I play music and have a physical science background, so I am interested in this. But I am definitely a tourist here. So am I being unfair if I suggest this field is awash with data but still thirsty for real knowledge? Brains make rhythms in circumstances X, Y and Z but why? Do they *need* to?

Such a warm feeling from paying a huge water bill and knowing that Southern Water's bosses and shareholders won't have to suffer for all those leaks and sewage discharges they were responsible for.

To be clear, what is being proposed here is to axe the main mechanism for getting Britain’s homes insulated - which is by FAR the best way to reduce household energy bills in the long term 🤦‍♂️ …and also, just incidentally, an absolute non-negotiable requirement for meeting UK climate targets 😬🥵☠️

"Your parcel is out for delivery" doesn't mean you will get it today. They chuck everything on the van, deliver as much as they can, and take the rest back to the depot.

We only really get the Observer for the TV listings. If they aren't going to list BBC4 or Channel 5, why bother?

Sensitive instruments have detected waves from one black hole consuming another

Philosophers are the palliative care nurses of the scholarly world. They take on cases that are beyond the help of science, such as the problem of phenomenal consciousness.

The main arguments against solipsism, in 4m43s. Bobby Byrd: I Know You Got Soul music.youtube.com/watch?v=Fjre...

Autumn shadows

It's 10.5C outside and I have noticed the heating on for the first time this autumn. Our renovated Victorian house can no longer keep itself above 20C by insulation alone.

Thanks guys. Nice of you to let me know who the email is from and what it is about.

This blood pressure chart, reproduced in the Guardian, makes its point clearly. But oddly, it includes cases where diastolic pressure exceeds systolic, which is impossible by definition.

(1) I think AI will make $$$ (2) I know a lot about AI (3) I have a financial interest in AI The people who answer no to 2 oughta listen to those who answer yes to 2 and no to 1 and 3. Cos nobody says yes to 3 and no to 1. Draw a Venn diagram if it helps.

We’re burning the planet for this 🤷‍♂️

USA: no kings UK: less dukes

British.

The rubber-hand illusion works on octopuses. They "may have a sense of body-ownership like we do". No shit, Sherlock. Imagine trying to live as an 8-armed creature without knowing which arms are yours. www.scientificamerican.com/article/frea...

The existence of allostasis implies the existence of someostasis and noneostasis.

I am more an #AI person than a #neuroscience person. Reading neuroscience findings, I grieve over all the cool ways the brain might have worked, but doesn't.

In many ads on Youtube, the product message is entirely in the visuals, with the sound providing mood only. For someone like me who is mostly on YT to listen to music, this is just fine, the next best thing to an ad-free experience. Don't change a thing, guys!

Ofcom: you need to pay your fine now Royal Mail: It's OK the cheque is in the post

Among the first services on the ARPANET, ~50y ago: Parry, a paranoid chatbot; and a porn generator which inserted random porn terms in a fixed sentence structure. People have been pursuing this stuff for a long time. The technology has advanced, obvs

Interesting #BBCradio4 prog from @jimalkhalili.bsky.social on #quantumcomputing, but why no questions about the threat to #cryptography and #cybersecurity?

Such a heart-warming spectacle in the middle East today. The peacewashing of American fascism.

Big celebration in Israel today but not so much in the occupied Palestinian territories. What are Palestinians meant to be grateful for? Of course there is a peace plan. But the war isn't over. In 1967, Israel saw that it might survive a future of unending conflict. Gaza confirms that belief.

I nominate the person who renamed WH Smith as TG Jones for the Nobel Prize in Economics. Only kidding.

Damn, my laptop battery died again. Suddenly apps grab their stuff and leg it faster than a drug gang during a bust.

Excellent book by @neurograce.bsky.social , accessible but not dumbed down. The math takes a back seat during a tour of important historic and current research in neuroscience. Even if you know parts of the story you may find new insights and connections. GL has a good nose for neurononsense.

@stimoo.bsky.social Never been to #DelftHolkand but I have lovely musician friends there.

Clearly President Trump gets some credit for the Gaza ceasefire, but this does not suddenly put him on the right side of history.

The economy isn't growing because WE ARE NOT DRINKING ENOUGH. Seems legit.

People with no humility should be reincarnated as naked mole rats and given the job of toilet cleaner for life. You can't say there are no obvious candidates.

App/feature that surely must exist already. Facial recognition emoji selector. Make a face or gesture into your camera, and a matching emoji is inserted in your text.

Scary, huh? Money now. Or we vaporise your data. At first I thought this might be one of the endless wrongly-addressed emails that I get: legit message, typo @. But Chrome says the link is insecure (no https). So perhaps this is a straightforward boring old phishing attempt.

What us jazzers don't say out loud to our pop and classical colleagues.

At least in systems neuro, there's a strong sense of excitement. It's the opposite of "papers and research projects could have been done 15 years ago". New ways to measure things we've never been able to before - dynamical systems; connectome constraints. New ideas about how brains/minds work.

Israel's assault on the Gaza aid flotilla, like UK "terrorism" arrests of peaceful pro-Palestine protesters, is utterly predictable - and guaranteed to arouse more sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

With Jane Goodall's observations of chimpanzees, the tide turned against the prevailing human exceptionalism. Our appreciation of the cognitive capabilities of other species - including primates, corvids, octopuses, even bees - has continued to grow.

The music is from Herbie Hancock and the video is lifted from OpenAI's website, and I have been too fucking lazy to edit them together. I think you can see that it works, though. Rough music.youtube.com/watch?v=4mcX... Rough! Rough!

I think I may have to send a book back to the seller even though I want to read it. The print is simply too small and lightweight for my eyes. I might be better off with the e-book, which I can read in dark mode and magnified as necessary.

If you decide that from now on the only way you are going to help good causes is by giving them money, don't complain when they start coming after you for money.

Your Brain Is Not an Onion With a Tiny Reptile Inside. I'm dipping into this paper in preparation for @jimalkhalili.bsky.social BBC2 series on brain evolution. Biologists say psychologists have got it all wrong. How will a physicist navigate these choppy waters? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Wait. If you have to do voluntary work in the community in order to get settled status, then it's no longer voluntary, is it?

Two paragraphs of explanation should be provided on arrival at every website: 1. How we'll make life hell for you if you accept all cookies 2. How we'll make life hell for you if you reject all cookies

I always try to order books from bookshop.org, which supports local bookshops. But when bookshop.org is charging £37.50 for a title I can get from Amazon for £22 (with free delivery), my resolve crumbles.

Science isn't a body of knowledge, it's a process of acquiring knowledge. You can't say that too often. But I can sometimes get impatient with science books which dutifully take the historical approach.

Instagram notifications: Can you hear me? Wake up! Say something! Stay with me! Why aren't you responding? It's like being given CPR when you are perfectly well.

The prose is mouthwatering. The crumpets, I have to report, are bland and boring.

They've lost the 9yos

#Gatwick is my local airport. I am not screaming for more flights. It would be disastrous for the environment, and anyway, there will never be 'enough' flights. Enough is... what? Two or more a day, to every obscure destination? Labour is locked in the Sim City trope that growth requires airports.