"Carcinization" is a curious biological phenomenon: given enough time, across many environments, many species will evolve into crabs. The body-type of a crab, with its low center of gravity, sideways gait (useful for evading predators), ease of concealment and protected organs is suitable to many different environments:
The lost art of mathematical modelling
We provide a critique of mathematical biology in light of rapid developments in modern machine learning. We argue that out of the three modelling activities – (1) formulating models; (2) analysing models; and (3) fitting or comparing models to data – inherent to mathematical biology, researchers currently focus too much on activity (2) at the cost of (1). This trend, we propose, can be reversed by realising that any given biological phenomenon can be modelled in an infinite number of different ways, through the adoption of a pluralistic approach, where we view a system from multiple, different points of view. We explain this pluralistic approach using fish locomotion as a case study and illustrate some of the pitfalls – universalism, creating models of models, etc. – that hinder mathematical biology. We then ask how we might rediscover a lost art: that of creative mathematical modelling.
Planetary carambolage: The evolutionary political economy of technology, nature and work
The following editorial introduces the special issue (SI) on “Work, Environment and Planetary-scale Computation in Political-Economic Evolution”. Here, however, we go beyond an outline of what each contribution to the SI addresses, and attempt to draw a more pronounced shared embedding of the arguments that have come to the fore. The original idea of this SI was to synthesize a range of contemporary global political-economic challenges, i.e. (1) technology (esp. digital transformation), (2) nature (esp. ecological crisis) and (3) work (esp. precarization via the evolving platform economy). The main argument developed in this editorial reflection focuses on the common ground and origin of those processes found in the complex evolution of capitalist development. We frame the latter by assigning it a new term, i.e. “planetary carambolage”.
Termite Ecology in the First Two Decades of the 21st Century: A Review of Reviews
Termite ecology came of age in 1978 with the seminal review of Wood and Sands which by considering the quantitative contributions made by termites to the carbon cycle at the landscape level concluded that they were major players in tropical ecosystems. Subsequent field work in the succeeding two decades was summarised in 2000 by Bignell and Eggleton, the most recent review which attempted to cover the entire topic in detail, which included 188 listed references and has been extensively cited for almost 20 years. Subsequent summaries more narrowly defined or in some cases more superficial are listed in the bibliography. In this overview, the main and subsidiary headings in Bignell and Eggleton are revisited and reclassified in the light of 186 selected articles added to the relevant literature since 2000, and some earlier work. While the literature on termite ecology remains buoyant, it has declined relative to publications on other aspects of termite biology. Overall, the thesis that termites have a major impact on, and are major indicators of soil health and landscape integrity in the tropics and sub-tropics is maintained, but the drivers of local diversity, abundance and biomass remain complex, with many biographical, edaphic and optimum sampling issues not completely resolved. The large increase in diversity and abundance data from Neotropical biomes can also be noted.
Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Hardly a day goes by without my getting an email from someone looking for a way to do good with technology. From computer science students thinking about post-grad careers to seasoned coders with decades of experience, there's an army of hackers looking for a way to turn their expertise into public goods.
Pluralistic: Digital sewer socialism (08 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Hardly a day goes by without my getting an email from someone looking for a way to do good with technology. From computer science students thinking about post-grad careers to seasoned coders with decades of experience, there's an army of hackers looking for a way to turn their expertise into public goods.
Pluralistic: Model collapse (12 Aug 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
One of my favorite rhetorical and analytical moves is joining things together (showing that two different, seemingly unrelated ideas are aspects of the same phenomenon) and taking them apart (resolving a paradox by demonstrating that what appears to be one, contradictory thing is actually two different things that have been lumped together).
Pluralistic: Ad-tech is fascist tech (10 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
A core tenet of the enshittification hypothesis is that all the terrible stuff we're subjected to in our digital lives today is the result of foreseeable (and foreseen) policy choices, which created the enshittogenic policy environment in which the worst people's worst ideas make the most money:
Pluralistic: Ad-tech is fascist tech (10 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
A core tenet of the enshittification hypothesis is that all the terrible stuff we're subjected to in our digital lives today is the result of foreseeable (and foreseen) policy choices, which created the enshittogenic policy environment in which the worst people's worst ideas make the most money:
A varied ecosystem and terminology. - Nel Ramblings
Pluralistic: Tiktok’s enshittification (21 Jan 2023) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Pluralistic: The tedious power of storytelling (02 Jun 2026) must-we-pretend – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Yesterday, I attended a Brian Eno talk about the nature of creativity and art based on What Art Does, the short book he published with Bette Adriaanse last year:
Pluralistic: Market participation is exhausting (30 Mar 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
We're a diverse species, cognitively speaking – different ways of thinking come more easily to some of us than others. I'm good at a lot of things, but I have terrible spatial sense. I can't parallel park or catch a ball, and I get lost so easily it's almost comical (it's a running joke in my family).
Pluralistic: Enshittification and Reverse Centaurs go global (29 Jul 2026) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
It's safe to say that the past couple of years have been good ones for me publishing-wise, thanks to a string of international bestsellers, both novels (Picks and Shovels) and nonfiction (Enshittification, Reverse Centaur), as well as plenty of awards and accolades:
Pluralistic: A disenshittification moment from the land of mass storage (10 Oct 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
Sometimes, you really can vote with your wallet. I know, I'm generally pretty down on this kind of thing, but sometimes, it works!
Holobiont
A holobiont is an assemblage of a host and the many other species living in or around it, which together form a discrete ecological unit through symbiosis, though there is controversy over this discreteness. The components of a holobiont are individual species or bionts, while the combined genome of all bionts is the hologenome. The holobiont concept was initially introduced by the German theoretical biologist Adolf Meyer-Abich in 1943, and then apparently independently by Dr. Lynn Margulis in her 1991 book Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation. The concept has evolved since the original formulations. Holobionts include the host, virome, microbiome, and any other organisms which contribute in some way to the functioning of the whole. Well-studied holobionts include reef-building corals and humans.
