Will Lowe
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conjugateprior.org
Will Lowe
@conjugateprior.org
3.4K followers 740 following 9.8K posts
Señor Research Scientist, NPC at the Hertie School in Berlin 🇩🇪 via Princeton, Mannheim, Edinburgh and a bunch of other ivory towers that will probably be billiard balls and decorative boxes by the end of the decade.

Rome Statute appreciator.
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conjugateprior.org
My rule is: never post hole (unless it's sf 😜)
Oooh, err, missus!
November 26, 2025 at 8:11 PM
conjugateprior.org
If I fits. I sits.
November 26, 2025 at 11:46 AM
conjugateprior.org
Tariff-brain (US National Parks edition)

Note to Americans: These things start with foreigners but don't stop with them.
Changes to Entrance Fees and Passes in 2026 Beginning January 1, 2026, changes to entrance fees and passes include: • America the Beautiful passes will cover entrance fees for up to two motorcycles. • A new America the Beautiful pass for nonresidents of the US will be available for $250. All other America the Beautiful passes Will only be available to Us citizens and permanent residents. • Entrance fee free days will only apply to US citizens and residents. Nonresidents will be required to pay entrance fees and applicable nonresident fees. • The following parks will have a surcharge of $100 for each nonresident of the US entering the park: Acadia National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, Everglades National Park, Glacier National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, Grand Teton National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Parks, and Zion National Park.
November 26, 2025 at 9:07 AM
conjugateprior.org
This one, because not only is it self-describing but it's the respectable aftermath of the immediately previous holiday that you can't quite remember the details of, and that's ok.

(Outside of Scotland, ymmv)
Calendar entry: "2nd of January (Scotland). 2 Jan 2015 Repeats every year"
November 25, 2025 at 10:17 PM
conjugateprior.org
Without wanting to defend foolish parochialism (or the sophisticated kind, for that matter) this passage does really invite a Ryle 'category error' response.
they do not belong. An instance of a mistake of this sort would be the following story. A student of politics has learned the main differences between the British, the French, and the American Constitu-tions, and has learned also the differences and connexions between the Cabinet, Parliament, the various Ministries, the Judicature and the Church of England. But he still became embarrassed when asked questions about the connexions between the Church of England, the Home Office and the British Constitution. For while the Church and the Home Office are institutions, the British Constitution is not another institution in the same sense of that noun. So inter-institu-tional relations which can be asserted or denied to hold between the Church and the Home Office cannot be asserted or denied to hold between either of them and the British Constitution. The British Constitution' is not a term of the same logical type as the Home Office' and 'the Church of England'.
November 25, 2025 at 10:07 PM
conjugateprior.org
Some of these Harry Potter sequels look surprisingly good
"Thomas Kuhn and the Causal Theory of Reference" by Jacob McDowell, in Hopos.
November 24, 2025 at 9:50 AM
conjugateprior.org
@dbroockman.bsky.social (2016) rides again.
But again, this is just an illusion created by the fact that these people give us no ideological answers to analyze! They get ideological scores close to 0 because 0 is the default, not because they expressed moderate views. If we scale the transparency of points by the ideological coherence of each voter, notice how the voters near the bottom of the chart start to disappear:
November 22, 2025 at 7:41 PM
conjugateprior.org
Apropos nothing in particular, I just got a nice new T-shirt

(from the fine folk at @kyivindependent.com)
603,628 square kilometers
November 22, 2025 at 6:07 PM
conjugateprior.org
"Tim Apple is master of the interface, only the Ives flatness stands before him, icons are now paperweights"
A butterfly preserved in lucite
November 21, 2025 at 2:32 PM
conjugateprior.org
There's a lot of foreigners in my office so the emergency kit had to be adapted.
A first aid box with a small bottle of Tabasco sauce next to it in a cupboard.
November 21, 2025 at 12:48 PM
conjugateprior.org
Calvin is dragged back to bed by his blanket
November 18, 2025 at 10:28 AM
conjugateprior.org
So you think to yourself, "Ok, I'll just go check in on the old place" and what do you find? A Home Secretary figuring out how to make asylum applications revenue neutral by confiscating wedding rings, and whatever the fuck this is:
"Three sugar cubes worth of plastic enough to kill a puffin, study finds" From the Guardian, god help us all.
November 17, 2025 at 9:02 PM
conjugateprior.org
Periodic reminder to authors that when people say they were inspired by what you wrote, you really never know what they took away from it.
Maxi Becker, a cognitive neuroscientist at Duke University, first got interested in insight after reading the landmark 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by the historian and philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn. "He describes how some ideas are so powerful that they can completely shift the way an entire field thinks," she said. "That got me wondering: How does the brain come up with those kinds of ideas? How can a single thought change how we see the world?"
November 17, 2025 at 1:42 PM
conjugateprior.org
The last thing you'll see
Paddington Bear, about to show you where the marmalade in his sandwiches comes from
November 17, 2025 at 12:50 PM
conjugateprior.org
"I'll just age faster if I leave this longitudinal analysis and you can't make me. I'm never dropping out. Just close the R session and walk away."
"Multilingualism protects against accelerated aging in cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses of 27 European countries"
November 17, 2025 at 11:12 AM
conjugateprior.org
supernormal stimulus surely?

Supernatural stimuli seem quite difficult to randomize, though I guess there are ways...
A Ouija Board. Naturally this wouldn't really work, because although the spirits might speak, gulls can't read.
November 16, 2025 at 12:19 PM
conjugateprior.org
From my Data Science and Decision Making course slides:
The entire setup for Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister is: a principal, his agent, and an agent who is not entirely sure how many principals he has.
November 15, 2025 at 1:35 PM
conjugateprior.org
So, this character just turns up in my building, jet black and rhythmically rocking the bird over our mailboxes. Sometimes I wish Berlin could stop being quite so Berlin for a moment.
I have so many questions, but is it weird that "how does a cat have a finger like this" is top of the list?
November 13, 2025 at 11:39 AM
conjugateprior.org
The Appointment with AI in Samarra
An article title says that James Bond screenwriters have run into major problem. With a link to the article. An AI pop up offers to pontificate on the consequences of that problem. But you haven't yet clicked and seen the article yet. Somerset-Maugham retells the story: "The Appointment on Samarra" The speaker is Death There was a merchant in Bagdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that had jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threating getsture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Bagdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.
November 11, 2025 at 10:48 AM
conjugateprior.org
Sharpies: Because sometimes you need forecast *regions*
With hurricanes, you gotta measure from the base
November 10, 2025 at 1:32 PM
conjugateprior.org
Things can be underthought (Hume), overthought (Berkeley), or thought just the right amount (Kant).
November 10, 2025 at 12:55 PM
conjugateprior.org
Antinous: "Come on Odysseus, put it away. You know you're not going to use it."
Eurymachus: "The bow he means!"
Michael Caine, naked and pointing a shotgun at two men, in a scene from Get Carter (1971). iykyk
November 10, 2025 at 11:02 AM
conjugateprior.org
See, this is what happens if you feed them
A bunch of Lime scooters begging outside someone's door, firmly convinced that they are the source of all rides now.
November 10, 2025 at 10:30 AM
conjugateprior.org
If you know me, you know I would
November 9, 2025 at 4:40 PM
conjugateprior.org
As far as I can tell, the word effect already has quotes. They're just silent.
"The t is silent, as in Harlow."
November 9, 2025 at 2:10 PM