Will Cundill

[Cait Mercer @MercerCait]

Hard to disagree.

[Will Cundill @willcundill]

@davemcmillanmtl You want this person to destroy what? Every provincial border town would eat dick. It's complicated. You don't know what you are talking about.

[Will Cundill @willcundill]

@JulioHashem

[Will Cundill @willcundill]

@Wendys very sour scone sandwich. It’s the dough.

[Will Cundill @willcundill]

@gothburz @ProfSteveKeen Following

[Mark Collard @profmarkcollard]

Just heard the very sad news that Prof. Roy Carlson passed away this morning. Roy was the founding chair of the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University, and a major figure in BC and Canadian archaeology. An unfailingly kind, supportive, and intellectually stimulating colleague, he will be much missed. RIP Roy and thanks for everything.

[Dogwoof @Dogwoof]

A true master of documentary cinema. RIP Frederick Wiseman.

[Aaron Day @AaronRDay]

For You "Elon Saved Free Speech" White Knight Assholes: Read the New Terms of Service Released Today

X just updated their Terms of Service effective January 15, 2026. Here's what you agreed to:

AI TRAINING RIGHTS GRAB: Everything you post becomes training data for their AI models. Every thought, opinion, creative work. You're building their models for free. No compensation. No opt out.

PERPETUAL CONTENT LICENSE: They get a worldwide, royalty-free license to use, copy, modify, and distribute your content "for any purpose" in "any media now known or later developed." Forever. They can sell it. Give it to governments. Anything.

FORCED JURISDICTION: All disputes must be filed in Tarrant County, Texas. You waive the right to join class actions. If they wrong millions of users, you sue alone in THEIR court.

ARBITRARY TERMINATION: They can delete your account "for any other reason or no reason at our convenience." Years of content, connections, reputation. Gone. Zero due process.

$15,000 LIQUIDATED DAMAGES: Access more than 1 million posts in 24 hours and you owe $15,000. Per million. Journalists and researchers investigating the platform face financial ruin.

GOVERNMENT DISCLOSURE: They reserve the right to hand your DMs, drafts, and entire history to governments based on what they "reasonably believe" is necessary.

ANTI-JAILBREAK CLAUSE: Testing their AI systems, exposing censorship mechanisms, or security research is now explicitly a Terms violation. They added "prompt engineering or injection" to prohibited conduct.

ONE YEAR STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS: Discover they harmed you after 366 days? You "forever waive the right" to pursue any claim.

MAXIMUM LIABILITY $100: They destroy your business, reputation, or life through negligence? Maximum recovery: one hundred dollars.

Free speech platform. Sure.

[Will Cundill @willcundill]

@cheapscotsman @HudsonHMack

[The Wall Street Journal @WSJ]

Breaking: Jane Goodall, the English primatologist and anthropologist who was considered a foremost expert on chimpanzees, has died at age 91. https://t.co/SiHKaOX38n

[Michael Edward Johnson @johnsonmxe]

@johnhawks has a nice overview of some recent work on what distinguishes the human vascular system from other primates. His thesis is that we're optimized for physical endurance. Probably true; I also suspect we're optimized for cognitive endurance.

"Cognitive endurance" has two categories:
(1) longer periods of thinking,
(2) holding (vascular) priors for a longer time.

The former would seem to require allowing sustained bloodflow to the brain -- brains are expensive & using them for longer periods requires more investment in plumbing. Simple.

The latter category is more conceptually interesting. A "latch" is a vascular clench that gets locked & restricts local neural dynamic range. A latch is functionally a Bayesian prior. If you get bitten by a dog, your body latches shards of that experience into your nervous system; you have less cognitive-emotional-perceptual freedom next time you see a dog. Latches are memory, enforced stasis on local circuits. A latch is also a prediction: we can hold a counterfactual until it becomes true (active inference), sometimes for years.

(That our nervous system doesn't distinguish between these uses is the source of much interest in human affairs.)

Part of my argument for human origins is that we use latches much more than other animals, and we almost certainly have specific vascular adaptations for this.

What would these adaptations be? I mentioned some broad considerations in my Hand of the Mind article; essentially I proposed we have mental hands that are capable of finer grips. But we may also expect humans to be optimized for *longer* grips; capacity to hold priors that can help get us through cold seasons. If I were studying human origins I'd specifically dig into the latch-bridge mechanism & comparative vascular muscle anatomy across hominids.

[McGill News Magazine @McGillNewsMag]

A bookish McGill law student who led hockey’s most fabled team to the Stanley Cup when he wasn’t busy writing exams. It sounds too crazy to be true - but it actually happened. Ken Dryden, LLB’73, LLD’18. What an incredible life RIP

[Sesame Street @sesamestreet]

The Sesame Street library is coming to YouTube!
Beginning in January 2026, YouTube will have the largest digital library of Sesame Street content, with hundreds of full episodes coming to the Sesame Street channels.
Join us as we help children everywhere grow smarter, stronger, and kinder, one episode at a time

[Christie Wilcox @NerdyChristie]

When people watch dance performances, it's as if their brainwaves are choreographed too—especially they're watching together in a theater. That and more of the best in @ScienceMagazine and science in this edition of #ScienceAdviser: https://t.co/6JYpU82GiL

[Will Cundill @willcundill]

@jamieoliver your flat iron tips worked nicely…

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

Moms in the wild - a mother's day thread 🧵

1. "Look Mom, I'm scaring them!"

[BBC News (World) @BBCWorld]

Sailor jailed in Bahrain freed after royal pardon https://t.co/jmoFFwQWNh

[Montreal Gazette @mtlgazette]

On #WorldDownSyndromeDay 2025, CDSS urges the Canadian government to implement inclusive support systems for individuals with Down syndrome. Early support can transform lives 💙 — via @healthing_ca

#InclusionMatters #DownSyndrome #SupportForAll https://t.co/3uKMnyTwkG

[Ryan Grim @ryangrim]

A theater in Miami screened the Oscar winning “No Other Land” and now the mayor is moving to end their lease