Bird account
@dialecticbio.bsky.social
The "The Dialectical Biologist" account.
Structural biology & anti-racism.
Loves: birds, proteins, Linux, Lewontin
Hates: race science, racists, transphobes
Structural biology & anti-racism.
Loves: birds, proteins, Linux, Lewontin
Hates: race science, racists, transphobes
Reposted by Bird account
There are so many fucked up things with the current administration that it's hard to focus on one but this recent move is basically a death sentence for the planet. I've been involved with more boots on the ground actions over the years than I can count and this really bums me out.
EPA reverses long-standing climate change finding, stripping its own ability to regulate emissions
The agency announced it is repealing its 2009 conclusion that greenhouse gases warm the Earth and endanger human health and well-being.
www.nbcnews.com
February 13, 2026 at 6:06 AM
There are so many fucked up things with the current administration that it's hard to focus on one but this recent move is basically a death sentence for the planet. I've been involved with more boots on the ground actions over the years than I can count and this really bums me out.
A story of how science should work: an issue with methodology is picked up in this paper, authors agree they made a mistake and retract: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Meanwhile, many papers using Richard Lynn's fraudulent National IQ data are still unretracted www.statnews.com/2024/06/20/r...
Meanwhile, many papers using Richard Lynn's fraudulent National IQ data are still unretracted www.statnews.com/2024/06/20/r...
February 14, 2026 at 12:03 AM
A story of how science should work: an issue with methodology is picked up in this paper, authors agree they made a mistake and retract: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Meanwhile, many papers using Richard Lynn's fraudulent National IQ data are still unretracted www.statnews.com/2024/06/20/r...
Meanwhile, many papers using Richard Lynn's fraudulent National IQ data are still unretracted www.statnews.com/2024/06/20/r...
More Invisible Cities (my comfort book)
February 8, 2026 at 3:45 AM
More Invisible Cities (my comfort book)
Steven Pinker in 2019: “I was not aware of the charges against Epstein at the time. And no, I was not paid for the letter" www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pete...
Epstein files: [shows Pinker was paid $10,000 for the letter] www.justice.gov/epstein/file...
Epstein files: [shows Pinker was paid $10,000 for the letter] www.justice.gov/epstein/file...
!["Alan [Dershowitz] had us give Dteven Pinker $10,000 for a letter"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ltfn4ycf2afx23cmmlfynfwn/bafkreih3t7dmugjvn5jsvpwb7zniybehpinedwxt56q6qyomlwxgwyqmmy@jpeg)
February 5, 2026 at 6:26 AM
Steven Pinker in 2019: “I was not aware of the charges against Epstein at the time. And no, I was not paid for the letter" www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pete...
Epstein files: [shows Pinker was paid $10,000 for the letter] www.justice.gov/epstein/file...
Epstein files: [shows Pinker was paid $10,000 for the letter] www.justice.gov/epstein/file...
Still processing how so many of the worst happenings of the past 15+ years -- the resurgence of Nazism + race pseudoscience, the anti-feminist culture war bullshit, crypto, the Uber-fication of the economy, etc. -- can all be traced back to Epstein and his rapist pals
February 4, 2026 at 10:54 PM
Still processing how so many of the worst happenings of the past 15+ years -- the resurgence of Nazism + race pseudoscience, the anti-feminist culture war bullshit, crypto, the Uber-fication of the economy, etc. -- can all be traced back to Epstein and his rapist pals
Reposted by Bird account
It's also one of the world's most famous scientists sending up the balloon to his fellow powerful men that a young woman with no institutional affiliation or financial clout dared to speak out about their raping habits. *She* is organising a conspiracy; *he* is merely giving a friend the heads-up.
This email from Dawkins in the latest Epstein documents is a kind of perfect glimpse into the psychology of old boys club: Dawkins whinges about the "nasty young woman", but also has an undercurrent of unease, and seeks reassurance from Brockman that the child sex trafficker wasn't all *that* bad
February 1, 2026 at 1:01 AM
It's also one of the world's most famous scientists sending up the balloon to his fellow powerful men that a young woman with no institutional affiliation or financial clout dared to speak out about their raping habits. *She* is organising a conspiracy; *he* is merely giving a friend the heads-up.
This email from Dawkins in the latest Epstein documents is a kind of perfect glimpse into the psychology of old boys club: Dawkins whinges about the "nasty young woman", but also has an undercurrent of unease, and seeks reassurance from Brockman that the child sex trafficker wasn't all *that* bad
January 31, 2026 at 11:55 PM
This email from Dawkins in the latest Epstein documents is a kind of perfect glimpse into the psychology of old boys club: Dawkins whinges about the "nasty young woman", but also has an undercurrent of unease, and seeks reassurance from Brockman that the child sex trafficker wasn't all *that* bad
Now the right-wing metabolic response on Alex Pretti's murder is that he retroactively deserved it because he was on camera behaving *unruly* towards ICE a few days prior. Apparently kicking the tail light of the death-squad vehicle warrants an execution. These ghouls...
No surprise, but seems the right-wing has already metabolised the murder of a man by secret police for excercising his constitutional rights. "Well, he shouldn't have been out there with a gun, i-it's dangerous". They act the based tough guys, but their one ultimate value is subservience to The Boot
January 29, 2026 at 2:13 AM
Now the right-wing metabolic response on Alex Pretti's murder is that he retroactively deserved it because he was on camera behaving *unruly* towards ICE a few days prior. Apparently kicking the tail light of the death-squad vehicle warrants an execution. These ghouls...
No surprise, but seems the right-wing has already metabolised the murder of a man by secret police for excercising his constitutional rights. "Well, he shouldn't have been out there with a gun, i-it's dangerous". They act the based tough guys, but their one ultimate value is subservience to The Boot
January 26, 2026 at 10:38 AM
No surprise, but seems the right-wing has already metabolised the murder of a man by secret police for excercising his constitutional rights. "Well, he shouldn't have been out there with a gun, i-it's dangerous". They act the based tough guys, but their one ultimate value is subservience to The Boot
Can't help but keep thinking that if this is what ICE feels emboldened to do in broad daylight--straight up murder--what the fuck are they getting away with behind closed doors in the concentration camps they have set up? It's going to take years to uncover the full damage they've inflicted
January 25, 2026 at 11:14 PM
Can't help but keep thinking that if this is what ICE feels emboldened to do in broad daylight--straight up murder--what the fuck are they getting away with behind closed doors in the concentration camps they have set up? It's going to take years to uncover the full damage they've inflicted
Man, writing is so hard. You're constantly confronted with your own limits, all the papers you have not read, all the terminology and facts you keep forgetting, etc. No wonder people turn to alcohol or worse (generative AI) when writing.
January 6, 2026 at 6:41 AM
Man, writing is so hard. You're constantly confronted with your own limits, all the papers you have not read, all the terminology and facts you keep forgetting, etc. No wonder people turn to alcohol or worse (generative AI) when writing.
Still crazy to me that the richest man in the world is a straight up white supremacist and constantly trying to incite a "race war". Seems like we really need to do something about that if we want to survive the next decade
January 3, 2026 at 2:32 AM
Still crazy to me that the richest man in the world is a straight up white supremacist and constantly trying to incite a "race war". Seems like we really need to do something about that if we want to survive the next decade
A movie that came out in 2025 that deserves way more love is "Mountainhead". Extremely funny satire of tech billionaires and AI zealots.
January 1, 2026 at 1:55 AM
A movie that came out in 2025 that deserves way more love is "Mountainhead". Extremely funny satire of tech billionaires and AI zealots.
I'm currently giving this a hate-listen, because why not: Bret Weinstein on the Joe Rogan podcast for the 2000th time. In it, Bret will apparently finally reveal to us his groundbreaking new theory for evolution
youtu.be/WX_te6X-0aQ?...
youtu.be/WX_te6X-0aQ?...
Joe Rogan Experience #2427 - Bret Weinstein
YouTube video by PowerfulJRE
youtu.be
December 18, 2025 at 5:31 AM
I'm currently giving this a hate-listen, because why not: Bret Weinstein on the Joe Rogan podcast for the 2000th time. In it, Bret will apparently finally reveal to us his groundbreaking new theory for evolution
youtu.be/WX_te6X-0aQ?...
youtu.be/WX_te6X-0aQ?...
A part of me was naively hopeful that, with the erosion of science in the USA, other countries/governments would increase science funding in a race to become new tech leaders (looking at you Australia). Of course, that was a pipe dream.
December 7, 2025 at 9:19 PM
A part of me was naively hopeful that, with the erosion of science in the USA, other countries/governments would increase science funding in a race to become new tech leaders (looking at you Australia). Of course, that was a pipe dream.
Reposted by Bird account
I'm increasingly interested in race science as a form of cultivated, weaponized statistical illiteracy. Take this figure, one of the most common propaganda plots, plotting national IQ data against education polygenic scores. "The correlation is so high! Clearly IQ differences are genetic!"
Oops!
Oops!
November 28, 2025 at 11:31 PM
I'm increasingly interested in race science as a form of cultivated, weaponized statistical illiteracy. Take this figure, one of the most common propaganda plots, plotting national IQ data against education polygenic scores. "The correlation is so high! Clearly IQ differences are genetic!"
Oops!
Oops!
Reposted by Bird account
I talked a bit with Jason about Grokipedia and it is, without exaggeration, like if you trained an LLM solely on white supremacist blogs and had it try to write Wikipedia entries. Some of the most insane stuff I’ve seen on the internet
Hard to find a clearer distillation of the gen ai project.
White nationalist talking points and racial pseudoscience: welcome to Elon Musk’s Grokipedia
World’s richest person wanted to ‘purge’ propaganda from Wikipedia, so he created a compendium of racist disinformation
www.theguardian.com
November 17, 2025 at 7:08 PM
I talked a bit with Jason about Grokipedia and it is, without exaggeration, like if you trained an LLM solely on white supremacist blogs and had it try to write Wikipedia entries. Some of the most insane stuff I’ve seen on the internet
????????
November 17, 2025 at 10:05 PM
????????
Elsevier's Intelligence has "gone woke". Never thought I'd see the day
Today is the day! Our reply to the two concurrent critiques (from the same set of authors) is now published in the journal Intelligence 🧵 1/
November 12, 2025 at 9:45 PM
Elsevier's Intelligence has "gone woke". Never thought I'd see the day
What the fuck are we doing, people? I'll skip the part where I talk about the pitfalls of polygenic scores, because it really doesn't matter.
First: you don't get to say "we are not stigmatising people with these conditions" and then have a debate about how these conditions made Hitler into Hitler
First: you don't get to say "we are not stigmatising people with these conditions" and then have a debate about how these conditions made Hitler into Hitler
November 12, 2025 at 8:42 PM
What the fuck are we doing, people? I'll skip the part where I talk about the pitfalls of polygenic scores, because it really doesn't matter.
First: you don't get to say "we are not stigmatising people with these conditions" and then have a debate about how these conditions made Hitler into Hitler
First: you don't get to say "we are not stigmatising people with these conditions" and then have a debate about how these conditions made Hitler into Hitler
Love your work Nathaniel, but saying that Watson believed in and promoted racial pseudoscience, but also that he personally didn't have hatred in his heart for Black people, is a meaningless qualifier. That's just describing how racism operates
November 9, 2025 at 12:08 AM
Love your work Nathaniel, but saying that Watson believed in and promoted racial pseudoscience, but also that he personally didn't have hatred in his heart for Black people, is a meaningless qualifier. That's just describing how racism operates
What a fantastic obit of Watson. Unfortunately, his life story is a common trope: guy who thinks he's hot shit experiences failure for the first time, and instead of learning from that, goes full bigot and gets really into The Bell Curve.
![One formative influence was Watson’s making his one and only important scientific discovery when he was only 25. His next act flopped. Although “Watson’s [Harvard] lab was clearly the most exciting place in the world in molecular biology,” geneticist Richard Burgess, one of Watson’s graduate students, told the oral history, he discovered nothing afterward, even as colleagues were cracking the genetic code or deciphering how DNA is translated into the molecules that make cells (and life) work.
‘I really don’t know what happened to Jim’: Friends ask where James Watson’s odious attitudes about race came from
“He fell flat on his nose on all these problems,” Harvard’s Ernst Mayr (1904-2005), the eminent evolutionary biologist, told the oral history. “So except for this luck he had with the double helix, he was a total failure!” (Mayr acknowledged the exaggeration.) By the 1990s, even Watson’s accomplishments at Harvard and CSHL were ancient history.
Watson nevertheless viewed himself “as the greatest scientist since Newton or Darwin,” a longtime colleague at CSHL told STAT in 2018.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:ltfn4ycf2afx23cmmlfynfwn/bafkreigcwyxfsyzsmjgh2hvl2ke44gi77bsmwwqrqdfo3uiarchkbet6s4@jpeg)
November 8, 2025 at 10:51 PM
What a fantastic obit of Watson. Unfortunately, his life story is a common trope: guy who thinks he's hot shit experiences failure for the first time, and instead of learning from that, goes full bigot and gets really into The Bell Curve.
Yes but you see the racists thought about this and came up with a brilliant answer, which is that Northern European populations experienced cold winters which put enormous selection pressure on high IQ alleles because uhhh, they had to plan ahead. No other populations had needed to plan ahead before
"there has been constant gene flow between populations for essentially the entire history of the human race, we passed through a genetic bottleneck only a few thousand couples wide, intelligence is our key adaptive trait, and the most genetically diverse population of humans on earth is all dumb."
apropos james watson’s death i had an idle thought today about how stupid race/iq stuff sounds. “buh if your skin is darker you are biologically less smart” is a thing only a dumbass can believe
November 8, 2025 at 6:40 AM
Yes but you see the racists thought about this and came up with a brilliant answer, which is that Northern European populations experienced cold winters which put enormous selection pressure on high IQ alleles because uhhh, they had to plan ahead. No other populations had needed to plan ahead before
So James Watson died, and it's interesting observing the Nazis eulogise and lionize him. There's the standard stuff about his racism and sexism and "cancellation" making him a hero. Then there's the labelling of Watson as a "genius". Genius? Haha
November 7, 2025 at 9:54 PM
So James Watson died, and it's interesting observing the Nazis eulogise and lionize him. There's the standard stuff about his racism and sexism and "cancellation" making him a hero. Then there's the labelling of Watson as a "genius". Genius? Haha
Reposted by Bird account
We're excited to share the final version of our paper, where we demonstrate how confounding remains a thorny problem for claims about causal genetic influences on human behavioral and socioeconomic outcomes. (w/ @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social) 🧵👇
November 7, 2025 at 7:06 PM
We're excited to share the final version of our paper, where we demonstrate how confounding remains a thorny problem for claims about causal genetic influences on human behavioral and socioeconomic outcomes. (w/ @jedidiahcarlson.com @oliviarxiv.bsky.social Ruth Shaw @arbelharpak.bsky.social) 🧵👇