This is only 6 years away mind you

It’s 2032. PhD applications include several pubs as first and senior author evidencing a successful research program and supervision. Consideration for tenure track positions requires a Nobel prize in your area. For promotion to Full Professor, your obituary should reflect positively on your career.

It’s 2032. PhD applications include several pubs as first and senior author evidencing a successful research program and supervision. Consideration for tenure track positions requires a Nobel prize in your area. For promotion to Full Professor, your obituary should reflect positively on your career.

I’m on the job market btw 🔊

Them: if we do this, it will accelerate scientific discovery! Me: cool, what can we do to decelerate it though

Congrats to iOS 26 for simulating uncorrected astigmatism.

If you're interested in a short behind-the-scenes of the retraction of a mega-metascience paper—the first of its kind (the retraction, not the paper)—this might be for you! Had to gloss over so many details to observe allotted time but happy to share an extended version of my slide deck with links.

I’ve been studying some so-called “measure theory” and I’m ready to call it: the theory appears to be correct Can I move on now?

Person complaining about unsolicited help from some AI: make it stop! My Brain: excuse me, don’t you mean— Me: please don’t My Brain: …—”make it SLOP”?

We recently published a theoretical review about how compositional and generative mechanisms in working memory provide a flexible engine for creative perception and imagery. Pre-print: osf.io/preprints/ps... Paper: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

So “handbook of experiment” I guess

It’s Monday and everyone is saying we should all get back to working hard so I thought I’d get right on it

Get ready for the new year by following the smartest thinkers on social media! go.bsky.app/H61xswq

Your weekly reminder (the first of more to come) that one of this account's key purposes is boosting your good work - your essays, papers, videos etc. Send them my way for a repost. Making ex cathedra pronouncements is not enough; let's support each other's thought

'Tis the season to preprint BBS commentaries; I'm happy to share ours too! 🎄✨ The textual basis of current LLMs causes trouble, but linguistically relevant insights *can* be found in systems modelling the more natural form of human spoken language: the speech signal itself. arxiv.org/abs/2512.14506

Me: time to contemplate the fruits of my labor, KINDLY Brain: Me: you heard me Brain: Brain: I don’t hate it very much

Coming soon to an academic institution near you

Coming soon to an academic institution near you

Writing a grant is like that thing in Interstellar where if they decide to do the thing, a few hours will be experienced by them but everybody else will have aged decades and made lots of technological and scientific progress. Only it’s you who gets old. And you also make progress? Nope still them

Ah, spoke to soon. Had to spend the whole day in reformatting nightmare because incomprehensible reasons. The whole day, so roughly 19 years

Now that I’ve finally submitted this grant I can get back to whatever I was doing 67 years ago

Now that I’ve finally submitted this grant I can get back to whatever I was doing 67 years ago

Solving the puzzle of loading the dishwasher after spending hours trying to fit stuff in a research grant Brain: now does this remind you of anythi— Me: uh-huh I see it very clever now STFU

Academic discussions “… let’s come back to that” They never come back to that

Academic discussions “… let’s come back to that” They never come back to that

Do not compile in advance

Writing a research grant feels to me like sculpting a piece of marble with my bare hands (bloody)

A lot of my work seems to involve my inner voice saying “oh well, try again tomorrow”

In the privacy of your own mind you can substitute names like Cozy Sequences and Banal Spaces and even Mortal Wombat for the actual names. The important thing to remember is you don’t have to inflict this onto other people by posting it on oops sorry

A surprising number of books: Title: A friendly introductory primer on the first steps towards [subject] Preface: for people who are extremely knowledgeable about [subject]

— Meanwhile, in some math department — - this is so cool, what should we call it? - easy, a kernel - cool - wait haven’t we used that term for 39 different unrelated objects already? - what’s your point? - yeah you’re right sorry

This but for "realism" and philosophy

— Meanwhile, in some math department — - this is so cool, what should we call it? - easy, a kernel - cool - wait haven’t we used that term for 39 different unrelated objects already? - what’s your point? - yeah you’re right sorry

I’d love to lead my own research group but I’m worried about uncontrollable procrastination (spending 6 months on the lab acronym and logo)

MiniThread: I was reading this paper and through it was worth a comment because the results are very counterintuitive to me (and the authors too) Miller, G. A., & Selfridge, J. A. (1950). Verbal context and the recall of meaningful material. The American journal of psychology, 63(2), 176-185.

If I were forced to trade my prince..hood..ness for something I wood rather have an m-dash than a mere hyphen

I’m looking at the public comments on a manuscript submitted to an ML conference authors are being nasty to a reviewer because they think it’s secretly a chatbot, some randos are accusing a reviewer of using AI to hallucinate non-existent references, and yet others are showing the papers exist 👍🏻🫠

Funder: provide a thorough justification for your research program Me: because if I do this, other researchers will do something else and *they* might discover something huge

I don’t know why people complain about writing research grants. It’s basically looking at your history and realizing that all the pieces represent excellent decisions and figuring out how they point in a specific and promising direction which is definitely not a form of soul destroying self-harm

I don’t know why people complain about writing research grants. It’s basically looking at your history and realizing that all the pieces represent excellent decisions and figuring out how they point in a specific and promising direction which is definitely not a form of soul destroying self-harm

Documentary filmmakers: the thing that makes these documentaries special is that you can hear the stories directly from the mouths of those who experienced these remarkable events Also DFs: have a seat, you’ll be looking at the camera, here’s the script, stick to it, those exact words

In what can only be described as one of my most spectacular failures of social inference, someone sitting next to me at the movie theatre asked me ‘what movie is this?’, I told them, then I thought about it for a moment and asked them politely how come they didn’t know what movie they came to see.

In what can only be described as one of my most spectacular failures of social inference, someone sitting next to me at the movie theatre asked me ‘what movie is this?’, I told them, then I thought about it for a moment and asked them politely how come they didn’t know what movie they came to see.

Me: I developed a chemistry of lemon gooey butter cookies. It took many attempts but I managed to master the rationale, technique and execution, and today it is my pleasure to show you the result Them: did you finally decide to just follow the recipe closely this time? Me: Me: to the letter

Me: I developed a chemistry of lemon gooey butter cookies. It took many attempts but I managed to master the rationale, technique and execution, and today it is my pleasure to show you the result Them: did you finally decide to just follow the recipe closely this time? Me: Me: to the letter

Many character quirks make a lot more sense when you realize everyone in the show is playing ‘the floor is lava except for predefined marks’

Many character quirks make a lot more sense when you realize everyone in the show is playing ‘the floor is lava except for predefined marks’

What problem is explainability/interpretability research trying to solve in ML, and do you have a favorite paper articulating what that problem is?

**Me at a Halloween party** Them, looking at my costume: what are you supposed to be? Me: that’s a great question! Let’s think about it carefully step by step. You’re asking about my costu— Them: no stop it

**Me at a Halloween party** Them, looking at my costume: what are you supposed to be? Me: that’s a great question! Let’s think about it carefully step by step. You’re asking about my costu— Them: no stop it