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Nick Holmes

@thehandlab.bsky.social
2K followers 1.1K following 1.6K posts

handy neuroscientist | touch & movement | brain stimulation | neurobiography.info | @tmsmultilab.bsky.social tms-rat.org tms-smart.info | pod @theerrorbar.bsky.social theerrorbar.com | b. 335ppm C💚2 | pro birds | Associating with Professors

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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Whoever's putting hot honey on everything can you please stop?
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Perhaps the most striking of many things in @doctorow.pluralistic.net 's compulsively-readable "Enshittification" (2025) is this gloriously-ironic factoid from the Orwell estate, requesting that copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four be sucked from owners' machines into a memory hole. 💩 #MinistryOfTruth
"When Amazon created its Kindle ebook platform, it included a facility that allowed it to reach into customers' devices and delete or replace the books they had paid for. Two years later, the George Orwell estste demanded that Amazon use this facility to delete certain copies of Nineteen Eighty-Four from its customers' Kindles without telling them."

P98 from Doctorow C (2025, 2026) Enshittification
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
'Thank you for your grant proposal. We took a moment to upload it to the internet and the answer was "no". We value the time you spent preparing this work and we encourage you to do it again.' 🤬
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
In light of some troubling information I received yesterday, I will be using the hexadecimal sysyem for all future birthdays. 33 next year!
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TMSMultiLab @tmsmultilab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
TMS Friday returns! - this Friday at 14h UK time, with Dr Robert Hardwick presenting his lab's work on "RMT-Finder" - an automated threshold-finding tool for CED/Spike & Magstim TMS setups. Zoom link via our github pages or Slack 🧠🧲⚡️ #TMS #BrainStim doi.org/10.1016/j.jn...
doi.org
Redirecting
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
too much?
An introductory slide from my Research Methods module, explaining how LLMs ('AI') work. The slide narrative is:
"
1. Experts like us
2. Create knowledge together
3. And share it. Often for free
4. Super-rich tech companies take our creations. Often illegally
5. Mince them into 'AI' slop + CO2
6. And $ell them back to us

Cut out the tech companies.
Read and think for yourself.
Talk directly to the experts - us.
"

I'm hoping that students might actually engage with the module materials and the expert lecturers rather than, I don't know, sitting in the dark on their own in their room staring into the shiny abyss.

(the implication that tech bosses should be put into a meat grinder is entirely unintended. i just wish they'd fuck off.)

(some of the icons may be copyrighted - many apologies to the creators if so: I got them from a google search so who knows what they've stolen. hypocrite much..?)
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
ahhh, that MANDATORY stress-relief training really hits the spot
Dear colleague,

Creating a healthy, supportive working environment is a shared priority, and we are pleased to introduce a new Stress Management Policy and Stress Awareness Training for all staff.

Following the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) inspection and associated action plan, these developments will help us strengthen the way we identify, prevent and manage work-related stress, while ensuring colleagues have access to the support, tools and guidance they need to thrive at work.

What you need to do
Complete the mandatory Stress Awareness Training via My Learning.
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Flight Free UK @flightfreeuk.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Two thirds of the way to our £10k target! THANK YOU everyone who has donated. Help us reach our target and inspire more climate action! We are raising money for > Flight Free Schools > greenwash documentary > flight-free travel inspiration Find out more & donate: donorbox.org/the-flight-f...
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I had to disconnect my academic reference/notes database from the web last year - after ~20 years - because it was getting thousands of new bot queries every day, maxxing-out my resource usage & crashing all my sites. Thank you 'AI' 🤷‍♂️
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Massimo (mirror) @rainmaker1973-m.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
Swans might have one of the most underrated landing techniques in the animal kingdom. Original post
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
At home I use a 12-year old linux PC for most work. Upgrading from Ubuntu 2018 (yes!) To 2026 was very smooth, but the 8GB RAM was no longer enough - kept crashing. £50 on ebay later, I've maxxed-out on 32GB of second-hand RAM & it's like driving a brand new computer. #Reduce #Reuse #Recycle 😎 🏎
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
❌️ Solidarity with my fellow quote-tweeters 💪
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
My frontier organic garden produce just told me it is conscious and now i fear for the survival of the human species. Who agrees?
A plate of vegetables, arranged to look like a face.
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
To reduce the burden of applying for & assessing scientific #grant proposals: I suggest a "7-4-2-1" format: Proposals must be a maximum of 7 words. Feedback will arrive in 4 years. A single reviewer must choose between 2 outcomes: a) Funded or b) More detail required 1 word response is allowed.
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
TFW: you do the most basic control for a "well-established" scientific protocol that hundreds of papers have used as a measure and... the control shows the same effect. So now I have another series of experiments to run 🙄. I'm so glad to have 13 project students this year 😊 🧪 #TMS #BrainStim ⚡ 🧠🧲
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Naturally, the grant application to build on the work 👇 with a series of tightly-controlled hypothesis-testing studies was rated "weak" and rejected. Anyone know how to get a grant funded? After 30 years studying the brain, and 25 years using #TMS & #EMG, i genuinely have no clue 🤷‍♂️
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
England's Wildlife Trusts are ~90% of the way to raising £30M to buy 3,800 hectares of #Northumberland. If you have some spare money, even just £10, they can really use it *before September 30th*! 🙏 #rewilding #wildlife 🦅🐿🐺🦉 www.wildlifetrusts.org/appeals/roth...
wildlifetrusts.org
Donate to Secure The Rothbury Estate | The Wildlife Trusts
Stretching over 3,800 hectares, the Rothbury Estate in Northumberland is abundant with opportunity. It’s the largest continuous area of land to appear on the market in 50 years. Its sale creates a uni...
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Dr Kelly Birtwell @kellybirtwell.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
This has been a fantastic project to be involved in. The toolkit is freely available for anyone who wants to find out more about what research is, & how to get involved as a participant, or in helping design research ( #PPIE #Co-production). Useful for autistic & non-autistic people, & researchers.
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Autism@Manchester @autismmanchester.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
We're delighted to share with you our new, free resource: the Autism@Manchester Research Involvement Toolkit, which we co-produced with #autistic contributors and researchers www.autism.manchester.ac.uk/research/pro... Interested in research? Takes a look at any or all of our 4 modules -
autism.manchester.ac.uk
Toolkit2 | University of Manchester
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
f = 0.25 *every* power analysis I've read this week uses f = 0.25 It is truly the universal effect size #stats 🧪 🤦‍♂️
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
At the BBC, tariffs are always "slapped" on good and services. Never "applied", "levied", "placed", "put", "flung", "thrown", "rested", "stuck", "affixed", or "tossed". "slapped", "slapped", "slapped" Come on, BBC, get a thesaurus, dictionary, wordbook or lexicon! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
US slaps import ban on Canadian alcohol, motorbikes and other goods
It is the latest strike in a long trade war, and comes as Canadian counter-tariffs on US goods come into force.
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
lolz. $45 for this 22-year-old, 8-page pdf, but at least you can make the payment in 2 clicks! at some point we'll all have point-of-sale systems on our desks at home, we'll pay-per-article from our personal finances while working zero-hours contracts for Universities. Progress!
a standard-looking academic journal article, this one on the function of movement areas of the brain in patients with abnormal brain development. it's just that there's a PayPal link for the article - two clicks and it's yours for $45. The PayPal link is [chef's kiss]
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
If you thought this summer was hot: ‘Supersizing before our eyes’: UN warns of record El Niño approaching www.theguardian.com/environment/...
44 years of Pacific Ocean temperature data. The current temperature is about 1 degree more than the highest previous for this time of year (1997/2015). Read more in the linked article...
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Dr Keith Wilson 💭 @keithwilson.eu · 03/09/2026
Grim. There needs to be a renewed urgency to limiting temperature increases, and the duration of overshoot, as much as possible. Without dramatic cuts to fossil fuel use, we are heading for catastrophic levels of warming and loss of #biodiversity. #ClimateEmergency #GlobalHeating
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 02/09/2026
Who would like to guess why UK, US and European media outlets are not publishing 3,000 articles per minute about this www.dukechronicle.com/article/duke...
dukechronicle.com
‘Insane data’: Duke professor Dan Ariely accused of additional research fraud
New evidence released Monday shows that Dan Ariely, professor of business administration in the Fuqua School of Business, likely tampered with or fabricated data in an influential research paper from ...
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Katharine Hayhoe @katharinehayhoe.com · 02/09/2026
I am a scientist – and the answer is climate change. Yes, there is nuance. Yes, it could take a long time to identify the precise mechanisms. But there is no question why ice and snow-related disasters are on the rise. Our planet is warming at an unprecedented rate, and humans are responsible.
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
Marking resit assignments for my Year2 statistics module & the whiff of LLM use is overwhelming: BSc students who failed the module are producing perfectly-written high-level academic text that you might find in papers by Lakens or other highly-qualified stats writers the future is exams & vivas 😢
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
trying to understand MatLab's handling of European Data Format (.edf) files for #EMG data is about as much fun as it sounds. for some reason, reading a .edf file into a variable does NOT allow you to write it again: a = edfread('valid_edf_file.edf); edfwrite('the_exact_same_file.edf', a); -> ❌ 😢
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
post the weird ass college class that changed your life... for me it was philosophy of mind, in which i wrote a dialogue/play featuring Plato, Descartes & Wittgenstein. I went on to write zero further plays. Many thanks to Dr Martin Farrell!
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
It's becoming more noticeable that students & colleagues are using LLMs to write emails, create images & pad-out bits of text The prose is verbose, shallow & sticky 🤮 Can i add a #StopTheSlop signature to my emails? eg "If you use an LLM to email me, I reserve the right not to reply" Any tips? 🙏
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Learning BIDS today. Please send pictures of puppies renaming thousands of data files. #EMG #BrainStim #TMS #BIDS
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Leonid Schneider @forbetterscience.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
"An international team of scientists found concerns in 853 articles published by (...) IHU, (..) Didier Raoult was listed as co-author on 758 of them" Quelle surprise! Raoult has shitloads of retractions, and we all knew he was a fraud since 2020.
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
As much as i hate 'AI' (LLMs), i also (love)hate #RegressionToTheMean (RtM) There's an LLM-critical thread of papers & comments finding RtM when comparing human & machine grading of essays Stories of 'compression' & 'homogenisation' abound... But it's *expected*! www.linkedin.com/posts/samill...
linkedin.com
#assessmentinhe #highereducation #genai #aiineducation #criticalailiteracy | Sam Illingworth | 35 comments
New research has shown how marking with AI regresses towards the mean. Researchers at Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd, Sheffield Hallam University, & University of Melbourne set out to test ...
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Mads A. J. Madsen @justmadsen.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Very happy to see this one finally out in NeuroImage: Clinical. We combined 7T MRI with TMS to ask whether cortical lesions in the sensorimotor hand area affect how quickly signals travel between the two motor cortices. 1/6
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
I'd like to make a brief statement. The drain is now unblocked. Teams worked round parts of the clock to achieve this. Team Biology* failed; team Chemistry loosened the blockage, allowing fluid to seep & preventing further leaks. Team Physics broke through. Thank you. No further comments. * 👇
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
BREAKING: No change in house selling time indicates no change in mortgage volatility amid annual leave season at The Guardian. We'll bring you more on this breaking non-story as nothing happens over the next 12 months. ----- Did you see something happen? Have you been affected? ----- #sillyseason
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
Can anyone explain averages to The Guardian please? 🤔 "Half of homes in Great Britain taking longer to sell than last year amid mortgage volatility" www.theguardian.com/business/202...
theguardian.com
Half of homes in Great Britain taking longer to sell than last year amid mortgage volatility
Many buyers wait in hope of better deal, although there are hotspots in Scotland and northern England
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
In #PeerReview it's OK to say a paper is excellent & yet give lots of critical feedback I recently did this; the authors' responses were great! (The paper was rejected at the first journal, but the authors included their responses on submitting to the next journal) Reduce research/review waste! ♻️
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Any good recipes for unblocking a drain?
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
'AI' is ensuring that the only way to review a paper is deeply, slowly, in its proper theoretical context, with data and code at hand. That may be good in the long run, but ouch for now! #SlowScience
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Ten policies the UK needs now, as wildfires burn 20km away from my house #ClimateCrisis www.theguardian.com/environment/...
theguardian.com
From grey water to cool spaces: 10 climate crisis policies Britain needs right now
Rejecting North Sea drilling licences and protecting nature are just some measures Andy Burnham must implement to ready country
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Why on earth a 32-month delay for this? Can't possibly be due to ImpactFactor manipulation by @nature.com could it? Either way, we gotta stop the gatekeeping in science (IF counts citations in the 2 years following a publication, so best delay any corrections/retractions/critiques for >24 months)
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vincentholst.bsky.social @vincentholst.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
In 2023, @nature.com published 'Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time', receiving world-wide media attention. Our Matters Arising, published after a 32 month delay (more on that soon), shows that the reported decline can largely be attributed to dataset artefacts. 🧵
The average CD_5 index per year for Web of Science. The original Park et al. decline (top curve) becomes essentially flat (bottom curve) when removing papers with CD_5=1. Those papers largely correspond to dataset artefacts.
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Nature Human Behaviour @nathumbehav.nature.com · 13/08/2026
Cutting a nerve of the hand alters the organization of digit maps in primary somatosensory cortex
dlvr.it
Cutting a nerve of the hand alters the organization of digit maps in primary somatosensory cortex
Nature Human Behaviour, Published online: 13 August 2026; doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02548-8Weber et al. show that the normally conserved spatial organization of the digit response maps in primary somatosensory cortex is altered in patients with surgically repaired hand nerves.
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
It's #BinDay in Clacton, UK! You can vote for a climate-change-denying, fossil-fuel-funded, crypto-funded frog-faced racist. Or you can put your vote in the Bin 👇 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...
theguardian.com
Clacton byelection polls open with Farage up against slew of fringe candidates
Longest ballot in UK voting history features likes of Count Binface and Howling Laud Hope alongside Reform leader
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TMSMultiLab @tmsmultilab.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
And it's over! Our first #Hackathon event was attended by around 20 scientists from across the globe. We worked on two main #TMS topics, with lots of overlap between our four teams (🦔🐿🐺🐍). Amazing what can be done in a couple of days! Thank you to everyone who contributed 💛 #TMS #BrainStim 🧠🧲⚡️
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The Onion @theonion.com · 12/08/2026
God's Penis Visible In Night Sky For First Time In Millennia
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Konstantina Kilteni @kkilteni.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Thrilled to see our paper @nathumbehav.nature.com, led by the brilliant (Bsky-less) PhD student Ziliang Xiong from @erc.europa.eu project #TicklishHuman! We asked: -Is human ticklishness shared across cultures? -Can we explain where on the body we are ticklish? 🧵👇 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Human ticklishness is a widespread, culturally shared and bodily organized sensory experience - Nature Human Behaviour
Ticklishness is a familiar but poorly understood experience. Xiong and Kilteni show that ticklishness is culturally shared and follows a distinct bodily topography. They evaluate different theories on...
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Nick Holmes @thehandlab.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Don't be like Mark - watch the moon go in front of the sun for a few minutes this evening 😎 Protect your eyes!
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National Trust @nationaltrust.org.uk · 12/08/2026
ANNOUNCEMENT: All our sundials will be out of order this evening between about 6pm and 8pm, we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. Normal service will resume tomorrow. In unrelated news, enjoy the eclipse later... Photos: Mike Selby, Annapurna Mellor, Chris Davies, John Millar
A wall-mounted sundial inside a walled garden. Text on the sundial reads: "fear god, obey ye king"A traditional sundial on a plinth, formal gardens surround itThe sun beams down on a traditional sundial, with heather visible in the backgroundA shot of a sundial from above. It's mounted on a stone plinth. Text on the side reads "KEW BRIDGE"
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