Huge congratulations to @alexeykoshevoy.bsky.social l who defended his PhD thesis today!! with his co-supervisor @sblldtrch.bsky.social and jury members @simonkirby.bsky.social @gboleda.bsky.social Paula Rubio Fernandez & Benjamin Spector.

also with @kakapitan.bsky.social @sobchuk.bsky.social @artjomshl.bsky.social @hugoreasoning.bsky.social & many others

We're officially launching the new PSL CultureLab in 10 days !
If you're interested in the research of a collective bridging Computational Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Evolution, you can check our programme (and come to our event, if you're in Paris 22 September):
psl.eu/agenda/collo...

Amazing Oleg!

Perfect.

🚨🚨 New preprint 📜 with Mathieu Charbonneau (@matcharbonneau.bsky.social‬): Modelling the emergence of open-ended technological evolution (arxiv.org/abs/2508.04828). Feedback welcomed! #Evolution #Technology #Culture #OpenEnded #TechnologicalEvolution #CulturalEvolution 🧵: 1/29

I'd join the class action if I were US-based.

From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?

Adding AI watermark to latest paper...

We just played Hitster at a family gathering and it was a perfect example of what they found. Teams compete to guess when hit songs came out. Even though this was my extended family and we don't meet often, teams needed only two rounds before deciding whose hunches commanded respect.

one of my favorite science stories got debunked...

We often have to judge who is knowledgeable—precisely when we are not. Can humans really do that? Our new paper in Psychological Science shows that, surprisingly, we can. drive.google.com/file/d/1b15E...

Philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has died.

PUBLICATION I 🐻 Les ours en peluche ont-ils évolué culturellement pour devenir plus mignons ? Un projet étudiant @psl-univ.bsky.social @normalesup.bsky.social explore l'impact de la perception de la mignonnerie sur l'évolution des artefacts culturels et débouche sur une publication 👉 bit.ly/3YUZnw5

My therapist: Don’t worry, Merovingian cursive is not real, it can’t hurt you

Merovingian cursive:

How are humans able to make sense of time? Not with special biology but with “time tools”—ideas, practices, and artifacts that render time more concrete.

My new paper explores this vast, varied toolkit—one that makes use of knots, nuts, hands, flowers, mountains, shadows, and much more.

(link 👇)

$500 million is… less than 1.25% of the NIH’s 2024 budget.

When I say there is no capacity to absorb the shock, I mean it.

"Literary Fiction Indicates Early Modernization in
China Prior to Western Influence"
sociologicalscience.com/download/vol...

A harrowing tale

"What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at midday, and three feet in the evening?"

This riddle is thousands of years old, but why does it stick with us?

In our new paper, we argue that the feeling of insight might explain the lasting success of some cultural products: tinyurl.com/4j756h9a

Sick of being taken advantage of by OTHER PACKAGES?!

Use python package {tariff} to show those packages WHO IS BOSS.

Make Reinventing The Wheel Great Again!

pypi.org/project/tari...

15 positions in AI at Paris Sciences et Lettres, computational social science and ethics very much included. I believe these are four-year "fellow" positions requiring some teaching during that term. #MLSky recrutement.psl.eu/en/pnp8wd2rbs

🚨New in @science.org🚨
With Simon Townsend (@nccrlanguage.bsky.social) and Martin Surbeck, we have investigated whether wild bonobos can combine calls in complex combinations, similar to how humans combine words into sentences 🧪
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

#ScienceResearch #AnimalCommunication

On the subject of, you know, all *this* I came across a poem about the end of the world crammed into the flyleaf of a 10th century manuscript. Wanna hear it?

Of course you do. Buckle up.

Listen, earth. Listen, edge of the great sea.