Stian Reimers

We're well into "Unsubscribing from any mailing list that sends messages containing the phrase 'No tricks, just treats' or 'Spooktacular'" season. Already Yorkshire Trading and Coursera have, sadly, succumbed.

Families needed for a study about children’s talking and thinking. Are talking and thinking skills different in children who were born after Covid lockdowns? Was your child born in England between July 19th 2021 and October 19th 2021? If they were, you could take part in our study. Your child would play fun talking and thinking games with a researcher over Zoom. We would see your child three times for about 45 minutes each time. You would fill in some questionnaires about your household which will take 1.5 hours. If you take part in our study you get a free Amazon Fire tablet! If you have any questions or want to sign up you can contact bicycle@citystgeorges.ac.uk.

🌟We are looking for children turning 4 years old to participate in our study 🚲🎉 If your child was born in England just after lockdowns ended (between July 19th and October 19th 2021) you could take part and get a free Amazon Fire Tablet! 🖱️Sign up here: cityunilondon.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Today at #NDAS2025: using #AI for systematic literature review quality assessments with Dr Nick Behn, and checking methodology and designing animated online tasks for kids with Professor @steer-rhinos.bsky.social

Hello, #Econsky! The Department of Economics at City St George’s is now on Bluesky. Follow us for updates on our research, events, and life around the department.

Honest people don’t lie. Or do they? Liars aren’t honest. Or are they?
One puzzling conundrum in contemporary politics is that politicians who seem to be estranged from facts and evidence are nonetheless considered honest by their followers.
1/n

Looking forward to speaking at this event - I’ll be talking about how the presentation format of graphical trends influences what people predict will happen next. But whether or not that’s your thing there’s a great selection of interesting talks from both academics and practitioners.

Very much looking forward to this - open to anyone from any walk of life which involves giving informal money guidance to others. Do come along if it's something that might be useful for you.

❗️Norway more than doubled the aid planned for #Ukraine in 2025
Thank you, Norway! 🇳🇴🇺🇦

Norway will spend 85 billion Norwegian kroner (over €7.2bn) on supporting Ukraine this year, up from 35 billion (€3bn).

Jonas Gahr Støre said: "We are increasing support because there is a need for it”

⭐ We are still looking for 4-year old children born during lockdown to take part in the BICYCLE study 🧸🎉 We are especially interested in hearing from families living in the East Midlands 📍 please share with those who might be interested! cityunilondon.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

Happy New Year: Now sort your fucking life out It'll keep on pissing itself away until you set goals.

The comments under this week's newsletter, particularly from people who changed their career in their 40s, are extremely lovely. In short: it's not too late. You can still do it iandunt.substack.com/p/happy-new-...

A festive project here, bringing together animation, MIDI input, USB relays to contol low-voltage devices, and smart device management, all run from a browser with JavaScript. The owl tells the students what Chrismas melody to play and when they get it right, the piano gets more festive...

Do Financial Concerns Make Workers Less Productive?* Abstract. Workers who are worried about their personal finances may find it hard to focus at work. If so, reducing financial concerns could by itself incre

Recently accepted by #QJE, “Do Financial Concerns Make Workers Less Productive,” by Kaur, Mullainathan (@sendhil.bsky.social), Oh, and Schilbach (@fschilbach.bsky.social): doi.org/10.1093/qje/...

American Psychiatric Association Adds ‘Obsessive Categorization Of Mental Conditions’ To ‘DSM-5’
theonion.com/american-psy...

Making most of my first video post to show this magnificence from tonight's Taunton carnival. Something I grew up with, but I still get that sense of awe as one of these comes around the corner.

Two people drinking hot chocolate on a train

A sleeper cabin

Coffee and sausage bap by a train window

Waking up this morning approaching Penzance on the Night Riviera sleeper. Really is a wonderful way to travel, albeit one entirely unsuited to sleeping.

We ran it a couple of weeks ago with 70 students as part of an onboarding session. Feedback, both on usefulness and realism, was positive, so we'll be updating and running again in the winter with the next intake. Can give more practical details or dm a link to have a go if useful...

Judgment and Decision Making (JDM) starter pack

Happy to add you

go.bsky.app/8nDKmwG

A screenshot of a law clinic with options for consultations

In AI roleplay news, I've built a web app for law students to prepare for consultations with clients in our law clinic. Exciting developments: (a) a point-and-click interface for selecting cases; (b) using openAI's whisper API so users can speak/listen rather than type. Built with GPT-o1 support.

Very happy to share resources or more detail if you want to drop me an email...

We run with classes of 30-50; on 6-7 tables. Each table has a set of tasks and their own combination box to open, and at the end each has their unique clue to crack the final whole-class puzzle - finding the one right index card out of a thousand possibles. Lots of sorting and group working.

The contents of a treasure chest, a mix of snacks with a realistic chocolate key on top

Today has been induction week escape room day: Students learn about the university to crack combination boxes, decode phone numbers, and scan barcodes to open the treasure chest. All modelling collaborative autonomous learning. Six hours and 200 - all successful - students later, ready for a pint.

A starter pack of schools or departments of psychology from around the world.

Please share, encourage your school/dept social-media person to join up, and feel free to suggest additions...

😃

go.bsky.app/FmgYgVj

How to run Ollama on Windows Getting Started with Ollama: A Step-by-Step Guide

That's to say, nothing clever from my side; you could do the same on your PC or Mac by following these instructions: medium.com/@researchgra.... Go on. Have a go.

And the science bit: I'm running Meta's Llama3.1 8 billion parameter model using Ollama with an open-webui interface running through Docker. I only know what some of these words mean.

Also re the environmental impact of GenAI, this is using significantly less processing power than, say, playing Microsoft Flight Simulator. So clearly still issues about local impact of data centres and scaling of GenAI use, but everyday ChatGPT-style interactions don't have to be energy intensive.

And it's changed my conception of LLMs: I vaguely knew how they worked, but it feels different seeing this small model give a history of polyphony, explain laminar flow and how beta blockers work, and roleplay a patient with acute psychosis. If the internet goes down there's plenty to keep occupied.

Obviously there are license options that promise not to retain data, but they often don't fit our needs. Also, it's very cool to have this amazingly eloquent and knowledgable agent just sitting there chatting away from your graphics card.

A screenshot of a chat window that looks like ChatGPT or Claude

Excitement: I now have a large language model comparable to ChatGPT running on my own PC. As in, without an internet connection. It's a capable model, which opens up use cases in universities where you wouldn't want to pass sensitive data outside the organisation.

A child completes a game on an Amazon Fire

Nice to wake up and see a piece about our BICYCLE project in the most read articles on the BBC website. We're looking at development effects of lockdown on children's cognitive and linguistic development. Also there's actually a photo of one of the tasks I developed! www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Wait, which of us is tech support?