Scientists invented a fake disease, and AI fell for it.
Researchers in Sweden created a fictional itchy eye condition called “bixonimania” to test how easily false medical information could spread through AI systems and scientific literature. youtube.com/shorts/bhaKg...
What does a black hole sound like? 🎤🎶🧪
Astrophysicist @erikahamden.bsky.social breaks down how the supermassive black hole at the center of the Perseus galaxy cluster releases energy into the surrounding hot gas, generating enormous pressure waves that ripple through the cluster.
This looks great.
"Diaries, sketchbooks, common-places, notebooks, ledgers and ships' logs: how the blank book changed the way we think, and helped us change the world."
The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
#History #Notebooks #Journal #Journaling #Planners
On good news, Luna flyby is happening over the next day, can follow live telemetry here, live radio coms, and a the moment the astronauts are describing the approach to the moon and what they see
artemis-live-dashboard.vercel.app
This is a great list of techniques for getting real information out of a Google search and avoiding AI slop and paid results.
(One thing not included is that if you add "-ai" to a search, you block the AI summary) cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...
Saving to dig into after exams.
It brings me some solace to know that whatever's happening down here, there are still some absolutely incredible human-made and human-driven robots wandering around Mars, looking at cool rocks and dirt and sending us pictures just because we're curious about planets and our own origins in the cosmos
Digits of pi encoded as colours, arranged as a spiral with the symbol pi in the middle
Happy #PiDay!
Here's the first 1,000 digits of pi encoded as colours 🎨 made with #RStats
Texting daily with a random human peer is more effective at reducing loneliness than texting with a highly supportive chatbot.
Next time you feel lonely reach out to a human, any human.
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Screenshot of result that says "Your deltaE_OK JND 0.00080". Underneath it says "This shouldn't be possible. I'm not saying you cheated, but not not saying that."
I can't get my result to share properly so you get a screenshot.
www.keithcirkel.co.uk/whats-my-jnd...
Critical thinking is under serious threat from large language models/AI. Uni administrators are too prone to accept tech hype! (plus it can be wrong, steals IP, has devasting environment/energy impacts). @jessicacalarco.com made a great one-pager I share with students (plus effective model of comms)
Sycophantic AI distorts reality by returning responses that are biased to reinforce existing beliefs.
"sycophantic AI distorts belief, manufacturing certainty where there should be doubt."
Unbiased sampling produces discovery rates 5X higher! arxiv.org/pdf/2602.14270
We show that synesthesia is sensory and automatic in nature: the pupil scales with the brightness of experienced synesthetic colors. doi.org/10.7554/eLif...
Now in its new dress @elife.bsky.social (convincing & valuable in round 1).
If anyone wants to pick up the method, happy to share & explain!
Here’s a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my “Data Visualization: A Practical Introduction”: socviz.co
Asteroids, exploding stars, and feasting black holes swarm in the first-ever batch of nightly alerts from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile
Why I think, in the current A.I. moment, we should be reading Paul Churchland. #philsky #philsci
thehangedman.com/philosophy/p...
“Details of the agreement, which was finalized in federal court in Maryland this month, aren’t public…[this] ends litigation between Novartis, one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies, & the estate of Lacks, a mother who died of cervical cancer at age 31 & was buried in an unmarked grave”
Since yesterday, the Einstein AI cheatbot website underwent some rebranding. The tagline changed from "Einstein does the busywork so you don't have to," to "Einstein is the personal tutor every student deserves." In the FAQ, "How does Einstein do all this?" became "How does Einstein help me learn?"
“Braaains!” Like zombies on the hunt, the Spitzer and #NASAWebb infrared space telescopes went looking for brains in space and captured these uncanny images of nebula PMR 1. A dying star is creating the nebula by expelling its outer layers: https://go.nasa.gov/3MJuY0U
We've posted a new fMRI study of semantic relations (has-part, is-a, made-of, etc.), a key aspect of language. We find that relations are represented in the same brain regions as are other semantic concepts, though voxels tend to be selective for only one relation or another.
doi.org/10.64898/202...
Bots have made their way to Prolific experiments. Our lab has stopped online testing of adults entirely now for this reason - we want to know if what we study is real. Probably data collected 2-3 years ago are ok, but moving forward we just can't know. www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
For those of us who teach the Literary Digest 1936 polling fiasco, this pedagogical article is great: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
📚 Reading Women in Cognitive Science 📚
“Recommendations for readings are welcome, especially in the history of cognitive science (prior to 1950s, and the older the better).”
irisvanrooijcogsci.com/2026/02/15/%...
I’m an Autistic classically trained chef and I wrote the food aversion acceptance cookbook and guide COLOR TASTE TEXTURE. It’s useful for all ages, no cooking experience required. My goal is to help kids avoid food related trauma and offer a balm of kindness for anyone who couldn’t escape it.
Applications for our Space Astronomy Summer Program must be submitted by 11:59 pm EST January 31, 2026, to receive consideration.
Have you ever wanted to study individual differences in attention only to be frustrated by prohibitive low reliability?
If so, what a coincidence!
Let me introduce you to the first study from the newly formed Sheffield PandA lab:
Using RSVPs to measure the speed of attention: rdcu.be/e0t0A
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Make it your New Year resolution to add a #workingmemory dataset to OpenWMData so that we can curate our field's precious data, start testing theories and benchmarking models across datasets, conduct secondary analyses and meta-research using the data itself, and help me feel like I'm, like, alive.
Beautiful experimental philosophy paper on what people ordinarily mean when they say that a statement is “true”
Turns out it’s not always about corresponding correctly to the facts. Sometimes it’s more closely related to a moral ideal of “truthfulness”
philarchive.org/archive/ZYGTJN
In large lectures, I use our LMS to do graded surveys on questions sprinkled throughout the session. Credit for answering, with opportunities to discuss options in class. Can also collect feedback on various topics. (Can be done with Kahoot, Google forms, or other means.)
GOOD NEWS! Researchers have shown Alzheimer’s disease can be REVERSED- not just prevented. Using a potent neuroprotective compound called P7C3-A20, they found RESTORING balance to a central cellular energy molecule (NAD+) not only PREVENTED disease features but REVERSED them, EVEN at late stages.
