Wonderful news! Journal of Research on Research is launched. "if you are a researcher who researches any aspect of research, then this is the journal and community for you." Worth reading the whole editorial for a transparent and thoughtful account of this amazing community-driven effort.

What looks like bad surveys often is really meant to train people on the messaging implied by the questions.

"Everything is connected". The badge of the conspiracist nutcase through the ages.

Primordial gods created AI, and poor little humans are not evolved enough to understand it... Right? Manda huevos!

Man of underdeveloped imagination’s attempt to guilt others into consuming more of his mediocre product.

And you know the logic of these shows is now demonstrably responsible for the election and policies of at least one truly terrible world leader.

I suddenly have an idea for a remake...

Looking at UK election results, we’re now a country of political illiterates and I blame journalists for it. And I do not only mean the BBC, I mean the entire profession. Especially all the ones that put their own celebrity above integrity (e.g. those who went into podcasting).

Scott Hanselmann has been a role model for my entire career. As a tech geek and as an all round good person, he sets the benchmark. Today at NDC Conferences Toronto he shared a poignant retrospective and message of positivity for the future with AI.

His takeaway is one that others are repeating. AI is a tool, not a replacement for engineers. If you use it to automate the toil and amplify human learning, you're on a sustainable path. If you use it to replace human thinking then it's probably not.

Female Power for Whom? Queen mothers, pawned girls, and the limits of the Standard Cross Cultural Sample www.ggd.world/p/female-pow...

A British minority faces a murderous threat on our streets. Where are the so-called anti-racists? Latest column www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

New analysis concludes that replicability studies of ensembles of papers are flawed. Verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that has conceptual problems and so are inaccurate and unreliable. Via @devezer.bsky.social et al arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268

Howard Jacobson on the protest marchers — unfiltered and unflinching. When one of Britain's greatest living novelists speaks, it's worth listening. Full episode of Unholy out now. #UnholyPodcast #HowardJacobson #FreeSpeech

📣 The difference between replicable and not replicable is not itself scientifically replicable. 📣 New work with Erkan Buzbas, showing that verdicts such as "X% of results replicated" are based on an inferential machinery that doesn't work. arxiv.org/abs/2604.26268

Me: "I think you can better understand the appeal of AI if you think about the fantasy of psychics." Students: Me: "You know how Counselor Troi on Star Trek was a psychic?" Students: Me: "Okay but you've seen psychics in movies before, right?" Students: Me: "Have you seen movies?" Students:

If AI was actually intelligent you'd think it would've told Sam Altman how to make profits by now...

Clearly, the use of LLMs to summarise and analyse scientific (or otherwise) documents is well justified. Their understanding is, at least, at a human level. The following example (image attached) strongly supports their intellectual capabilities. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I like this. @philipcball.bsky.social explaining how reductionism is necessary, but not sufficient to understand How Life Works. youtu.be/zaON7ud8kQM?... I wonder if he's familiar with Alicia Juarrero's explanation of messy coherence? (Why it's necessary.) aliciajuarrerodotcom1.wordpress.com

I don't want to put a downer on Artemis. I'm very happy to see people excited by it. I would just like to see all that positive energy harnessed to shout louder about what's going on.

To be clear, no, that is not correct. That's not how science determines what is true bec science does not determine what is true. That's not the job. We describe, explore, explain, understand, predict, estimate, measure, and do other things, using many tools. We do not arbitrate truths.

You should be glad about this, Iris. You are doing a great job convincing little men to publicly expose their ineptitude, ignorance and arrogance for all to see and enjoy. Not too difficult, I know, but the more the merrier! 😌

Game designers develop test for AI (ARC-AGI-3): The model gets dropped in and has to explore, discover what winning is, and adapt in real time. Humans: 100% Gemini 3.1 Pro: 0.37% GPT 5.4: 0.26% Opus 4.6: 0.25% Grok-4.20: 0.00% Scaling alone will not close this gap. So we may be far from AGI.

Angine de Poitrine - Full Performance (Live on KEXP) www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Ssi...

Many people—from sitting politicians to Joe Rogan—have suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu is dead and replaced by AI. I wrote about why mass digital delusions like these are about to become much more common, thanks to AI and the perverse incentives of algorithmic social media. Gift link:

Executives use the promise of an AI revolution to wallpaper over their managerial incompetence.

😎✨

When I step back for a moment, I find it amazing that we do have to specify that the Jewish volunteer community ambulance service also looks after people who aren’t Jewish. I do understand antisemitism is so common that ppl presume Jews would leave non-Jews suffering.

An arson attack on a Jewish ambulance service isn’t about Israel. It isn’t about Zionism, or American imperialism, or capitalism, or war in the Middle East. It’s about Jews. It’s about making British Jews feel fearful in their own homes. Just like Bondi Beach, and Heaton Park, all over again.

Good if we all want to reduce our dependency on the US, but stupid if we replace it with becoming more dependent on China. Trump is doing exactly what Xi has being doing at every opportunity.

Changes to gene names or proper software help. But the overarching problem with spreadsheets is that errors (1) occur silently, (2) can be hidden in thousands of rows of data, and (3) are difficult to audit. Excel is generally incompatible with the principles of computational reproducibility.

sometimes, not infrequently, we confuse someone being a jerk w their points being bad. on the flip side, we elevate a lot of bad takes bec we generally like the person making them. sorting all this thru publicly is impossible due to social media dynamics so we gotta practice doing it on our own.

Decision-based Evidence-making

The Bafta slur incident really turned out to be a great litmus test for people/groups where the moral compass is stuck (broken). It's still right once every rotation. ;-) And for the really clever observer: note any correlation with any other subject of popular outrage?

Wow.

i love the kinds of illusions that completely disappear as soon as you squint your eyes. they're like a tiny little light-hearted prank rather than complete destruction of everything you thought was real.

bigthink.com/13-8/nature-... by @adamfrank4.bsky.social

If you left Twitter for moral reasons, how can you stay on substack? Why i never will pay for a substack. @iandunt.bsky.social @naomialderman.bsky.social

Also, the article is paywalled and he’s oblivious to the irony.

As if normal people buy iPhones every day. Brought to you from the PoV where privilege is like water to a fish.

Kid Rock is exclusively for people who clap on the 1 and 3

I've been working on this one for a while. It's about how we got here, and where we're going. I hope you'll read it to the end. Gift link: www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Although the confidence that they can anticipate what we need for parliamentary democracy in 60 years is adorable.

Headline shows that decision making in this process is dominated by people who are either incompetent (there for the wrong reasons) or focused on maximising their benefit. Example for @iandunt.bsky.social next edition of www.weidenfeldandnicolson.co.uk/titles/ian-d... www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

This should be reported as a bribe that makes Amazon money, not as a movie that loses Amazon money...