The accelerating crisis of fascism, racism, and “dehumanizing” behaviors is more than a product of conscious prejudice or institutional design—it is an emergent, biologically mediated epidemic produced by the interplay of cultural, economic, and societal structures with the human genome and neurobiology (Stringhini et al., 2022; Krieger et al., 2022; Kuzawa & Sweet, 2021). New research in neuroscience and social epigenetics demonstrates that these structural forces shape us at the molecular level, perpetuating patterns of aggression, exclusion, and social unraveling that threaten collective stability (Kuzawa & Sweet, 2021; Krieger et al., 2022).
A Worthy Labor
There is a simple and compelling truth established by the sciences: universal reality is a system of systems, and all life within it exists only in relationship and interdependence with its surroundings. This conclusion is not just philosophical speculation; it is supported by disciplines such as physics, biology, and complex systems theory. Denying this reality has contributed directly to human suffering, social turmoil, and ecological crises, which continue to threaten our collective future. The observable universe, from subatomic particles to galaxies and biospheres, is characterized by nested systems that interact and rely on each other. No organism survives in isolation. […]
The Strength of Weak Ties Across Disciplines: Connectivity, Plasticity, Novelty, & the Imperative for Global Solutions
The sociological theory of weak ties, introduced by Mark Granovetter in 1973, reveals that infrequent, low-intensity social connections act as vital bridges that link otherwise disconnected social groups. These weak ties facilitate the flow of novel information, resources, and opportunities, supporting innovation and adaptability within social networks (Granovetter, 1973). Over time, this foundational insight has found compelling parallels across disciplines including technology, neuroscience, quantum physics, organic chemistry, machine learning, and cloud computing. These interdisciplinary connections expose shared principles of connectivity, plasticity, and novelty underpinning both natural and human-created complex systems.
The Ventromedial Hypothalamus, Autism, cPTSD, and Type 2 Diabetes: Piecing Together the Neuroendocrine Puzzle
Living as an autistic human with cPTSD, my personal health journey has always intersected with questions about the brain, stress, and physical illness. Recent neuroscience is finally exposing the depth of mind-body connections in conditions like type 2 diabetes (T2D)—and for people wired differently, like those on the autism spectrum or living with the scars of toxic stress, these findings feel especially urgent. A new mechanism, outlined in Lin et al. (2025), peels back the lid on how metformin, the most common diabetes drug, directly interacts with the brain’s ventromedial hypothalamus (VMH) to control blood sugar. This opens new theories about the unique diabetes risks faced by neurodivergent and trauma-affected populations and whether treatment responses might also diverge.
Human Cognitive Diversity as Adaptive Radiation: Genomic and Neurodivergent Pathways to Species Dominance
Rapid radiations, in which bursts of diversification yield disproportionate contributions to extant biodiversity, underlie most of the known diversity of life (Wiens & Moen, 2025). This principle holds across clades of animals, plants, fungi, and protists. We argue that a parallel process manifests in humans: our global dominance as an apex mammalian species derives from rapid internal diversification of cognition, behavior, and social interaction styles. Drawing on evolutionary genomics, epigenetics, and neuroscience, we propose that neurodiversity—including autism and related neurodivergent profiles—constitutes an adaptive radiation within a single species, sustaining variation that enables resilience, innovation, and ecological mastery. We synthesize evolutionary biology with human neuroscience to suggest that the same mechanisms responsible for generating flowering plant and arthropod hyperdiversity also operate, at a psychological and genomic scale, in Homo sapiens.
Protected: About my kids (access required)
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Ethics or Extinction (this is not hyperbole)
The time for robust, enforceable ethics regulations and bias elimination for large language models (LLMs) and AI systems is not on some distant horizon, it is here and now. Despite mounting real-world harms, business and national actors often resist oversight out of fear of losing out in the global scramble for economic and technological dominance. However, refusing prompt, meaningful engagement with these safeguards threatens to wrest control from human hands, setting the stage for outcomes that reach all the way to existential risk.
Autism: A natural, evolutionary neurotype (review)
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is traditionally conceptualized as a pathological condition characterized by impairments. However, a growing body of scientific evidence supports understanding autism as a naturally occurring neurodevelopmental variant shaped by complex genetic and environmental factors and maintained through evolutionary mechanisms. This review synthesizes current knowledge from genetics, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology to argue that autism represents a natural neurotype rather than a disorder. It also addresses common misconceptions rooted in deficit-focused medical models and highlights the neurodiversity paradigm’s implications for research, practice, and social inclusion.
Reflections of the Mind: How Large Language Models Illuminate Human Language & Brain Function
The metaphorical alignment between Large Language Models (LLMs) and human language processing offers a transformative lens for bridging artificial intelligence and neuroscience, revealing profound insights about both systems and catalyzing reciprocal advancement. Despite their fundamentally different substrates—biochemical neural circuits versus engineered tensor networks—LLMs and the human brain share core computational principles manifest in attention, predictive processing, memory, and hierarchical representation dynamics.