iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The only thing that matters is having exquisite tastes and good preferences, which my students can only learn by proximity to us, the chosen ones. No amount of reading, writing, or arithmetic can help.

nytimes.com

Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think.

If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.

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g0m @g0m.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

A world where a twist ending is repurposed as a video title. where a thing's climax has been removed, leaving an advertisment for the gap where it used to be. such things are commonplace in. the twilight zone

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Oaf @languidoaf.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

CEO of Taco Bell: we’re actually worried that some of our upcoming items could destroy humanity as well

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

Somehow an AI startup having a heavy neuro component makes it seem to me like it’ll be less likely to succeed. The more serious a neuro, the less likely.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

About 3 years ago I bought a 4TB portable SSD for $220. That same device is now listing at over $1000.

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Katie Mack @astrokatie.com · 06/08/2026

I understand that funding bodies want to go all in on AI as the shiny new innovation thing. But if all the grants start going to AI at the expense of everything else then the research sector is going to end up looking like a farm with dozens of threshers hacking away in a field with no wheat.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

From now on I’m adding “you should do a breakthrough” to every conversation with AI. “ChatGPT how did cucumbers become the canonical ‘pickle’ when there are so many pickle-able vegetables? You should do a breakthrough.”

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

Thomas the Tank Engine appears to have agency but he also has an engineer. How much of his sense of control is an illusion? These are the questions I ask now that I have a 2 year old. Is this philosophy? Am I a philosopher now?

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

Psychologists should found “participant island,” where we strand a large representative sample of people who must complete our tasks to earn airdrops of food and water. If you’re really good you get to temporarily board the Neuroimaging yacht

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

This is not a good time to be me, a guy who needs to buy a lot of memory

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J. Brendan Ritchie @jbrendanritchie.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

This is over x2 the FY2026 budget for all of NIH.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

I wish the world would stop tempting me to have opinions about soccer

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Ben Collins @bencollins.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Not a great economy alert! Wall Street Bets users think Palantir spiked today because The Onion story titled “Palantir Acquires Pentagon for $800 Billion” hit their front page. They’re guessing trading bots indexed the top post on the subreddit reddit not understanding source.

A chart showing an immediate spike after the headline hit the front page of Wall Street Bets.

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Ryan Moulton @moultano.bsky.social · 19/06/2026

I spent the last month obsessed with finding colors that can't be displayed on a conventional screen. This is what I found. moultano.wordpress.com/2026/06/19/w...

moultano.wordpress.com

Where to Find the Colors Your Screen Can’t Show You

An atlas of the vibrance of the real world

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

An I missing something or are all the available current Python-based MVPA libraries painfully slow vs Matlab implementations like Cosmo? Searchlights take forever. PyMVPA was fast but it has gotten crusty. Python makes me sad.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

We are recruiting new students for our NSF-funded Bridge Program at University of Delaware this year. The positions are fully funded for 2 years and the summer bridging those years. To receive funding applicants must be residents of an NSF EPSCOR jurisdiction. Questions? email me tvickery@udel.edu

Ad for a Bridge Program for post-bac students to gain training in data science, psychology, and neuroscience. Free tuition and a graduate stipend is provided for two academic years (and the summer in between them). Apply by June 6, more info at www.psych.udel.edu/bridge-program
Contact tvickery@udel.edu with questions.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 15/05/2026

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I have to admit I've rarely seen much practical value in modeling data trial-by-trial (e.g. hierarchical model), in terms of basic effects. It's work and confusing and usually supports the same basic inferences. BUT when you're interested in cross-task correlation, the benefits are bananas good.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 08/05/2026

I’m starting to wonder if this maintenance was really scheduled for this time

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Hakeem Jefferson @hakeemjefferson.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

FWIW, I don’t think the major problem in my field, or related ones, is that people need to move faster & produce more. I read a lot of papers as part of the job, and I’m increasingly convinced we’d benefit from fewer papers and better ones, not more mediocre work produced ever more “efficiently.”

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

There is so much about this interaction that basically perfectly sums up the bizarre stupidity of this era.

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pixelatedboat aka “mr bluesky” @pixelatedboat.bsky.social · 28/04/2026

Me: I voted for Donald Trump because I had him confused with that other guy. Donald Duck. NYT reporter: Are you sure you want me to print that next to your real name and a drawing of you? Me: Yes.

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beetle moses @beetlemoses.bsky.social · 24/04/2026

Something instead of nothing

Page 2: Later, the main zookeeper is in a dark room filled with TVs displaying security footage of the zoo animals. He is soaking wet in a raincoat, staring solemnly at the screen which shows the chimpanzee. The zookeeper reaches down to press a large red button on the desk beneath the screen display.

Page 3: from inside the chimpanzee exhibit, we see the security gate open. The chimpanzee wander through and exits the building to a dark, rainy street corner. He extends his arms and lets the rain fall onto him.

Page 4: the chimpanzee is in the backseat of a cab, driving somewhere else in the city at night. The final panel is the chimpanzee at checkout in a grocery store with a huge pile of bananas. The clerk looks mildly shocked.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 17/04/2026

Browser-based explanation of the basic classification algorithms commonly used in MVPA, for a grad course I'm teaching this fall. You can click to add data points in different patterns, see algorithm's response, and compare algorithms' performance.

cogneurolab.org

MVPA Classifier Explorer

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

The low interest in studying these drugs amongst non-medical psych and neuro researchers baffles me. Perhaps it's the barriers. But I don't think the folks rooted in medical disciplines are gonna do a great job of studying effects on body image, productivity, relationships, social life, memory...

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David Aerne @meodai.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

I wanted a way to explore Unicode by visual similarity, not just by name or codepoint, so I built Charcutrie. It lets you browse characters that look alike, search across scripts and symbols, and even sketch a shape to find matching glyphs. (pretty badly for now :D) charcuterie.elastiq.ch#U+221E

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Bluesky compression destroys it but here's a link to a random dot autostereogram animation. I mean come on. cogneurolab.org/PSYC310/rds_...

cogneurolab.org

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

If I ever become an Editor-in-Chief, first of all, stage an intervention. But if the intervention fails, my first new policy will be that for any paper to be considered the authors need to identify 40 potential reviewers.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

She moves to Prague to escape her onerous student loan. Her monthly payment? $60. And after 20 years the balance would have been forgiven. Sorry but that is just…hilarious?

nytimes.com

Student Debt Burdened Them, So They Moved Abroad and Stopped Paying

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

Random-dot stereogram generator made in Claude in minutes (crossed/uncrossed/anaglyph). I know people have a lot of feelings about AI but I could spend my whole day doing stupid things like this. claude.ai/public/artif...

claude.ai

random-dot-stereogram.html

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William Ngiam | 严祥全 @williamngiam.github.io · 30/03/2026

Visual #workingmemory peeps, you're going to love this. This is super challenging - might give you pause on how we are measuring color memory... My color memory is a 40.4/50. Please do worse so I feel better. dialed.gg?c=3PCHDE

dialed.gg

Color Game — How Well Can You Remember Colors?

We show you colors. You recreate them from memory. Challenge friends to beat your score. It's harder than you think. Play free at dialed.gg.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

Insel sucked and no one person should be able to have this kind of impact on science funding

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Make your face or any face a Thatcher illusion...mobile-friendly...thanks Claude. cogneurolab.org/PSYC310/that...

cogneurolab.org

Thatcher Illusion

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

Ah yes, that is why he was known as James “The Bean” Spader, so synonymous he became with that very famous show that existed in 1995.

Google AI hallucinated a show called The Bean that made James Spader famous

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Critical Neuro @criticalneuro.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

And yet there are plenty of “legitimate” scientists that voluntarily go on @hubermanlab.com podcast implicitly promoting exactly this grift!

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Andrey Chetverikov @achetverikov.bsky.social · 04/03/2026

Recently, van der Stigchel and colleagues posted a provocative commentary suggesting that we should be wary of bots in online behavioral data collection (🧵by @cstrauch.bsky.social here: bsky.app/profile/cstr...). But should we? Here is my response letter osf.io/preprints/ps.... 1/5

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

I haven't extensively debugged this yet but it's fun. Play as Hubel & Wiesel and determine the RF properties of a V1 neuron. cogneurolab.org/PSYC310/v1-r...

cogneurolab.org

V1 Receptive Field Mapping Lab (In-Person)

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Sami Yousif @samiyousif.bsky.social · 27/02/2026

(Perceptual) space and time are warped by the gravity of objects and events in their vicinity. There's been a flurry of work recently documenting examples of this gravity, all resulting in some really neat illusions. @brynnsherman.bsky.social and I discuss all of those, here: rdcu.be/e5SWo

rdcu.be

Distortions of space and time in and around objects and events

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Another S&P demo courtesy of Claude: Receptive fields (RGCs/LGN center-surround): cogneurolab.org/PSYC310/rece...

cogneurolab.org

Receptive Field Explorer

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OPAM @opam.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

Come and join OPAM as an organizer for 2026/7!!🎉 We are still looking for two new early career researchers (phd/postdoc) to join the OPAM team to help run everyones favorite one day miniconference! Express your interest by this weekend!

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Brendel @brendelbored.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

What you idiot commies don’t understand is that if we tax rich people they will JUST LEAVE, depriving our nation of tax cheats, political bribery, and national acts of perversion

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

One of the funniest, dumbest things I persistently see online as a dad of a toddler is that you should not tell a child “good job!” They don’t have a job, you see. It’s very confusing for them.

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Tim Vickery @timmytimmytimmytim.bsky.social · 23/02/2026

“I don’t think he’s colorblind he knows all these colors. Show me green!” He picks up green and red.

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