Links to things you might find interesting…

1. What is a music genre? — P.D. Magnus, Emmie Malone, & Brandon Polite explore the idea that music genres are “historical individuals” (thanks to OUP for making this article temporarily open access)
2. “The core danger we identified [in our simulation] is now emerging: a violent confrontation between state and federal military forces in a major American city” — law and philosophy professor Claire Finkelstein on the possibility of a new civil war in the US
3. When it comes to selecting research projects to fund, there’s a better way than peer review — just rule out the obviously bad or unqualified and then select the winners randomly from the rest, argues Louis Larue
4. “I’m just arguing that it’s better to have a daughter than a son.” Just. — Victor Kumar makes a case
5. What is it like when AI “breaks” your area of research? — an oral history of natural language processing
6. How to search effectively for literature when doing philosophical research — advice from Martin Lenz
7. “Implementing AI tools in [systematic scientific] reviews… could be disastrous, mixing an illusion of scientific credibility with poor-quality outputs” — but, says Benjamin Santos Genta, “there are ways (at least in theory) of mitigating the risks”

Mini-Heap posts usually appear when several new items accumulate in the Heap of Links, a collection of items from around the web that may be of interest to philosophers. The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap. Thank you.
Previous edition.