf -- completely LLM text, judged 54% AI. 🤷🏻‍♂️
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amulya.bsky.social @amulya.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
My husband Drew wrote this at breakneck speed while moving cross-country and caring for an 8 month old, bc he felt it was necessary, ethically and politically, to correct the record. If you read Tyler Austin Harper's piece, I hope you'll read this.
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Sridhar Ramesh @radishharmers.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Some kid who is in their teens right now will someday look back nostalgically on today, today of all times, as the golden years. There is a whole generation brewing who will consider the 2020s peak.
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A.R. Moxon @juliusgoat.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Haven't watched yet, but as it has a new season let's bring over to Bluesky my cast list for Lord of the Rings using the cast of S1-3 of Ted Lasso. Let's start with an easy one: Aragorn. No fucking second breakfasts for any fucking hobbits or any other fucking muppets with this Aragorn.
Bret Goldstein as Roy Kent glares to the side.
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 14/08/2026
Here's Amazon's two new planned fossil-fuelled AI data centres next to the ENTIRE POWER GRIDS OF SEVERAL LARGE COUNTRIES Together, the two gas-burning data centres will emit more than Spain's entire grid, if built
Bar chart comparing 2025 national grid CO2e emissions (grey bars) with two Amazon fossil‑fuelled AI data centres (red bars), showing the Amazon sites at about 33 and 17.5 megatonnes CO2e—higher than many countries' entire power grids.
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
50 green groups write to Andy Burnham demanding he be clear that climate change is the cause of the current extreme heat crisis. Greenpeace, WWF, Friends of the Earth and others say "the British public deserves leadership that speaks honestly about the nature of the challenges the country faces"
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EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
I wrote about the Trojan horse, and what we can learn from her mouth about different cultural attitudes towards deception and violence. As someone comments below, the phrase GIFT ARTICLE is pretty scary in this context.
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Dr Ian McCormick @wokestudies.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
Advice for freshers in 1660: "Goe not a gadding and gossiping from Chamber to Chamber..." (James Duport) #students #HigherEd #edusky #academicsky #university
" Scholars arriving in Cambridge in the 17th century were not short of advice. James Duport, a tutor at Trinity College, compiled rules that covered most aspects of their lives. Today’s freshers take note: “Let your discourse be sauoury & sappy.” "
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/advice-for-freshers-in-1660-goe-not-a-gadding-and-gossiping-from-chamber-to-chamber
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arr @arr.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
english isn't for cowards. if you're not saying 'torpify,' that's a skill issue. there's no Académie Française telling you what to do. if you try to type 'pallific' and freak out when you see a little red underline, maybe you're not ready to roll with the big dogs.
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EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
No professional accomplishment has ever made me happier than this. theonion.com/translator-o...
theonion.com
Translator Of Original ‘Minions’ Epic Poem Slams ‘Sexless, Bloodless’ Film Adaptation
PHILADELPHIA—In a 4,500-word essay published in Harper’s Magazine, Emily Wilson, known for her popular translation of the Minions epic poem, blasted the latest film Thursday as a “sexless, bloodless” ...
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
This is Nambia erasure.
Inaccurate AI generated map of Africa with country labels in very incorrect places recently displayed at a conference by a representative of the US State Department.
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Dr Neil & Mr Price @drneil.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
It’s really starting to grind me down
The Barney/Moe’s Tavern meme

“Default AI features” Barney being kicked out
“Finding how to turn it all off in the settings” -satisfied Moe

Third panel Barney coming in behind “software update”
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
A flawless post. Straight to my library of screen-grabbed gold.
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David Spurrett @doctorspurt.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
They recognise that the books, like the activity of thinking itself, are their competition. This is an enclosure of the commons. An internal Anthropic memo says “we do not want it to be known that we are pursuing this project.”
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