iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Chris Baldassano @chrisbaldassano.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

I'm recruiting PhD students this cycle! We study how the brain perceives, remembers, and predicts naturalistic experiences like movies and games, using computational tools to analyze behavioral and neural data 🧠 App deadline is 12/2/26 - see our lab pubs on our website www.dpmlab.org/pubs.html

dpmlab.org

Columbia Dynamic Perception and Memory Lab

04832

Reposted by andrea e. martin

eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 3h

lol, never change Ivies, never change (see Penn tooting its horn a couple of years ago about Katalin Karikó's Nobel win, when they never supported her or her research on mRNAs)

35820

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Chris Bogle @chrisbogle.bsky.social · 12h

9. Neurodivergent people who hack the gates and succeed differently, undermine the authority of those who guard orthodox ways of learning and succeeding. “How dare you challenge our house now we’ve let you in.”

1698

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Chris Bogle @chrisbogle.bsky.social · 12h

8. Accepting ADHD means admitting the level playing field was never level, that success wasn’t pure merit, that the game was rigged toward a narrow frame of cognition. That’s threatening to people who believe they succeeded “on merit”

18316

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Chris Bogle @chrisbogle.bsky.social · 12h

7. Here's what makes certain people uneasy: To accept reality of ADHD is to accept the system itself is disabling, which means the structures must change, & that threatens those who benefit most from them. Easier to deny ADHD than to accept structural change

110130

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Hipster Vampire Amy @lasrina.bsky.social · 19h

TV COMMERCIAL: Your next breakdown could be right around the corner! ME: Yes, I KNOW, but it’s very rude of you to—oh. Oh, you’re talking about CARS.

521628

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Onze Taal @onzetaal.bsky.social · 13h

Hij was te herkennen aan zijn taal: hij zei niet 'tjirp tjirp', maar 'chirp chirp'. #tkv

0132

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Gretchen McCulloch @gretchenmcculloch.com · 17h

omg sarah you made a fish linguistics tote for meeee

3486

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Alastair Somerville @acuity.design · 15h

Tom Gauld cartoon (as ever)

Two panel cartoon - author saying how book is a cautionary tale about technology. Techbros CEO holding up book at meeting saying let’s build these cool things.

48122

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Kat Tenbarge @kattenbarge.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Anthropic banning “abusive or cruel behavior” toward Claude in its new usage policies is proof to me that tech companies are going to moderate violence against AI before they ever moderate violence against women and minorities

189116172907

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Corey @kh0rish.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

This is why AGI isnt happening. Sense perception, movement, and memory are chemistries coupled to each other and all coupled to direct matter exchange with the environment, like a centrifugal governor. Nothing is representation, interpretation, “info processing”, or math.

There is another, radically different way to solve this problem, that is to couple the opening of the valve to something that necessarily varies in response to steam pressure and workload in a way that results in constant flywheel speed. By ‘necessarily’ I mean that the physical properties of this thing respond to changes in steam pressure and workload in a particular way. Such a solution responds in one step and does not require measurement. Thus, there is no time lag problem or concomitant source of error. Nor does it require an executive. In our current example, the thing that responds to both steam pressure and workload is the speed of the engine itself. Hitching the valve control to the flywheel couples the thing you want to control (the valve opening) directly to the thing that embodies the relevant sources of variance (the flywheel speed). So far, so good. The remaining problem is connecting these objects with the proper relation. In this case, we want a negative relation between flywheel speed and valve opening - increased flywheel speed should close the valve, while decreased speed should open it. The solution is to attach weighted arms to flywheel-driven spindle and to link the valve control to these arms (see pic). As the spindle turns, the arms raise and lower according to the centrifugal force generated by the speed of rotation. Faster spinning raises the arms, which pulls the valve closed. Slower spinning lowers the arms, which allows the valve to open. The degree of valve opening / closing varies continuously in response to the height of the arms. The result is uniform flywheel speed linked to oscillating pistons. This beautiful solution is implemented in the Watts centrifugal governor, and 18th century piece of technology that still works brilliantly.

Diagram of bacterial chemotaxis. The stimulus ligand is environmental material. The MCP is a sensory receptor that interacts/bonds with environmental material, which triggers a change in rotation of the motor and thus changes the movement behavior of the cell. The “adaptation” mechanism on the left is the memory, it modifies the sense receptor to make it less responsive over time so that it will more likely stay in the area with all the good material instead of flying right through it. All these systems have feedback mechanisms to reset the processes. All things coupled together in an intricate dance of molecular activity, directly doing things and not measuring, interpreting, or representing.

513740

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Smart Alyk @smartalyk.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

DAY 279 SPECIES 279 - Stygiolobus azoricus STAGE: Archaea MEDIUM: Arches Paper. Chromatic & QoR watercolor, Sakura pen, Tombow pencil Stygiolobus azoricus is an thermoacidophilic, obligately anaerobic archaeon that has many hair like appendages called archaella. #sciart #watercolor #archaea #art

2245

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Dr Katie Twomey @k2mey.eurosky.social · 08/10/2026

It seems baffling to me that people are conflating models and theory. Statistical analyses are for describing patterns in the data. Theory means giving possible reasons those patterns are there. Surely that's obvious but then I see people saying LLMs can tell us things about language development...

2377

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 08/10/2026

Thinking using a model should not be about correlation meaning causation. If you do that you're not able to have deep understanding of the world anymore and in fact you may be unable to think in rich scientific and humanistic ways.

1397

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 08/10/2026

And none of this even if monetarily compensated (which seems outside possibility anyway) really protects against the damage these models' ways of thinking, of seeing and understanding the world, cause.

1444

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 08/10/2026

Also labour from the people mining rare Earth minerals, the people in the Global South who toil to clean the data and supervise models live as human-in-the-loop, the people building/ cleaning data centers... the labour theft is so extensive it's not realistic that this would have been feasible.

217257

Reposted by andrea e. martin

The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Philipp Otto Runge’s Farbenkugel (1810). The top two images show the surface of the sphere, while the bottom two show horizontal and vertical cross sections. From our selection of colour charts, wheels and tables through the centuries: publicdomainreview.org/collection/c...

08017

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Birdboy @20thcenturytype.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

Shoko Uemura, Night Herons, 1956.

07115

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Deon T. Benton @deontbenton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

for context: i believe that none of it (or very little of it) is done in the service of advancing theory and understanding underlying mechanism. this, to me, is the only reason to use models in the cognitive and psychological sciences, but perhaps i missed the memo!

1112

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Deon T. Benton @deontbenton.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

this is somewhat ironic, i know, but i really cannot stand the deluge of AI papers in the field at the moment. everybody and their mama seems to have hopped on the train

1164

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Matt Binder @mattbinder.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

the tech industry is about to invent books

Andrew Yeung
@andruyeung
X.com
We created gyms because modern day work no
longer required physical activity. Without exercise,
our muscles atrophy.
I predict we'll need gyms for our brains too, once Al
starts doing our knowledge work.
10:53 PM • 10/4/26 • 1.3M Views

571214764184

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Andrew Tobolowsky @andytobo.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

This is almost exactly what I say to my students. I don't have any use for your essays! You have use for your essays!

942763

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

One thing I find endlessly funny about the rise of AI is that it has revealed that there is a large number of people who believe that the reason they wrote essays at school or university is their teachers were desperately waiting for them to provide a definite answer to “Lear: what’s up with him?”

6857781249

Reposted by andrea e. martin

singular locus sarah @scgriffith.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

again, really hope working mathematicians put the pieces together and realize the fundamental threat from ai companies has little to do with transforming practices or modes of mentorship. they want a death grip on funding and employment in the discipline. it's what they want with everything

411836

Reposted by andrea e. martin

singular locus sarah @scgriffith.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

killing me seeing mathematicians respond to the ai situation by talking about its effect on lines of inquiry or mentorship, & refusing to acknowledge all this hinges on redefining how money and power operate in mathematics. not my place to tell them what to do, but i naively expected something more

66510

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/10/2026

One of the most upsetting things for people trained in formal computational theory, who are not AI boosters, to witness is how claims about the outputs of systems with no formal specification are taken as if they are indicative of formally linked capacities, such as the ability to add; see thread:

316434

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

"By using AI, tasks like essays that used to take hours can be completed in minutes!" Sure, like how if I arrive at the gym and immediately go for a shower, my workout is done in record time. And if I throw my sandwiches straight in the bin, I can finish my lunch in under 10 seconds.

7069921911

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/10/2026

The behaviour of these systems, such as their outputs, may well be CONSISTENT with these systems having the capacity of e.g. addition. But the logical form we deploy cannot be that because something correlated with our assumptions that our assumptions are (formally) correct.

26011

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Cognitive Science Society @cogscisociety.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Many strong Elman Prize candidates are never nominated simply because no one thought to do it. Please repost! Your share might reach the colleague who writes the letter. Deadline: Nov 18 👇

01418

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Heleen Slagter @haslagter.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

🚨 Job alert 🚨 Our department @vuamsterdam.bsky.social is hiring an Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience! Join our lovely community here in beautiful Amsterdam! 🧠🔥 Deadline: October 15 workingat.vu.nl/vacancies/as...

workingat.vu.nl

Vacancy — Assistant Professor in Cognitive Neuroscience

Join the Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) as Assistant Professor in cognitive neuroscience.

15631

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Alex Hanna @alexhanna.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Indigenous languages are often hidden to LLMs, for good reason. We speak with Keoni Mahelona about his work on Indigenous data sovereignty, and why it’s worth being skeptical when the “AI" industry says it cares about preserving Indigenous languages. (with @emilymbender.bsky.social)

513345

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Emma James @emljames.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

We have 3 departmental PhD studentships available for 2027 entry, alongside opportunities to apply for ESRC funding. I'm keen to support applications relating to cognitive mechanisms of word learning over adolescence. Please share and get in touch if interested! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

088

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 28/09/2026

reminder, if you present, in psychology say, findings that "wow a neural network simulated this task" it's not actually surprising (they are function approximators) nor is the surprise compatible with believing neural networks can learn any mapping (they cannot) — confused? see below

34912

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Mal Shah @compositiomality.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Accepted to Linguistic Inquiry! I argue on syntactic grounds “some of the apples” is really “some apples of the apples” with NP-ellipsis. This explains which quantifiers and which modifiers (adjectives, prepositional phrases, relative clauses) can’t appear. Preprint: ling.auf.net/lingbuzz/009...

ling.auf.net

44512

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Prisonculture @prisonculture.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A lot of people are not well right now: physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. This is an excellent time to de-escalate conflicts and to lean into patience. This is true in our personal lives and also (maybe especially) online when it's overwhelmingly strangers crashing into each other.

131656497

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Roope Kaaronen @roopekaaronen.net · 27/09/2026

Did you know humans around the world have made string figures (cat's cradles)? And even stranger, the exact same figures to surprising degrees of complexity. In the thread below, we try to unravel this mystery:

0267

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Rose Schmits @roseschmits.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Fresh new pots now online! www.roseschmits.com Free UK shipping, worldwide shipping available

718946

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Ole Jensen @olejensen.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I would like to highlight two postdoctoral positions in the project Neuronal Mechanisms of Reading in Children Using OPM-MEG at the University of Oxford: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecruit… my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecruit�� Deadline 30 Sep.

my.corehr.com

03737

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Kate Bevan @katebevan.com · 24/09/2026

*extremely tired voice*AI agents don't "go rogue". They are not sentient; they don't have agency. They work within guardrails set by humans. If the humans are so shit at building secure sandboxes for the agents to work within, that's on the humans. Stop using this framing.

32753311

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Jonathan Peelle @jpeelle.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

We are hiring a new director for our brain imaging center at Northeastern University (Boston) in the Institute for Cognitive and Brain Health! Please spread the word. I'm on the search committee happy to speak with anyone who is interested. northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...

northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com

Associate Professor/Professor and Director, Northeastern University Biomedical Imaging Center

About the Opportunity About Northeastern: Founded in 1898, Northeastern is a global research university and the recognized leader in experience-driven lifelong learning. Our world-renowned experientia...

11421

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Giovanni D’Angelo @giodang.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

#lipidtime: It's a lipid universe. Today in Nature we publish the Lipid Brain Atlas, the first map of membrane lipid composition across the entire mouse brain, a layer of organisation that cell-type and transcript maps had left out. #lipidomics #neuroscience #BrainAtlas

1011952

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Bodo Winter @bodowinter.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

New tenure track position call for cognitive science at UCSD: apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/JPF04633

apol-recruit.ucsd.edu

Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science

University of California, San Diego is hiring. Apply now!

14425

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Rose Schmits @roseschmits.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Its the ol’ smooth jazz pottery roundup ✨ All these pots currently available for purchase on my website www.roseschmits.com Free UK shipping, worldwide available

821356

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Anyway, panic is a psy-op. Stay furious. Stay serious. Organize.

102643636

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Boxo McFoxo @boxobark.ing · 20/09/2026

a legitimate subfield of computer science

A bingo card, headed: bullshit mechinterp manuscript bingo
The free space square in the centre says: smuggled priors

The squares are:
Prompt variations produced by LLM itself
LLM-as-a-judge
Tiny model, massive overclaim
We’re not saying it’s X, just that it’s functionally X!
Cherry-picked SAE latents
KV cache mysticism
Ablation as sole proof of mechanism
Prompt hacking
Circular reasoning justified by heatmap
“Peer reviewed” by Anthropic’s Claude
Automated post-hoc feature labelling
Superposition handwaving
Funded by an obscure AI safety outfit
Labelled feature is probably just tracking punctuation
Logit lens fanfiction
An intricately contrived roleplay scenario
Model fine-tuned for the test
“implications for model welfare”
Clever Hans effect is mistaken for situational awareness
Cognitive science terminology used, just as a metaphor of course!
Purported circuit only works half the time
Teleological language
Hyper-specific coefficient tuning
Inconvenient results buried in appendix

0186

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Rose Schmits @roseschmits.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I hate to be the bearer of bad news but you gotta buy my pots cause actually they may one day grow to be Emrakul The Promised End and destroy all of humanity thats how powerful and important they are. Every time i throw a pot i am tempting eldritch power. Invest now in pots

1740498

Reposted by andrea e. martin

Esther Mondragón @e-mondragon.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

King of the magic fountain!

A tiny snail on top of a solar fountain seemly drinking

A tiny snail on top of a solar fountain.

171