great article in @quantamagazine.bsky.social by natalie wolchover on the bacterial flagellum and proton motive force. alas, I missed this great model on what happens to the stators during gear-shifting. see it in STC:
smallthingsconsidered.blog/schaechter/2...
#MicroSky
Unbelievably sad and heartbreaking. And probably preventable, if other UK parents had vaccinated their own children. An important, moving piece (gift article).
Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...
I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.
Update: I've just discovered (again from a paper that doesn't cite its sources) that Germans were training Bullfinches to sing folk songs (they'd match the notes, tempo, etc.) from 1768 to the 1980s (when wildlife laws stopped it). The songs would be taught by finches to their kids. Amazing.
Now out in PTRSB!🔥
Wherein Francesco d'Errico, Ivan Colage & I track the emergence & trajectory of hominin epistemic #nicheconstruction through material culture—the alteration of the informational landscape via spaces, bodily ornaments, & artificial memory systems.
#evosky #archeosky #philsky
Congratulations!
OPEN POSTDOC position (part of @erc.europa.eu Consolidator DYNALANG)
We build math&comp models of neural dynamics using insights from formal linguistics + ML
Seeking theory-driven researchers w/ interests in language, neural dynamics, & math/comp neuroscience.
Apply here: tinyurl.com/55exdpse
It’s a great moment to remember that in the leadup to this popular uprising, the first major gut-punch was delivered by Budapest Pride. Poetic justice. 🇭🇺🏳️🌈
his video shows Hungarians celebrating in central Budapest after the election results on April 12.
Hungarians celebrated the landslide defeat of Orban by singing "We Are the Champions" out in the streets
BREAKING: the judges who dismissed high-profile cases in immigration court against two international students who have advocated for Palestinian causes, Rümeysa Öztürk and Mohsen Mahdawi, were fired yesterday, alongside four other judges.
/w @haleaziz.bsky.social and @nicknehamas.bsky.social
👀 looks like the core Stan folks are pretty bullish on Jax as the software of choice for fitting Bayesian models
bob-carpenter.github.io/dj-paper/
We are offering two 4-year PhD positions in our new SNF project "The Evolutionary Roots of Altercentrism"
Another nativist claim, that infants have innate pro-sociality, fails upon closer inspection. Not completely surprising, as Damian Scarf’s elegant paper showed that even if such patterns emerged, it would likely be explained by simple associative processes. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....
![Six-panel composite figure. Caption: Interactive artifacts always rely on people’s interpretive and interactional practices. Rowwise from top left to bottom right: A. Aegeus consults the oracle at Delphi (cup from Vulci, 440-430 BCE). B. Byzantine mosaic depicting the zodiac, from the floor of the 6th century CE Beth Alpha synagogue. C. One-sided sense-making in an experimental psychotherapy session, (McHugh 1968). D. Still from a BBC documentary showing a person interacting with ELIZA via a computer terminal, late 1960s. E. Researchers interacting with the PARC copier (Suchman 2007 [1987]). F. Screenshot of large language model chat interface, 2026.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:tfyqeo3tprov5lejatxoi6lb/bafkreidiwulbxshg5plxdu6ryxklje4zljxlakzdjxcgekentekonkrlwu)
Six-panel composite figure. Caption: Interactive artifacts always rely on people’s interpretive and interactional practices. Rowwise from top left to bottom right: A. Aegeus consults the oracle at Delphi (cup from Vulci, 440-430 BCE). B. Byzantine mosaic depicting the zodiac, from the floor of the 6th century CE Beth Alpha synagogue. C. One-sided sense-making in an experimental psychotherapy session, (McHugh 1968). D. Still from a BBC documentary showing a person interacting with ELIZA via a computer terminal, late 1960s. E. Researchers interacting with the PARC copier (Suchman 2007 [1987]). F. Screenshot of large language model chat interface, 2026.
New! Interactional foundations for critical AI literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno...
Why do Anthropic engineers talk to Claude as a witch-doctor to his potions? How is prompt engineering like spider divination? Can one reason without reasons?
ft. Lovelace, Adorno, Suchman, Weizenbaum & many more ☺️
Only a few more days left to apply for a 5 year postdoc with me and Sergio on the neurobiology of child language development. Apply via the MPG postdoc program portal www.mpg.de/en/max-planc... Deadline 13th April
I'm hiring! 📢 Fully funded 4-year PhD position in Language Evolution using Communication Games at @mpi-nl.bsky.social. Come work with me on how different social pressures shape the evolution of new communication systems in the lab! Deadline for application is May 18th! share.google/fGTKbFS4v4Gb...
I am reminded by this critique of a computational social science conference I went to not long ago, where many of the talks were along the lines of 'humans do X, so we tested different LLMs on X too to see if they can do it', without much theoretical justification or consequence
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., attends a news conference in the U.S. Capitol. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
AOC: “This is a threat of genocide & merits removal from office. The President’s mental faculties are collapsing & cannot be trusted.
To every individual in the President’s chain of command: You have a duty to refuse illegal orders. That includes carrying out this threat”
We further conceptualize ‘algorithmic bias’ as a novel form of implicit prejudice—in which human prejudices are 'laundered' via the opacity of AI—and introduce the idea of a computational level of prejudice that interacts with systemic and individual levels of analysis.
New preprint! w/Tessa Charlesworth & @williambrady.bsky.social:
The Psychology of Algorithmic Bias
We introduce a psychology-centered framework to specify mechanisms through which human behavior interacts dynamically with AI systems to produce algorithmic bias.
osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/rxu37_v1
It is very easy to become accustomed to Trump’s ravings, and laugh them off. That’s a dangerous thing to do.
When Trump states: “A whole civilization will die tonight,” he is threatening to commit genocide.
We can’t allow that to happen. Congress must end this war NOW.
Professur (W3) für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft an der Universität Regensburg: #linguistics #jobs jobs.zeit.de/jobs/w3-prof...
Miyagawa Shuntei's 1898 painting, "Playing Go (Japanese Chess)"
How to quantify the impact of AI on long-run cultural evolution? Published today, I give it a go!
400+ years of strategic dynamics in the game of Go (Baduk/Weiqi), from feudalism to AlphaGo!
Super fascinating, thanks for sharing! One caveat maybe: Papers have reported relatively dramatic shifts in chess moves over time, with some biases being obviously influenced by chess computer engines and socmed royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
The Department of State tweets a video of Secretary Marco Rubio. In the video, Rubio says: "Imagine if instead of spending billions of dollars supporting terrorists or weapons, Iran had spent that money helping the people of Iran. They would have a much different country."
FactPost News tweets a video of Donald Trump speaking at a podium. In the video he says: "We can't take care of daycare. We're a big country. We're fighting wars. It's not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare, all these things."
hmm
Promotional poster for a DCU MSc in Psychology and Wellbeing qualitative study titled “At the Intersections of Identity: Autistic Ethnic Minority Women Navigating Masking in Productivity-Driven Systems.” The poster explains that the study explores how productivity pressures intersect with identity and masking for autistic women from ethnic minority backgrounds in education and professional settings. Inclusion criteria listed are: identify as autistic, identify as a woman, belong to an ethnic minority group, and be aged 18 or older. Researcher is Mariam Sobayo, School of Psychology, DCU, with contact email provided. Supervisor is Dr. Aine Travers, School of Psychology, DCU, with contact email provided. Interviews last approximately 45 to 60 minutes. A large QR code is included for registration and more information. The design uses red and peach tones, features the DCU logo, and includes an illustration of diverse women forming the silhouette of a head at the bottom.
Research Participation Request
Do You Identify As Autistic?
Belong To An Ethnic Minority Group?
Identify As A Woman 18Ys+?
Mariam is looking for participants:
Autistic Ethnic Minority Women Navigating Masking In Productivity- Driven Systems
Find out more: Mariam.Sobayo2@Mail.Dcu.Ie
What makes a body feel like our own? The sense of body ownership is a core aspect of self-awareness, and it depends on the integration of multiple sensory signals. What role do visual predictions play in body ownership? Check out our new paper in Royal Society Open Science: doi.org/10.1098/rsos...
