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, please send ’em in.

1. The extended cognition of spiders (via Robert Long)
2. “Morality is a cultural construction in something like the way bridges are” — they must be designed “according to what would adequately fulfill their function and the nature of materials that” says David Wong (Duke)
3. So you want to be a public philosopher? — Carrie Jenkins (UBC) has some ideas, advice, and strategies for you
4. With so much information about philosophy programs and philosophers now readily accessible, do we still need rankings? — David Sobel (Syracuse) raises the question
5. Defending liberal toleration as a response to moral and social diversity — Peter Balint (UNSW Canberra) in conversation with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt)
6. Might we benefit animals by eating them? — a lecture by Jeff McMahan (Oxford)
7. “The entire country is starting to seem like the character from ‘The Matrix” who preferred his life in the constructed reality to life in the real world” — Michael Lynch (U Conn) on our “common reality”
8. Ask Barry Lam (Vassar), creator and host of the excellent philosophy show Hi-Phi Nation, anything — today on Reddit
9. Enhancement, transhumanism, disability, and biopolitics — a symposium on The Bioethics of Enhancement by Melinda Hall (Stetson)
10. Does voter ignorance undermine democracy? — Ilya Somin (George Mason) and Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) discuss