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Jon Phillips

@jowiph.bsky.social

10K followers 910 following 8.8K posts

Historian of evolutionary biology and scientific racism who has somehow turned into a historian of the physical sciences. Expect lots of cat pictures and general miscellany. Marylandic.

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 10d

The FBI may no longer be relying on SPLC, but their anti-extremist resources are still extremely worthwhile, especially these days. So in that spirit, time to re-up the thread of extremist profiles I wrote for them on scientific racists

Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · Jul 5

I’ve shared these a few times on the other site, but since everything is new again, here’s a thread of extremist profiles on prominent scientific racists I wrote for @SPLC roughly 10 years ago:

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Reposted by Jon Phillips

Full Story Baltimore @fullstorybaltimore.tours · 1d

Wednesday!! Final one!! And then it goes away, probably for good this time

Full Story Baltimore @fullstorybaltimore.tours · 15d

Faux Civil War recruiting poster, with text in a variety of vintage fonts, reading:
RALLY, NEIGHBORS,
FOR THE UNION
The walking tour
“Baltimore’s Confederate Shadows:
Mount Vernon to Midtown”
SOON TO TAKE THE STREETS!
Knowledge is power!
Let the rebels take warning!
NO SKEDADDLERS WANTED! FALL IN, FOLKS!
The Union MUST and SHALL BE preserved! The Rag of Treason must no longer define us!
On Saturday, October 4th, 7pm to 8:45pm
And Wednesday, October 15th, 7pm to 8:45pm
☞ Purchase tickets at https://fullstorybaltimore.tours/
Returning for two nights only
Do not miss this unique chance

Another faux Civil War recruiting poster, with text in a variety of vintage fonts, reading:
NOTICE!
RALLY, NEIGHBORS, FOR THE UNION
AWAKE! THE ENEMY ARE UPON US!
AND JOIN US ON THE WALKING TOUR
“Baltimore’s Confederate Shadows:
Mount Vernon to Midtown”
SOON TO TAKE THE STREETS!
Knowledge is power!
The Union MUST and SHALL BE preserved! The Rag of Treason must no longer define us!
On Saturday, October 4th, 7pm to 8:45pm
And Wednesday, October 15th, 7pm to 8:45pm
☞ Purchase tickets at https://fullstorybaltimore.tours/
Returning for two nights only
Do not miss this unique chance

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Reposted by Jon Phillips

Arvid Ågren @arvidagren.bsky.social · 8h

Theodosius Juan Dobzhansky.

Great anecdote from @jowiph.bsky.social!

Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 21h

Only tangentially related, but a certain Russian-American geneticist once received a passport randomly assigning him the middle initial J (he had no middle name). On a trip to Brazil, an official wouldn't let him in with just J on the paperwork, so he became Theodosius Juan Dobzhansky

There was a hitch, at the very end. Well, a very minor hitch was that when my passport came from Washington, -- of course,
getting a foreign passport in wartine was not so easy -- I have sudenly acquire? a second initial. Just how it happened, I have not the faintest tea, but the passport came for somebody caller The posius J. Dobzhansky, So ever since, I was "J."

Q: ft's really H, len't 1t? Or none at all?
Dobzhansky: No -- tbere 1a no socond initial, of course, at all.
But naturally It would have been nothing short of foolish to send a passport obtained with such difficulty, after presumably investigations and so on, in order to remove a J. All my passports since have had a J. I am presumably legally a J. now.
*: Did you make up a name to go with 1t?
Dobzhansky: Yes. At one time, also in Brazil, when a not very Intelligent Brazilian official demanded that I have a second name, as 1t should be, after several attempta to explain to him tbat I baa no socond name, I finally decided, why not Juan?
*: Then you have a Brazilian second name.
Dobzhansky: So I have a Brazilian second name.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22h

a real water is wet scenario here

Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 22h

POLITICO: “.. They referred to Black people as monkeys and ‘the watermelon people’ and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies .. and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.

@politico.com
www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 19h

Reminded of when my grandfather's dementia got to the point that every racist and sexual comment that crossed his brain immediately came out of his mouth

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 21h

Trump ignores a question from a woman reporter but says, "I just like to watch her talk. Good job. Thank you darling."

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 19h

What is the point of history if not to document the eternal Manichaen struggle?

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 19h

As a sometime historian of scientific racism and eugenics, uh... yeah

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 21h

Surely no youth movement would ever venerate Hitler

Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 21h

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 21h

This was always going to be the ultimate use case

Drew Harwell @drewharwell.com · 21h

Sam Altman went from “AI will cure cancer" to "ChatGPT porn" in less than a month

ChatGPT boss predicts when AI could cure cancer

We made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues. We realize this made it less useful/enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems, but given the seriousness of the issue we wanted to get this right.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4o (we hope it will be better!). If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way, or use a ton of emoji, or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it (but only if you want it, not because we are usage-maxxing).

In December, as we roll out age-gating more fully and as part of our “treat adult users like adults” principle, we will allow even more, like erotica for verified adults.
12:02 PM · Oct 14, 2025
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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 21h

Just a wild time when some of the world's greatest novelists, poets, composers, and scientists were all hanging out, doing drugs, and living their most interdisciplinary lives

Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 22h

One of these days I really want to do a project examining the midcentury social network composed of Auden, Stravinsky, the Huxleys Aldous and Julian, Margaret Mead, and others I'm sure I'm forgetting

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 22h

WH Auden is a specter lurking in the background of the entire 20th century. He's everywhere. Are you a historian of 20th century Anglo-American science, arts, letters, politics, religion, etc? Beware; Auden is in your archives. Watching. Waiting.

Rachel Feder @rachelfeder.bsky.social · 2d

Tell me your most unhinged literary opinion, as a little treat

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Reposted by Jon Phillips

David Grinspoon @drfunkyspoon.bsky.social · 22h

A year ago we launched Clipper towards Europa.
Since then NASA science has been ravaged & threatened by our malevolent administration. By the time Clipper is orbiting Jupiter and sending back precious data we will have different people in power. As perilous as the journey is, that gives me hope.
🧪🔭

The rocket carrying Europa Clipper, rising from the launchpad.

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 22h

Having flashbacks to jr high when, having just moved from Memphis to Seattle, I repeatedly got in trouble for addressing teachers as "ma'am"

The Louvre of Bluesky @thelouvreof.bsky.social · 22h

Unless you're bending the knee don't call anyone in the US SIR. SIR is a title bestowed in Britian. For example. Sir Elton John, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Laurence Olivier. Here all it does is make you sound like a magat.

Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 22h

Ngl, there is probably a depressingly large market for "nonpolitical" RATM-scented AI audio slop

Funky Dynamite @sweavart.bsky.social · 23h

So you love Rage Against the Machine but hate that they got all “political”? Just make an AI RATM
song that talks about how dope Reaganomics is and also says Happy Birthday Caleb

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 22h

The fact that this reading would piss off Michael Crichton immensely only makes it more true

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 22h

The explicitly stated core premise of the film is that despite the efforts of the most powerful people in the world to rigidly police the sex of a population under their control, "life, uh, finds a way"

Eric Shmeric @ericdienstfrey.bsky.social · 1d

So Jurassic Park is about a group of rich people who don't understand that biology is far more complicated than "there are only two genders" and how this ignorance toward gender fluidity in nature causes these rich people to lose their money and die.

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 22h

She was a great editor, and SciAm caving to a bad-faith right-wing pressure campaign was one of the more impressive recent examples of publishers shooting themselves in the foot, out of a very crowded and competitive field

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Sexy Andrew Hickey Costume @andrewhickey.500songs.com · 22h

Scientific American has really gone downhill since Laura Helmuth's departure.

Apart from everything else wrong with this puff piece, you can never see Game of Thrones with Marilyn Monroe in it, because she died more than forty years before the series started.

Scientific American @sciam.bsky.social · 2d

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

Want to See Marilyn Monroe in Game of Thrones? AI Could Make It Soon

Despite early, and familiar, copyright growing pains, Sora may be the prelude to AI-generated on-demand TV and movies

www.scientificamerican.com

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Sarah J. Jackson @sjjphd.bsky.social · 1d

It’s almost like billionaires and strong vibrant institutions of civil society can’t coexist

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 1d

It's so fucked up, I wanted to post a thread about why exactly this is so terrible, but the anger kept getting the words all tangled up until all that was left was "what the fuck"

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 1d

What the fuck

Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 1d

Very bad: OSU unilaterally cancelled the registration of grad students attending the joint conference of the National Society of Black Physicists and the National Society of Hispanic Physicists. And OSU won't fund recruiting at the Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science.

Ohio State changes policy on group conferences after Trump administration threats

A federal investigation into potentially discriminatory practices at Ohio State prompted the university to change its policies regarding conferences.

www.dispatch.com

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 1d

Purely scientific, or social/historical a la Mismeasure of Man or Charles Lane's "Tainted Sources" or that sort of thing?

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Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 1d

Note that I don't mean an "iq is genetic" manifesto, but the opposite. But the lack of answers reinforces my impression that a trustworthy resource toward which I could direct people who ask me about this topic doesn't exist.

Ehud @duhe.bsky.social · 1d

So what’s the best short resource suitable for laypeople about the heritability of intelligence or IQ?

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Jon Phillips @jowiph.bsky.social · 1d

Good things are better than bad things

Daniel M. Ford @soundingline.bsky.social · 1d

give me your most hinged, apologetic, milquetoast, agreeable, universal opinion.