iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.” Carl Gustav Jung

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 12/08/2026

After 30+ years of reading, I just learned that the letter A is an upside-down ox head. I've seen it millions of times. Billions? Now it's the only thing I can see. A = 𐤀 = 𓃾 IT HAS TWO HORNS Ɐ #linguistics #etymology

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

What rabbit hole have I fallen into now? Reading about reward processing in orbitofrontal cortex sparked a hunch: abstract rewards (money) don’t get devalued with repeated delivery the way primary rewards (food) do (you get full) Diving into papers now…Uh oh #NeuroSky #Neuroeconomics

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

From a book on Cassandra (see reply) for anyone else who resonates: “Her failure to communicate all that she knows keeps her on the limits of society, and her existence there allows her to expand on and even celebrate the very knowledge that she fails to communicate” #Mythology #Cassandra #BookSky

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Created a #Notion database today for the educational DVDs I own on ancient Greek history, mythology, and philosophy (excluding TV/movie adaptations) Here's the list if it's useful for anyone! Am I missing anything good? #AncientGreece #GreekHistory #GreekMythology #GreekPhilosophy #Odyssey

Screenshot of a Notion database table with Type, Provider, and Name columns, listing:

Courses: Medea & Other Plays (Euripides) (Memoria Press), Ancient Greek Civilization (The Great Courses), Greek Tragedy (The Great Courses), Introduction to Greek Philosophy (The Great Courses), Masters of Greek Thought: Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle (The Great Courses), The Long Shadow of the Ancient Greek World (The Great Courses)

Documentary: Greece: Secrets of the Past (IMAX), Alexander's Lost World (Athena), 5000 Years of Magnificent Wonders: Ancient Greece (Questar), Ancient Civilizations: Athens and Ancient Greece (Questar), Ancient Greece: Gods and Battles (The History Channel), In Search of History: The Greek Gods (The History Channel), The True Story of Alexander the Great (The History Channel), In Search of the Trojan War (BBC), Helen of Troy (PBS), Odysseus Returns (PBS), The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization (PBS), The Real Olympics (PBS)

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

How many people with valuable work are going unseen because they’re skilled at what they do rather than knowing the right words to say on social media? #BuildInPublic #SoftwareEngineering #Builders #ThisSucks

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

The cool thing about abstraction is that I spent hundreds of hours building the first adapter for one particular model of the Muse headset… The second model took maybe a dozen of hours… The third model only took hours… And now 2 of the remaining 3 models took about 30 minutes. #Muse #EEG #BCI

There are various biosensors shown, including all 6 current models of the Muse headset: Muse 1 Gen 1, Muse 1 Gen 2, Muse 2, Muse S Gen 1, Muse S Gen 2, Muse S Athena. There are a few other biosensors shown that are not directly relevant to this post.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Data streaming in from the Cyton! That's a solid stopping point for tonight. #Biosensors #EMG #BuildInPublic

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Got another biosensor! This one is the OpenBCI 8-channel Cyton Biosensing Board for ExG. I’ll be using it to measure muscle activity (EMG), and then using it to estimate where in the brain (EEG) that muscle activity came from. Technical docs here: docs.openbci.com/Cyton/CytonL... 🤓

The OpenBCI 8-channel Cyton Biosensing Board is shown, with its variety of parts laid out in an orderly fashion. At the center of the image, there is a box that has its electrodes and cables shown, along with an OpenBCI sticker on the front left of the box. In front of the box, there is a paper card that shows the contents of the box, with both a name and a visual representation for each part. The parts themselves are laid around the card.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Now I have one biosensor tower! Pictured from top to bottom: Muse 2, Muse S Athena, Muse S Gen 2 (yes it’s confusing), and the Zephyr BioHarness 3.0 #Biosensors #Biosignals #EEG #PPG #ECG #Muse

A “biosensor tower” that is a rounded piece of cardboard with 4 biosensors running from top to bottom: Muse 2, Muse S Athena, Muse S Gen 2, and Zephyr BioHarness 3.0.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 12/08/2025

TW: Painful facial expressions These 4 trials show a basic pattern of my response to C-tactile touch. EEG, ECG, and more soon. See thread for hypotheses! Also, please excuse the very scientific Q-tip. I've...misplaced my Von Frey monofilaments! 😂 #BuildInPublic #Neurophysiology #Biosignals #Nof1

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

If these acronyms light up your brain, we should talk :) SpI/II, Sp5C, VMpo, Idfp, post-IC, mid-IC, vAIC, MCC, PAG, NRA, NA, FMN, VH 🧠 #Neuroscience #Neuroanatomy #FunctionalNeuroanatomy #Neurophysiology #Interoception #EmotionalMotorSystem

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 09/08/2025

I’ve lived with symptoms that doctors have repeatedly asserted has no biological cause. It’s made me determined to prove they do have a measurable cause, so no one else is dismissed like that again. Who else is working towards this change? #Neurosky #Neuroskyence #ChronicIllness #Psychosomatic

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

Spent a lot of time today reading The Emotional Motor System (1996). It’s funny how often a decades-old textbook is still the deepest, most comprehensive take on a topic. For another prime example, check out The Midbrain PAG Matter (1991)! #Neurosky #AffectiveNeuroscience #EmotionalMotorSystem

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 03/08/2025

Finished building a #ReactJS badge to show (hardcoded) total repos and test counts for a #GitHub org. Will soon integrate with the node-test-counter package I just built, so it can be updated automatically. Check it out here! github.com/neurodevs/react-github-badge ✅ #BuildInPublic #OpenSource

Screenshot of a webpage footer displaying a GitHub-style badge labeled "Neurodevs" with "22 repos, 540 tests" in green, positioned below a symmetrical diagram of brain regions labeled left (L) and right (R).

Code snippet showing a TestCounterBadge React component with props for title (Neurodevs), githubUrl (https://github.com/neurodevs), numRepos (22), and numTests (540).

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 31/07/2025

Finally got around to building a small module to count tests across packages. I've written 536 tests so far across all @neurodevs repos, and it only took 3 of those tests to count the rest! github.com/neurodevs/no... #BuildInPublic #TestDrivenDevelopment #TDD #SoftwareEngineering

Terminal screenshot showing a script output for test counts across @neurodevs repos. The script, executed with node build/scripts/demo.js, displays a JSON-like object: total: 536, with a perRepo breakdown. The repo with the highest count is 'react-connectivity-graphs': 78, followed by 'node-ble': 71 and 'node-lsl': 70. Repos with the fewest tests include and 'node-test-counter': 3, 'node-html-loader': 2, and 'node-eeg': 2.

Terminal screenshot showing test results for the file CrossRepoTestCounter.test.ts. All 3 tests passed in a total of 6ms:

• createsInstance
• throwsIfRepoNotFound
• resultEqualsExpected

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Started building a #NodeJS adapter for this robotic arm to eventually deliver #C-tactile stimuli in experiments. It’ll target both sides of my cheeks, forearms, and calves to test for somatotopy using #EEG source localization. There will be many other tests too! #BuildInPublic #Neuroskyence

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

C-tactile touch (slow, gentle) is normally pleasant. For me, it's painful (allodynia) and causes involuntary movements / vocalizations under certain conditions. Hypothesis: C-tactile => #Insula => Cingulate => PAG => Motor Here’s a partial #causal model to test! #BuildInPublic #EEG #Nof1

A terminal window displays output from running a Node.js script (node build/scripts/demo.js) for a causal model used in the I-INSULA protocol.

The causal model M is shown as a triple ⟨U, V, F⟩, where U is a set of external variables (like C-tactile, vestibular, thermal, and visual stimuli), V is a set of internal biosignal variables (like source-localized EEG and EMG), and F is a set of causal mechanisms represented as functions.

A submodel Mx is also shown, where one function in F has been modified to return a constant value (e.g., 1) to simulate activity of an internal variable (in this example, posterior insular cortex activity) to test whether it is sufficient to causally explain downstream activity in the cingulate cortex or EMG muscle activity.

A screenshot of TypeScript code in a code editor, showing part of the StructuralCausalModel class implementation.

The method toSubmodel takes a set of mechanism modifications (Fx), stores them in instance variables (currentF, currentFx), and performs causal mechanism overrides via doMechanismModifications(), replacing the function with a constant-returning one. The new submodel is then created in createSubmodel() and returned.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I’ve been building these graphs to show likely neuroanatomical pathways of my unexplained condition. Tonight, I started building the causal engine to move from unexplained to explained. I'm becoming a falsifiable model, one mechanism at a time. #Neuroscience #Causality #EEG #Nof1 #BuildInPublic

Screenshot of a TypeScript class named StructuralCausalModel implementing Judea Pearl’s formalism of a structural causal model. The class defines private readonly fields U, V, and F for external (exogenous) variables, internal (endogenous) variables, and causal mechanisms, respectively. It includes a static Create method, a toTriple method, and supporting interfaces for typing the causal model components. The code structure reflects a modular, type-safe design for executable causal modeling.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Testing efficiency matters. Inefficient: Manually spinning up separate instances just to tweak one value at a time. Me, earlier today. Efficient: 9 side-by-side graphs, each testing a different value, all in a single view. Me, now. #BuildInPublic #DeveloperExperience #DX #UXTesting #VisualTesting

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

Ensuring the graph fits seamlessly wherever it’s embedded has been tricky. Now, with fixed-width nodes and word wrapping on long labels, its dimensions are much better defined. This should go a long way toward making this #reactjs component “just work” wherever it's embedded! #buildinpublic #css

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

Okay, I've spent enough time on this mild curiosity! I found a bug that hid for 3+ years in my code. It broke the radial layout unless there were at least 4-5 nodes. Back then, I fixed it with a hack. Now, I know why. I may even be less likely to do it again! :D #buildinpublic #code #opensource

An image showing git changes in TypeScript code, with 2 changes made. A minus sign was changed to a plus sign, which fixed a known issue. Text overlay on the image also describes the thought process.

A screenshot of WolframAlpha showing three different lines plotted on the same graph:

y = 140 / (x - 1)
y = 140 / (x + 1)
y = 140

There is commentary on the graph which shows the problems associated with using a minus sign, and the more beneficial effects observed when using a plus sign.

An image showing the flowgraph with the corrected layout. The nodes start at the proper intended angle. Before, the actual angle was a bit shallow, which led to the nodes feeling crammed and the top/bottom nodes being hard to read because they're at a steep angle relative to horizontal. Now, the angle is a bit wider as was intended, giving more visual space and making it easier to read labels of nodes.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

Noticing a recurring #tdd pattern in my #frontend work: minor: create footer component – Footer.test.tsx => rendersFooter patch: renders footer in app – App.test.tsx => rendersFooterInApp First, assert "it" exists. Then, assert it exists in a context. Anyone else do this or have a name for it?

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

A while ago, I had a wonderful package called react-connectivity-graphs Then, I had the smart idea to change its name to node-connectivity-graphs because... #ssr #nodejs Now after two days of undoing that "smart idea", I'm back to having a wonderful #react package 😂 #buildinpublic #stillaboutnode

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 21/06/2025

Added a #css transition to smooth the menu modal by toggling between .open and .closed classes. Per #tdd, updated tests to capture toggle behavior. Then, updated actual behavior and CSS definitions. The transition still felt clunky, so I added a fade effect to <main> also! #buildinpublic #reactjs

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

I've now made my developer website mobile-first, with progressive enhancement for desktop. The idea behind progressive enhancement is to first build your core UX with the hardest case (mobile) and then scale up to desktop. Hello world still stands! #buildinpublic #reactjs #frontend #mobilefirst

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Alright, I got distracted by life for a bit. Happens. Especially these days it seems. Getting back into it, now I've added these hover transitions for desktop users and tightened up styling once again. How long can I go until I get rid of hello world? 😂 #buildinpublic #softwarecraftsmanship

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 14/06/2025

🛠️ Public Build Log #5 Sometimes building out is tempting. More features, more flash. Today, I paused and decided to reinforce what was already there. Half a day of work later, it may only look a bit cleaner, yet the foundation is now solid. #software #craftsmanship #stillmatters

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

🛠️ Public Build Log #4 To build better #flowchart abstractions, I want to first embed them into a broader web app to get a clearer sense of how to proceed. I also need a personal website, so that serves both purposes. I remember building a partial website before. Here’s just how partial 😂 #react

A very minimal webpage for a personal website. A header shows @ericthecurious, Posts, Projects, and About. The main body shows “Hello world!” The rest is blank space.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

🛠️ Public Build Log #3 This graph shows many more nervous system structures likely related to my condition based on known human neuroanatomy. It’s still oversimplified, yet also now becoming too complex. Needs more crisp abstractions 🧩 #graphtheory #datavisualization #designpatterns #neuroanatomy

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 10/06/2025

🛠️ Public Build Log #2 Now, you can see full names and other connections by hovering over nodes with your cursor! Shown here is a simplified neural pathway for left-sided C-tactile touch, which goes to the right-side of your brain 🧠 #neuroanatomy #interoception

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

Public Build Log: Today, added this vertical green line to clarify the left/right sides of this lateralized flow chart Believe it or not, it was fairly tricky based on how the code had been structured It’s a good lesson to remember: complexity of inner mechanisms sets the timeline, not appearance

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 24/04/2025

Wonderful talks today at #KSInteroception25, yet what stayed with me most was a passing comment: “What you want depends on how you are.” It instantly struck me as true, both experientially and neuroanatomically, even if I can’t fully explain why yet #neuroscience

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

Heading to the Allen Institute today for an interception conference. Setting an intention to live the embodied experience it seeks to explain. Before the models and maps, the body speaks. I want to listen. If you’re there too, feel free to say hi! :) #Interoception #Neuroscience

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