Back in the 1980s-2000s, there was an organization called
Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility that worked to oppose irresponsible and dangerous uses of computers in warfare. Maybe it needs a reboot, in our new age of AI.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compute...

Giving Groups Control Over the Rules of the Game, in Simulation, in the Lab, and in the Wild YouTube video by Santa Fe Institute

In this SFI Seminar, Seth Frey from the University of California, Davis, shares observational, experimental, and modeling research on how social systems can change in unpredictable ways, especially when power within a system shifts to power over the system.

Watch Frey’s seminar:

Could the logic of life be shaped by the architecture of biological circuitry? In this paper, @manlius.bsky.social shows how genetic, metabolic, and social networks can govern slow evolutionary dynamics in a unified nonequilibrium framework. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...

Linux FTW 🖤

Are Labubus that expensive? Wow!

SFI’s GWCSS program is designed for Ph.D. students pursuing thesis research in computational social science. Participants work closely with peers and faculty to advance their own research and take part in collaborative complexity-based problem solving.

Apply by Feb 4, 2026
santafe.edu/gwcss

Can a single mathematical edxpression capture the whole spectrum of shapes that can exist? An attempt towards the "super formula" was made in this paper by Johan Gielis, revealing a novel and powerful way to study universal natural forms & phenomena. @manlius.bsky.social @jordipinero.bsky.social

Why does life explore so few of the forms it could possibly take? Using fractal descriptors, this #scienceadvances paper shows that Earth’s biosphere clusters around simple shapes, reflecting deep evolutionary constraints. @artemyte.bsky.social @manlius.bsky.social www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

I loved this game when I was a kid! (The old one)

Yes, because (in my interpretation):

1) natural language is not precise
2) we take a long time to find the words that make more sense to what is happening in our minds

Illustration of the hypothesized flows of information between perception, memory and cognitive control in a conceptual model of working memory. Stimuli attributes are processed to varying degrees of abstraction and parts of these representations can be loaded into working memory under the guidance of cognitive control. Familiar stimuli such as the letter B activate visually abstract representations while less familiar stimuli are limited to sensory representations. Information can be shifted both up and down levels of the perceptual hierarchy to build either more or less abstract representations of either perceived or imagined stimuli. Working memories can be shifted into or out of the hierarchy as needed.

We recently published a theoretical review about how compositional and generative mechanisms in working memory provide a flexible engine for creative perception and imagery.

Pre-print:
osf.io/preprints/ps...

Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Research Data Services Librarian Alfredo González-Espinoza

“I believe the Data & Code Support Service is incredibly beneficial and important.” “My current research involves computationally intense data analysis, but there’s no centralized support for data quality or management within my lab group or department. Since discovering this service last summer, it has become an essential resource I rely on regularly.” College of Engineering Ph.D. Candidate Kester Wade

As part of his research into energy affordability for U.S. households, a Ph.D. candidate reached out to the Data & Code Support team for help with his data. He was paired with one of our amazing Data & Code consultants, Alfredo González-Espinoza (@spiralizing.bsky.social).

Read more: bit.ly/4726HuK

Need your #code to be faster but don’t want to use Fortran or C? Learn #Julia, the modern language for #HPC, with a high-quality book. Here are some options:

lee-phillips.org/amazonJuliaB...

#julialang - its speed and friendly syntax is taking it beyond #science into #finance and other areas.

Club Nintendo (México) #2, Jan '92 - 'Super Mario World' Cover.

Club Nintendo (México) #2, Jan '92 - 'Super Mario World' Cover.

How do Probabilistic Graphical Models and Graph Neural Networks Look at Network Data? Graphs are a powerful data structure for representing relational data and are widely used to describe complex real-world systems. Probabilistic Graphical Models (PGMs) and Graph Neural Networks (GNNs)...

How do Probabilistic Graphical Models and Graph Neural Networks Look at Network Data? arxiv.org/abs/2506.11869

What is alive? what is dead?

Before multicellularity, cooperation, etc, there are the thermodynamic constraints.

@ricardsole.bsky.social

Cat

#caturday

The Open at CMU team at Carnegie Mellon University Libraries supports researchers in making their work more transparent, accessible, and reproducible by providing expertise in open science, open data, open access publishing, and open-source software.

A national study put out by our incredible team of librarians is shedding light on how libraries are keeping up with the fast-changing world of #OpenScience. The study appears last month in The Journal of Academic Librarianship.

💻 Read the full story here: library.cmu.edu/about/news/2...

When LLMs Play the Telephone Game: Cultural Attractors as Conceptual Tools to Evaluate LLMs in Multi-turn Settings As large language models (LLMs) start interacting with each other and generating an increasing amount of text online, it becomes crucial to better understand how information is transformed as it passe...

When LLMs Play the Telephone Game: Cultural Attractors as Conceptual Tools to Evaluate LLMs in Multi-turn Settings arxiv.org/abs/2407.04503

Commun. Phys.: Evidence of equilibrium dynamics in human social networks evolving in time
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-025-02156-4

Precision is not limited by the second law of thermodynamics - Nature Physics Clock precision is thought to be fundamentally limited by entropy production in out-of-equilibrium systems. A theoretical work now introduces a quantum clock design where precision grows exponentially...

Physical devices operating out of equilibrium are affected by thermal fluctuations, limiting their operational precision

Coherent quantum dynamics can surpass the traditional thermodynamic precision limits, guiding development of future high-precision quantum devices
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Comic. [yellow sphere with icon that reads, CHECK ENGINE] [caption] This new sunspot cluster has raised concern among astronomers.

Check Engine

xkcd.com/3096/

Students in the library on laptops.

In this month's installment of our Discover & Discuss series, we explore books and movies on the topic of blending #AI into our lives, while retaining the skills and knowledge that makes us human. 👩‍💻🤖👨‍💻

💻 View eBooks + streaming videos available at the Libraries: library.cmu.edu/about/news/2...

Uncovering complementary information sharing in spider monkey collective foraging using higher-order spatial networks Collectives are often able to process information in a distributed fashion, surpassing each individual member's processing capacity. In fission-fusion dynamics, where group members come together and s...

Uncovering complementary information sharing in spider monkey collective foraging using higher-order spatial networks arxiv.org/abs/2505.01167

infomeasure: A Comprehensive Python Package for Information Theory Measures and Estimators Information theory, i.e. the mathematical analysis of information and of its processing, has become a tenet of modern science; yet, its use in real-world studies is usually hindered by its computation...

infomeasure: A Comprehensive Python Package for Information Theory Measures and Estimators arxiv.org/abs/2505.14696

Universal expansion of human mobility across urban scales Human mobility is a fundamental process underpinning socioeconomic life and urban structure. Classic theories, such as egocentric activity spaces and central place theory, provide crucial insights int...

Universal expansion of human mobility across urban scales arxiv.org/abs/2406.06889

Dream content discovery from social media using natural language processing - EPJ Data Science Dreaming is a fundamental but not fully understood part of human experience. Traditional dream content analysis practices, while popular and aided by over 130 unique scales and rating systems, have li...

Dream content discovery from social media using natural language processing epjdatascience.springeropen.com/articles/10....

Uuuh I really like those things

Very very cool!