Starre Vartan

Who Were We and Who Will We Become? Hi and Welcome! This is the third issue of Palimpsest of Flesh. As I've gotten really into the research (and grant requests!) for my next book, Warriors, Wanderers, and Weavers: The Real Story of Our ...

For my next book, I've been thinking abt how I can relate to people who lived 5,000 or 10,000 years ago. What do we have in common? What's incomparable? This month's newsletter essay explores one part of that idea. + pop-culture faves from pods to film! palimpsest-of-flesh.ghost.io/who-were-we-...

BREAKING: New York City reports the lowest levels of shootings, shooting victims, and murders ever recorded for the first two months of a year. Major crime is down nearly 8% citywide, burglary hit a record low, and retail theft dropped 25%

They are SO happy right now! I planted a whole bunch a month ago and they are going bananas, it's awesome.

Which Sex Is Stronger? | The Open Mind, Hosted by Alexander Heffner "The Stronger Sex" author Starre Vartan discusses the latest research on women's mental and physical capacities.

Appearing on The Open Mind on @pbs.org to discuss my book was a huge honor! Host Alexander Heffner asked me about The Stronger Sex - but we also got into a bit of a political convo too, which was interesting. See the whole thing here (politics last 10 mins). www.thirteen.org/openmind/sci...

Meet three scientists who said no to Epstein The warning signs included a web search, a mother’s doubts, and inklings of a “sexist attitude”

WOW. Great piece in @science.org about three researchers courted by Epstein who said "no thanks." Two of the three were warned off by the women in their lives which is a fascinating bit of anecdata. Incredible details in the piece. www.science.org/content/arti...

a close up of a man with a mustache ALT: a close up of a man with a mustache

Literally me:

Thinking about the remnants of the Hopeful Internet I grew up with. Wikipedia and Craigslist and Reddit -- all still around because, from my non-expert POV, they didn't Sell Out. Maybe Selling Out IS evil after all.

Woman sues Kenbridge, police after chief allegedly tipped off shooting suspect The town of Kenbridge and its police department are facing a lawsuit of more than $140 million.

A woman’s ex boyfriend, who is a cop, threatens to shoot her

Women are at the highest risk for being killed when they try to leave a relationship.

She calls 911 for help & the Police Chief WARNS the boyfriend instead.

Boyfriend opened fire on her car

We aren’t angry enough.

I know that I sound like a broken record but I think once this society was ok with accepting mass covid deaths just to be able to eat at Applebees then all bets were off.

Perfect bird design 10/10 peak A+ no notes #birds 🗺️

Join me and the v. witty Kate Denarzaulds for a convo hosted by @collinsbooks.bsky.social in Thirroul as I bring The Stronger Sex: What Science Tells Us About the Power of the Female Body to the #Illawarra & #Wollongong area! 17 March at 7pm for a rollicking & wide-ranging conversation abt strength!

I've worked with Rich and he's lovely! Pitch him.

Congrats Rich, this is exciting!!!

“The court is not aware of another occasion in the history of the US in which a federal court has had to threaten contempt—again & again & again—to force the US govt. to comply with court orders”

*210* violations of court orders in MN alone according to Reagan-appointed judge x.com/rparloff/sta...

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The issue here is obviously effed but I'm here to think aloud, yet again, how incredibly WEIRD it is that men basically wear identical uniforms as each other (in many aspects of professional life) and women just...don't. I think this says so, so much about gender roles and I find it fascinating.

Why we do what we do! Loved speaking at @susquehannau.bsky.social university yesterday, the students had such great questions.

My latest pod feature just dropped! The fab Tough Girl Pod! I really love speaking with such amazing women (all have been women so far!) who are putting out these incredibly inspirational pods for other women. It's just a beautiful thing to be a small part of! podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/t...

Reading people. Body language. Knowing how to connect with people totally unlike you and with different backgrounds and beliefs. Defusing tense situations. Gaining trust. High endurance, pain tolerance, and work ethic. Reaction time. Prioritizing order of execution. Anticipating people’s needs. Tons

I'm not entirely sure how they did it, but they've completely cleared the streets around my office in Midtown #NYC.

They paid a lot of people good wages to do the job effectively, thank you for coming to my socialism talk

"Over one billion people have experienced childhood sexual assault, and 600 million women and girls have experienced physical or sexual violence. No other issue affecting a billion people receives less attention in health priorities and agendas."

The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access • Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.

A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitter’s algorithmic feed significantly shifts people’s political views to the right.

Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.

This is one of the most concerning papers I’ve read in awhile.

anti-abortion groups don't see abortion as a single-issue - they are simultaneously funding & driving anti-trans, anti-LGBTQI, anti-migrant [...] efforts in the UK and transnationally. it isn't just 'what happens in the US', it's also what they've funded in Uganda, Hungary, Mexico, Poland [...] 1/

"Gender studies...brought a critical lens to the biological determinism Trump invokes. And this critical lens extends to revealing how gender hierarchies enable the kind of abuses that some men in Epstein’s circle seemingly believed they had the right to commit."

millipede, in flagrante

I'm a middle-ages cis, straight woman and I'm going to continue to use men's rooms whenever I damn please because I'm just SICK of this nonsense. IT'S A GODDAM TOILET.

The Gen X urge to hang with the raisin girls (cause you're not a cornflake girl!)

Organic molecules found in a 500-million-year-old fossil, upending the science of paleontology Scientists have found traces of a tough material that once formed the outer shells of ancient sea creatures called trilobites, preserved inside fossils that are more than 500 million years old. The discovery shows that parts of living organisms can last far longer in rock than experts once believed, and it changes how scientists think about how carbon is stored deep inside the Earth over long periods of time. Finding chitin in a fossil Inside layers of shale rock near Death Valley in eastern California, researchers found a trilobite fossil from the species Olenellus, an extinct marine animal that lived on the ocean floor more than 500 million years ago, that still contained a small piece of its original shell. Lab work at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) pulled a clear chemical signal from that shell patch. Elizabeth Bailey, an Earth and planetary scientist at UTSA, linked that signal to a shell polymer that older searches missed. Even with just a few fossils, discovering chitin hints that some carbon-rich compounds can stay trapped under ordinary burial conditions. Modern crab shells and insect skins rely on chitin, a tough sugar-based material in many outer coverings, to stay stiff...

Organic molecules found in a 500-million-year-old fossil, upending the science of paleontology
->Earth.com | More on "Ancient fossil organic molecules discovery" at BigEarthData.ai | #SustainableAgriculture #Science #Organic

t Conversation Kekius Maximus @Kekius_Sage · Feb 21 Do you think Elon Musk is happier than us, or just louder? Elon Musk @elonmusk I am not often happy 2:53 AM · Feb 22, 2026 · 2.3M Views

great news

The takeaway here is not that reporters are no longer interested in reporting on climate. It’s that reporters have fewer opportunities to do so, many climate reporting jobs have been axed, and good outlets have folded or shrunk. Some people are still doing good work, yes, but the trend line is down