after much deliberation and giving AI the benefit of the doubt, Wikipedia editors have had enough of AI slop. New policy bans LLM generated content, periodt www.404media.co/wikipedia-ba...

“I shall send off the manuscript today or Monday. It is an extremely poor affair; I must say something & have nothing worth saying. Lock it up carefully, I hate it to that extent it would break my heart to write it again.” Charles Darwin captures the joy of academia in a letter to his daughter, 1871

Don’t we all babe 🐝

We’ve been experimenting with the transparency toolkit from HeyGears to create optically clear models of radiolarians, microscopic single-celled marine organisms that build intricate glass skeletons with stunning geometric complexity. #sciart #3dprinting (Printer + materials provided by HeyGears)

An unaccounted for part of the economy is how much young people virulently hate AI, despite how aggressively it's being forced on them. They realize it's making their friends dumber and ruining the world and they want nothing to do with it. From the Penn student paper: www.thedp.com/article/2026...

Taking linguistic/grammatical diversity in the world's languages 🌏 serious is important because a too narrow perspective on how language works (in the brain), based on a few and in the grand scheme quite similar languages — English, German, Dutch, … — will miss a big part of the picture. 🖼️ 🧵4/

Issue 6: If an input violates the terms or acceptable uses, the user is solely liable. However, if an output violates the terms, the user is still solely liable! Apparently the provider can never be at fault. Even when they use automated black box filtering/detection invisible to users. 11/

I appreciate @seanhollister.bsky.social 's reporting here about the latest step Google is taking in their quest to destroy the information ecosystem and disempower information seekers: www.theverge.com/tech/896490/... 🧵>>

This thread is superb and why we must not let AI win

What I like here is that the solution comes from the students themselves "multiple low-stakes attempts rather than single high-pressure performances, conversations rather than presentations, uncapped formative practice that builds confidence, and peer explanation normalised as a routine activity"

Imagine being Hodgson's typesetter. He rocks up with his manuscript. "Any footnotes in this guv?" "Um. Just a couple." Then after he's gone, you open it and see this stuff. Academics: however naughty you think you are with footnotes you are a SPECK IN THE EYE of John Hodgson. 16/22

Let’s talk ✨constructive friction✨ in educational design! Yes, many students adopt AI as a rational response to assessment where thinking isn’t required for success @wonkhe.bsky.social But let’s talk about cases where friction makes something hard to do, and the by-product is learning! 🧵

A very very interesting thread on how individual mental experiences cannot be fit in a "one size fits all" description or paradigm. With tantalizing breadcrumbs on how there are multiple spectrums (biological, cultural and personal) lurking here as we map out the varieties of mental experience. 🧵

I first realised I was aphantasic after a psych undergrad and a PhD in cognitive neuro (studying visual ST memory no less). I got in an argument in the pub with someone who has extremely vivid imagery. I kept saying, no you just think it’s visual in nature (😳) - it’s just a visual representation!

The number of times I've heard people say try not to think of a pink elephant - as if that's hard 😆 My one superpower as someone with aphantasia, definitely not picturing a pink elephant over here

Is mental imagery a single process? Our meta-analysis of 46 fMRI studies suggests not. We find a key divide between object imagery (visualizing an object in rich detail) and spatial imagery (mentally transforming objects). This split mirrors the ventral and dorsal streams of vision

The one that blew my mind was finding out that someone I know doesn't think in language. How is that possible?

They are gathering data on prosopagnosia, using the Cambridge Face Memory Test, which is available on the Birkbeck University website, but it only works on a browser. www.psyc.bbk.ac.uk/mobile.php

Star (shape) and Star (astronomical) are both welcome here. The imagery scale simply asks about how vivid the image is, rather than which kind sounds like you added rich details like solar flares that weren’t mentioned in the prompt, so that aligns best with the ✨ hyperphantasia ✨ end of the scale

I think there's a very important lesson in this for educators. I always mention aphantasia when I'm doing sessions on adaptive teaching. Quite a lot of people don't even realise they have it.

awhile ago someone asked for feedback on a paper where the whole thesis was "aphantasia is a made-up concept used to pathologise normal people and romanticise genius bc of course nobody ACTUALLY sees things and pretending like some special people do is just putting them on a pedestal"

I'm really bad. I have no static visual imagery in my head at all. I can see movement though. So if I think of how I would draw a star I can visualise a basic star being drawn. People always pop up on these discussions and say 'no one with aphantasia can be an artist' and yah sucks boo to those guys

There used to be a lot of arguments about that on art forums years ago! (I think before aphantasia became widely known?) It was always a hopeless shouting match between people who couldn’t see images in their mind insisting that those of us who could must be delusional and not really seeing things

I used to think I was the type who visualized fully in great detail. Recently, I realized that it’s more like a detailed image with blind spots, almost like I can’t “look” at the image directly, but can see it in the periphery or sometimes, conversely, like I’m scanning it through tunnel vision.

Wait like literally actually see it? I think I’m not an imager.

It’s me! I always thought these descriptions were just romanticization.

Omg I imagined a legit star burning in deep space!

I need this but for whether or not people have internal dialogue and/or hear voices in their heads

Once a year I ask my students to imagine a red star. It’s cognitive psychology and we are about to talk about whether “imagery” is the same or different from “perception”, but first, I like to check in on what our class experience when we imagine something. Friends, the results NEVER disappoint!

First woman director for the DCCN. Congratulations Roshan 🎉

"locking educators into a compulsory regime of technologized education is precisely what profiteers and opportunists are attempting to do." RESIST! And thank you, @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social

Great work by Renewables First and @laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social and CREA to highlight Pakistan's $12billion in fossil fuel savings since the solar boom took off after the Russia-Ukraine war. Every kW on a rooftop and every MW in a solar farm is a step towards sustainable energy security #energysky

Nominations are currently open for the Linguapax Award, which recognizes work contributing to language revitalization, language maintenance, language rights, and linguistic justice. Applications close May 21st - please see below for more. linguapax.org/en/candidanc...

Interested in working at DAIR? We're hiring a communications lead, who we needed yesterday. Is that you? Please apply. Is that people you know? Please share the job ad with them so that they apply.

I sent a 21 sentence report to a journal’s short & sweet section (a replication of an even shorter one in from the 70s). It was rejected with a request for ‘full scale article’ because it was too interesting. 4 reviews, 6k words, 4 supps and a meta analysis later… most ppl just read the abstract 🦞

We're thrilled to announce the Ctrl-Z Award, a US$2,500 prize for researchers “who discover substantial errors in their published work and take meaningful steps to correct the scientific record." Covered by @nature.com today; read more here: centerforscientificintegrity.org/2026/03/10/a...

It’s that time of year where we try to replicate a 140-year-old cognitive psychology experiment using nothing but 10 volunteers, a bell and a stopwatch! It’s Cognitive Psychology, the volunteers are students from the back row. How did it go on 2026? 10.0.23.196/m9.figshare....

A student sent me a query during exam revision. The multiple choice question did not make sense and none of the answers were correct. So now I have to mark ChatGPT’s homework as well 😭 What’s your institution’s stance on students using LLMs to generate revision materials?

Straight to the top of my reading pile: Some of my favourite linguists @superlinguo.bsky.social, Hildebrandt & @suzyjstyles.bsky.social with a new paper on spontaneous multimodal iconicity in earthquake narratives doi.org/10.1080/0726... #iconicity #ideophones

I included a parsing question in my Cognitive exam. The sentences featured pirates and mermaids, and encouraged students to include illustrations to help explain their answer - More than 50 students included drawings 🥹

"to democratize art is not every person having a cute drawing made in seconds, to democratize art is every person having time and health to learn and make art if they chose to, and mainly to have the means to think and relate introspectively with art."

This looks like fire! 🔥

"AI art Ghibli trend" but it's Miyazaki's reaction and actually art

Proud to be a life member of @lingsocam.bsky.social, who has just come out with:"Four Reasons Why English Should Not be the Official Language of the United States: Statement Against White House Executive Order “Designating English as the Official Language of The U.S.” www.lsadc.org/content.asp?...

I won't highlight them all, but here's an obvious one: "The literature review is thorough but could be more focused. Some references (e.g., classic Piagetian theories of childhood play) seem tangential to the primary argument and could be condensed" We simply don't reference these theories.

The Indigenous People of North America have decided to go back to calling the Gulf of Mexico, “Chalchiuhtlicueyecatl”. It is what the Nahuatl People originally called it as it is the domain of the goddess Chalchiuhtlicue, who is assoc w/water bodies, including the Gulf of Mexico.

Applications for SCIENCE IRL grants are due *tomorrow*!! Send us your swinging-for-the-fences scicomm that - Reaches science disinterested people - Does not require your audience to come to you - Effectively hooks people with science - Gives people ACTION they can take

New postdoc opportunity from Sloan to study how AI impacts scientific research. We have a great community growing around AI/STS at Princeton and I would be very happy to consider supporting applications as a mentor - please email if you are interested! sloan.org/programs/dig...

🚨Paper alert 🚨 Need a social cognition task for measuring individual- and community-level variation? We are excited to share the TANGO-CC with you! 👀 Paper: doi.org/10.1177/2515... w/ @mcxfrank.bsky.social @patkanngiesser.bsky.social @kirstensutherland.bsky.social @elmanubohn.bsky.social...