Violent metaphors
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I study the genomes of modern and ancient peoples in order to uncover details of human prehistory. This is a blog about my passions: science, conflict, adventure, and interesting people.
Violent metaphors
2y ago
First reported here, and thanks to the reporter, Sebastian Murdock, for sharing the court order. (It’s often difficult to obtain these from state trial courts, and in this case it was even harder as the court’s e-filing system is down for a few days.)
The court is granting a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs without having had a trial or considering the uncontested evidence. That normally only happens if the defendants completely fail to show up. Here, the judge did it because Jones was refusing to comply with discovery. That basically means they weren’t turning over emails, recordings, and ..read more
Violent metaphors
4y ago
How do scientists talk about race? For quite some time a
small group of geneticists have been engaged in deep conversations about how
best to convey the complexities of, and the relationship between race, DNA, and
human variation to the general public. We come from different backgrounds—Ewan
is the director of the European Bioinformatics Institute, Adam is a geneticist
and science writer, Aylwyn is a human evolutionary geneticist, and I am an
anthropological geneticist—and nationalities, but are united in our agreement
that patterns of human genetic variation do not support the biological divi ..read more
Violent metaphors
5y ago
This was a big year for conspiracy theories. They’ve staked out more space in the headlines than we used to be comfortable with and stayed long enough that we’re starting to get used to it. The energy feeding them comes from above, as Trump and other mainstream media figures find new ways to harness conspiracy theory culture, and from below, as movements like Q Anon find ways to raise their profile with cynical self-awareness.
October was particularly gruesome. While relatively benign groups were busy ginning up new conspiracy theories for the benefit of the US and Russian governments—a bizarr ..read more