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Cian O'Donnell

@cianodonnell.bsky.social
3K followers 2K following 1.2K posts

Computational neuroscientist. Senior Lecturer at Ulster University in the Great City of Derry, Northern Ireland. "not articulate enough" odonnellgroup.github.io

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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Renato Duarte @rcfduarte.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
The EuroNMC COST Action has started — a four-year European network on neuromorphic computing. I am leading WG1: Foundations & Theoretical Models. Our question: when does a biological mechanism actually buy you something computationally, and when should it be deliberately violated? Join us!
cost.eu
European Network for NeuroMorphic Computing
AI has advanced rapidly and enabled a broad spectrum of applications. The most capable models driving these applications rely on billions of parameters and large-scale computing resources, leading to ...
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
the @simonsfoundation.org SFARI are doing hero work aggregating Autism data across their consortium sites. Latest SPARK release has phenotype data from a mind-boggling >448,000 individuals (>191,000 ASD): www.sfari.org/resource/spa... Genomic data available for >100k of these too
sfari.org
SFARI | Phenotypic Data
Explore phenotypic data available to autism researchers and powered by SPARK, a cohort of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative.
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Anna-Lena Eckert @eckertal.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
/vɒn ˈnɔɪmən/ --> NOY-man, the interviewer says his name at 1:40 and he does not correct him ;) youtu.be/vLbllFHBQM4?...
youtu.be
John Von Neumann Interview
YouTube video by sierranevadatrail
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Aitor Morales-Gregorio @aitormg.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Don't miss our latest poster at #Bernstein2026 on Tuesday afternoon II-25 "Wiring without firing: geometric rules generate brain architecture and dynamics" Conference abstract 💬: doi.org/10.12751/nnc... Preprint 📝: doi.org/10.48550/arX...
doi.org
Bernstein Conference 2026
Conference Abstracts
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Ok can we please settle once and for all: how to pronounce John von Neumann? von NU-man von NOY-man von NYOO-man
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
I remember trying to describe my PhD project on neuronal electrical noise from stochastic ion channel gating to my non-scientist flatmate, I was gesticulating and yammering on for around 5 mins. He nodded along politely then afterwards asked, ok but what does this have to do with hearing?
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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
In his essay, @apeyrache.bsky.social argues that implementing a lottery system in grant review saves researchers time, reduces strategic resubmission and accepts that, above a quality threshold, luck has always played a part in science funding. www.thetransmitter.org/funding/gran...
thetransmitter.org
How about adding an element of chance to grant review?
A process that uses a lottery system saves time and accepts that, above a quality threshold, luck has always played a part in science funding.
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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky
I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking. 

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review.  Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage.  To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.
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Steven Cook @dumpyunc.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
A few words about what I’ve been up to at Flourish. Reach out if this resonates with you and you’d like to talk! fewerbetterfaster.substack.com/p/the-parts-...
fewerbetterfaster.substack.com
The Parts List AI Doesn’t Have
Mapping the human brain with light
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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Catherine Dulac @dulaclab.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
I am highly humbled to be this year recipient of the Pearl Meister Greengard Prize for outstanding women in biomedical research: its first awardee was my PhD advisor Nicole Le Douarin, an extraordinary scientist and mentor! Importantly, this award also recognizes the amazing scientists from my lab.
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
British politics may be basket case but I for one am delighted about the growing and well overdue use of error bars on these voting projection charts
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Adam Bienkov @adambienkov.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
The British right has now descended to the point where 'the England team are not English' is becoming the consensus position
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Nico Schuck @nicoschuck.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
2023: 8,039 proposals 2024: 10,360 proposals 2025: 17,066 proposals 2026: 21,627 proposals Something's gotta give
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Ben de Bivort @debivort.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Hello friends, the Harvard Life Science departments have banded together to hire a new colleague working at the intersection of Life Sciences and AI. Could be primarily an experimentalist, or could be primarily a compute/theorist. academicpositions.harvard.edu/postings/16773
academicpositions.harvard.edu
Tenure-Track Professor in Life Science and AI
The Life Sciences Departments in Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences seek to recruit a tenure-track professor whose research is at the interface of AI and life sciences, from methodological developme...
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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Tim Vogels @tpvogels.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Playing Pong with spikes, dancing rate networks, composite engrams & #ihngrams4engrams. The labs most recent work-in-progress, now on biorxiv.com. Stay tuned for more Pong doi.org/10.64898/202... Dale doi.org/10.64898/202... Composite engrams doi.org/10.64898/202... Ihngrams doi.org/10.64898/202...
Small sub panel of the "Dale" paper's Fig. 1 ,depicting a humanoid dancing with joy. The paper is about how motor cortex can orchestrate a rich and flexible repertoire of network dynamics for rhythmic and goal-directed movements. Computational studies have begun to illuminate the mechanistic origins of this repertoire, but a comprehensive model that can explain the emergence of both transient and self-sustained dynamics is still missing. Condruz et al. show that three simple ingredients: Dalean connectivity, stability, and nonlinear neural responses, suffice to reverse-engineer networks that produce transient, steady-state, and self-sustained periodic activity. A single dynamical principle underlies this repertoire: the interaction of non-normal amplification, inherent to Dalean networks, with neuronal nonlinearity, so to ignite and sustain multi-stable, controllable dynamics. The approach yields entire families of connectivity matrices that require no hand-tuning or learning of weights. Without fitting them to data, these networks reproduce the population-level signatures of motor cortex, implying that the richness of cortical dynamics need not be sculpted by learning, but may emerge from simple biological ingredients. But really, we just feel like dancing with JOY!!
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 20/09/2026
Surely the purpose of Trump's AI Force is to enable a surveillance state. More generally I am not so much worried about AGI or AI taking over humans, but humans using AI as a weapon for cyber attacks or a tool for mass surveillance on other humans.
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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 19/09/2026
I assume that when whoever is making it IPOs they will reveal the full lineup implied by the existence of Tilly Norwood.
Grid of logic gate options as Venn diagrams of Tilly Norwood, Tilly Orwood, Tilly Andwood, Tilly Xorwood, Tilly Nandwood, and Tilly Xnandwood
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Patrick Wyman @patrickwyman.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
I've spent a lot of years studying a lot of collapses, and the truth of the matter is that they're always mundane: mild climatic shifts that reduce crop yields, a dumbass in power who makes some terrible decisions, neglecting things that obviously matter but the will to fix them can't be summoned.
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
reminds me of when I moved from Dublin to Edinburgh. I was used to Irish chat where you can say random things with no expectation that people will actually *listen to and process what you say*. It's kind of like that but being in charge of a powerful country with nuclear weapons
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Maria Farrell @mariafarrell.eurosky.social · 18/09/2026
This is precisely why hundreds of experts demanded that during Ireland's presidency of the EU our country not be allowed to handle tech policy. Ireland is the trojan horse for US Big Tech lawlessness in the EU. It's really as simple as that.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 18/09/2026
So about that batshit insane AI millenarian Silicon Valley sex cult running much of big tech….from Sonia Joseph: siliconvalleynotes.substack.com/p/agi-cnc-an...
Sonia Joseph y @soniajoseph_
To the journalists contacting me about the AGI consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties—
During my twenties in Silicon Valley, I ran among elite tech/Al circles through the community house scene. I have seen some troubling things around social circles of early OpenAl employees, their friends, and adjacent entrepreneurs, which I have not previously spoken about publicly.
It is not my place to speak as to why Jan Leike and the superalignment team resigned. I have no idea why and cannot make any claims.
However, I do believe my cultural observations of the SF Al scene are more broadly relevant to the Al industry.
I don't think events like the consensual non-consensual (cnc) sex parties and heavy LSD use of some elite Al researchers have been good for women. They create a climate that can be very bad for female Al researchers, with broader implications relevant to X-risk and AGI safety. I believe they are somewhat emblematic of broader problems: a coercive climate that normalizes recklessness and crossing boundaries, which we are seeing playing out more broadly in the industry today. Move fast and break things, applied to people.
There is nothing wrong imo with sex parties and heavy LSD use in theory, but combined with the shadow of 100B+ interest groups, leads to some of the most coercive and fucked up social dynamics that I have ever seen. The climate was like a fratty LSD version of 2008 Wall Street bankers, which bodes ill for Al safety.
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
'Medicine, dentistry and veterinary sciences is the subject group with the highest cost – a cool £19,986 for a year of tuition. It is followed by physical sciences (£16,466)'.
wonkhe.com
Counting the cost of teaching higher education in England
Last seen around the time of the Augar review, KPMG has updated work on the costs of teaching. DK finds evidence of cost cutting everywhere
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Margot Finn @eicathomefinn.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
'Based on this data the least expensive subject areas are law (£9,475), combined and general studies (£10,276) and other social sciences (£10,340). Those familiar with TRAC data will note that all of these costs are higher than the maximum fee limit'. The weighted average is £12,317.
gov.uk
Cost of undergraduate provision and qualifications in England
A study of the full economic cost of providing undergraduate-level higher education and other qualifications in England.
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Reposted by Cian O'Donnell
Stephen Montgomery @ebablab.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Are you a #NewPI in Ecology & Evolution? Would you like to meet with peers to chat about work, the future and life as a new PI? 🍪☕️ Then I have the form for you! 📋 Help us gauge interest in a new network/event by filling in this short survey: forms.cloud.microsoft/e/K4wUiuLuFn Please RT! 🙏
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Steve Ramirez @okaysteve.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
🚨 new work from the lab! "Hippocampal astrocytic sequences emerge during learning and memory recall" by @ryguy.io & @rsuthard.bsky.social thank you to the entire team for your camaraderie and for muscling through science together 🧠 -- we welcome all feedback! nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Hippocampal astrocytic sequences emerge during learning and memory recall
Nature Neuroscience - Senne, Suthard and colleagues show that dorsal hippocampal astrocytes display time-compressed calcium-event sequences after foot shock and upon context re-exposure, and that...
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Carolina Rezaval @crezaval.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
We’re hiring two postdocs! Join the our Lab @unibirmingham.bsky.social to uncover how the brain resolves behavioural conflicts. Deadline: 22 September 2026 @wellcometrust.bsky.social Please share! www.rezavallab.org
jobs.ac.uk
Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) at University of Birmingham
Apply for the Research Fellow (Postdoctoral) role on jobs.ac.uk, the top job board for academic positions in higher education. View details and apply now.
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Cathy Abbott @cathyabbott.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Spot on. The whole point of the cover letter, as opposed to the formulaic CV, is to convey more about who you are as a person, and why you would be a good fit. It is SO obvious when people use AI- I would never ignore a genuine approach but I'm not responding to people who have made no effort.
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(((Dr Hannah Wirtshafter))) 🔬 @aheadofthenerve.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Hi friends & colleagues! I’m on the hunt for a tenure-track home! I’m a BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 scholar studying learning & memory at the intersection of experimental neuroscience, theory, & machine learning/AI. I’d love to connect & would appreciate help spreading the word! web.mit.edu/hsw/www/
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Courtney Milan @courtneymilan.com · 13/09/2026
“You need to integrate AI because while it will degrade your abilities and make your job less interesting and more shitty, at least you will retain employment” is not the sell AI proponents think it is.
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Tomás Ryan @tjryan.bsky.social · 13/09/2026
"MIT wants to rebuild education around the things AI can't replace. That means oral exams, semester portfolios, in-person project work, and a required social component in every subject. The report even floats the idea of rethinking grades entirely..." This is the way forward @tcddublin.bsky.social
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Di Jiang @dijiang319.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Online today @science.org Noncoding transcription controls the developmental dynamics of long-range gene regulation | Science www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
science.org
Noncoding transcription controls the developmental dynamics of long-range gene regulation
The genomic regions regulating gene expression are often themselves transcribed into a variety of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs). However, the regulatory roles of this noncoding transcription remain largely ...
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🇵🇸Tim Henke (tɪm 'ɦɛŋ.kə) @timhenke.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Terence Tao, who is otherwise quite bullish on AI, had this to say:
Terence Tao writes on mastodon:

Fundamentally, problems in pure mathematics, such as the global regularity problem, serve a different purpose than immediately practical problems, such as that of finding a cure to a specific disease, or increasing the energy efficiency of some engine.  In most cases in pure mathematics, the problems are posed not because we desperately want the solution to these problems in and of themselves, but because we have seen from past experience that human-directed efforts to solve these problems tend to spur further development of the field through the efforts to solve such problems, and then to digest any partial or complete solutions that emerge for further insights.  Prematurely solving the problem by purely AI-powered methods - particularly without full transparency into the solution process - can contaminate this process to the point where it actually becomes a net negative for the progress of mathematics as a whole.  (6/6)
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Rhodri Cusack @rhodricusack.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We're hiring! 2 postdocs + 3 PhD students to join InfantNeuroAI at Trinity College Dublin: awake infant fMRI & OPM-MEG, plus computational models of how infants learn. Aims: understand infant visual cognition, infant neuroimaging methods, more energy-efficient learning 🧵 www.cusacklab.org/vacancies
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Alex Schier @schierlab.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
The first Danionella paper from the lab. Danionella cerebrum is transparent, so you can see all of the internal organs. But what sensory information are the organs sending to the brain? In our new preprint, Emily Bayer wanted to find out. 1/4 www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
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Natalie Christie Peluso 🧠 @nataliepeluso.com · 28/06/2026
While this essay is centred on mathematics, the gist is the same for any human conceptual thought facing AI Intelligence is process, path-walking, culture, collective, accretive #neuroskyence davidbessis.substack.com/p/the-fall-o...
davidbessis.substack.com
The fall of the theorem economy
How AI could destroy mathematics and barely touch it
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JJ @jjodx.eurosky.social · 08/09/2026
Version of record of our paper "Preserved cerebellar functions despite structural degeneration in older adults" is now available @elife.bsky.social Where we show that structure and function of the cerebellum are decoupled during the aging trajectory elifesciences.org/articles/109... #sensorimotor
elifesciences.org
Preserved cerebellar functions despite structural degeneration in older adults
Cerebellar-dependent functions are mostly maintained or even enhanced across the lifespan, with cerebellar-mediated motor abilities remaining intact despite degeneration, in contrast to non-cerebellar...
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Carl Kinsella @carlkinsella.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
unless you're waking up early to get the bus, Luas or DART, in which case you'll soon be paying 30% more per journey
rte.ie
Budget to support those 'who get up early every morning'
Tánaiste and Minister for Finance Simon Harris has said this year's Budget will support people "who get up early every morning and go to work".
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Memming Park @memming.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Truth, curiosity, and compassion. (yes, I used an Oxford comma.)
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Ego, insecurity and pedantry. These are the three fuels that keep the academic machine running 🙂
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Jen Keane @zenbuffy.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
A significant contributor to the gender pay gap and the continuing financial disparity between men and women is the undervaluing of all of the unpaid care work done by women in Ireland. Women all over Ireland get up early, every morning, and go to work, unpaid and unvalued.
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Michael Batey @mbatey.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Economic growth requires substantial immigration to sustain, but they won't acknowledge that
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James McAllister @jajmca.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Huge thanks to the very best supervisors 🙏🏻🎉 I am Cian's biggest admirer and am so grateful for all his support, encouragement and insight, as well as John and Conor's @conjh.bsky.social. Doing a PhD and science with them has been one of the best experiences, and I aspire to be like them!
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
We went for lunch to celebrate, didn't realise there would be a group of muscly triathletes jumping into the Foyle river to practise for their race. All these people put in hours of unseen effort and graft and sweat and heartache, about to reap their rewards - a fitting metaphor for James's journey.
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Massive congrats to my PhD student @jajmca.bsky.social, co-supervised by John Wade & @conjh.bsky.social, who handed in his PhD thesis yesterday inside 3 years, virtually unheard of in the UK! Amazing theoretical/computational work linking structure to function in recurrent neural networks.
Photo of James McAllister and Cian O'Donnell in front of River Foyle
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Enny van Beest @ennyvb.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
Textbook: tracking position during navigation is primarily the job of the hippocampus. Recent findings suggest a more complicated story. Recording >20k neurons brainwide, we indeed find spatial representations in every region! With @kenneth-harris.bsky.social and @carandinilab.net
Brainwide representations of a virtual corridor
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Jim Heys @jim-heys.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I’m very excited to share our new paper, led by the very talented Jack Bowler, a postdoc in the lab! www.nature.com/articles/s41... We all know that the way we learn something matters. But how does a training curriculum actually shape how the brain learns to solve a problem? a 🧵 1/N
nature.com
Structured experience shapes strategy learning and neural dynamics in the medial entorhinal cortex - Nature Neuroscience
The authors use recurrent neural networks to predict how structured prior experience shapes neural dynamics as mice learn flexible timing strategies during complex context-dependent behavior.
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Mark Riedl @markriedl.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Yann LeCun throwing bombs at the ACM AI Leadership Summit
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Dan Goodman @neural-reckoning.org · 01/09/2026
If you're in or near London do think about coming along to this. Not just a talk about a really fun topic (neural heterogeneity) but a chance to grill the author (me) on whether we learn anything with the theoretical methods he's used, and indeed whether the questions he poses are even meaningful.
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Cian O'Donnell @cianodonnell.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
of course Trump's renaming of Lake Ontario is petty but otoh all maps are political, and subject to change by governments of the day. indeed Ireland's name was contested for most of the 20th century
Google maps screenshot showing "Lake Ontario"Google map screenshot showing "Czechia"Google map screenshot showing "Myanmar (Burma)"Google map screenshot showing "Zambia"
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medRxivpreprint @medrxivpreprint.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
Machine learning analysis of Autism phenotype data supports a four-dimensional continuum with three overlapping subtypes www.medrxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…
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