Gunnar De Winter

@gunnardewinter.bsky.social

1538 Followers 266 Following

Biologist and semi-philosopher | science (and fiction) writer | plays with words and ideas 🌍 Belgium (for now) 🙋‍♂️ gunnardewinter.com

Your inability to focus isn’t a moral failing. It’s a design problem. You’re trying to think in environments built to prevent thinking. You’re trying to sustain attention in spaces engineered to shatter it. You’re fighting algorithms explicitly optimised to keep you scrolling, not learning. The solution isn’t discipline. It’s architecture. Build different defaults. Create different spaces. Establish different rhythms. Make depth as easy as distraction currently is. Make thinking feel as natural as scrolling currently does.
kakistocracy /kakɪˈstɒkrəsi/ noun government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state. "the danger is that this will reduce us to kakistocracy" - a state or society governed by its least suitable or competent citizens. plural noun: kakistocracies "the modern regime is at once a plutocracy and a kakistocracy"
A recent MIT study, “Your Brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of Cognitive Debt when Using an AI Assistant for Essay Writing Task,” provides sobering evidence. When participants used ChatGPT to draft essays, brain scans revealed a 47 percent drop in neural connectivity across regions associated with memory, language, and critical reasoning. Their brains worked less, but they felt just as engaged—a kind of metacognitive mirage. Eighty-three percent of heavy AI users couldn’t recall key points from what they’d “written,” compared to only 10 percent of those who composed unaided. Neutral reviewers described the AI-assisted writing as “soulless, empty, lacking individuality.” Most alarmingly, after four months of reliance on ChatGPT, participants wrote worse once it was removed than those who had never used it at all.
(A) The “spider-like decoy” stabilimentum of the first individual Cyclosa sp. observed in the Philippines. (B) The Cyclosa sp. observed resting within the stabilimentum illustrated in Figure 1A. (C) The first Cyclosa individual found exhibiting a spider-like stabilimentum in Madre de Dios, Peru. (D) The stabilimentum and spider of the Peruvian Cyclosa sp. showing the spider's position above the stabilimentum. (E) The Peruvian Cyclosa species that builds stabilimentum. (F) A similar stabilimentum, built by an unknown spider taxon, found and photographed in the Torotorofotsy-Ihofa forest, Madagascar by H. Cordey.
The colonial spider web in Sulfur Cave, is home to a mixed colony of Tegenaria domestica and Prinerigone vagans. A. Side view; B. frontal view
Message saying: "I discovered you through your Clarkesworld article “Symbiosis and Holobionts, or Life Is a Manifold”. It was brilliant, and I’ve been following you here ever since."
A graph of trends in despair by agein the United States for two periods - 2009-2018 (the blue line) and 2019-2024 (the red dotted line). It is apparent that the hump-shape in despair by age in the first period has been replaced by despair declining in age due to a rise in the rate of despair among younger people.
Reality is not what you think it is. It is not the foundation of our joyful flourishing. It is not an eternally renewing resource, nor something that would, were it not for our excessive intervention and reckless consumption, continue to harmoniously expand into the future. The truth is that reality is not nearly so benevolent. Like everything else that exists – stars, microbes, oil, dolphins, shadows, dust and cities – we are nothing more than cups destined to shatter endlessly through time until there is nothing left to break. This, according to the conclusions of scientists over the past two centuries, is the quiet horror that structures existence itself.
Scene from Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Queen Charlotte, in a dark orange cloak, says, "Let him be mad if mad is what he needs."
Yours truly doing a handstand in a gray shirt and blue shorts on a patch of grass. Fores-covered mountain in the background
A proposed publicity plan detailing your ability to promote and sell your book, including: stats for your online platform and following (Facebook, Instagram, website readership, etc); connections with key media partners, publications, and organizations that would help promote your book; teaching and speaking venues where you are known; noted individuals you are connected with who would potentially endorse and help promote your book; availability and commitment to travel and promote.
Sepia photo of yours truly on a pink background. In white letters above the photo: Live reading and Q&A with author Gunnar De Winter. Fri 4/4, 12PM EST, Instagram Live Under the photo, in yellow letters: Desert Beetle Song
Meme pf wide-eyed gray cat, ears tucked back. Caption: "My hypothalamus is full. I'm going home now."
Cover of Heartlines Spec issue 6, a group of people with ghostlike masks standing in front of colored wooden houses
Picture of slim, smooth tree trunks with strips of bright green, orange, darker red, and brown. (From Wikimedia Commons, taken by Janine Sprout.)
Brown spider on a leaf, covered with a white 'crust' of fungus
Screenshot of BlueSky's trending tab, with Kwanzaa, Metallica, and Christmas.
984 followers
Legs of a red squirrel sticking horizontally from a tree.
Three medium-sized white orchids amid green and round short stems, against a black background.
Meme of Despicable Me's Gru at a whiteboard, saying Frame: I finally sit at my desk to write Frame 2: I know exactly what I have to write Frames 3 and 4: I get distracted, spend 3 hours on the internet and write nothing
Graph with interdisciplinarity on x-axis, Day science experience on left x-axis, night science creative potential on right y-axis. As the blue line of day science experience drops, the red one of night science creative potential rises. They meet in the middle of the graph, labeled 'renaissance'.
Six people sitting around a tree stump with the Jurassic Five logo, on a little piece of fallow land surrounded by roads
Vintage scientific illustration of Magospheara life stages, from a single cell over an embryo-looking clump of cells to a ball of amoeba-looking cells.
Left: milky, luminescent sea slug with a tentacled tail left and a large bell shape to the right. Right: same shape in the dark, speckled with luminescent green dots
Screenshot saying: I confirm that I, Gunnar De Winter, am an official representative of De Winter, Gunnar.
Tiny toad, shiny and brown, crawling up a human fingertip
Woody and Buzz Lightyear meme. Caption: Writer's block is just the beginning. You also have endless rejection letters and caffeine addiction to look forward to.
Comment: "I threw up after reading this." My reply, attempting to speak troll "pretty beta" Comment: vomiting emoji. My reply: "You’re adorable. Have a good day, sweetie."
Comment: "Beta whiteys simp for trad-thots and then wonder why their women chase chads. Reply: "I was waiting for this comment. What took you so long?"
The face of a black-and-white cat with a white knitted hat that includes electrodes.
Displaced Syrian doctors train medical software that helps diagnose prostate cancer in Britain. Out-of-work college graduates in recession-hit Venezuela categorize fashion products for e-commerce sites. Impoverished women in Kolkata’s Metiabruz, a poor Muslim neighborhood, have labelled voice clips for Amazon’s Echo speaker. Their work couches a badly kept secret about so-called artificial intelligence systems—that the technology does not ‘learn’ independently, and it needs humans, millions of them, to power it. Data workers are the invaluable human links in the global AI supply chain.
... it took me some years to discover what I was. Which was a writer. By which I mean not a “good” writer or a “bad” writer but simply a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.
Screenshot, black letters on white background: Queue position 1162.
Jenny the Butcher from the tv show Dead Boy Detectives, standing in a white room with arms spread slightly. Caption: There's already one emotionally shut-down nihilist in this building.
Screenshot from Dead Boy Detectives s1e4. Niko and Edwin sitting on rocks, forest in the background, with Niko saying, "Luckily, love requires no logic."
Stereotypical mad scientist (Doc from Back To the Future) holding jumper cables.
Screenshot of text: @Gunnar is a biologist who writes so clearly and eloquently! Have you met many of those? And the topics are just fascinating. I highly recommend his substack.
Meme from The Great Gatsby of Leo Dicaprio raising a glass. Caption: What is the key to success? Consistency.
More from company webpage. Three pictures (social media icons, voice recording, and coin and bank notes). Captions: Link your social media profiles. Easy as copy-pasting your username from youtube. AI Twin created from you. A fully-functional bot mimicking your personality. Invite fans and monetize. Make money while your fans interact with your bot
Company page with white and purple letters on black background. Caption: "Create your AI Twin that makes money while you sleep Share your AI with fans and generate passive income"
Viktor from the show Arcane, reading a book.
Screenshot: (blacked out name) pledged a subscription to Thinking Ahead. Thought-provoking writing found nowhere else.
Captain Picard and Will Riker from Star Trek sitting side by side, both facepalming. Caption: Double facepalm, for when one facepalm doesn't cut it.
Picture of text: "We don’t have hobbies; we have side hustles. Do you enjoy writing? Start a Substack (that you secretly want to monetize but shh don’t tell anyone yet) or - heavens help you - try to get published. Enjoy visual art? Share it on Instagram and sell prints. Or maybe fitness and cooking are your things? Make reels, start a YouTube channel, and sell recipes/workout programs. No, you’re into music? TikTok your way to stardom and collect patr(e)ons that help you finance your demo. Welcome to hell… err, I mean hustle culture."
Black and white image of young(ish) Clint Eastwood pointing a gun at you. Caption: Do you feel lucky... punk? Well... do ya?
Sad fluffy cat with a red pointed party hat looking ruefully at a single red candle in an empty tuna can.
Rainbow Dash (My Little Pony) saluting with caption: Good luck, Soldier. God help us all.
Grumpy gray cat sitting on its behind on a plastic chair with a red pillow staring at a cup of coffee. Caption: First, I drink the coffee, then I do the stuff.
Four-panel meme of a seagull throwing its head back- and forward. First panel caption: You got this! Second: I believe in you! Third: Well, kinda. Fourth: But that's a whole separate issue!!!