Mike Jacovides

I wrote a book that I'm proud of: www.amazon.com/Lockes-Image...

Portrait of Eleanora di Toledo & her son, c. 1545, by Bronzino, leading Florentine mannerist painter (1503-1572); pupil of Pontormo, working under the patronage of Cosimo I de’ Medici, his polished style influenced development of European court portraiture. Gallerie degli Uffizi 1/3

Last week, a teacher’s assistant at the school I was visiting asked me if I did the King’s horoscope, “as well as all that science stuff” 😬

A. Gerald enjoys museums B. Scott enjoys museums C. Gerald loves antiquing D. Scott loves antiquing E. Gerald fits Scott F. Scott Fitzgerald

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Bad Government, 1338–40, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

I keep a stuffed eel on my desk as a reminder that our time on this planet is finite. A sort of memento moray.

Some notable examples of long-standing errors in science from Douglas Allchin’s new article: “When is science ‘self-correcting’?”: doi.org/10.1016/j.sh... Few quotes follow…

Columbo in a two ring circus: Just one more ring

Every friend group has that one friend that's just a ghost that hasn't figured out they're dead yet. If you don't know who in your friend group is the ghost then I'm sorry buddy but I've got some bad news for you...

The hard problem reduces to the easy problem, but the easy problem is insoluble

This is a really interesting collection of reactions

We're hiring in bioethics philjobs.org/job/show/32533

Steven Lukes’s “The Diversity of Morals”. kieranhealy.org/blog/archive...

Here's a paper I wrote titled, "Lessons from Locke on the Metaphysics of Power." Let me know if you have any thoughts about it, please. philpapers.org/rec/JACLFL-2

Here's a paper I wrote titled, "Lessons from Locke on the Metaphysics of Power." Let me know if you have any thoughts about it, please. philpapers.org/rec/JACLFL-2

Amazing story from @celinazhao.bsky.social. First time, I’m pretty sure, we’ve interviewed an AI agent for a story. Science | AAAS www.science.org/content/arti...

Spinoza/Rembrandt buddy picture

There's growing experimental evidence¹˒²˒³˒⁴ that LLMs are unusually good at talking people out of entrenched false beliefs and conspiracy theories. ¹ pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39264999/ ² pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41179846/ ³ sciety.org/articles/act... ⁴ connecticut.adl.org/resources/re...

"When I first held Ivanhoe and Wang's Readings in Korean Confucian Philosophy in my hands and leafed through it, I immediately regretted retiring from teaching a couple of months earlier" ndpr.nd.edu/reviews/read...

My fourth consecutive bedtime reading a book called Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site and I think I'm just about ready to come out against child literacy. I'm going to become the reverse Dolly Parton and devote my fortune to taking books away from children.

I love all of my fingers equally. Why do you ask such divisive questions?

Sometimes feel like I don't really have imposter syndrome

[job interview] interviewer: so god killed all your kids? job: that's right

Not geography but I will never get over sitting next to a guy in the dining hall freshman year at an elite university bragging about how he kept kosher as he chowed down on bacon. But you're eating bacon, I said. "Bacon isn't pork," he said. That was 41 years ago and I hear it like it was yesterday.

Spread the word

One mathematician closing in on proving X. Another mathematician closing in on proving Y. X and Y together entail Z, famous million dollar conjecture. Each mathematician slows down their work, racing to be the slower, to earn the million dollars and life of acclaim.

When I was a kid, I thought that the way it worked was obvious. Now I have to think about it. I blame society

zwee=two, ee=egg, -eg is an adjectival suffix

Thank cod

[benoit blanc in true detective] now i know you think time is a flat circle, but if i may, you’re thinking of a clock

Hey, Claude formalized Fermat's Last Theorem www.anthropic.com/research/for...

Introduce yourself by listing ten acts you made up: Prong Voles You Jackals! Sanitised Interiors The Cat Uncle Durian Cheesecake Explosion Horrendous Snare Two Toast Gnome Tchotchke ADHDigger Moths Do Astronomy

Undergraduates don't know who U2 is anymore

Müller-Lyer Illusion Illusion

No one actually has anything bad to say about the policies enacted by Caligula‘s horse-consul, so we have to assume that the old girl was a wise and just governor of men.

W1731820189 - From Gordan Ugarković (ugordan.bsky.social) - https://flic.kr/p/iC6rc4

The colander is a sieve for winnowing, portrayed in the bottom left

Norm MacDonald said that in the perfect joke, the punchline and the set up would be identical

Just to have something to do on my blog, I wrote out some advice that I find myself often giving to junior scholars and PhD standings re how to think about journals' prestige and reputation when deciding how to place one's publications. sootyempiric.blogspot.com/2026/08/jour...

What are you doing with your one precious life?

Odyssey 1968

Analytic philosophy is kiki while Continental Philosophy is bouba, however Basically Pleasant Bureaucrats are bouba while Sexy Murder Poets are kiki. This is my proof that the two are not the same distinction.

The idea of AI “hallucinating” is one I wish I’d had!

Something that went across my desk today: an inscribed copy of Helen Keller’s 1929 autobiography, Midstream. I had never seen her handwriting before this. #helenkeller @LibraryCongress #rarebooks #disabilitystudies

I think I was unnecessarily concerned.

"Newton . . . has become for me wholly other, one of the tiny handful of supreme geniuses who have shaped the categories of the human intellect, a man not finally reducible to the criteria by which we comprehend our fellow beings," Richard Westfall