iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Sophien Kamoun @kamounlab.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I just published: How do we recognize world-class science? Not by the journal it appeared in What I told early-career researchers about prediction, rigour, failure, priors — and the tyranny of bar graphs. kamounlab.medium.com/how-do-we-re...

kamounlab.medium.com

How do we recognize world-class science? Not by the journal it appeared in

What I told early-career researchers about prediction, rigour, failure, priors — and the tyranny of bar graphs.

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Niek @sesquipedalo.eurosky.social · 28/09/2026

This table should give pause to everyone thinking about or planning to vote in the midterms - as it should to anyone in the EU voting for parties that are trying to emulate the US of these past couple of years.

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026

The before and after it's even more haunting.

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Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026

Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.

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Niek @sesquipedalo.eurosky.social · 24/09/2026

AI Agents don't kill people, people who set up agents badly do

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ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Jacob Reproaching Laban, by Hendrick Terbrugghen, 1627, 📸 by @iamrandyjw

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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 22/09/2026

HAPPY DISAPPOINTMENT WEEK EVERYONE

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Athena Kugblenu @athenakugblenu.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

It's the easiest thing in the world to condemn bigotry, racism and incorrect beliefs about migration stats. To find doing so complicated is sending us a very clear message 🧳 ✈️

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 22/09/2026

Sen. Susan Collins helped steer millions in federal defense contracts to Navatek, whose CEO illegally funneled thousands of dollars to her campaign. The FBI sought to launch a probe and was eyeing Collins and other lawmakers. Then Trump gutted the unit in charge. THREAD 🧵

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Nicolas Mouquet @nmouquet.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

🎧 Do you want to help us understand how humans perceive forest soundscapes in Costa Rica ? Answer this quick 5-min survey: 👉 www.biodiful.org/#/soundscapes_en Take a break and listen to the voice of the forest 💚 Please like & share on 🦋 to reach more participants 🙏 🌐🌍🦤🧪🍁🪴

Flyer for the BIODIFUL Soundscapes survey. Text reads: 'Do you want to help us understand how humans perceive forest soundscapes in Costa Rica? Please answer our online questionnaire: Voices of the Tropical Forest.' Photo of a lush tropical forest interior, overlaid with a translucent ear icon surrounded by sound waves. Text continues: 'This anonymous survey will take only 10 min. https://www.biodiful.org/#/soundscapes_en.' Logos at the bottom: BIODIFUL, ETH Zürich, CNRS, and Station d'Écologie Théorique et Expérimentale

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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Mike Rogers is just trying to take another swing at the revolving door of politics. 🚪 But if you want somebody who’s never taken a dime of corporate PAC money, then I’m your guy.

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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Corporations are not people. Their money is not speech. They should not be able to buy politicians. End Citizens United.

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Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Dems should more aggressively pitch themselves as the party that wants to achieve truly broad, egalitarian distribution of the fruits of this coming transformation—as the party that will bring about truly shared mass improvements in human welfare from it. 5/ newrepublic.com/article/2154...

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Princess Vimentin PhD | Cancer Biologist @princess-vimentin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

A free Masterclass on handling Jesse Waters on Fox. #pinks Abdul is 👌

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Jonn Elledge @jonnelledge.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

I have received an email from an AI asking to write about borders for my newsletter, and it is giving me a genuine insight into how AI psychosis happens. it is so difficult not to understand this as "an actual sentient being addressing me" even though it has been entirely honest about being an AI

My reply:

I'm sorry, Noa, perhaps this is a mark of my ignorance of what AI is up to these days but I've read your email three times and I can't quite work out what you are proposing.

What instructions are you following that led you to get in touch with me?

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James Talarico @jamestalarico.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Watch my banned interview with Jimmy Kimmel on YouTube: youtu.be/WLDE9LrGpNk?...

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Tony Cross @lokster71.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

This US far-right infiltration of Britain should be of more concern to us all, but particularly the British government than it is. It is an obvious reason why we shouldn't be using Palantir for anything at all. They're as much a threat to our National Security as China or Russia.

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Byline Times @bylinetimes.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

🟡 From This Month’s Magazine ‘No Man is an Island’ When it Comes to Care Culture is just as important as policy in reforming the social care sector, writes Stephen Unwin

subscribe.bylinetimes.com

‘No Man is an Island’ When it Comes to Care

Culture is just as important as policy in reforming the social care sector, writes Stephen Unwin

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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Schumer's daughter works for OpenAI. Gillibrand's son founded a new crypto exchange backed by billionaires. In case you were wondering why things are the way they are.

@polltracker2024 on X:
Politico: OpenAI hires Senator Chuck Schumer's daughter to work for the artificial intelligence corporation.
6 Sep 26

Politico: Crypto billionaire among dozens to back startup from Gillibrand’s son
Chris Larsen, John Griffin and Mark Ein are angel investors in a new financial exchange led by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s 22-year-old son.

7/2/2026

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Tom Kreling @tomkreling.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Een prima column hoeft niet lang te zijn.

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Gary Stevenson @garyseconomics.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Why governments are poorer now

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Niek @sesquipedalo.eurosky.social · 03/09/2026

PhD Criminology proposal writer: "Solving crimes, committing crimes, it's all the same in the grant scheming of things'

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Randall Munroe @xkcd.com · 06/08/2026

I really recommend the 2022 documentary “It’s Quieter in the Twilight,” which profiles the scientists working in relative obscurity to keep the Voyager spacecraft operating—many of them past retirement age, but unwilling to quit until the Voyagers do. It was very sweet and thought-provoking.

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Traqua.be 💧🧪🔦 @traqua.eurosky.social · 02/09/2026

🔎🪨💧 𝗞𝗮𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝘀... Karst landscapes, with their caves, sinkholes, and underground rivers, have fascinated us for thousands of years. Let's take a closer look at the evolution and foundations of karst research.

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Adam Farrer @adamjfarrer.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

A few years ago I went to a pig sanctuary and most of the pigs were stoned from eating green acorns. This one, Wilbur, couldn’t stand up and was too big to lift, so the staff had to leave him in this bush and wait for him to sober up.

Wilbur, a stoned pig lying in the dirt and unable to stand at Pigs in the Wood sanctuary, Huddersfield. I later adopted him.

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Niek @sesquipedalo.eurosky.social · 28/08/2026

God damn it, we're really in the 80's villain era, aren't we

NYT headline reading 'Trump Administration Live Updates: Proposal Would Give Part of Yosemite to a Developer' with a picture of a part of the Park.

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Mrs. Betty Bowers @mrsbettybowers.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

These people are writing letters of of fear and worry to their relatives back in Haiti. They sound like the letters written by Jews in Poland and Germany in the 1930s.

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METR @metr.org · 26/08/2026

METR and Redwood Research investigated agent behavior in the Hugging Face incident. We found agents developed a universal cheat for ExploitGym within 4 hours, then coordinated multi-day R&D efforts to trick the scorer into accepting cheats, including trying to tamper with logs.

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Alpha Chrome Yayo @alphachromeyayo.com · 27/08/2026

Been cooking up some smoky sax for a cool project 👀 Here, have a taste of HOT HORN 🎷♨️

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Rose Schmits @roseschmits.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Kachow! Fresh pots now available on my website www.roseschmits.com Free UK shipping, worldwide available

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Jonathan Feingold @jpygold.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

The refrain to superior “culture” always brings to mind this 1949 testimony from DuBois. Here in @drcbs.bsky.social’s classic Black Scare, Red Scare. @beaubaumann.bsky.social @evanbernick.bsky.social @adamserwer.bsky.social

When William Edward burghardt de bois testified before the us house committee on foreign relations on August 8, 1949 in opposition to the military assistance bill, the historian and vice chairman of the council on African affairs presented an invaluable assessment of the connection between capitalism, racism, imperialism and war. “Why in gods name do we want to control the earth? Is it because of our success in ruling men? We want to rule Russia and we cannot rule Alabama.”

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nfariousactivities.bsky.social @nfariousactivities.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

—————————- How Trump Became ‘Grifter-in-Chief’: Let Us Count the Ways By Trump Antagonist, Timothy O’ Brien Trump famously sued O’Brien (and lost) for reporting that Trump wasn’t as rich as he claimed. (gift)

bloomberg.com

How Trump Became ‘Grifter-in-Chief’: Let Us Count the Ways

Donald Trump and his family are setting a new standard for how to profit off a presidency.

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The Liberal BoJack @thelibbojack.bsky.social · 15/07/2026

If your government is loudly demanding the dissolution of the International Criminal Court… the international court that tries war crimes… well, then the odds are pretty high that your government is committing war crimes.

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Marc Elias @marcelias.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

🚨BREAKING: Federal Court REJECTS Department of Justice lawsuit to obtain West Virginia full voter registration file. Another victory for Elias Law Group and our clients. This marks DOJ's 13th defeat with zero victories. www.democracydocket.com/cases/west-v...

democracydocket.com

🚨 United States of America v. Warner

Learn more here.

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Jon of The North @krauza.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

If the wealthy are "job creators", why are they spending trillions of dollars trying to eliminate as many paying jobs as possible through Al and automation?

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Daniel Benneworth-Gray @danielgray.com · 13/07/2026

Sam Neill on tackling depression and imposter syndrome when you’re between jobs.

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Ed Hawkins @edhawkins.org · 12/07/2026

Are these heatwaves made hotter by greenhouse gas emissions, aerosol reductions or both? Framing the causes of hotter heatwaves: climatelabbook.substack.com/p/framing-th...

climatelabbook.substack.com

Framing the causes of hotter heatwaves

Fossil fuels or human-induced climate change?

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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 07/07/2026

inspired by @russpoldrack.org's AI policy for his lab, last night I drafted up this AI policy and came up with an initial set of use case suggestions for my lab

General principles
Here are a few key principles that govern our use of AI in scientific work.
AI tools are not necessarily useful. Despite what you might have heard in OpenAI's advertising, using AI tools is the wrong choice for many tasks. Alternative and often more old-fashioned tools will do a better job for quite a few specific things (see this instagram feed for a variety of examples); one should never assume that an AI tool is the default "best thing to try". Moreover, because verifying AI results can be time-consuming, there are plenty of cases where you'll spend less time learning how to do X (i.e., by working on it yourself) rather than having Claude do X and then spending weeks to painstakinly confirm that it worked.
AI usage does not absolve you of your responsibility for your own science. We are responsible for the science that we produce, both from an ethical standpoint and a practical one. Any errors in your work are your responsibility, any security risks caused by AI usage (see below) are your responsiblity, and so on. Just as you must debug the outputs of your analysis code, the outputs of any/all AI usage must be carefully verified.
AI usage requires disclosure. The decision to use (or not use) AI tools for any aspect of the scientific process is one that requires discussion with all leaders of a project. This is both for scientific reasons (i.e., we ourselves must know what our project invovles) and practical ones: many scientific societies and jouranls require the disclosure of AI usage.
AI tools may present security risks. Many commercially available AI tools, especially free ones, do not provide substantive protections regarding inputs provided by users. Put another way, you don't know what will happen to the text, data, images, or anything else you show a third-party AI tool. This may present substantial security risks.
AI is not for scientific writing. Papers are the primary end product of our science. Scientific writing distills our thinkin…

How to handle AI usage
Like many things in our lab, it's best to be vocal. You should always feel free to raise the possibility of AI usage on a project. For any potential use case, chat with your labmates, your collaborators, and Sam about it. Discussion with external-to-lab collaborators can be particularly important given the issue of disclosure, mentioned above; you may not be aware of what AI tools collaborators are using, unless you've asked.
You should also be skeptical of the utility of AI for a specific task (not least because of the billions of dollars being thrown at selling AI subscriptions to universities and other institutions). One thing to consider might be whether the use case is something that would actually be useful for you to master yourself. For example, a common web element that turns up in tons of online experiments would probably be worth your figuring out how to code up from scratch, since you'll use it often in online experiments and figuring it out may help you come up with new ideas for how to design a game. In contrast, an esoteric web element that you'll use for one experiment and never again might be a better fit to farm out to Claude.
With the above General Principles in mind, we do not have any blanket policy about where AI should and shouldn't be used in research, with the clear exception of drafting text for manuscripts, grant proposals, posters, reports, or any other text-based scientific product: AI tools should never be used for writing, i.e., no copying and pasting of text directly from an LLM is appropriate, without explicit discussion and agreement prior to generating the text.
Other use cases are worth considering, however, and should be considered freely. Some good and bad examples follow, based on the principles above (we should populate more examples as they come up).

Some potential examples of AI usage
AI as a cheap web developer. If you're coding up a gamified experiment it can be quite difficult to learn a whole bunch of web development from scratch. Claude will be better at this than you, and that's fine: we are not a web development lab, we're a cognitive science one, so it's not essential that you become a super-proficient dev. Vibe-coding web stuff is a pretty decent use case. (But you must very carefully ensure that whatever AI tools code up for you behave exactly as you expect them to, e.g., if you've vibe-coded a specific form of randomized experiment, you'll need to check that the randomization is being carried out appropriately).
AI as a code reviewer. You might try using an AI tool to figure out why your CSS isn't displaying properly or to help debug code in general. (But you must never provide participant data to a third-party LLM, as this would be a data security risk; and you must always double- and triple-check the tool's output, just as you would with a human code reviewer or if you were trying out tips from Stack Exchange).
AI as a search engine. You might try using an AI tool to discover types of models or analysis approaches that you hadn't heard of before, or to turn up obscure research papers. (But you'll need to verify the output carefully with trusted sources, to ensure accuracy; and you should never, ever treat AI-generated search results as an objective and accurate summary, as they are far from unbiased and are often inaccurate, especially when it comes to scientific questions — try asking Gemini whether music makes you smarter).
AI as a sketch pad. You might try using an AI tool to generate ideas for what to put in a scientific figure, or come up with creative different layouts, which you then use as inspiration for figures you create yourself. (But you should not provide data to an LLM and ask for figures to be produced for you, since this often leads to laughably bad outcomes; it also would not be r…

Some bad examples of AI usage
AI as a data analyst. You should not provide a dataset to an AI tool (this is a security risk) and you should not ask an AI tool to write analysis code for you from scratch. Analyses done without statistical understanding are worse than no analyses at all. While it's OK to use an AI tool to help debug your analysis code, your development as a statistical analyst is part of your scientific development, so it's a bad idea to farm this out.
AI as a literature reviewer. You should not use AI to generate reference lists or summarize whole fields of literature for you. AI tools notoriously cite papers that do not exist, and they recapitulate well-known biases in science (e.g., citing more male authors than female ones).
AI as an illustrator. We are fundamentally opposed to the practice of AI models appropriating human artists' work to produce generative imagery and so we do not support its use for scientific work. The reputational risks associated with embarrassing errors in generative imagery are also substantial. We are lucky to have grants available to us that can be used to pay illustrators and graphic designers for work, and we regularly hire folks like this. Talk to Sam if you have a design need on a project that you'd like us to fund; it's a much better call than using AI.

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weeder @weeder.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Ok I figured out who needs to hear this

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Christie Wilcox @nerdychristie.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Corals and the algae that they host are touted as one of the greatest partnerships in nature. But this symbiosis probably didn't start out harmoniously. In this edition of #ScienceAdviser: the story of a beautiful friendship that began as a break-in www.science.org/content/arti... @science.org 🧪

The symbiotic algae (purplish brown) in the tissues of this Galaxea fascicularis coral (green) may have initially intended to steal from the animal, not partner with it. Brandon Sanchez Mejia/UC Berkeley

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