iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

📢 preprint 📢 Read it here first! People can be conservative in different ways. A common account distinguishes economic conservatism from social conservatism on the basis of two different sets of values... doi.org/10.31234/osf...

doi.org

OSF

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Abby Cassario @abbycassario.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Update: we got feedback. It was helpful! So we added a study to address it. In summary, threat-conservatism effects reliably emerge *only* at a very narrow intersection of both DV operationalization (terrorism policy) *and* threat stimuli (terrorism threat). Check it out! 👇 osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Julius Koschnick @juliuskoschnick.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

New working paper 🚨🚨🚨 What was the origin of modern economic growth? Joel Mokyr had a Nobel winning answer - growth took off when science and technology began to reinforce each other But can we test this quantitatively? This paper does so – read more ⬇️ 🧵

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 14/12/2025

Extremely proud to have contributed to this amazing three-part Special Issue on Vanuatu languages, out now in Te Reo! Especial thanks to the wonderful editors for pulling off this major achievement. You can read my contribution here: nzlingsoc.org/journal_arti...

nzlingsoc.org

Language shift in Vanuatu’s 2020 census: Investigation of a national dataset for 250,000 people - Linguistic Society of New Zealand

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

"The cooperative eye hypothesis proposes that human eyeballs are uniquely conspicuous and evolved under selective pressures to behave cooperatively....but lacks robust empirical support: human eye pigmentation does not uniquely stand out among primates, is not uniform at species level..."

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Look past the cooperative eye hypothesis: reconsidering the evolution of human eye appearance

The external appearance of the human eye has been prominently linked to the evolution of complex sociocognitive functions in our species. The cooperative eye hypothesis (CEH) proposes that human eyeb....

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Tarik Abou-Chadi @tabouchadi.bsky.social · 25/09/2025

Now out in @cpsjournal.bsky.social. In our new article, @denis-cohen.bsky.social @thmskrr.bsky.social and I show that where local rent prices increase more, residents with lower incomes become more likely to support the radical right AfD. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

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Sheina Lew-Levy @sheinalew.bsky.social · 11/09/2025

@durhampsych.bsky.social current has 5 (FIVE!!) PhD studentships being advertised! 3 to work with me on children as agents of cultural evolution 2 to work with @drboothroyd.bsky.social on examining school-based body image interventions. Please share and apply! www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...

durham.ac.uk

Fees and Funding - Durham University

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Josh Luke Davis 🏳️‍🌈 @joshlukedavis.com · 03/09/2025

woah this is genuinely, utterly WILD Ant queens of one species produce males of another species, so she can then mate with them and produce hybrid workers! This is so gloriously weird I can't quite compute it 🤯🧪🐜 www.nature.com/articles/d41...

nature.com

‘Almost unimaginable’: these ants are different species but share a mother

Ant queens of one species clone ants of another to create hybrid workers that do their bidding.

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John Holbein @johnholbein1.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

Climate models since the 1970s nailed it—most predicted global warming almost exactly as it happened.

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Prof Nichola Raihani @nicholaraihani.bsky.social · 19/07/2025

My colleague Quentin Atkinson wrote this piece - How Not To Run a University. It is an insanely good read about how managerialism is destroying universities. Make time for it. Talk about it. Share it. quentinatkinson.substack.com/s/how-not-to...

quentinatkinson.substack.com

How not to run a university | Quentin’s Substack | Quentin Atkinson | Substack

A case study of one university’s managerial misadventures, why it is happening and what we can do about it. Click to read Quentin’s Substack, by Quentin Atkinson, a Substack publication. Launched a mo...

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Kiran Basava @incertaesedis.bsky.social · 23/06/2025

Happy to share our new paper introducing the Animal Culture Database in Scientific Data: We’re putting together a resource consolidating primary research on cultural behaviors in wild animal populations and how they’re affected by human activity (1/5) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database - Scientific Data

Scientific Data - Mapping nonhuman cultures with the Animal Culture Database

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David @daverino.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

"Nasa has revealed a dramatic rise in the intensity of..events such as droughts & floods over the past 5 years. The study shows that..extreme events are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting & more severe" www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

theguardian.com

Nasa data reveals dramatic rise in intensity of weather events

Extreme events such as floods and droughts are becoming more frequent, longer-lasting and more severe, study says

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Cecilia Padilla-Iglesias @ceciliapad.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

I could not be more proud of my lab, and my fantastic colleagues for the study they just published in @nature.com revealing a massive expansion of our species' niche before dispersing out of Africa. Have a read, because it's an amazing paper 🤩

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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

“Historically, no one lived past age 35” "I’ve heard *so* many versions of this claim, including recently from a menopause doctor (implying menopause is not “natural” because noone lived long enough to go through it). Every time someone states this “fact,” a demographer loses a piece of their soul"

jenndowd.substack.com

There Were Still Old People When Life Expectancy Was 35.

A demography myth that won't die

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 03/06/2025

Very thought provoking But it's difficult to see how “science cannot be mandated” tackles the incentives for 'fast science', quantity over quality, etc that the best of Open Science aims to overturn

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Abby Cassario @abbycassario.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

🚨🚨 NEW PRE-PRINT 🚨🚨 Prominent theories in political psychology argue that threat causes increases in conservatism. Early experimental work supported this idea, but many of these studies were (severely) underpowered, and examined only a few threats and ideological DVs. 1/n osf.io/preprints/ps...

osf.io

OSF

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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 18/04/2025

Thing I just learned in #rstats: unz() lets you connect to a .zip and load files from inside it without actually unzipping it (great for a file I'm working with that's 30 MB zipped and 1+ GB unzipped, with multiple CSVs in it)

# unz() lets you connect to a .zip and treat it like a mini file system,
# and you can load files from inside it
one_zipped_csv_among_others <- readr::read_csv(
unz("lotsa_zipped_csvs.zip"), "one_csv.csv"
)

# readr::read_csv() can read a .zip with a single CSV in it
one_zipped_csv <- readr::read_csv("big_zipped_file.zip")

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Simon J. Greenhill @simongreenhill.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Two Fully-Funded PhD positions at Auckland Uni! Come help us understand the past and future of global cultural and linguistic diversity. #linguistics #evolution #academia #phd www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

An AI generated colorful image, trying to catch the eye of potential PhD students.

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Dan McGarry @danmcgarry.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

A few words of appreciation for Marc Neil-Jones, founder of the Vanuatu Daily Post. I owe my journalism career to him. village-explainer.kabisan.com/index.php/20...

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Nicholas Gibson @njsgibson.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

Religion data for reuse! Those stories about U.S. religion you're currently seeing in the news? They're from the Pew 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study. While anyone can explore the data with their online tools, Pew has also shared the underlying dataset: doi.org/10.58094/3kw...

doi.org

2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) Dataset Archives

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manvir singh @manvir.bsky.social · 11/02/2025

Thrilled to see this out! In our new Psych Review paper, we argue that prosocial religious beliefs develop as people strategically push narratives that motivate others to cooperate. We show how this "mutual policing" dynamic explains (among other things) the origins, decline, & varieties of belief.

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Alison Fisk @alisonfisk.bsky.social · 09/02/2025

This little bird survived a volcanic eruption! Buried by volcanic ash from Vesuvius in AD 79, this Roman fresco of a little bird pecking at fruit re-emerged looking as delightful as it did some 2,000 years ago! Villa Poppaea, Oplontis, Italy 📷 by me 2023 #Archaeology

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

I'm excited to share that I've just started a new Research Fellow position at the University of Auckland! I'll be working alongside Quentin Atkinson on a project about the connection between religiosity and socially conservative attitudes, so stay tuned for some cool new work!

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Martin Lang @martinlangcz.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Our new Registered Report testing whether secular individuals would be willing to join religious groups when threatened with cooperative insecurity. While this effect was weak in a behavioral test, a self-reported willingness to join was much stronger than anticipated. bit.ly/secularizati...

online.ucpress.edu

Mechanisms of Secularization: Testing Between the Rationalization and Existential Insecurity Theories

The study tests two competing explanations of the secularization process related to rationalizing worldviews and decreasing existential insecurity. While the former explanation argues that people are ...

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Roope Kaaronen @roopekaaronen.net · 04/12/2024

I am delighted to share our latest piece of research: ‘A global cross-cultural analysis of string figures reveals evidence of deep transmission and innovation’. This was long in the works and is by far the largest project I’ve led to date. A thread: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...

A huge phenetic tree visualising our global string figure dataset.

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Associate Professor Siouxsie Wiles @siouxsiew.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

It’s a dark day for research in Aotearoa New Zealand and the ramifications for the country are huge. Minister Judith Collins has just announced our blue-skies funder will no longer fund humanities & social science research and that 50% of what is funded must have economic benefit.

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Vincent Arel-Bundock @vincentab.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

Our JSS article is out! And now I get to focus on {marginaleffects} 1.0.0. Stay tuned. www.jstatsoft.org/article/view...

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Rachel Leah Childers @donskerclass.bsky.social · 01/11/2024

Since I am suddenly inundated with statistics-oriented followers, I should post again that I am still conducting free weekly open office-hours for anyone in the world with Econometrics questions, Wed 10-12AM Eastern or by appointment. Details and sign up at donskerclass.github.io/OfficeHours....

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David Brady @davebrady72.bsky.social · 30/11/2024

Cool paper on “humanity’s perennial tendency to denigrate kids”. Here’s screenshot of abstract:

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Rafe Meager (they/them) @economeager.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against women is a major public health and inequality concern. It's not clear what causes it or how to reduce it. Gaby Deschamps' JMP considers that IPV is positively correlated with motherhood, and asks if we can understand why. www.gabrieladeschamps.com/research

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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

"language transmission may have a local-level sex bias in certain regions of the world, and the effects of ethnographic traits, such as descent and postmarital residence, are inconsistent at a global level" 👀👀👀 www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

pnas.org

Genetic and linguistic comparisons reveal complex sex-biased transmission of language features | PNAS

The history of people’s movements and interactions shapes both genetic and linguistic variation. Genes and languages are transmitted separately and...

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DB Krupp @dbkrupp.bsky.social · 19/10/2024

Have you ever wondered about individual-, group-, and multi-level selection arguments? Packed with strong opinions, vehicles and replicators, the Price equation, and causal graphs, I hope you find some answers in my new paper. Please share widely! ecoevorxiv.org/repository/v...

ecoevorxiv.org

Three Paths Through the Levels of Selection

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

"Ethnographers can... use participant observation to provide evidence of causality" "they can leverage the strengths of ethnographic research... to illuminate causal processes, building upon prior research and complementing rather than replacing other forms of inquiry"

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Guy Lavender Forsyth @guylavenderforsyth.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

May be a bit niche, but I’ve made a starter pack for Vanuatu! Includes people in Vanuatu, who do work related to Vanuatu, and who are interested in Vanuatu and the region There's only a handful of us at the moment but please let me know if you or anyone else should be added! go.bsky.app/u8riwS

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Kevin Lala @kevinlala.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

I'm very happy to see my article "Genes, Culture and Scientific Racism", coauthored with Marc Feldman, published in Proc Natl Acad Sci USA (see rb.gy/x0e4lw). We explain why people wrongly believe race is a biological classification.

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Catherine Sheard @sheardcat.bsky.social · 29/10/2024

Fully-funded PhD position available on the cultural evolution of tea! With me, Sabine Parrish, and David Burslem at the University of Aberdeen (🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿), come combine anthropology and biology to think about why people drink tea and how that may change in the future. www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

findaphd.com

People and tea: past, present, and future at University of Aberdeen on FindAPhD.com

PhD Project - People and tea: past, present, and future at University of Aberdeen , listed on FindAPhD.com

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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 30/10/2024

when he typed in “Pakistan IQ,” rather than getting a typical list of links, Hermansson was presented with Google’s AI Overviews tool, which gave him 80. For “Sierra Leone IQ,” it was 45.07 & 75.2 for “Kenya IQ” these results were directly taken from debunked race sciences published by Richard Lynn

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Jake Holland-Lulewicz @archaeojake.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Press release on our paper in Nature Comms tracking the spread of peaches across Indigenous North America! Through this study we aimed to center Indigenous communities and ecologies in narratives of colonialism as a socioecological process #archaeology #history #ecology www.psu.edu/news/researc...

psu.edu

Peaches spread across North America through Indigenous networks | Penn State University

Indigenous networks played a key role in the spread of peaches across North America, according to a new study led by a researcher at Penn State.

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Mindy Weisberger @laminda.bsky.social · 22/11/2024

Here's a stunner for #FossilFriday, just look at that beetle's preserved wing case! It belongs to a group called frog-legged leaf beetles (so-named for their extra-juicy rear legs), paleontologists called its pattern "the most perfectly preserved pigment-based colouration known in fossil beetles" 🧪

livescience.com

49 million-year-old beetle looks like it was squashed yesterday

Paleontologists named the insect "Attenborough's Beauty," after Sir David Attenborough.

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