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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Enrico R. Crema @ercrema.bsky.social · 5d

⚠️Paper Alert!⚠️
Excited to share this paper with @roccoro.bsky.social where we examined whether ceramic technology in Saharan Africa was the result of a single or multiple episodes of innovation & diffusion
rdcu.be/eJi3g

Bayesian analyses of radiocarbon dates suggest multiple origins of ceramic technology in Early Holocene Africa

Nature Communications - Several possible points of origin have been proposed for the spread of ceramic technology in Saharan Africa between 11–10,000 years ago. Here, the authors...

rdcu.be

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · 1d

Y'all these titles are getting out of control 😅

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

ESLR @eslr.bsky.social · Aug 18

ESLR is currently undergoing a transition, and a new committee (@alexschakowski.bsky.social, @ahnisnaahsi.bsky.social, @katebonner.bsky.social, @lucahahn.bsky.social, @mariapykala.bsky.social) is working on reinstating its presence and shaping its future. Please feel free to get in touch!

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Alejandro Pérez Velilla @apvelilla.bsky.social · Jan 29

My first PhD project is out there. Thank you to my advisor @psmaldino.bsky.social and to mentor, co-author and friend @babeheim.bsky.social for encouraging and helping build this exciting and insightful collaboration. Onwards!

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · Jan 28

The Development of Risk Attitudes and their Cultural Transmission

New preprint w/ Alejandro Pérez Velilla & @babeheim.bsky.social. This is one of the best modeling papers I have ever been involved in, tackling developmental, cultural, and class differences in risk attitudes.
osf.io/preprints/so...

The Development of Risk Attitudes and their Cultural
Transmission. We use cultural evolutionary models to examine how individual experiences and culturally-inherited information jointly shape risk attitudes under environmental uncertainty. We find
that learning processes not only generate plausible variation in risk attitudes, but also that conservative learning strategies—emphasizing the preservation of generational knowledge—excel in high-risk environments, promoting stable wealth accumulation and long-term survival but limiting asset growth as conditions improve. In contrast, exploratory learning strategies—leveraging risk-free juvenile exploration and peer influence—foster risk-tolerant attitudes that thrive in affluent, low-risk settings where wealth buffers and social safety nets reduce the costs of miscalculations. Introducing economic stratification to the model reveals how wealth disparities and
inter-class interactions reinforce these patterns, exacerbating differences in learning strategies and risk-taking behaviors, and perpetuating socioeconomic inequalities through the cultural inertia of excessive risk aversion. By uniting developmental, social, and evolutionary perspectives,
our framework provides a novel lens on the cultural evolution of risk attitudes and their broader
societal implications.

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Andy Radford @andyradford.bsky.social · 10d

Fancy joining us?
Check out this excellent @royalsociety.org Career Development Fellowship:
royalsociety.org/grants/caree...
If you're eligible & are interested in social behaviour, vocal communication or anthropogenic impacts on wildlife, feel free to DM or email me.
@bristolbiosci.bsky.social

Career Development Fellowship | Royal Society

This scheme provides the most talented early career scientists from underrepresented groups in STEM with research funding and high-quality training opportunities to build a strong base for a successfu...

royalsociety.org

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Drug Monkey @drugmonkey.bsky.social · 13d

This may be the most important paper ever published about NIH funded research.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

What if NIH had been 40% smaller?

Replaying history with less NIH funding shows widespread impacts on drug-linked research

www.science.org

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · 12d

Congrats @alexeykoshevoy.bsky.social!!!

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Elizabeth Hobson @elizabethhobson.bsky.social · 15d

**PhD POSITIONS** I am recruiting 1-2 PhD students to work on sociality and cognition in Monk Parakeets, starting Fall 2026. Full ad is here: hobsonresearch.com/index.php/20... (please help spread the word!)

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · 18d

Tomorrow!

Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Aug 25

Performing "Alaka'i 1777" at Index Space (NYC) on 9/21 for TechnoMirage—a creative gathering exploring AI and speculative futures. Come hear extinct birdsongs in immersive spatial audio! 🦜 lu.ma/xda8t4h1

TechnoMirage · Luma

Join us for Reclaim, Reimagine, Rewire, a 3-part journey that pierces through the illusion of creative progress projected by AI. TechnoMirage is a half-day…

lu.ma

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Bret Beheim @babeheim.bsky.social · 22d

How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!

400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!

Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Cultural Evolution Society @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social · 25d

The count down starts for #CESRabat! Follow @ces2026.bsky.social and join us May 11-13 next year for an exciting meeting in Rabat, Morocco.

Massive thanks to the #CESRabat organising committee:
Sarah Alami (co-chair)
Mathieu Charbonneau (co-chair)
Zachary Garfield
Edmond Seabright

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Sep 5

Keep yours eyes out for some incredible work from @sobchuk.bsky.social in the coming years 🥳

Oleg Sobchuk 🇺🇦 @sobchuk.bsky.social · Sep 4

Great news from the @erc.europa.eu today: I received an ERC Starting Grant to study the cultural evolution of literature 🔥

www.eva.mpg.de/press/news/a...

Charting the evolution of European literature

Oleg Sobchuk has received an ERC Starting Grant to study 200 years of European literary evolution

www.eva.mpg.de

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Aug 25

Performing "Alaka'i 1777" at Index Space (NYC) on 9/21 for TechnoMirage—a creative gathering exploring AI and speculative futures. Come hear extinct birdsongs in immersive spatial audio! 🦜 lu.ma/xda8t4h1

TechnoMirage · Luma

Join us for Reclaim, Reimagine, Rewire, a 3-part journey that pierces through the illusion of creative progress projected by AI. TechnoMirage is a half-day…

lu.ma

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Paul Smaldino @psmaldino.bsky.social · May 9

As grant money starts drying up, it's more important than ever not to waste it on paying publishers' open access "article processing fees" when we can host PDFs for free. Tom Morgan and I wrote a paper on this, forthcoming at Science and Public Policy. Accepted draft here: osf.io/preprints/os...

Author-Paid PublicationFees Corrupt Science and Should Be Abandoned
Thomas J. H Morgan & Paul E. Smaldino

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Tim Waring @twaring.bsky.social · Aug 21

🧠 Want to integrate cultural evolution into your course using award winning materials created by the field's experts, and get paid $2000 to do it? 💵

🚨 The Cultural Evolution Society is seeking applications for the ACE Teaching Innovation Awards.

🔖 Apply here: vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Qualtrics Survey | Qualtrics Experience Management

The most powerful, simple and trusted way to gather experience data. Start your journey to experience management and try a free account today.

vuw.qualtrics.com

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Kevin Lala @kevinlala.bsky.social · Aug 13

I'm pleased to share this new article by @svenkasser.bsky.social, Laura Fortunato @anthrolog.bsky.social, Marc Feldman and myself.

The article extends gene-culture coevolution to recognize evolutionary effects of culture arising through drift and migration.

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Cultural Evolution Society @culturalevolsoc.bsky.social · Aug 8

We are pleased to announce our newly elected committee members of the Cultural Evolution Society:

Minhua Yan @minhuayan.bsky.social
Helena Miton @helenamiton.bsky.social
Wataru Toyokawa @watarutoyokawa.bsky.social &
Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social

Welcome and congratulations!!

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Aug 8

Such a pleasure to be the first guest on the new bioacoustics podcast Wild Resonance! 🦜🐳

youtu.be/1gEI7Ihibac?...

Wild Resonance ep. 1: Animal Syntax in the Trees and Seas - a Conversation with Dr. Mason Youngblood

YouTube video by Wild Resonance

youtu.be

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Jul 31

I totally understand, and thanks for the apology. Always down to chat about this stuff—I know there's a lot to debate about these patterns in other species (and how meaningful they actually are in general). All the best to you as well!

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Jul 31

Do I see that the data for hybrids, which has a minor role in the paper and the smallest N, is v noisy? 100%, I have eyes. But a trend line is only a coarse summary, especially when accounting for other sources of variation. More in the paper if you decide to check your ego and stop projecting. 🙂

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Jul 31

Wow okay. Sorry I thought I was dealing with an adult. Maybe you should read the paper before making aggressive critiques... That line of best fit comes from a model explicitly based on the mathematical formulation of Menzerath's law, accounting for individual identity and sequence ID...

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Jul 31

What is your specific critique? I don't see any red flags with the plots, especially given the output of the models.

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

Garance Barbier @garant-b.bsky.social · Jul 9

Our latest study on ant acoustic communication originated from a project about soil health monitoring. A picture being worth a thousand words, I will let my abstract explain it all!
Here's the paper in #OpenAccess: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
#acoustics #animalbehaviour #entomology

The drawing of an ant mound, titled "Soil secret surfaces: new communication method in an ant species?" with ants making various sounds. The sounds are labelled: "walking sound", "biting sound", "cleaning sound".
One ant is producing a sound with a repeated pattern, and the label reads "unexpected sound". A text is under the representation of that sound, it reads: "Ants seem to react to it. Are they rubbing body parts to produce it?".
Questions are at the bottom of the drawing: "Want to know how we recorded? What the sound could means? Full link to the study below!". There is also in the corner a QR code leading to the article mentioned.

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Reposted by Mason Youngblood

animal prattle @animal-prattle.bsky.social · Jul 31

How much does it cost to caw?

@wascherclaudia.bsky.social @masonyoungblood.bsky.social report that in 3 crow species, there is a strong negative relation b/t call sequence length & call duration --> they obey Menzerath's law of efficiency

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#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics

Claudia Wascher @wascherclaudia.bsky.social · Jul 31

New paper with @masonyoungblood.bsky.social: crows follow Menzerath’s law showing vocal efficiency in their communication. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Vocal efficiency in crows - Animal Cognition

Many communicative systems have been selected for efficiency, shaped by the trade-off between information transmission and energetic or temporal constraints. Linguistic laws such as Menzerath’s law—pr...

link.springer.com

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Mason Youngblood @masonyoungblood.bsky.social · Jul 31

Crow vocalizations show Menzerath’s law (indicator of efficiency), with some interesting age and sex differences! 🐦‍⬛

Claudia Wascher @wascherclaudia.bsky.social · Jul 31

New paper with @masonyoungblood.bsky.social: crows follow Menzerath’s law showing vocal efficiency in their communication. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Vocal efficiency in crows - Animal Cognition

Many communicative systems have been selected for efficiency, shaped by the trade-off between information transmission and energetic or temporal constraints. Linguistic laws such as Menzerath’s law—pr...

link.springer.com

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