To think better, you need to understand how thought works. But it's one thing to theorize about its building blocks, and another to see them in action, real-time.

Thinking is an action.

Happy 462nd Birthday to Galileo Galilei, born #OTD in 1564 -- a crucial figure in the early stages of what we now call the scientific revolution. Here are photos that I took in 2009 of his (rather humble) birthplace in Pisa, and his ornate tomb in Florence: #science #history #histsci

In Ikebukuro Station, Tokyo, commuters form double queues at each train door. One line boards the next train. The other waits for the train after that. No one directs them. There are no detailed instructions. People just seem to know.

On Darwin's birthday, the charming doodles his kids left all over his manuscript of "On the Origin of Species" www.themarginalian.org/2016/04/06/c...

Great apes may use playful teasing to learn about their social relationships. In a new paper, Erica Cartmill & I propose a bond-testing hypothesis for ape teasing. Out today in Phil Trans Biology: royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/article...

Out if context quotes

Last year a researcher asked if he could borrow my aphantasic brain for an experiment. That decision led to me spending 30+ hours deep inside an MRI, looking at pictures or trying (and failing) to imagine them.

Maybe nature has no joints. claude.ai/share/fb5af...

Indeed.

I Used to Know How to Write in Japanese (Somehow, though, I can still read it) aethermug.com/posts/i-use...

A great book by Sean B Carroll on two of my intellectual heroes: Jacques Monod and Albert Camus. Two giants (and friends) who won the @nobelprize.bsky.social but also fought totalitarianism during the Nazi occupation (joining the Resistance) and afterwards. Two great inspirations for these days.

When the IT guy takes over my computer remotely

OK, this is wild. In September 2023, geophysicists across the world started monitoring a very odd signal coming from the ground under them. It was picked up in the Arctic. And Antarctica. It was detected everywhere, every 90 seconds, as regular as a metronome, for *nine days*. What the HELL? 1/

Clusters - an Asymmetrifcal Particle System with Emergent Patterns By Jeffrey Ventrella vimeo.com/1048238799

Determinate Self-Sabotage, or Obsessive Connoisseurship? aethermug.com/posts/self-...

Every year at the end of the semester, I ask the students in my Psych of Language class to create memes about what they've learned. They then vote for their favorites. Here's the winner about how the idea of a universal grammar is no longer as compelling as it once seemed. 1/5

This is a new image from #JWST. The bright points with spikes are stars in the Milky Way. Everything else is a galaxy. Everything. Else. Is. A. Galaxy.

In chaotic systems, the smallest fluctuations get amplified. As scientist Edward Lorenz put it in the 1960s and 70s, even a seagull flapping its wings might eventually make a big difference to the weather. Here's how scientists came to understand what chaos is, and how to wrangle it: 🧵

How can biological systems anticipate future events? In our new paper with @jordiplam.bsky.social, we show how a simple genetic circuit can predict future trends through a simple (and perhaps widespread) mechanism @drmichaellevin.bsky.social @koseskalab.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

Bertrand Russell, writing on the other side of two world wars, on how to heal an ailing and divided world – it is not too late www.themarginalian.org/2019/11/13/e...

One thing is to say "thank you", another thing is to imply it even without saying it out loud. Which is not possible in most languages. What if Gratitude Was Built Into the Grammar? New post on Aether Mug: aethermug.com/posts/what-...

Researchers think a single strand of RNA could have done the work of a contemporary protein enzyme. It might even have been capable of replicating itself, helping to explain the origin of life. 🧪

Gorgeous vintage Japanese illustrations of animals and scientific phenomena www.themarginalian.org/2019/12/12/k...

Norbert Wieiner, who was a central figure within the field of cybernetics—a precursor to complexity science—is describing below the implications of the compression that automatization entails. Outsourcing a computation to a machine explicitly or implicitly involves the creation of and investment in—

Another day, another proof of the Riemann hypothesis in my inbox

The responsibility is reciprocal: I'm bad at socials and socials are bad at me.

1/🧵 The biggest parenting myth? That our behavior has ENORMOUS influence on our children. Almost every trait kids develop gets blamed on something parents did (usually mom...). This belief creates massive anxiety. But what does the SCIENCE actually say? #ParentingTips #MomTok

An Aphantasic's Observations on the Imagination of Shapes aethermug.com/posts/an-aph...

This will never stop blowing my mind.

How to know that there's life on a planet? What biosignatures can be detected? In a 1993 @nature.com paper, Carl Sagan and his team turned Galileo's spacecraft towards our planet. Here's what they found and the lessons for future exoplanet research nature.com/articles/365...

How to put all complexity in a single drawing? Here's my take, with catastrophes (the folded surface), ecosystems, computation (Turing Machine), turbulence, collective intelligence, nonlinear dynamics and chaos, evolution, viruses, networks and time. And a little touch of Santa Fe NM

If you would like to get out of Silicon Valley's pocket and stop letting algorithms decide what you see, give the Marginalian newsletter a try — an oasis of sanity, free, ad-free, algorithm-free, entirely human, made of feeling and time for 19 years running: www.themarginalian.org/newsletter/

What is human #StatisticalLearning for? The standard assumption is that the goal of SL is to learn the regularities in the environment to guide behavior. In our new Psych Review paper, we argue that SL instead is provides the basis for novelty detection within an information foraging system 1/2

Matsuri's Grown-Up World—a tragedy. "The difficulty level will increase even more with the new season." aethermug.com/posts/matsu...

In times of difficulty and disorientation, take consolation in the telescopic perspective, with a side of Bulgarian folk music and Carl Sagan:

Do languages evolve in time in ways similar to microbes? Is there horizontal information transfer too? Tal Dagan and co-workers pioneered work in this area using network science. See the @royalsocietypublishing.org paper here: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10....

Dear Charles, Careful what you wish for. — Someone from 186 years in the future

I wrote another thing. "Whatever a Man or Woman Was Able to Accomplish Before, You Can Accomplish, Too - A play over milkshakes" aethermug.com/posts/whate...

While Roman engineers and architects were building cities, termites in Brazil excavated a massive network of galleries, creating millions of mounds that persisted until today and can be seen from space phys.org/news/2018-11... … A good reminder of the power and scale of collective intelligence.

Some new experimental thinking tools on Aether Mug. Primitive Atlas of Glass Circuits aethermug.com/posts/primit...

I wish people would stop saying "people suffering from aphantasia" to refer to all aphantasics. Aphantasia is not a disease nor a handicap. Some people suffer because of it, but most are doing fine. Some are doing even better than most people who *can* visualise.

Here's my first blog post of the year! "The Luxurious Pain of Using My Time" aethermug.com/posts/the-l...