This is a good way of reframing. I'm going to keep it in mind

1/2 Meditation has significant effects on the brain within 2–3 minutes, peaking at 7–10 minutes, regardless of the individual’s level of experience.

The study used breath-watching (Isha Yoga) and EEG in 103 participants

(paper) link.springer.com/article/10.1...

i will stake a strong claim and say that it is almost never a bad idea for you, a grad student, to roll up to a conference and just introduce yourself to people you'd like to talk to. profs absolutely love talking to students. just go for it!! we're nice!

I Work Very Hard, And I Would Like To Try Cake By A Horse Hello. I am a horse. I work very hard at my job of being a horse. When humans say move the heavy thing, I move the heavy thing. When humans sit on top of me and pull on my head, I carry them where they want to go. The main food the humans give me is hay and oats. But I am thinking it would be nice to have a different food. I am thinking I would like to try cake. Yes, yes. Cake. I know all about it. When humans eat cake, it is in glad times. It is the food for a celebration, such as when a woman becomes 47. I have seen cake on the Fourth of July. When humans have a cake, they stand around it and clap hands and smile and say happy birthday at each other. Sometimes there are beautiful markings on a cake, such as balloons or a pink shape. Sometimes the top of a cake is on fire and a boy must blow on the fire with mouth wind. This is the scariest cake. I do not want this kind. But I will eat any other cake. Any cake that is not the fire cake that tries to kill the boy. Please understand: I do not get money for doing work. I do not get to go inside the house. All I am either doing my horse job or standing in my pen or eating food off the floor. I always do these things. But I have never once gotten cake and I would like it very much. I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children. I am more helpful to the farm. Children do not move the heavy things like me or let anyone ride on them. And yet they get cake. Maybe the humans will realize this. Maybe they will say, "You know who deserves cake? That horse. That horse whose back we are always on." Every day I dream about what it will be like if I get to eat cake. Here is what will happen. First, I will walk to the cake and putt my nose at it like hrrfff to make and stomping my hooves to make sure it is not a snake. Then I will trot in a circle to show that I am a horse and I am large. After that, I will nuzzle the cake to …

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me.

It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

More than just emotions, but... yeah

Having spent many years living alongside degus, this is so clear. Glad its been proven.

Definitely agree, re: knowing the animal's history. Re: climbing, I really think of dogs as not-climbers, so I'm not sure what to do with that line of inquiry

Hmm, coming back to this ... I'm always skeptical of random online animal vids, but there is some impressive stuff happening here that I can't immediately discount. And it seems like good faith - the person doesn't seem to have our perspective so that makes me think its unlikely they're gaming it

100 points to whoever guesses what set me off this time

The Machine Stops - Wikipedia

It seems like every year or so I post about how E.M. Forster's sci-fi chestnut "The Machine Stops" (1909!!) foresaw an awful lot about our burgeoning dystopia.

I'm compelled to post about it more and more, since it somehow only seems to become more prescient.
www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/7...

This is a basic and crucial point for any discussion of LLMs’ use in teaching research or writing. Whether it can ape us, fool us, or get facts right or wrong is, in the end, irrelevant. The LLM is not the thinker we are trying to encourage; the LLM is not the writer that we are trying to improve.

How so? I don't use bots for writing, but these 2 sound like different steps in the same process

miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fi...

it always comes down to this

Soula the dog, lying in the sun.

First bask of the new year!

psychopaths

Conscientiousness is the one that sticks out, for sure, but in light of your other clarification I think I'll need to ponder further

oh okay, that was not how I was viewing this... further intriguing

Fascintating / bizarre...

◇Levi◇ on Instagram: "I've actually made so much Improvement over the last 3 days! Day 1 I couldn't hold for even 1 sec away from the wall Yesterday i could barely hold 3 sec And today a bit longer!🤩... 46K likes, 198 comments - calisthenicslevi on January 7, 2026: "I've actually made so much Improvement over the last 3 days! Day 1 I couldn't hold for even 1 sec away from the wall Yesterday i could ...

Cute and funny dog video, but... is the dog doing behavioral imitation??
www.instagram.com/reel/DTM_yNR...

Weigh in for me CE folks...

Periodic reminder that without biodiversity, we’re all doomed.

Let’s not brush it aside and focus solely on carbon (obviously critical).

Focusing on carbon while sidelining biodiversity is a catastrophic mistake.

Biodiversity isn’t optional. It’s fundamental to our very existence.

1/2 Ai, the chimpanzee who revolutionized science from Kyoto, has died at the age of 49.
She was the first chimpanzee to learn Arabic numerals.
Here you can see her in action in Tetsuro Matsuzawa's laboratory.

My main point was - If one gets a demanding reviewer, they may well ask for the addition and restructuring a lot of content, which could go against the authors’ view, approach, style, whatever you want to call it. Interference of that sort, which is not uncommon, can really damage academic writing.

Hadn't thought about the analogy with law before. But it makes sense, as do the other points on expertise.

Of course many of us academics also think other academics' writing is bad; that's where much of the criticism stems from.

And that fuels reviews that I think often make the writing worse.

99% of cakes are far too sweet to be genuinely delicious

hah! That's rotational velocity even, a different thing from the usual type, unless translated into such... Seemingly almost unintuitive by design

“Auld Land Syne” on a Stylophone.
#NewYearsEve

A call for CARE in animal behaviour: an holistic ethical research framework Despite increasing awareness of animal welfare, there are vast discrepancies between legal protections and recommended practices for different species…

🚨 Our new paper is out!! A call for CARE in animal behaviour: an holistic ethical research framework 🐾💚 www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Done!

And it seems pretty unlikely that you'd get effects that big when there isn't a substantial causal influence. Particularly when there are null findings coming out of the same data to contrast with (e.g. body image)!

Cripes. They're using Cohen's outdated effect size standards, too. Should be using the revised versions, ala Funder and Ozer. >0.3 is a large effect size. >0.4 is huge, and these are the levels they're reporting at. This should not be downplayed, these are BIG effects.