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

Thank you for sharing, Your Highness. That table of letters is where I received the divine symbols from the gods (of Wikipedia), and it will be a useful resource for others. I tried to copy more symbols into the post from there, but Unicode had other plans!

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

Back of the napkin math on how many times I've actually seen the letter A: Capital A is ~0.25% of English letters 250 words per minute ≈ 1200 characters per minute About 3 instances of A per minute of reading 30 years at 3 hours per day ≈ 6 million oxen Dang, not billions

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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

Weinstein 2023: Reward, motivation and brain imaging in human healthy participants – A narrative review Here’s a fun (scary) quote from this last one: “These findings [from Yang et al. 2021] imply that secondary reinforcers like money can increase incentive motivation with repeated reward”

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

Some good sources: “The Orbitofrontal Cortex” by Edmund Rolls (2019 textbook) Yang et al. 2021: Secondary rewards acquire enhanced incentive motivation via increasing anticipatory activity of the lateral orbitofrontal cortex (scary title)

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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

Book title: “Cassandra and the Poetics of Prophecy in Greek and Latin Literature” Author: Emily Pillinger

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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

It’s a great question that I don’t know how to answer yet. I checked out your products and could see them helping people get seen if they’re comfortable using tools like those. Like your question though, I’d rather people be seen without needing to become content creators. I just dont know how.

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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 · 11/06/2026

🧵4/4 Healing then is the end of resistance that repairs this tear: the allowing of whatever pain you’re feeling. Cognitive surrender allows for our sensory truth to emerge, and it reorganizes the heart of our being. It restores balance between the two halves of our brain. We heal when we feel.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

🧵3/4 Neurosynth is a platform for fMRI meta-analyses, and you can see differences between the left/right brain. I noticed that there is increasing brain lateralization from pain (37%) to painful (52%) to chronic pain (88%) to suffering (97%) The mind tears itself apart as it resists the pain.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

🧵2/4 Here’s what I mean by suffering is a sensory-cognitive dissonance: Suffering happens when we feel pain (sensory) yet our mind resists (cognitive). While there have been studies into the neural correlates of pain and suffering, I noticed something others haven’t.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Will check it out, thanks for the share!

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Well, it’s a good thing then that I have Linux, open-source, and data science experience. Bad thing is that I’ve already asked multiple doctors to take a look at it, and not one has expressed the slightest interest 😅

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Nice! I got a 100x WGS from Nebula Genomics a few years ago, although I haven’t really figured out how to properly use it yet. Would love to see if you end up putting something together to explain your process

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

Interesting that you say defiance, since Kierkegaard described the despair of willing to be oneself precisely as an act of defiance. Are you familiar with his book The Sickness onto Death? Old and Christian yet also surprisingly insightful

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 22/08/2025

I appreciate the directness of your writing. It’s helped me to process these feelings that have been difficult to resolve in the absence of anyone willing to touch these subjects. I honor your courage in doing so. I suppose we both despair at willing to be ourselves, a la Kierkegaard.

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 21/08/2025

Despair does work quite well here: so no one feels the despair I and so many countless others have felt. There really isn’t a good word for relief of despair. The closest I could find is solace. It seems like solace is used to describe “comfort in” or “relief from” despair. The latter works?

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Reflecting here, I realize “dismissed” isn’t quite the right word. It’s more that I want to make sure no one else is left to suffer without hope of relief, the way I once did. I wish there were a word or phrase for that experience. Does anyone know one?

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 19/08/2025

Woah, that’s an unusual level of human cross-region specificity. I’m excited to see more! Since BLA receives visual associative input, do you think external theta entrainment (like stroboscopic flicker) could indirectly influence similar circuits? We’re finishing up a theta stroboscopic study now!

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

I like the idea of treating it as a mixin, using data attributes, or “Tailwind-ifying” JS props. In general, I prefer names that people recognize immediately, and “traits” didn’t feel familiar to me at first glance. Data attributes and mixins tend to be more widely understood.

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

🧵 5/5 I’ve discussed this with a neurologist, with some hypotheses coming from him and others from me. While many other doctors have told me my disorders have no biological basis, he said this definitely has an organic cause, just one he had never seen or heard of before.

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

🧵 4/5 Trial 4 – Right side, eyes closed Strong motor response. As in previous, absence of visual competition is hypothesized to more freely allow right CT stimulus to propagate through left thalamus to left insula, producing a strong downstream motor response from left cingulate cortex.

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

🧵 3/5 Trial 3 – Left side, eyes closed Strong motor response. With no visual input, thalamocortical gating is hypothesized to be insufficient to block left CT stimulus to right thalamus to right insula, producing a strong downstream motor response from right cingulate cortex.

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

🧵 2/5 Trial 2 – Right side, eyes open Moderate motor response. Visual gating is hypothesized to be insufficient to block right CT stimulus to left thalamus to left insula, producing a modest motor response from left cingulate. This may suggest relative hyperactivity of the left insula to CT input.

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

🧵 1/5 Trial 1 – Left side, eyes open No motor response. A thalamocortical gating effect from competing visual input is hypothesized to block left CT stimulus from sufficiently propagating through right thalamus to right insula, preventing a downstream motor response from right cingulate cortex.

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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 · 10/08/2025

To add even a little more subjectivity here, I’d rather keep component props atomic and declarative like this: <Component isDraggable={true} isResizable={true} onLeftSwipe={…} onRightSwipe={…} /> Basically, single responsibility principle applied to props. It’s great for types too. Thoughts?

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Eric Yates @ericyates.bsky.social · 10/08/2025

Preclude is the perfect word here. I’ve never quite thought of it that way before. It’s not so much being excluded, as it is that there was never a question of possibly being included. Thank you for the (tragic) perspective.

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

I feel you so much here. Like you say, at least we get to be ourselves.

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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

The code doesn’t do much yet, just what you see in the video! But if you’re curious, here it is: github.com/neurodevs/no...

github.com

GitHub - neurodevs/node-robotic-arm

Contribute to neurodevs/node-robotic-arm development by creating an account on GitHub.

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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

I actually used SVN from about 2019-2020…on purpose. Client’s request. Still recovering.

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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 · 15/07/2025

I'm writing a preregistration! Mostly anatomy / causality so far. The aim is to define causal mechanisms in terms of expected biosignal patterns prior to data collection, using case observations + known human neuroanatomy. It's going to take while from scope, and I'll keep sharing along the way :)

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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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