Timothy O'Leary

Two-photon calcium imaging at 24,000 lines/s, with the resonant axis spanning 4x what other systems can do. Inertia-free. Diffraction-limited. No tradeoffs. Che-Hang Yu developed a 4x angle multiplier for laser scanning. His paper is out today: opg.optica.org/optica/fullt... 1/n #fluorescenceFriday

Embedding unreliable AI deep into the source code of the military without human oversight is the single stupidest thing we could do as a species.

And that is *exactly* what the United States is about to do.

Yes! Some clear thinking. Once we move away from "species x is a good/bad model for y because of z handpicked reasons" we can do science.

In 2023 a bill to prevent AI from autonomously launching nuclear weapons *failed to pass*. This was apparently not newsworthy.

www.congress.gov/bill/118th-c...

America, and probably the world, stands on a precipice. Call you Congresspeople, right now.

The urgent plea of @garymarcus.bsky.social demands rapid action: the US Military, in the hands of fascists, seeks to bend Anthropic to the knee in the aims of incorporating AI into military weaponry. Gary asks us to call our political representatives right now. I just did. Now it's your turn.

A summary of the last decade's news:

2016: the cunts are in charge now
2026: documents reveal that the cunts were always in charge

Calcium spikes know which way the wind blows!

Lily Nguyen and I wrote a dispatch on this fascinating work led by Itzel Ishida+@sethisachin.bsky.social+Gaby Maimon!

authors.elsevier.com/a/1mfk53QW8S...

LLMs should be a private cognitive tool, like a calculator, which is not currently possible under our existing model of corporate AI. Crucially, they do not think and have no agency, again in the same way as a calculator

for those who are paywalled or want to read the original research instead of the headline: arxiv.org/pdf/2602.14740

Broader engineering principles than those most of us are familiar with, for sure!

Macro photo of a brown stink bug in face view on a leaf, guarding a tightly-clustered bunch of eggs that are shaped and colored exactly like a full tray of dark beer with foam on top.

Finally, the bug is back with a round of the Guinness.

Reverse Engineering of Biological Complexity Advanced technologies and biology have extremely different physical implementations, but they are far more alike in systems-level organization than is widely appreciated. Convergent evolution in both ...

No! It's the other way around. Engineering principles *generate* complex systems:

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

engineering principles first, complexity follows ;)

What’s Wrong with Political Philosophy? Learning from Bernard Williams and Judith Shklar Podcast Episode · Past Present Future · 11 February · 1h 9m

Podcast recommendation: I had never heard of Judith Shklar before, but her idea that hypocrisy weighs against cruelty couldn't be more relevant to our current politics. Depth of discussion is a nice antidote to the rising tide of bs too... podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/p...

Not just a gut feeling: It is indeed harder to find reviewers....

Front cover of my book, titled "Comparative musicology: Evolution, universals, and the science of the world's music" (published today by Oxford University Press)

1st of my 4-page essay published in Nature today titled "Music is not a universal language - but it can bring us together when words fail" Picture caption: "Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny (centre) performed in Spanish at the half-time show of the 2026 American Football Super Bowl LX."

My book is now published! 🌏🎶🧪

You can download it for free at academic.oup.com/book/62353 - I’d be grateful if you do!
I also published an accessible summary with audio/video today in @nature.com: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
Try reading that first, then give the whole book a read if you like it!

that's because it was the same country back then... and we're still trying to get rid of them

this is simply because spiritual energy cannot be localised to a unique source

nice rug

If you use peer review for your own work but refuse to contribute to it yourself then you know what you are: we all have one.

"Move fast and break... oh... it broke."

Who could have seen this coming?

Thank you!

"The brain doesn't know or care about trial averaged rates" couldn't have said it better!

Could you share links to the studies you mentioned in the article? ❤️ (stuck at paywall)

Data-Driven AI for Neuroscience Organizers Carsen Stringer, HHMI/Janelia Research Campus Srini Turaga, HHMI/Janelia Research Campus Atika Syeda, HHMI/Janelia Research Campus Fabian Sinz, University of Göttingen Alice Wang,

📢 Applications are open! This meeting brings together scientists using data-driven #AI to analyze + model neural circuits and uncover how the brain performs complex computations. 🧠

Apply by May 28 ➡️ janelia.news/NAI26

@computingnature.bsky.social @sinzlab.bsky.social @srinituraga.bsky.social

There may or may bot be a clinical use for suicide risk but personally I think everyone should be more aware how unpredictable it is, not least for the sakes of everyone affected by it.

but it's less hard to publish papers about publishing null results

hmmm... I'm undecided on this

Sure, I will go back to some of this. Although from memory I don't remember such studies acknowledging that you can get strong oscillatory entrainment with *zero* ephaptic coupling: this was the thrust of decades of work by Nancy Kopell, Bard Ementrout, Roger Traub and others. More parsimonious IMO.