Dr Poppy Watson

‘What Oligarchy Looks Like’: AI Giants Pledge to Pump $100 Million Into 2026 Midterms | Common Dreams Silicon Valley elites plan to spend big in 2026 to influence Congress for AI-friendly legislation. Leading the Future PAC pledges $100 million.

“‘What Oligarchy Looks Like’: AI Giants Pledge to Pump $100 Million Into 2026 Midterms ***
The goal of the PAC is to elect a Congress that will prohibit individual states from passing their own AI regulations.”
2/11/26 … 1/ www.commondreams.org/news/ai-supe...

sign with lots of angry wugs protesting cuts

good morning, #linguistics 🐦🐦 pals

the University of Essex wants to cut 50% of our Language & Linguistics department, close our foundation programme & our Southend campus, + cut 400 jobs academic departments and professional services jobs across all depts

join us in the fight against these cuts!

This is so depressing. If it's safety they are worried about, um motor vehicles??

A Ketogenic Diet for Treatment-Resistant Depression This randomized clinical trial assesses the effect of a ketogenic diet on mental health outcomes in individuals with treatment-resistant depression.

Just out today, the keto diet showed a (modest) benefit in treatment resistant depression, when compared to a pretty reasonable control! jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

On all fours by Miranda July; the book of guilt by Catherine Chidgley

Marina Hyde being brilliant

Nice thread

1/8 🧵 Breaking: Groundbreaking study drops in Psychedelics!
Psilocybin's effects on social behavior & inflammation in female mice modeling anorexia nervosa? TOTALLY context-dependent on metabolism & exercise. Explains why only ~40% respond in human trials. Implications for personalized therapy!

Large language models can accurately score people’s Big 5 personality traits on the basis of their brief, open-ended narratives.

LLM ratings converged with self-reports and predicted daily behaviour & mental health www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Flock of chickens (BHWT)

The race is on to re-home 120 ex-commercial laying hens in Didcot before February 8th. The British Hen Welfare Trust is appealing for would-be kind hearted chicken keepers to come forward by 4pm Friday and give the hens a chance at a free range retirement.

RFK Jr. Demonstrates How To Remove Tapeworm By Scooting Ass Across Carpet WASHINGTON—In an address touting the practice as a completely drug-free method to relieve the common affliction, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. demonstrated Thursday how ...

“Doctors won’t tell you this, but you don’t need medication for a tapeworm—all you need is the natural power of friction,” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said as he dropped to the floor, lifted his legs high, and dragged his ass along the White House carpet during a press conference.

Sounds like a job for an AI friend ;)

What diet are patients with T2D more likely to choose when looking to lose weight? First author Alexis Care (University of Staffordshire + RehabCare) + team, found preferences for continuous vs intermittent low-energy diets, low-carb & simple diet approaches: doi.org/10.1111/jhn....

Do goal-directed actions minimize prediction error? Together with @haslagter.bsky.social and @fahrenfort.bsky.social I identified falsifiable predictions of active inference and reviewed the extent to which they are supported by empirical results. Read the preprint here: tinyurl.com/2by8k3h6

1. The thing about science that these jokers don't understand is that science cannot be vibe-coded.

Whatever its flaws, the point with vibe coding is that you're trying to quickly make something that sorta works, where you can immediately sorta see if it sorta works and then sorta use it.

wake up babe, new effect size metric just dropped

Methodological flaw may upend network mapping tool The lesion network mapping method, used to identify disease-specific brain networks for clinical stimulation, produces a nearly identical network map for any given condition, according to a new study.

Lesion network mapping method, used to identify disease-specific brain networks, produces a nearly identical network map for any given condition, according to a new study www.thetransmitter.org/brain-imagin... via @drrickadams.bsky.social

Fantastic talk! I learned so much

I'm looking to hire a postgraduate research associate in Computational Psychiatry for my new lab at Yale. Please see link below for details & help RT 🙏

postdocs.yale.edu/posts/2026-0...

#postdoc #cogpsych #neurojobs #psychologyjobs #visionscience #cogsci

Just to clarify: once again, this study has only an observational design and reverse causality or third variables are perfectly possible. We simply don't know if social media "harmed" any participant

PSA: With recent spikes in the news, I decided to get tested for my immunity to measles. Results came back saying I had none. If you got your vaccination back in the 1970s like me, you might want to check too.

A new publication in JEP: LMC in collaboration with Brett Hayes, Yanjun Liu, Won Jae Lee, Jaimie Lee and Ben Newell (UNSW Cognition Group). It's all about the link between attention and beliefs in forming "learning traps"

psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/202...

You are someone who does quantitative #metascience? Want to do this as a #professor? With a research-focused, tenure-track position in Germany? At a great institute with a super smart and fun team? This one is for you! 🤗

How long should it take to retract a paper with incontrovertible signs of data fabrication? Sleuths think 2 months is too long, particularly when clinical risks are involved. deevybee.blogspot.com/2026/01/an-o...
#retraction #stemcells #cardiology
@erictopol.bsky.social

The system is really grinding to a halt so I hope publishers pull their fingers out. Sucks especially for ECRs who are trying to establish a track record and need papers! Often might have to wait 3 months just for initial desk reject :(

Simvastatin in the prevention of recurrent pancreatitis: a triple-blinded randomised clinical trial (the SIMBA trial) Background Recurrent acute pancreatitis (RAP) or acute-on-chronic flares in chronic pancreatitis (CP) have limited preventive options beyond addressing the underlying aetiology. Statins, due to their ...

Despite the heralded anti-inflammatory actions of statins, simvastatin had no effect on recurrences of acute or acute on chronic flares of #pancreatitis gut.bmj.com/content/earl...

Back at work today. Sunk 3.5 hrs so far into a review of a not-very-good-3-experiments-long paper for a low impact journal. Why do i do this to myself?

It turns out I'm mainly eating a Mediterranean diet, but probably too much of it :)

What a longevity expert eats in a day What do you need to eat to become a super ager? If anyone would know, it’s Eric Topol, a cardiologist

I found a non-paywalled version. Really interesting, dnyuz.com/2026/01/02/w...