Charles Pence @pence@scholar.social
- Personal
- https://charlespence.net
Philosopher and historian of biology: the past and future of chance in evolution & science in a digital world • PI, Pence Lab, UCLouvain • 🇺🇲➡️🇧🇪 • Co-editor, _Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology_
Joined Mar 2020
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Finally *extremely* happy to announce that my book on the history of concepts of chance in evolutionary theory will be coming out (maybe even this year!). Read more about the project here: https://blog.pencelab.be/2021/the-rise-of-chance-in-evolutionary-theory-under-contract/
Charles Pence
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A coda to the Guardian's shameful bigotry - the UK editors didn't /just/ cut that segment of the interview, but also spiked an entire series of trans articles - again from the US staff - "Gender Now":
https://eoinhiggins.substack.com/p/guardian-pulls-judith-butlers-comments
Seriously, actually, in ~15y of conference travel I was in a session this morning with me and 4 other people, and _all four other talks_ were on (wildly different!) things I have open projects on. The most weirdly pertinent to my own work session I've ever attended.
I'm at a real-life conference at which I have already given a real-life talk, and other people are now giving real-life talks, and I hardly know how to act. Was this what being an academic used to be like? This is fun!
I used to have trouble understanding superposition, but now I'm pretty sure I'm in a superposition of having it together and not having it together
Charles Pence
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Climate activist arrested after ProtonMail provided his IP address - https://twitter.com/tenacioustek/status/1434604102676271106
Charles Pence
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OK, so presumably wherever you live a certain language is most commonly spoken, right?
Question for you.
What do you think is the *second* most commonly spoken language in your area?
Feel free to explain as much as you like. "Area" is also open to wide interpretation, whatever feels comfortable.
Charles Pence
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"We banned nearly 37M accounts between January and March of this year"
If you've ever wondered what it's like to fight spam at scale, here's what Reddit deals with.
When I occasionally say that I've very strong concerns about the Fediverse dealing successfully with abuse at this scale, this is the sort of thing I'm talking about.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ModSupport/comments/o6l2z5/f_spammers/
Very French to get mad at "présentiel" for being a loan-word from the English "presential," a word that is literally unknown to my phone's spell checker and which Wiktionary reports was last used in this sense in the 16thC
Charles Pence
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Cover designs for my forthcoming book are in and one of them is actually... really great?!
Of course, for a book on chance in evolution they had to give me one with dice, but thankfully they also ran with an image that I'd found and produced damn near the thing I had in my head a priori...!
In any event, a *super* cute museum if you ever have the chance to visit! (The town is pretty, too.)
Random history of science nerd moment from my vacation: The small town of Saint-Hubert is the birthplace of Pierre-Joseph Redouté, best known popularly for engravings of roses. But (!) also corresponded/collaborated with De Candolle, illustrated for Humboldt, and others!
His brother, Henri-Joseph, went for animals instead of plants, and illustrated Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's famous book on fish. Both worked for the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle. #histsci #florespondence
Also, *man,* serious impostor-syndrome-triggering honor to be on this list of fellow contributors to the series:
First book project now feeling significantly more concrete! Watch this space for a two-weeks-free PDF download link that I'll post here soon.
just mis-typed ssh as "aah" and, yeah
sports
I don't much post sports on here, and I know I'm only an expat, but *wooooo* 🇧🇪
In case you were wondering, it's all car horns and vuvuzelas here in Brussels
tfw there's a major furor brewing over on Twitter about Darwin's historical context, racism, and misogyny, right in my area of expertise, but I've just hit the end of the hardest academic year in my career and literally cannot even
Charles Pence
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Carl T. Bergstrom on Twitter: "We have a new paper out in PNAS today, in which we address the harm wrought by dramatically restructuring human communication of the span of a decade, with no aim other than selling ads."
Explanatory thread in plain language: https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1407099264363208706
📄 https://www.pnas.org/content/118/27/e2025764118
🐘
Charles Pence
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Huh, what's that humming noise? Proud to announce we installed our new server into a #Datacenter last weekend, CI and other features are coming into range.
This is a major milestone for #Codeberg, we have been waiting for this for a long time, investing a huge share of our funds into this project.
Thank you for your regular donations, especially as members of the non-profit association. You didn't join yet? Consider doing so today to support our mission: https://join.codeberg.org
Busting at the seams to be able to say more about the *two* awesome scholars who are coming to join my research group as postdocs next year. Gotta get some ink on some contracts first, though.
- Personal
- https://charlespence.net
Philosopher and historian of biology: the past and future of chance in evolution & science in a digital world • PI, Pence Lab, UCLouvain • 🇺🇲➡️🇧🇪 • Co-editor, _Philosophy, Theory, and Practice in Biology_
Joined Mar 2020
