Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes

Photo at night looking down a long hall with vaulted ceiling and stone flagged floor. It's very gothic. Arches and columns are on both sides.

Moody night photo of a gothic exterior of large hall, taken side on, showing finials and a large bird sculpture silhouetted against a dark cloudy sky.

Back in Cambridge again for the final #ExcavatingGarrod project meeting (on this grant at least!), with Emma Pomeroy and @toriherridge.bsky.social

a person is holding an empty wallet in their hands and looking at it . Alt: A man's face from below slowly looks down, then POV into his opening wallet which has one coin in it. Then his face looks away, pained.

Yes yes "London prices" but also cornish pasties are now over 7 quid at Birmingham New Street

Photo at night looking down a long hall with vaulted ceiling and stone flagged floor. It's very gothic. Arches and columns are on both sides.

Moody night photo of a gothic exterior of large hall, taken side on, showing finials and a large bird sculpture silhouetted against a dark cloudy sky.

Back in Cambridge again for the final #ExcavatingGarrod project meeting (on this grant at least!), with Emma Pomeroy and @toriherridge.bsky.social

It's one of the best! I like to start the day in this room, and then go next door at 4pm.

🧪 General thought based on a lot of #HumanOrigins reading recently: doing open science via pre-prints & data sharing are great, but they don't substitute for presenting research to your peers at conferences. Perhaps especially for complicated, controversial discoveries and interpretations.

OK I saw Romulus and loved the grimy aestheticon the planet, and Andy's character/s is brilliantly acted.
But I was sad that the two British lads with good lines died so fast, and disappointed by the super-rapid development of the aliens.
Best bit was crashing into the rings.

Also: for my PhD I spent six months just in the field collecting samples. Running and analysing said samples took much more than that (and the observations that were key to interpreting all those data were made 2yrs 11 months into my 3yrs of funding).

This was not a particular outlier.

So weird.

It's in the thread!

FYI I think your newsletter has stopped coming to my email

🏺

Just been writing about this object actually!

What even is the point of such captions?! The figure would have to be so simple in order not to require editing

Greyscale diagram of northwestern Europe with arrows detailing movement and interaction of material cultures linked to Bell Beaker and Corded Ware around the Rhone-Rhine corridor.

I put this figure of Needham's model of a Bell Beaker/Corded Ware fusion into PowerPoint, and I kid you not the auto-generated caption was 'Map of the Battle of Brexit'.

@urbanprehistorian.bsky.social

www.cambridge.org/core/service...

A suit ! Rare Jim plumage

Ah there is actually something interesting in the babies idea which I also write about , but I agree it seems a stretch for the prime driver

🏺 🐺 🐕 My pet theory is that wolves' musicality and ability to sing WITH PEOPLE is a key reason why we were mutually attracted - domestication through shared aesthetic sensibility, not merely economics of being good at hunting or guarding or pulling sleds...
(this is going to be in #Matriarcha 📚)

Sorry to miss you, I'm down there tomorrow!

It's not the same as religion either, because it's not a search for origins, or purpose. More a desire to relate, but to another kind of entity entirely.

Oh wow ok

I nearly put in a caveat about pets!
But I think it's more than TOM... something else is there; we want to meet The Other, a consciousness 'beyond animalia', experience a connection that both defines and transcends what we are.

It fascinates me that humans want this connection so much. It's SETI on planet Earth.
And that there's an openness to consciousness in machines, but less so* to identifying it in most sentient, intelligent, socially complex non-human animals.

*I'm talking public, not researchers in either case

🏺 🐺 🐕 My pet theory is that wolves' musicality and ability to sing WITH PEOPLE is a key reason why we were mutually attracted - domestication through shared aesthetic sensibility, not merely economics of being good at hunting or guarding or pulling sleds...
(this is going to be in #Matriarcha 📚)

💯

😂👌

12th March

I think it's been inflammatory and unhelpful to all stakeholders. Not representative of the institutional reality, either in terms of what's practically and ethically possible, or of the real attitude & activities of professionals who actually curate the material.

It fascinates me that humans want this connection so much. It's SETI on planet Earth.
And that there's an openness to consciousness in machines, but less so* to identifying it in most sentient, intelligent, socially complex non-human animals.

*I'm talking public, not researchers in either case

🏺

I also interpreted this as them counting every fragment vs every individual. Kind of incoherent in the way it's being presented to the public tbh. And I'm not sure what it's achieving