Adam Van Arsdale
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apv2600.bsky.social
Adam Van Arsdale
@apv2600.bsky.social
Biological anthropologist (Pleistocene human evolution), Professor @Wellesley College, dad, outdoor-lover, sport enthusiast
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
My family has been without half our income for 40 days. It has been.. very hard.

We are willing to feel that pain so people can have health care next year, or to undo these illegal recissions.

We are not willing to have been put through this for NOTHING.
November 10, 2025 at 1:36 AM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
In case anyone is wondering if Watson was really THAT bad, @lpachter.bsky.social compiled a list of quotes that are absolutely not for the faint of heart.
liorpachter.wordpress.com/2018/05/18/j...
November 7, 2025 at 10:18 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
A charming essay by the former chair of Africana studies at Bowdoin College about the New York Times crafting elitist propaganda.
Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani
It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…
lithub.com
November 8, 2025 at 5:56 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
Here’s the direct link to my introduction chapter to ‘Long COVID and Society’, open access and free to read for all, either directly online or downloaded as a PDF

link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...
The Social Aspects and Impacts of Long COVID
This chapter provides a substantial introduction to the book, giving an overview of the social, cultural and political aspects and impacts of Long COVID. Drawing on perspectives and theories from heal...
link.springer.com
November 7, 2025 at 9:16 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
HE'S APPEALING TO THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES THAT HE BE ALLOWED TO STARVE AMERICANS
#BREAKING: The Trump administration is asking #SCOTUS for an immediate “administrative” stay of a Rhode Island district judge’s order that is otherwise requiring it to resume the distribution of SNAP benefits from other funding sources no later than the end of today.
November 7, 2025 at 11:50 PM
Thread
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis just took the bench. She's expected to rule on a request for a preliminary injunction governing the use of force by federal agents in Chicago.
Good morning. Back in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis, who is expected to rule in 20 minutes on the use of force by federal agents against protesters and journalists in Chicago.
November 6, 2025 at 5:27 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
Our position statement rejecting the use of GenAI for reflexive qualitative research can be found here

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
<span>We reject the use of generative artificial intelligence for reflexive qualitative research</span>
We write as 416 experienced qualitative researchers from 38 countries, to reject the use of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) applications for Big Q Qu
papers.ssrn.com
November 4, 2025 at 8:18 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
My lab at Indiana University is searching for a *postdoc* and *technician* to contribute to our work studying the evolution of social behavior using fruit flies as a model system. Details below, feel free to email me with any questions! More info on our research: saltzlab.com
November 5, 2025 at 4:56 PM
New techniques for old bones: Morphometric and diffeomorphometric analysis of the bony labyrinth of the Reilingen and Ehringsdorf Neandertals anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
New techniques for old bones: Morphometric and diffeomorphometric analysis of the bony labyrinth of the Reilingen and Ehringsdorf Neandertals
Neandertals are known to possess very distinctive traits in their bony labyrinth morphology, such as an inferiorly positioned posterior canal and a very low number of turns in the cochlea. Hence, the...
anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com
November 5, 2025 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
We’re excited to announce that we are partnering with the American Council of Learned Societies to host a graduate student intern this summer, to help edit our news coverage of the changing landscape of religion in America
ACLS Graduate Internships on the Spiritual Infrastructure of the Future
The ACLS Graduate Internships on the Spiritual Infrastructure of the Future program provides summer work opportunities for PhD students to address practical problems and explore potential future…
buff.ly
November 5, 2025 at 1:07 AM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
The Biden administration worked hard to accomplish this new free IRS filing system. It’s astounding that one should have to pay fees in order to pay their taxes. But this rent seeking is entirely consistent with the economic policies of the current administration that benefit the most wealthy.
👀 Scoop: IRS Direct File, the free government-backed program that let you file your taxes for free, is dead.

IRS wrote to state tax agencies saying it would not be operational this coming tax season, per records I've obtained.

IRS Direct File: 2023-2025.

(Story from when the pilot launched.)
IRS tests free e-filing system that could compete with tax-prep giants
The tax agency has quietly built its own prototype system for filing tax returns digitally and free of charge, according to current and former officials.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 4, 2025 at 10:50 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
Two #Postdoc opportunities in the Pontzer Lab at Duke
-Human Ecology, Energetics, and Climate
-Population Ecology Aging, and Health Network (PECAHN

Check it out and spread the word!
academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/30783
Duke University, Evolutionary Anthropology
Job #AJO30783, Postdoctoral Associate, Evolutionary Anthropology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, US
academicjobsonline.org
November 4, 2025 at 10:23 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
I would rather live next door to someone who speaks another language than live next door to someone who doesn’t want to live near people who speak other languages. I know nothing about Person A but I know person B is a shitbird.
Vance says it is "totally reasonable and acceptable" for people to not want to live next door to people who speak a different language than they do
October 29, 2025 at 5:01 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
everything I'm seeing about this is apocalyptic. is anyone on here fundraising around this already / know the best Jamaican orgs to support atm?

abcnews.go.com/Internationa...
Hurricane Melissa live updates: Jamaica braces for its worst storm in history
Hurricane Melissa, now a powerful Category 5 storm, is set to be Jamaica's worst storm in history.
abcnews.go.com
October 27, 2025 at 5:28 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
One day you're grad school roommates in the dankest apt in Ann Arbor; 20 years later you write a paper together. To friendship and scholarship -

On populations & our poor operationalization of the concept w/
@apv2600.bsky.social

onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy1.lib.asu.edu/doi/10.1002/...
October 23, 2025 at 5:18 PM
Excited to finally have this article out with @robingnelson.blacksky.app. Although we have nominally centered populations as our unit of evolutionary analysis in biological anthropology, we have no coherent understanding of what a population is. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....
The Population Problem: Biological Anthropology and the Many Definitions of a Population
Objectives With a focus on variability, biological anthropology has nominally centered the population as a key unit of analysis and node of evolutionary change. In this paper, we examine constructio...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 23, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
Wow. Harvard nuking its PhD programs

- Science PhD admissions reduced by more than 75%
- Arts & Humanities reduced by about 60%
- Social Sciences by 50–70%
- History by 60%
- Biology by 75%
- The German department will lose all PhD seats
- Sociology from six PhD students to zero
Harvard FAS Cuts Ph.D. Seats By More Than Half Across Next Two Admissions Cycles | News | The Harvard Crimson
The Faculty of Arts and Sciences slashed the number of Ph.D. student admissions slots for the Science division by more than 75 percent and for the Arts & Humanities division by about 60 percent for th...
www.thecrimson.com
October 21, 2025 at 5:11 PM
Atlantic Crossings: Biosocial Interventions in African Diasporic Bioarchaeological Thought and Practice onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Evaluating the Evolvability of Paranthropus Cranial Morphology in Relation to Feeding Biomechanics onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...
onlinelibrary.wiley.com
October 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
Nuevo e importante Paranthropus boisei KNM-ER 101000: compartía adaptaciones manipulativas y bípedas con Homo, y su mano se parece a gorila para procesamiento de alimento y agarre poderoso para escalar.
New fossils reveal the hand of Paranthropus boisei www.nature.com/articles/s41...
October 16, 2025 at 12:43 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
National Fossil Day (and World Anatomy Day) seems opportune timing to drop a couple of coauthored papers with great collaborators. Here's #2 for the day, this one led by colleague Cody Prang of Wash U. Ardipithecus is of critical importance for reconstructing the ancestral condition for hominins. 🏺🧪
Ardipithecus ramidus ankle provides evidence for African ape-like vertical climbing in the earliest hominins - Communications Biology
Morphometric analyses of ankle bones provide evidence that humans evolved from an ancestor with vertical climbing adaptations like those of chimpanzees and gorillas.
www.nature.com
October 15, 2025 at 6:49 PM
Reposted by Adam Van Arsdale
We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT
October 15, 2025 at 3:53 PM