I appreciate that you've made it open access, but is there a PDF available of the book for those who prefer to read offline?

You want them fund a competing right wing dictatorship?

Saw this guy at the Field a few weeks ago, such a legend. Thank you for doing your part to correct the unjust underrepresentation of the Permian in paleoart

Finally, this book really made me want to learn more about specialized mutation systems, like cassette-switching in the vertebrate immune system and CRISPR-Cas. I hadn't known much about this stuff before and it's just unbelievably cool.

I'm also interested in the philosophical implications of denying Leibniz's claim that "natura non facit saltus". It seems like many models (in bio, physics, econ) that assume continuity have faced difficulties as we've found that the discreteness of the variation in these systems matters.

Though I’ve long been interested in the role developmental bias plays in evolution, I was completely ignorant of the role of mutational biases, and while the math is beyond me, Stoltzfus presents some interesting frameworks for formally exploring the influence of biases on evolution generally.

whose insights about the importance of mutation in evolution are distorted by neo-Darwinists into outright denials of the importance of selection. With this move, MS apologists are able to superficially claim the findings of the molecular evolutionists without actually altering their models.

When neutral theory challenged this account, the neo-Darwinists moved the goal posts, redefining their program as a sense of allegiance to a lineage of thinkers who understood selection to be the driving force of evolution, which they counterposed to the early geneticists...

I really appreciated that Stoltzfus presents a clear account of "neo-Darwinism", which I've found both defenders and opponents often leave vague. Originally, he argues, neo-Darwinism was a specific theory of evolution in which selection acts on infinitesimal allelic variation in a gene pool.

I'd love a Nagarjuna episode! I was just looking at MMK again last night and realized I'd need an annotated version or some kind of introduction to understand what he's arguing--do you have any recommendations?

She found that Túngara frogs who've settled in an urban environment, where their predators and pests are less populous, have developed more complex calls than rainforest populations. I'd venture that we've done more or less the same.

Also thinking about how different *forms* of wealth might be more or less protected from eavesdroppers. Two people, one with some acres of wheat and the other with gold, might have the same net worth, but the owner of the farm is much more vulnerable to pests and opportunistic theft.

Being in the entourage of a rich and powerful man might get you some play even if you don't have much going for you otherwise; and he, not you, would end up the victim of redistributive violence.

One strategy she describes is one in which a male frog will sit next to a calling male in order to intercept females who are attracted by the call without incurring the eavesdropper risk. How do people try to reap the benefits of signaling while letting someone else take on the risk?

Got me thinking about mate signaling in human societies--what risks do men bear in producing flashy mating signals? And how can we increase the salience of those risks?

Signalers in turn might adopt anti-eavesdropping strategies, both plastic--like decreasing the rate or volume of their calls at certain times-- and evolutionary--like switching their mate signaling to an entirely different sensory register.