the self-studying brain
drug-eating rats invaded the Houston police evidence room
Early human ancestors didn’t regularly eat meat — An analysis of the chemical composition of fossilized teeth in Australopithecus africanus — an early relative of humans — suggests the bipedal primates had primarily vegetarian diets
People readily infer psychological traits from faces (such as trustworthiness or competence; henceforth, “face judgments”), even when the faces are unfamiliar and devoid of any background knowledge. […] face judgments are often inaccurate and may reflect our biases and stereotypes more than true facts about the person […] Understanding the mechanisms underlying face judgments has become a hot topic with a literature spanning social psychology, political science, visual psychophysics, cognitive neuroscience, and computer vision […]
Is the human face a biomarker of health? If face was a biomarker of health, then facial appearance could serve as an honest signal manifesting mate quality to potential mates. Taking the evolutionary lens, individuals who would find “healthy faces” attractive would then be able to obtain better genes or/and improved fitness for their children. […] Although theories of sexual signaling predict that attractive appearance would be positively related to actual health, not all studies found such connection. […] previously widely assumed interpretation of face as a biomarker of good health and beneficial developmental conditions actually lacks a scientific, evidence-based grounding. […] Currently, we cannot conclude that there is sufficient support for the hypothesis that the human face contains valid cues to health, and that facial appearance therefore provides a reliable cue for identifying healthy and unhealthy individuals.
The paradox of the self-studying brain
Tableau de l’Amour Conjugal by Nicolas Venette was purportedly written by a medical doctor and, like Aristotle’s Masterpiece, was a central sexual education text for hundreds of years after its 17th-century publication.
On May 5, 1725, Leendert Hasenbosch, a Dutch soldier and bookkeeper exiled from his ship for engaging in sexual acts with a lower-ranked sailor, became the first known inhabitant of Ascension Island. Stranded with meager supplies, he chronicled his struggle for survival in diaries later found by English sailors. His final entries describe him parched, sucking blood directly from the neck of a bird he managed to catch, and draining the bladder from a turtle to drink its urine. Hasenbosch’s body was never found. Centuries later, the British Crown claimed the island, transforming it into a testing ground for one of the world’s first large geoengineering endeavor led by Joseph Dalton Hooker and Charles Darwin. Imported plants and seeds from Europe, Africa, and South America created a new ecosystem, turning the volcanic landscape into a hub for imperial ambitions. Its legacy lives on in the libertarian fantasies of tech moguls who are reimagining terra nullius — lands claimed as belonging to no one — as experimental sites for their floating cities and colonies on Mars.
