The footsteps illusion-like pausing and sticking illusion The rectangles in the upper half appear to move to the right and stop periodically; however, they are moving to the right at a constant speed in the same way as the rectangles in the lower half.

Some people say we don’t build beautiful things anymore and, like, lol. Motherfuckers, we built this:

This story just keeps going: Giant octopuses of the Cretaceous were probably the top ocean predators of their day. They were up to 19 meters (60 feet) long, snacked on plesiosaurs and mosasaurs, and were probably quite intelligent. Sorry we missed you! 🧪 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Once upon a time I just admired nudis and sea slugs. But it was not enough. Now apparently I'm creating an R package to celebrate their colour palettes? 😅 First up, my Sydney fave, Hypselodoris bennetti. #rstats #nudibranch #dataviz 🦑🐙🧪 #marinelife #invertebrates

Abstract Mad Libs

Now published in Perception (@pec-ipe.bsky.social)! Schulz-Hildebrandt, H. (2026). When purple perceived only at fixation: A fixation- and distance-dependent color illusion. Perception, 0(0). doi.org/10.1177/0301...

It’s Penguin Awareness Day which seems like a great excuse to post the greatest ever Wikipedia edit.

Cow Tools! We have lived alongside cows for nearly 10,000 years. We breed them and exploit them It is now, only now, that we have discovered THEY CAN USE TOOLS Here I describe our study (paper) www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti... in @currentbiology.bsky.social with @auersperga.bsky.social

In Australia we have government run by private school elitists for the benefit of private school elitists #auspol

Differences in perceived speed

This head is spinning continuously, but we see it rotating back and forth... ...presumably because of our strong prior expectation that faces are convex. This is a very nice example of the Hollow-Face illusion promoted by Richard Gregory: www.richardgregory.org/experiments/

Slime mold on a stick. NWT, Canada. Photo covers about 5cm in height. #slime #myxo #fungifriends

Beau Miles. One of my favourite YouTubers, a genuine human, being his awesome self. And so watchable too, he can really tell a story. youtu.be/T5YF95r_Bew?... This video revenue will plant trees. I love this, he’s documented the whole process, transparently, no BS. This is how you do it.