Rob Davies
@robayedavies.bsky.social
Reads, runs, looks out for birds, teaches data analysis methods in Psychology at Lancaster University, researches individual differences in reading and language; he/him/his
I'm looking to hire a postdoc to study attention and how it might be impacted by digital environments: go.uvt.nl/24788 - 2,5yrs, starting 2027/Q1 - Salary €4.925 - €5.264/m + 8% vacation bonus + 8.3% year-end bonus - 30% tax benefit for intls - 8+ weeks of vacation leave Happy to chat over email!
“Watson’s 1968 book, amid other slights & sexist language directed at Franklin, implied the flash of insight was his. Popular accounts still routinely suggest Franklin missed the significance of the photo. She never had a chance to challenge Watson’s dismissive narrative; she died of cancer in 1958”
Science Magazine@science.org · last mo.Exclusive: A new analysis refutes James Watson’s claim that he was the first to recognize the significance of the famed photograph 51. https://scim.ag/4rTKck8
Thanks Rob. For a broader selection of critical work in this area, you might be interested in this collection...
Mark Rubin - List of Critical Metascience Articles
What is Critical Metascience? Metascience uses a scientific approach to try to improve science. Critical metascience takes a step back to question some of metascience's common assumptions, approaches,...
sites.google.com
New open access paper from Pekka Syrjänen and me in which we contrast logical and methodological conceptions of severity and argue for a pluralist approach to evaluating scientific credibility. doi.org/10.1177/1089...
For my first piece for Audiofemme, I wrote about how Juan Atkins created techno from a post-industrial collapse that hauntingly mirrors the current so-called AI “revolution” Atkins didn’t just change the world - he proved that music & art is inseparable from the material conditions that produce it.
Juan Atkins Conjured Techno From The Wreckage of American Capitalism
The late techno pioneer’s legacy was more than just a musical revolution — it imagined technology as a tool of unity and liberation, not something that disrupts our lives.
audiofemme.substack.com
if you've never seen a Capuchinbird (Perissocephalus tricolor), here you go
I don't have a statistics book out yet, because I keep drafting long chapters for there separate books at the same time. You can, however, read those chapters as they're released, for free, over on my website, betanalpha.github.io/writing/.
Writing
betanalpha.github.io
David M. Perry@lollardfish.bsky.social · 5d agoYou should welcome all the new people to Bluesky by TELLING US ALL ABOUT YOUR BOOK AND DONT FORGET A LINK SO WE CAN BUY IT. Bluesky, the app for books.
🎉 You can move #rstats up to the top of the the interpreter startup list in Positron now, which speeds things up a ton for non-Python people 🎉
The long-awaited 1000 Days article is out, and Science asked me and Zara Harmon to give our Perspective about this huge undertaking. Here's a summary of what we said about this huge project to build child-specific computational models of early language development www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The first 1000 days: Modeling language learning from individual children’s everyday speech
Children learn to understand and speak from the speech around them, yet how that everyday input shapes learning remains unresolved. Large language models show that language is learnable from data, but...
science.org
New, on Heat Death! @saulelbein.bsky.social in from the top rope with an essay on The Great Texas Flip, and the long parade of GOP infamies, cruelties, arrogance, and hubris that led to me turning up at his front door at midnight, grinning and asking for a shot of whisky
After The Deluge
Or: how to lose Texas in several easy steps
heat-death.ghost.io
A 75-year-old Leamer wrote this in *2019*? Damn... RIP to a legend
While this man drives, the puppy sleeps on his mother, & the mother dog sleeps on this man's leg. If the word "peace" were an image, it would be these three on a journey. Original post
Arkivism is a search and visual discovery engine for millions of public domain works from the collections of the Smithsonian, The Met, NASA, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, Rijksmuseum, and more. [arkivism.com]
Arkivism: search millions of public-domain images
Search over 3 million public-domain artworks, photographs and illustrations by describing what you're picturing. Free, forever.
arkivism.com
I love Sankey charts, but they only show a snapshot. So I made an animated one tracing how global crude oil flows shifted through the 2026 Hormuz closure, Jan–Aug. It’s a model built from many public data sources, using #Rstats, #D3 and #Quarto. jhelvy.github.io/2026-global-oil-flows/
Our working group had the second gathering at the Vatican yesterday Much of the discussion took place under the Chatham House Rule. Below, I share some of the points from the meeting, in the hope of informing others about some of the dominant themes of discussion
Dr Abeba Birhane@abeba.blacksky.app · last yr.I was part of a working group on AI and Fraternity assembled by the Vatican. We met in Rome and worked on this over two days. I am happy to share the result of that intense effort: a Declaration we presented to the Pope and other government authorities coexistence.global
🧩 Why do some children find learning to talk or read much harder than others? Our review on developmental language & reading disorders is now published — bringing together genetics, neuroscience, cognition & intervention. 📄 doi.org/10.1177/1747... 🎨 doi.org/10.6084/m9.f...
Beating fascists in the digital age "Brazilian activism against far-right in english. Simple version now. Better version coming in the future." x.com/kennystrikes...
Albert Pinto@70sbachchan.bsky.social · 2w agoBrazilian Spring is incredibly inspiring. Here is Lula's improbable comeback architect Janones sharing Brazilian lessons for a new spring rising across the world "If the global left unites, we'll sweep the far right off the face of the earth, I GUARANTEE YOU THAT!"
New blogpost: my lab's AI policies and norms. I'm trying to figure out how researchers should make use of AI to accelerate discovery without letting it replace human understanding or falling off the "slop cliff." Here are some ideas. babieslearninglanguage.blogspot.com/2026/10/my-...
lol what do you mean “release”? I got the six disc peel session box set 20 years ago
Romesh became a patron last month - very exciting all round! www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/stay-informe...
Romesh Ranganathan becomes the Refugee Council’s new Patron - Refugee Council
Award-winning comedian joins our charity to speak up for humanity, dignity and fair treatment for people rebuilding their lives in Britain.
refugeecouncil.org.uk
A decade after beginning the project, Ryan McGee, Olivia Kosterlitz, Artem Kaznatcheev, Ben Kerr, and I have a paper in PNAS this week that is one of the best pieces of work I've ever been involved in. Without paywall: carlbergstrom.com/publications... Below, a thread about (part of) the paper.
incidentally if you run a science lab you should be thinking about redundant and secure storage for short and long term We have a dedicated server with a nightly versioned backup for active stuff plus longer term stuff yearly off site, along with some more complex stuff for our citsci databases
Lynda Barry's basically perfect definition of How To Art thenearsightedmonkey.tumblr.com/post/1447676...
Mark Truesdale@marktweedale.bsky.social · 2w agoName a piece of comic art that occasionally wanders into your head unannounced and makes you smile. #comics
Do you need to know what you think before you start writing? Not necessarily, argues historian Lynn Hunt. In a 2010 #AHAPerspectives essay, Hunt explores how the act of writing itself generates new ideas and why getting words on the page is essential to the thinking process.
How Writing Leads to Thinking (and Not the Other Way Around) – AHA
Writing is stressful. Sitting in my computer chair my neck and shoulder muscles almost immediately tense up as I dig around in my brain for the best phrase or even any coherent string of words.
historians.org
Very much enjoyed this post on doing math with LLMs.
dynomight@dynomight.net · 2w agoScattered thoughts on how doing math feels these days dynomight.net/math/
"In the 1990s Philip Morris implemented a 10-year “sound science” public relations campaign to create controversy regarding evidence that environmental toxins cause disease. Our article describes the tobacco industry’s later campaign to advance the “sound science” concept via legislation." A. Baba +
Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ@olivia.science · 3mo agoother similar cases also touched on here if useful olivia.science/before
County vaccination figures looked reassuring until the largest US measles outbreak in 30 years began. Ana Bento tells the story of building a 50,000-school dataset, published in Nature Medicine, to find out why the averages were lying, and what surveillance looks like once you finally zoom in. 🧪
The hidden map of measles risk: why zooming in changed everything
County vaccination figures looked reassuring right up until the largest US measles outbreak in 30 years began. This is the story of building a 50,000-school dataset to find out why the averages were lying, and what surveillance looks like once you finally zoom in.
go.nature.com
This ALMOST inspires me to learn to crochet. #Vera #DCIVeraStanhope What got you started, @isabellatyc.bsky.social ? www.smh.com.au/culture/tv-a...
