Academics who love doing public outreach and #scicom don't always get this level of support from their universities. That's a shame because the more we share knowledge and passion, the more it encourages investment in what we do. Thanks to #UNSW for investing energy and time in this profile!

Within a week of the tragic and terrorist events that targeted the Jewish community here in Sydney, the Australian Prime Minister has announced a gun buy-back scheme to get guns off our streets. This is just one action item, there are more in the works (like license regulations, max caps, etc.)

Super figure-ground confusion here!

Compare this to the United States, where the 1st graders shot at Sandy Hook in 2012 could have been students at Brown shot 13 years later, and where we have done nothing. It's not impossible to make gun violence rare. We just keep choosing not to try.

Who needs brain training apps when, for free, I can just never use reference management software?

Picture this: You're teaching a cognitive psychology class and decide to show this clip of the 1972 hit song, 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘪𝘶𝘴𝘰𝘭. What's the topic of the day, and what point are you illustrating with this song?

𝘊𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘦's idealization of 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦's energy and competence is a problem. Because 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘦 is 𝘧𝘶𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘦 to 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘦, and AUGHH, 𝘱𝘢𝘴𝘵 𝘮𝘦 has left 𝘤𝘶𝘳𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘵 𝘮𝘦 a sh%t ton to do.

**How distributed is the brain-wide network that is recruited for cognition?** That goes to the top of the list! #neuroskyence doi.org/10.1038/s415...

Fantastic day for a lab hike! From Spit Bridge to Manly Beach, featuring all stages of the lab life cycle: 1st year undergrad -> honours thesis student -> PhD scholar -> visiting international student -> old professor. #LabLife #UNSW #Sydney #Australia

Why yes, I did just try to reverse pinch the back of a cake mix box in order to increase the font size of the directions.

I have refined The uranium That was in The centrifuge And which You were probably Saving For power generation Forgive me It was so powerful I am Become death

These clips are great

UNSW maintains a 𝘛𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘕𝘦𝘸𝘴 𝘠𝘰𝘶 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘜𝘴𝘦 repository where teachers share 2-minute videos describing something they've tried that seems to work. Here's my contribution this year: a little something to help build interpersonal connection even in large lectures. #EduSky

Food for thought: "Students are more capable than their anxiety tells them they are."

It is our great honour to announce the APCV Keynote at #epc-apcv-2026: Prof. Hakwan Lau from the Institute for Basic Science in Korea! The call for member-initiated symposia & abstracts is now open: visualneuroscience.auckland.ac.nz/epc-apcv-2026 #psychscisky #visionscience #neuroskyence

Seriously???!!!

Google defaulting all Gmail users to a setting that enables Google to harvest all your emails into chatbot training is straight-up evil and invasive. www.huffpost.com/entry/opt-ou...

One of the world’s most dangerous spiders: the Sydney funnel-web! This large one seems bereft of life. Otherwise, the done thing is to scoop it into a container and bring it where its fangs can be milked to create antivenom.

Love this. But maybe, like islands, we are connected underneath, more deeply than we care to look

Bad news, folks. I just discovered something 𝗱𝗶𝘀𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗯𝗶𝗻𝗴. Notice a common pattern among these (and other) supposed giants of literature? My gawd. Look at the em-dashes. They all used ChatGPT!

The world seems even larger when family is on the other side of the globe. But every now and then, something makes the distance feel smaller — like when a class assignment led my niece to ask me for a letter of life advice. Heck, I even got to build on my childhood love of the computer game #Zork.

I like to start and end my lectures with music to set the energy level — often selections that students aren't like to have heard. This week's was an oldie but a goodie, and I can't get it out of my head. Enjoy!

Edible fractals!

Lots of folks captioning aurora photos like "for a few minutes we didn't think about politics" guess I'm built different, every time I'm out trying to see night sky stuff I frequently think about how much light pollution is entirely preventable with just a tiny bit of regulation

We used a brain "pinging" again and found that distractor suppression is reactive rather than proactive, meaning attention is first drawn to the distractor before being suppressed.

Anyone need a concrete demo of the cocktail party problem? Conan O'Brien can help.

The kids are alright

On the event of James Watson's death, I highly recommend this 2023 commentary from @matthewcobb.bsky.social and Nathaniel Comfort with crucial new insights into the discovery of the double helix. (And also check out Cobb's brand new biography of Francis Crick) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

80% of getting “there” is being “here”. (Apparently, Saturday-morning-Steve writes motivational posters...)

If a teacher has made a positive difference in your life, let them know. It's one of the most moving ways to help them see that flowers have bloomed in their footsteps. #EduSky

UNSW students have burning questions, like why do we yawn? And why is yawning contagious? It turns out that yawning isn’t boring! It touches on some of the deepest parts of being human. (My answer, with appreciation for the exciting yawning research of Andrew Gallup and colleagues, cited within!)

I promised myself that when I next had a successful grant, I'd share a snapshot of my trail of unfunded submissions. With gratitude to the ARC, looking forward to next several years of collaboration on effort motivation with @minzlicht.bsky.social, Deena Skolnick Weisberg, and Frederik Anseel!

Guilty

Nothing here is moving

So proud of my former PhD student and current colleague, Sandersan Onie, who was recognized with the 2025 UNSW Alumni Award for Social Impact and Service last night. This video does a lovely job showing why he is so deserving of it. His work is a beacon of light!

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire." Chatbots may provide information more efficiently than library books (also free), but that's the filling of a pail. It takes the spark of human connection to light the fire.

We are wave functions of possibility, small in the universe only as bounded infinity is next to unbounded: endless just the same.

You gently massage the data, cheekily omitting that one participant lingering teasingly beneath the exclusion cutoff. Then a final flourish, as you add the covariate you're almost ashamed to justify. You feel — you 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 — it's wrong, and it's exhilarating. ...p = .049.

Facebook data reveal the devastating real-world harms caused by the spread of #misinformation theconversation.com/facebook-dat... by @acarson.bsky.social et al. Misinformation’s real-world impact: "linked to poor health outcomes, falling public trust, and significant societal harm."

‘Storytelling is your best weapon for convincing people’ - @willstorr.bsky.social www.bps.org.uk/psychologist... Repost for your chance to win a copy of his book, 'The Science of Storytelling'.

A number of students follow me on LinkedIn, so I posted this for them. What good is being old-ish if you can’t pretend you have some life wisdom to offer?

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘛𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘸: The story of a high-concept, decades-long TV show undone by statistical learning.

Australian squirrel

In a slow centrifuge, it’s easier to unite in the middle. By word and deed, some invest in spinning it faster. It seems so obvious.

💯 Our minds seek analogy, pattern recognition to help make sense of the world. Without history, national myths and Hollywood tropes fill the void, which remove complexity and are easily moldable. Teaching history helps combat "System 1 thinking" at a societal level. Thanks for what you do.

Thanks, @ellecordova.bsky.social

Welcome, everyone, to UNSW Open Day. It’s gorgeous outside, and just as much fun in the lecture halls, where I’m loving giving the Psychology talk. One down, another at 2:30. Hope to see you there! 😃

It was a terrific treat to present to the team at the Reserve Bank of Australia today. I'm on a mission to share cognitive science's most useful insights with as many people as possible, and today's fantastic audience made it particularly enjoyable. Thanks for having me!

My dept at the University of Auckland (NZ) will be hiring in social psych at the junior level this cycle. Official ad to follow It's a big research-active dept with fun colleagues, plus you can commute to uni on a boat, paired with a pleasant walk thru Albert Park (this pic from heading home today)