Mini-Heap: recent items from the frequently updated Heap of Links, collected in groups of 10, here for your perusal and discussion.

If you have suggestions for the Heap of Links, send ’em in.

1. “What if you had the opportunity to become a vampire, irreversibly—and everyone you knew who had become one said ‘It’s utterly indescribable'” — how should you decide? L.A. Paul (UNC) talks with Julia Galef at Rationally Speaking
2. “The reality of the psychological is one of the most important lessons of fMRI studies of the brain” — Tim Crane (Cambridge) on understanding consciousness and “how we can be”
3. “This is making my brain all tingly, like that time I put Pop Rocks on a q-tip” — the Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt becomes a philosophy student in the show’s 3rd season
4. “You don’t defeat a slippery slope by jumping off the cliff and taking the shortcut to the bottom” — Hayek’s problem with socialism was that it eventually empowers the “ruthless, lawless authoritarians of the right,” argues Jacob Levy (McGill)
5. How to turn children into “bullshit detectors” — the experimental work of Andy Oxman (via Timothy O’Keefe)
6. “I could run… [but] not this time… I’m really good at explaining complicated fuckery” — Rachel McKinnon (Charleston) describes and responds to online harassment she has been subject to
7. Pluralism without fragmentation — Michael P. Wolf (Washington & Jefferson) on Sellars on normativity
8. Sometimes, when we swear, “it’s just incidental that we’re expressing ourselves using language at all” — an interview on cursing with Rebecca Roache (Royal Holloway)
9. Interviews with philosophers, centered around their reading — Luciano Floridi, David Papineau, Massimo Pigliucci, Angie Hobbs, and others
10. “Far more is at stake… than the fate of an excellent philosophy program and the lives of its students and faculty” — Jennifer Frey (South Carolina) on recent threats to tenure