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Marc Kissel

@marckissel.bsky.social
2.5K followers 466 following 758 posts

co-creator of 2 amazing daughters, paleoanthropologist, Assistant professor at AppState in Boone, NC!

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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
"Meanwhile, what we need to demand from universities far and wide is clear: Cease to be a place where sexual assault is often subject to less punishment than protesting and plagiarism" www.thecut.com/article/what...
thecut.com
What It Feels Like at Cornell Right Now
As a professor at the Ivy League school, Kate Manne has known many, many victims. There’s a palpable feeling on campus, she writes, that this is big.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Im teaching a class about eugenics this semester (for the record, it is a look at its origins etc and not a methods class....). Since there are so many connections to now times I keep on thinking about chidi's line here:
Chidi from the show the Good Place responding to something Jason said by saying "just editing my syllabus in my head based on that comment."
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Brendan Harley @profharley.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Scientists 🧪 need to meet this moment and help create a healthier future in this country. So I wrote something at @medpagetoday.com "A Bone Marrow Transplant Saved Me in '95—That Wouldn't Be Possible With Today's NIH" www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/seco... cc @gfriedman.bsky.social
medpagetoday.com
Opinion | A Bone Marrow Transplant Saved Me in '95—That Wouldn't Be Possible With Today's NIH
Proposed changes to the agency's budget threaten new cures
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
👀 (I haven't read this yet but am very curious.....)
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
So my dept (anthropology) is on the same floor as Computer Science. CS students were voting on their favorite language & someone gave #rstats a negative vote! but i told my Anthro Data Science students i was appalled by lack of R love it got some more votes so I'm counting that as a win!
an image from a wipe board that has lists of different computer programming languages and tick marks next to each where student's voted on their favorites. in the lead are Python(13),  Java(12?), C (12) & C++ (8). R has 4 votes but someone put a minus next to the tally marks making me wonder if the first vote was a negative one
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Me, teaching my #rstats students how to use ggplot: "So there's a way to make the legend go away. I've only managed to get it on the first try once and it was *very* exciting. Lets see how many tries it takes me today" [Gets it in 1st try. Students seem unimpressed] Me:
static.klipy.com
Maximus: Are You Not Entertained?
Alt: Maximus From gladiator saying "Are You Not Entertained?"
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
when i got to college i wanted to talk more in class and be a different person overall. First weeks a prof asked a question and OMG i knew the answer was "Paradigm Shift." But I mispronounced it and the prof made fun of me. I didn't speak in a class for a very long time after that....
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
1. Remember, we're in the itchy lot 2. Let us never speak of the Short cut again 3. It takes 2 to lie. 1 to lie and 1 to listen 4. First I have to drive your pregnant mother to the hospital and now this? 5. Kids kids kids, as far as Daddy's concerned your both potential murderers.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
One of my favorite classes I'm college was a 2 credit class on science fiction. I knew nothing about sci-fi but the prof was so into the topic that I looked forward to class every time. We read some amazing books and i learned so much on how to appreciate sci-fi!
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
my wife @jennakissel.bsky.social makes our kids watch the Worst Witch every Halloween (she has a reminder set to make sure to request the dvd from the library). And we even have a "Worst Witch Watch Party" in which she invites their friends to come and watch it and bask in Tim Curry's greatness
static.klipy.com
Tim Curry Worst Witch
Alt: Tim Curry in the Worst Witch dressed as the Grand Wizard
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Im Teaching a data science for anthropology class using #rstats. Most never coded before/worked w/ command line interface so I live demoed using one via playing Zork, the text adventure game. They were amused how excited I got when I found the sword :). Plus fun way to intro a CLI environment.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
y'all, my colleague implied that my random facts about Carl Linnaeus i told her this morning were not that interesting and that the students won't like them. So now i plan to bring this up in faculty meeting so i can share even more facts and prove her wrong :)
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
9th year teaching at Appstate!
Homer Simpson rings ned Flanders doorbell. When Flanders answers homer says "can't talk now Flanders. I've got a class to teach."
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
www.nature.com/articles/d41... "We can almost look through the eyes of the Aurignacian people and see how they viewed the environment around them,” says Amy Clark, a palaeolithic archaeologist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts."
nature.com
40,000-year-old bird carvings provide clues to how ice age humans flourished
Newly discovered figurines point to skills that might have helped shape early humans’ expansion across Europe.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
" Our findings suggest shared behaviors between Neanderthals and modern humans that extended beyond subsistence to include nonutilitarian behaviors within the specific geographic and temporal context studied here." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
pnas.org
Long-term cultural continuity across the Neanderthal–modern human sequence at Üçağızlı II Cave, northern Levant | PNAS
We present evidence from Üçağızlı II Cave in the northern Levant, Türkiye, documenting the sequential occupation by Neanderthals (Homo neanderthale...
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Reposted by Marc Kissel
Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
This is so incredibly cruel and gratuitous bsky.app/profile/jayw...
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Reposted by Marc Kissel
Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
The dissenters in Watson would've overturned laws in about 30 states that allow the counting of late-arriving ballots mailed by Election Day, including many from voters who are stationed at military bases overseas. We came one vote away from that catastrophe. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
This is true! Also the actual bit I use is something like "...and then the ice sheets retreated from north America letting people explore the area". But the 14 yr old said I need new material so maybe I should make it about homo naledi (and since maybe the costal migration model works better).
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
So cool to see this research out! Very interesting to think about what it means... www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...
cell.com
Proteomic analysis of dental enamel from 20 Homo naledi individuals shows no male markers
The morphological homogeneity of the middle Pleistocene hominin Homo naledi is reflected in its dental proteome, with no evidence supporting confident identification of male individuals, and the detec...
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 18/06/2026
"There is certainly no better way to turn a vibrant classroom into “Lord of the Flies” faster than to create artificial scarcity of the commodity that our institutions seem to prize more than anything else"
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Are you looking for course materials for the Fall? if so I would love to talk to you about our AI-powered learning platform could help with student retention and engagement
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
Hi! my name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. I’d like to invite you to submit your latest research article to our journal. We are short some mighty works for our latest edited volume that fits well with your research
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
some new book reviews at AJBA! - Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image (reviewed by Jon Marks) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/... - The Botanic Age (Reviewed by Sarah Lacy) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image. By Gowan Dawson, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024. 392 pp. $40 (cloth). ISBN: 978‐0‐30‐027062‐4
Click on the article title to read more.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
"And when I started teaching, I saw how no one in education is ever good enough—not students, not teachers, not staff, not administrators, not instructional designers—and everyone is told they must be better, that they must compete against each other and, more horribly, against themselves."
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anthrofuentes.bsky.social @anthrofuentes.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
Setting the Record Straight on Anthropology @americananthro.bsky.social on the Vanderbilt Report...Yes. And still more to come... americananthro.org/advocacy-sta...
americananthro.org
Setting the Record Straight on Anthropology - American Anthropological Association
The Report on the State of Scholarship in the Humanities and the Humanistic Social Sciences identifies anthropology as the single most extreme case of scholarly deterioration in the humanities and soc...
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
"What's the story Wishbone? What's this you're dreaming of? Such big imagination on such a little pup." www.whatsthestorywishbone.com
whatsthestorywishbone.com
What's The Story, Wishbone? | A Feature Length Documentary
A heartfelt documentary exploring the beloved PBS series that introduced classic literature to an entire generation.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 11/06/2026
"results indicate that Gini coefficients, and thus inequality, declined over time, coinciding with increased prosperity and the development of the city’s street plan, indicating that governance likely helped limit economic inequality."
cambridge.org
Inequality declined in the Bronze Age city of Mohenjo-daro | Antiquity | Cambridge Core
Inequality declined in the Bronze Age city of Mohenjo-daro
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Very cool to see Michael cover our work. Grateful to New Scientist for taking the time to talk about it. I'm pretty sure that reading that magazine as a teenager is one of the things that made me first learn about human evolution etc so i'm amazed to be quoted in those pages :)
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
"This Review integrates evolutionary genetics with molecular mechanisms to clarify why ageing evolves, how it varies across species and individuals, and how these insights can guide healthspan extension."
nature.com
Evolutionary genetics of ageing - Nature Reviews Genetics
Modern humans increasingly live long enough to experience late-life consequences of genetic and molecular systems shaped by natural selection. In this Review, the authors integrate evolutionary geneti...
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Anne Lutz Fernandez @lutzfernandez.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
🧵as I read this piece. My first thought: Teachers and professors have long been sounding alarms about declines in student skills, knowledge, and behavior. But test scores are all political and school leaders attend to. This attention cuts all ways, as I'll come back to. #GiftLink #GiftArticle
nytimes.com
Your School District Is Probably Scoring Worse Than 10 Years Ago
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
interesting study! though sadly after the root canal the neandertal's dental insurance rejected the claim and they had to pay the whole thing out of pocket
npr.org
Neanderthals may have drilled out a cavity 59,000 years ago
Scientists dug up a Paleolithic tooth that shows signs that these hominins may have been capable of executing a precise dental procedure.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
"Late Middle Pleistocene H. erectus may have coexisted with Denisovans in parts of East Asia, where these interactions are presumed to have occurred." www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Enamel proteins from six Homo erectus specimens across China - Nature
Palaeoproteomic analysis of ancient enamel proteins extracted from Middle Pleistocene Homo erectus specimens from the Zhoukoudian, Hexian and Sunjiadong sites in China suggests that they are a ne...
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
Excited to see some of my students graduate today. Super proud of them! Plus my semiannual attempt to remember how to put on the graduation hood (I mean I have a PhD but have to watch a bunch of YouTube videos to figure it out every year ;) ).
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/exc... “Iago says that he has no reason for hating Othello, and it would be wrong of us to impute any racist anti-Moor motivation on his part.”
mcsweeneys.net
Excerpts from Chief Justice John Roberts’ High School English Essays
“Huck shows great disrespect for the Court’s precedent in Dred Scott when aiding the fugitive Jim, presumably due to liberal indoctrination by the Widow Doug...
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
to show why this history is important, here's Davenport writing to Madison Grant (quoted in War Against the Weak) asking "Can we build a wall high enough around this country so as to keep out these cheaper races, or will it be a feeble dam...[leaving our descendants to seek] asylum in New Zealand."
Quote is from Black's War AGainst the Weak. he cites a letter from Davenport to Grant where Davenport writes "Davenport hoped to craft a super race of Nordics. "Can we build a wall high enough around this country," he asked his colleagues, "so as to keep out these cheaper races, or will it be a feeble dam ... leaving it to our descendants to abandon the country to the blacks, browns and yellows and seek and an asylum in New Zealand." "
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Here's a thing abt Davenport's eugenic work. He & Mary Scudder wrote a book called "Naval Officers: their heredity & development" which was a collection of bios, w/ "an account of the achievements & other events in the life of the man." They wanted to know why some are more successful than others
Image of the title page of “Naval Officers: their heredity and development" published in 1919 by the CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Roxie wants everyone to know this is her ball and no one else's. Also timeline cleanse for all the reasons
A dog with black and white fur is lying on a rug with her head held up and looking off towards the left. In between her front legs is a pink ball. The Ball is supposed to used for exercise
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Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
I say it again and again: Because we don’t learn the real history of this country, we do not understand what this country is capable of. After 1870, 22 Black men served in Congress. By 1901, because of racist SCOTUS rulings, electoral coups and election cheating and violence, there were none.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
When I was ~8 my mom made us late to airport and it was so stressful that I still stress about the memory (there was a lot of yelling). Once it was up to me I always got there early and loved having time to read a book for fun or just take a moment and not worry about being late
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
I say this every year:
Homer Simpson notices it is tax day and says "will you look at those morons? I paid my taxes over a year ago"
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Awhile back I meet the brilliant Jenni French & and now been lucky to collab on a project w/ her for the last ~3 yrs. Along with Somaye Khaksar & @anthrofuentes.bsky.social our 1st project paper is out, on origins & development of mobile containers (1/n) 🧪 🧺 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
sciencedirect.com
The origins and development of mobile containers: Biocultural perspectives on Pleistocene containment
Containers are ubiquitous and universal across all present-day societies. The substantial increase in the quantity and diversity of containers in the …
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anthrofuentes.bsky.social @anthrofuentes.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
New Article: “More than “Information in the Head” Culture, Cultural Evolution, and Concepts in Dynamic Assemblage” w/ @gregdowney.bsky.social and Alex Gillett--plus input from a number of commentators-- finally out in Current Anthropology www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/... 1/7
journals.uchicago.edu
More than “Information in the Head” : Culture, Cultural Evolution, and Concepts in Dynamic Assemblages | Current Anthropology
Humans engage the world, not just through organic evolutionary processes but also through innovation, technology, communication, social organization, environmental exploitation and alteration, and dev...
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 08/04/2026
So raw and real
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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career The loss of Brian Donovan’s grants and job speak volumes about federal funding priorities — and academia www.statnews.com/2026/04/07/b...
statnews.com
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
I was just thinking that I didn't get to use this during #2026MMM
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Yay for genetics! #2026MMM
media.tenor.com
a blue background with a cartoon character and the word canal on the bottom right
Alt: a cartoon DNA molecule with eyes appears
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
How I imagine the mmm library team start their meeting #2026MMM
media.tenor.com
a woman is smiling with the words " i am a librarian " next to her
Alt: a woman is smiling and saying " i am a librarian "
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Ok I say this every year but the #2026MMM art team are just amazing. Like the science and art that goes into all of this is astounding and so cool they do this!!!
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anthrofuentes.bsky.social @anthrofuentes.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
My latest @sciencepolitics.bsky.social sciencepolitics.org/2026/03/25/h...
sciencepolitics.org
Humans Are Wonderfully Varied. Scholars Shouldn’t Let the Government Say Otherwise. - Science Politics
Academics have a responsibility to speak up when misrepresented scientific work about race, sex, and gender shapes policy.
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Marc Kissel @marckissel.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
gila monster, probably: #2026MMM
media.tenor.com
a man in a red shirt is crying and saying but i already did something today .
Alt: a man in a red shirt is crying and saying "but i already did something today"
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