TOMORROW!

Rats in a maze, the binary is: go left or go right? To get food, of course. When the rodent is sleeping, their brains replay the experience and the map of the spatial path is a torus shape. Corrections are made if a wrong choice is made, not in the torus but in the trajectory around it. Amazing.

What's extraordinary is the parallel between human brain/neural net and the shape of space-time fabric.

How Squishy Math Is Revealing Doughnuts in the Brain Topology, sometimes called rubber sheet geometry, is finding patterns in the brain, drugs and evolution

Related: How Squishy Math is Revealing Doughnuts in the Brain

#neuralnet #torus #ai

AI neural nets are made out of hardware not biology but still based on binary, on-off signals. Discussion now about parallels.

Data plot of mouse brain that goes well beyond the x-y-z plot.

The shape is a torus? Why?

What do the collectivity of neurons firing look like, structurally, in real time? 3D

"The Jennifer Aniston Neuron"

ONE neuron that's on fire.

In this Indiana diner, everyone has three questions: How's the tenderloin? Is the quarry hiring? And where do you think Rod Dreher is going to move to next?

"Claire Isabel Webb explores how mathematical frameworks may help illuminate long-standing puzzles in the science of mind. If consciousness arises from structured patterns of activity, what does that imply about intelligence? Could similar patterns arise in machine systems?"

"Nina Miolane approaches this question from an unexpected direction: geometry. Patterns of neural activity can be understood as structures... Cognition described thru the geometry of neural representations: patterns that can be measured, compared, modeled across biological and artificial systems."

Claire Isabel Webb & Nina Miolane | The Geometry of Consciousness YouTube video by The Long Now Foundation

Long Now Talk (live!): GEOMETRY of CONSCIOUSNESS

"What is consciousness? Neuroscience can map neural activity with extraordinary detail, yet the relationship between electrical signals and subjective experience remains one of humanity’s most enduring questions."

@longnow.org

NarraScope 2026 | Schedule NarraScope is a conference that brings together the writers, developers, scholars, and players of interactive narrative.

I’m very excited for @narrascope.org this year, and extra excited to be the Sunday Keynote Speaker!

narrascope.org/schedule/#su...

"We are pleased to share more than 125,000 U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs. These materials which span nearly two centuries of American law are now freely accessible online."

"Includes records and briefs spanning cases from 1830 through 2019."

My sister LOVES hers (2023, new), also red. She bought the tech package, no regret, but otherwise standard everything else.

SUFS Virtual and Accessible Earth Day 2026 — STAND UP FOR SCIENCE VIRTUAL & ACCESSIBLE EARTH DAY 2026 RALLY organized by Stand Up for Science - A virtual, accessible and inclusive rally for everyone, everywhere, on April 22, at 8PM ET.

April 22, 8 pm ET: EARTH DAY 2026
virtual rally with ASL interpretation

Hosted by Stand Up for Science
@standupforscience.net

#SUFS #earthday #climatechange #earth #planetearth

Trump and the IRS are in talks to resolve his $10 billion lawsuit over leaked tax records The president's lawsuit, filed this year, alleges that the IRS failed to take the necessary steps to prevent the unautho

Billions in foreign real estate deals while serving as head of state.

Billions in crypto deals while gutting regulation of the industry.

Suing his own government and negotiating a settlement funded by the taxpayers.

We're so numb to Trump grifting off the presidency that hardly anyone notices.

The 11 most challenged books of 2025, according to the American Library Association The ALA says 4,235 titles were challenged at U.S. libraries — the second-highest year on record. Forty percent of the challenged works involved LGBTQ+ subjects or the experiences of people of color.

Full story and stats:

American Library Assoc: 11 Most Challenged Books of 2025

1. Sold
2. The Perks of Being a Wallflower
3. Gender Queer
4. Empire of Storms
5. (tie) Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Tricks
7. A Court of Thorns and Roses
8. (tie) A Clockwork Orange, Identical, Looking for Alaska, Storm and Fury

#books

Great news! @standupforscience.net is working on this.

You know SUFS is all about action...

We are bringing our signature approach to cataloguing the damage to the scientific ecosystem and building the policy framework necessary to make a better, more just version of science!

More soon!

The Onion Has a New Plan to Take Over Infowars

Here's how we're taking over InfoWars.

If I’m honest I find if I’m avoiding writing something it’s usually a sign that it’s not ready yet, and I need to go for a walk / read a book / watch a movie / flick through old notebooks until I find the idea that I need to glue to the first idea to make it work.

Betrayal at Club Low - and now this - is the fabled "one city block" experience brought to life, in a world compelling and vibrant and branching in ways you'd never expect.

Some of my favorite games ever.

British actress and fashion icon Audrey Hepburn, born on this
#AudreyHepburn #MuralArt

Brooklyn Street artist Tristan Eaton's Audrey Hepburn mural, Mulberry Street NYC.

"It's newsreel film. It shows us winning the war."
"But we didn't win the war."
"That's what they told us."

The Man in the High Castle (based on Philip K Dick alternative WWII history sci-fi) is now on Netflix. Excellent, and timely, too.

1962 Hugo winner is adapted, deepened, in brilliant ways.

The Inside Story of Five Days That Remade the Supreme Court

How deep does the corruption (ethics, finance, partisanship) go in the Roberts Supreme Court?

Please read this explosive investigation into the hidden, secret shadow docket—with leaked emails over the past decade, gift link:

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/18/u...

Dave W Plummer, @davepl1968 tweets: A lot of people don't seem to understand that if you ask an AI the SAME question, you will get the SAME answer. Every. Single. Time. To avoid that, the models "salt" your prompt by adding random input params so that the model does not take the same path. But LLMs are not random or unpredictable - if you ask it the name of TinTin's dog, and it gives you an answer, then the same model with the same weights and the same input will ALWAYS say Snowy. Quoting: Anthony Eckert @EckertAnthony Replying to @davepl1968 The difference between ai and a calculator is that the calculator doesn't change depending on if you tell it there's a ghost in the machine or not

The state of understanding how these machines work—the ones that people make wild epoch-defining claims about?!—is distressingly thin. This guy invented Task Manager and has 30+ years of programming. He’s not a ML person but neither am I, and I know how token probability sampling works at temp>0!

If you're bringing your game to demo or playtest at this event, drop a link and a pic in the comments!

#NYMakesGames

NarraScope 2026 registration is OPEN for in person and online only memberships narrascope.org/register/