iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rajat Ravi Rao @rajatrrao.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

New preprint 🎨🧠: Appreciating Ambiguity in Art: The effects of semantic distance and insight confidence on aesthetic appreciation osf.io/preprints/ps... Aesthetic appreciation appears to track how confident a viewer feels in their interpretation, rather than the artwork's degree of ambiguity itself

osf.io

OSF

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Robin Boardman @robinboardman.com · 24/06/2026

3,400 people die on a single extremely hot day in India. 30,000 in 5 days. Most of the poor aren't even counted. The study calls that a conservative estimate. Mass death is here. My heart is breaking. www.euronews.com/2026/06/10/h...

euronews.com

Extreme heat causes 3,400 excess deaths per day in India - study

Experts warn that official heatwave death figures are grossly underestimated.

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Rajat Ravi Rao @rajatrrao.bsky.social · 22/06/2026

I had the pleasure of attending the Mind Art and Knowledge in Brussels 🖼️ I presented our upcoming work on ambiguity and gaze in visual art—a great opportunity to share our progress with people who have been key influences on this project. Thanks to the organisers for putting this together!

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Julia M. Rohrer @dingdingpeng.the100.ci · 03/03/2026

Hannah Ritchie has built a fun little tool where you can compare energy usage of various products and activities. This is super helpful imho, because it's so hard to develop intuitions even just about the scales involved here. hannahritchie.substack.com/p/does-that-...

Screenshot of the "Does that use a lot of energy?" online app

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Rajat Ravi Rao @rajatrrao.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Had the chance to give my first PhD talk at the Vision and Depiction conference at @tudelftide.bsky.social , presenting “How does ambiguity shape gaze in art viewing.” Great to exchange ideas on cognition and visual art. Many thanks to @maartenw.bsky.social for hosting! Talk link: lnkd.in/eZzpveyB

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Gavin Lamb @gavinlamb.org · 06/09/2025

"Since 1800, there’s been a sharp decline in nature-related words in English language books. It closely matches a simulation of nature–human interactions." A new piece in @grist.org by Kate Yoder, with some #ecolinguistics input from @repoole.bsky.social grist.org/language/nat...

grist.org

The words we use to talk about nature are disappearing. Here’s why that matters.

We’ll need to do more than ‘touch grass’ to revive them.

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Dr. Aaron Thierry @thierryaaron.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

I've finally got around to curating a selection of films about the #climate crisis 🎥 There's lot of mediocre climate films out there, but for me these stand out head & shoulders above the rest 🎞️ They make excellent resources for classrooms, lecture halls, or community cinema's 🎬 Thread:🧵Plz RT

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Mariam Aly @mariamaly.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Excited to release the SPOT grid: a new image set that factorially crosses scene-object & texture-pattern pairings. We hope these stimuli will be useful to researchers aiming to (partially) disentangle the contributions of lower- and higher-level visual features to behavior & brain activity. 1/

8x8 grid depicting the approach to stimulus creation. Feature pairs are on the axes and images are in the cells. The x-axis represents the high-level feature pairs: setting (green) and object (teal). For example, the first column of images all depict “truck” (object) in “field” (setting) rendered in various textures and patterns. The y-axis represents low-level feature pairs: texture (blue) and pattern (purple). For example, the first row of images all depict different objects and settings rendered as if drawn with crayon (texture) and containing large horizontal edges (pattern).

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Nina Bruinhof @ninabruinhof.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

Had a great time at SRIP conference this week in Liverpool. Learned a lot about perinatal mental health, saw inspiring talks, was able to present my own work and met many other researchers. It was a success, thanks for organizing and having me @thesrip.bsky.social!

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Nina Bruinhof @ninabruinhof.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

It was great to be part of a symposium at @escaponline.bsky.social on Parental Adversity in the Perinatal Period. I shared a project of my (almost-finished) PhD on how infant crying links to child behavioral problems and maternal trauma and attachment. Thanks for having me! #ESCAP2025

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Rajat Ravi Rao @rajatrrao.bsky.social · 27/06/2025

My amazing winning team from the @odissei.bsky.social Open Data Infrastructure for Social Science and Economic Innovations Workshop benchmark challenge with our project “Green talk, brown walk: Computing the gap between firms polluting & sustainability discourse.” #linguistic-features #greenwashing

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Rajat Ravi Rao @rajatrrao.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

Attended my first PhD conference “Cognitive Futures in The Arts and Humanities” where I got to present my poster titled “Do we appreciate ambiguity in art?”. Had the opportunity to travel to Sicily, bond with my supervisor, Francesco Walker, eat amazing food, and make some great connections!

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EVAlabs Vienna @evalabs.bsky.social · 19/05/2025

Do aesthetic experiences require real sensory input, or can mental imagery evoke them just as powerfully? Our study shows that vivid mental imagery alone can trigger aesthetic experiences nearly indistinguishable from those caused by real sensory input! doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2025.112588

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Wet Owl @levisatyrane.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Oh yeah nice one kid hook that hope for humanity right into my veins

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Anjan Chatterjee @anjanchatterjee.bsky.social · 17/03/2025

When cherished beliefs and intuitions turn out to not be confirmed. Not a lot of difference in the impact of art seen in museums versus on a screen in the lab. Reasons to actually test intuitions. With @kohinoordarda.bsky.social and others. 🧪 #sciart www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

A comparison of art engagement in museums and through digital media - Scientific Reports

Scientific Reports - A comparison of art engagement in museums and through digital media

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Rajat Ravi Rao @rajatrrao.bsky.social · 08/05/2025

Do children care about abstract art such as Josef Albers’ ‘Homage to the square’? Zsofia Pilz recently conducted at the Josef Albers museum in Bottrop Germany. This was done under the supervision of Dr. Francesco Walker from HATLAB, Leiden University www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/news/2025...

universiteitleiden.nl

In this museum, psychologists explore how to bring abstract art closer to children

Children are generally not drawn to abstract art, research shows. But how exactly does abstract art affect our emotions? Through empirical research, psychologists from Leiden University are investigat...

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Brian Nosek @briannosek.bsky.social · 28/04/2025

An open letter supporting the international bachelor’s psychology programs threatened for cuts. Proceeding with these cuts would damage some of the most important and impactful psychology departments globally. #supportdutchpsychology openletter.earth/against-lang...

openletter.earth

Against Language Barriers: A Call to Protect International Education in Dutch Academia

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Eiko Fried @eikofried.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Four large Dutch universities, including Leiden University where I work, have decided to throw international psychology bachelor programs under the bus in an effort to appease the rightwing government. Here's my blog why this is a terrible idea. eiko-fried.com/cutting-inte...

eiko-fried.com

Cutting international bachelor programs threatens psychological science » Eiko Fried

Two days ago, four Dutch universities announced discontinuing their English-speaking psychology bachelor programs (1, 2). I will briefly explain (1) how this decision came to be, (2) why this is such ...

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Masud Husain @masudhusain.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Why academia is sleepwalking into self-destruction. My editorial @brain1878.bsky.social If you agree with the sentiments please repost. It's important for all our sakes to stop the madness academic.oup.com/brain/articl...

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Emily S. Cross @escross.bsky.social · 05/03/2025

Interested in fresh new #neuroaesthetics research? Want to hear from brilliant keynotes @neurobea.bsky.social, @anjanchatterjee.bsky.social & Fredrik Ullén from @ae.mpg.de, and an all-⭐ cast of speakers? Then submit your abstract & join us in Ascona🇨🇭 this Sept! Plz share! sbs.ethz.ch/conference.h...

sbs.ethz.ch

Aesthetics 2025

Submission period: 10 February 2025 - 31 March 2025

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