Michelle Vigeant Taupier
michellevt.bsky.social
Michelle Vigeant Taupier
@michellevt.bsky.social
Linguaphile, economic and policy history, and math/science enthusiast — too many interesting things in the world.🗺️
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
Most discussions about “misinformation” treat the problem as if people simply don’t have good enough critical-thinking skills. It sounds intuitive, but it’s not entirely accurate. The problem isn’t just individual ignorance, it’s the structure of the information environment people are placed into.
December 7, 2025 at 2:14 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
Huge congratulations to Donna Haraway, author of "Staying with the Trouble," who has won the 2025 Erasmus Prize, given by the Praemium Erasmianum Foundation!
Erasmusprijswinnaars - Praemium Erasmianum Foundation
The Praemium Erasmianum Foundation has awarded the Erasmus Prize 2025 to the American philosopher and historian of science Donna Haraway. The theme of this year’s prize is “the pursuit of what binds…
buff.ly
December 3, 2025 at 1:02 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
I’m happy to share a short opinion piece I’ve just finished, where I revisit the famous Skinner vs. Chomsky exchange on how language is learned through the lens of today’s large language models (before getting mad read the rest) 1/n
osf.io/preprints/ps...
December 3, 2025 at 10:22 AM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
Great culture can save lives. Literally.

Amazing letter in today’s @thetimes.com about Tom Stoppard
December 2, 2025 at 8:48 AM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
Now that we're no longer on X, we could really do with some help sharing our podcast! As we're getting into the #Christmas spirit, anyone (in the UK) who reposts our 'Santa PLC.' episode over the next 24hrs (see below) will be entered into a prize draw to win one of our fabulous books! #EconSky
December 1, 2025 at 9:58 AM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
Here are King Tut's trumpet's being played after 3300 years (recording from 100 years ago). Spine chilling.
youtu.be/HO3P5jkQmgU?...
Tutankhamun's Trumpets played after 3000+ Years
YouTube video by zvrk2010
youtu.be
November 29, 2025 at 11:15 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
And read this, which inspired my essay.
November 26, 2025 at 10:06 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
This! I endorse It all - from the historical perspective to the wide angle view illuminating the big gaps in the field. If you’re feeling up to it, take a few steps back for a good dose of humility but also inspiration.
Another of Charlie Gross’s passions was history of neuroscience. He wrote excellent books. This gave him a wide-angle view. He taught us that dogma exists to be challenged, we haven’t figured things out, and being a stepping stone is inevitable and perfectly fine.
direct.mit.edu/books/book/2...
Brain, Vision, Memory: Tales in the History of Neuroscience
In these engaging tales describing the growth of knowledge about the brain—from the early Egyptians and Greeks to the Dark Ages and the Renaissance to the
direct.mit.edu
November 26, 2025 at 9:41 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
New on Language-on-the-Move: the native speaker is dead and everything but, even so, there is such a thing as native listening and explicit instruction matters in language learning, as Andrea Pešková explains
www.languageonthemove.com/native-liste...
Native listening and learning new sounds
I hear what you don’t hear Have you ever listened to a language you don’t know and thought you recognized a word—only to realize later that you were completely mistaken? Our ears play tricks on us.…
www.languageonthemove.com
November 4, 2025 at 1:59 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
I’m kinda sad that my Lower Silesian posts are low traction here on bluesky, so my new thread is all about making faces.
Faces of Lower Silesia.
March 27, 2025 at 7:25 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
On this day in 1933, Amartya Sen was born. The Nobel Prize winning economist wrote the classic 'Development as Freedom' & helped create the Human Development Index. Have a listen to our podcast to discover why his ideas are still so influential today. #EconSky podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/s...
Season 4 Episode 3 - Amartya Sen
Podcast Episode · Economics In Ten · 12/04/2021 · 1h 29m
podcasts.apple.com
November 3, 2025 at 6:52 AM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
In a softball interview with sycophant Bari Weiss, Vinay Prasad
said the "scientific establishment" blindly supports vaccines.

I have bad news for him.

He's the establishment.

With measles & pertussis spreading, he's failing us all.

My latest.

sciencebasedmedicine.org/prasadestabl...
Dr. Vinay Prasad Doesn’t Realize He’s The Establishment. It’s His Job to Produce Results for the American Public, Not Fluff Donald Trump.
Because he can masterfully feign concern over evidence and data, Dr. Prasad is the Shohei Ohtani of spreading doubt and mistrust about vaccines. It's no surprise that under his "leadership", Andrew
sciencebasedmedicine.org
October 26, 2025 at 4:21 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
"We think of [the Renaissance] as a triumph of beauty and good architecture, exactly as both Vitruvius and readers such as Alberti had hoped, but McEwen bids us remember the costs."

Architect Magazine reviews "All the King's Horses: Vitruvius in an Age of Princes":
When Beauty Became a Weapon: How Vitruvius Armed Renaissance Power Grabs
“Discover how Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture became a blueprint for authoritarian control in Renaissance Italy—reshaping cities, erasing commons, and turning beauty into a weapon of power.”
www.architectmagazine.com
October 22, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
‘Extinction is a protracted, uneven process, and hard to square with our mental picture of abrupt catastrophe.’

Lorraine Daston reads 𝘝𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘥: 𝘈𝘯 𝘜𝘯𝘯𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭 𝘏𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘌𝘹𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯by Sadiah Qureshi.

www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
Lorraine Daston · Kaboom! Slow-Motion Extinction
Historians who address such topics as extinction, which straddle the history of humans and of the Earth, face the...
www.lrb.co.uk
October 21, 2025 at 11:15 AM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
I’ve just uploaded to philpapers my (preprint) chapter titled “Values and Measurement” forthcoming in the Routledge Handbook of Values in Science.
It’s an overview of arguments for values playing significant roles in measurement practices.

Comments welcome!

philpapers.org/rec/LARVAM-2
Cristian Larroulet Philippi, Values and Measurement - PhilPapers
At first sight, measurement might appear to be a natural candidate for a scientific practice that is value-free. This chapter reviews prominent arguments supporting the opposite view, i.e., that value...
philpapers.org
October 21, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
This week we welcome Prof. Steven Shapin to the pod!🎙️

We explore his journey through interdisciplinary spaces, revisit Leviathan and the Air-Pump 40 years on, and explore how credibility, trust and expertise are shaped by the fragmentation of expertise and (recent) political & cultural challenges
S5 E11 - Steven Shapin on the Social Life of Scientific Knowledge
Podcast Episode · The HPS Podcast - Conversations from History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science · 19/10/2025 · 50m
podcasts.apple.com
October 19, 2025 at 10:25 AM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
Bombshell! - Caleb Nelson, one of the most respected originalist scholars in the country, comes out against the unitary executive interpretation of Article II democracyproject.org/posts/must-a...
September 29, 2025 at 8:57 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
🚨Recent work from Jane Acierno, Clare Kennedy, Fiery Cushman & Jonathan Phillips:

Inverse option generation: Inferences about others' values based on what comes to mind
Inverse option generation: Inferences about others' values based on what comes to mind
Prior research shows that when people try to think of things, such as solutions to a problem, the options that come to mind most often are those that …
www.sciencedirect.com
October 2, 2025 at 2:25 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
The editors of @designobserver.com have curated a wonderful collection of books to help readers become happier, more authentic and connected versions of themselves, including "Nonlinear" by @kevinbethune.com! Check out their list: #design
Editor Picks: The best books for designing a better life
From vision to voice.
bookshop.org
September 29, 2025 at 11:40 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
there is a point here i want to amplify. the free speech defenders of the mainstream seem to have no awareness that actual free speech is often more fractious and destabilizing than civil and respectful. a society where speech is genuinely free isn’t the deferential space they want it to be.
September 21, 2025 at 2:10 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
"Art critics regularly bring to a painting history, culture, schools of painting, and so on. But what’s often left out is how the act of viewing shapes mental structures in the brain."
The Pleasure of Patterns in Art
The interplay between repetition and variation is central to how we perceive structure, rhythm, and depth across mediums.
thereader.mitpress.mit.edu
August 21, 2025 at 7:12 PM
Reposted by Michelle Vigeant Taupier
Worth reading this article twice.
Fully entered a state of madness by the time I finished this essay, on the remarkable intellectual (and political) failures of New Atheism, and a new anthology edited by Lawrence Krauss nymag.com/intelligence...
How the New Atheists Joined the MAHA War on Science
A new anthology showcases the intellectual failures of a diminishing brand.
nymag.com
August 19, 2025 at 1:45 AM