You call your tummy your tum-tum I call my belly my bell-bell We are not the same -My 4-year-old probably, if he understood this meme format

My 5-year-old made protest signs (we're not going to a protest, these are apparently just for marching around the kitchen with)

Everyone keeps talking about Judith Butler but whenever I hear that name all I can think is "The existence of Judith Butler implies the existence of Judith Maid"

New article on loops and self-reference. A mash-up of Hofstadter and this quote from Pratchett: "Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. [...] Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."

Pros and cons of my toddler deciding he is a squirrel: Pro - easier to get him to try foods (just tell him it's an acorn) Con - harder to tell what he wants because he refuses to speak and only makes increasingly angry chittering noises to communicate needs

I have a new article out in The Conversation about metaknowledge (our knowledge about what we know!): theconversation.com/most-people-...

It's cool what you can find outside if you stop and look. I was out playing on a dirt mound in the woods (as one does when they have a 5 year old) and noticed a lot of ant activity, caught these tiny ants moving their babies

Perk of having kids: Getting to do all those kid “science experiments”. Spent my weekend playing with oobleck and hearing a four-year-old say “non-newtonian-fluid” a bunch of times 10/10 would recommend

Evolution is wild: "[H]awkmoths produce their [bat] confounding clicks by rubbing their genitals together. They seem to have evolved this ability on three separate occasions, with each group repurposing a different section of their sex organs" From An Immense World

The great thing about sharing your articles on Reddit is you get to hear what's wrong with your article from people who haven't read it

Some reflections about writing about science and philosophy for a general audience: cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/thoughts-a...

Don’t worry, internet arguers. I’m reading the arguments and silently keeping score. I know who’s winning. At the end of the internet I’ll reveal who won

I Am The God Of Your Children. I Am The Final Parent. — theonion.com/i-am-the-god...

I wish more local music shows were earlier in the day I want to live that punk rock lifestyle but also be in bed by 8:30pm

Behavior change is hard. It's not a willpower problem. The evidence says mindset shifts and good intentions barely move the needle on long-term behavior. There's no simple trick you'll get from a Ted Talk to suddenly able to stop procrastinating, go to the gym, lose weight, or whatever. 🧵

Science citation practices are pretty wild. From The Hungry Mind by Susan Engel: [Children] can wander, grab things, climb, build, take things apart, and open things up (Campos et al. 2000)

Very annoyed to learn I was just granted a patent for the dumbest project I ever worked on

The cool thing about discussions on the internet is you can always take a step back and reflect on how you’re coming across. Without the pressure of needing an immediate response, you can always make a decision about how you want to present yourself.

My new favorite concept: stigmergy! It's how ants build complex nests without any central plan. One ant drops a dirt pellet, and that pellet becomes a signal for other ants to drop pellets there too. The environment itself becomes the blueprint cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/memory-as-...

One of my kids will pretty much only eat pickles On the one hand, he's having trouble gaining weight and it's a constant concern for us and his pediatrician On the other hand, the kid has great taste

“Living well is the best revenge,” I repeat to myself in the mirror, psyching myself up for yet another idyllic day fuelled by the thought of my eudaimonia crushing my foes.

It sure is a lucky coincidence that I ended up with not just the best kid, but the two best kids in the world Sucks for the rest of you though, ngl

Recently I got mad about a science news story that was not only clickbait, but the article itself was fluff and left readers less informed than if they didn't read it. It made me question what the point of science news is anyways, if it's treated as cheap entertainment with no factual basis.

As a neuroscientist, I recommend disregarding any advice you read that begins with “As a neuroscientist”

Very cool response to the “fruit fly brain upload” hype: researchers had a model based on a worm brain control a fly body, showing if you use deep learning techniques to train any network that's well connected enough, you can get reasonable behavior out.

The scientific study of the mind: When you stop and think about it, it’s kind of amazing we can have a science of the mind. How we act, the decisions we make, and who we are feel so intimate and idiosyncratic

I watched the Artemis launch with my 5-year-old right before bed and he got so excited he was sprinting circles around the kitchen pretending to be a rocket going around the moon.

Apparently my 5 year old told his mom that I'm the funniest person he knows. This is high praise coming from the comic genius who came up with this joke: Knock knock Who's there? Yodelayhee Yodelayhee who? Yodelayhee you have to go to bed, it's the middle of the night!

Kids are such great little scientists "Sometimes siblings do terrible things to each other because they're curious about cause and effect, and siblings are convenient objects on which to carry out their experiments" --From How to Raise Kids Who Aren't Assholes

Sometimes your kids will do something that just fills your heart with pride and makes you feel like you've done something right with raising them (My son is licking pickle flavored ketchup off of a popsicle)

New post, where I talk about the myths and truths about brain lateralization -- we aren't "left brained" or "right brained", but we are right or left handed, and there's interesting science behind why cognitivewonderland.substack.com/p/why-were-r...

Gotta love small town news. Local family named a beagle Snoopy and it made it into the paper

It’s crazy to me that the US educational system doesn’t teach you that you can buy a big bag of sticker-backed googly eyes and stick them to whatever you want

I have a new article out in Skeptic:

They say making friends is a lot different as an adult but I dunno, I was at a dude's house yesterday and I knew he wanted to be friends because he brought me to his room to show me his Pokemon card collection

Proud to see my gym had this hung up on their bulletin board this morning

Something a little different this week: a story of sonder "Photons bounce off of the snow and strike my retina, setting off a cascade of electrical activity. Different photons, each having taken a cosmic journey across space from the sun, strike the retina of the grocery guy."

I don't know if water mixed with vinegar is actually effective as a cleaning product, but it sure makes your house smell amazing

I feel like ~2 years is the perfect age gap between siblings because right around 5 the older one naturally wants a dog and the younger one naturally wants to be a dog

My daycare teaches my kids fundamental life skills. Today the toddler's learning activity was eating pickles and drinking pickle juice. Apparently he drank all the pickle juice they gave him. Good kid

Just came across an old draft in my writing folder called “3 thoughts”, and it has three bullet points. The first two are incomprehensible combinations of words (one is “Orthogonal Salmon Rushdie”). The third is “Did I have a third thought?”

I tried to share this with the "Doom Neuron" community (a community around this project) and the mild pushback was immediately removed as "disrespectful".

You might have seen the news headlines saying "human brain cells on a chip learned to play Doom". It sounded really interesting, so I decided to look into it. The reality left me very disappointed

Tomorrow at 12 PM PST, I'll be chatting with @tommyblanchard.bsky.social on Substack livestream about extraordinary beliefs, cognitive anthropology, and the evolution of childhood. Tune in for a great convo :) open.substack.com/live-stream/...

what the fuck is Buster's dad?

They say money can't buy happiness, but I'm not sure that's true since with enough cash you can hire a personal assistant whose full-time job is unsubscribing you from marketing email lists

There are only two types of days in the winter: 1. Days where the kids are home from daycare because it's a snow day 2. Days where the kids are home from daycare because they are sick

New post about animal consciousness and the evolution of minds (and a review of Peter Godfrey-Smith's book, Metazoa):