Yanna

The Hidden Psychology Behind Doorbuster Deals On doorbuster deals, and the way that shopping events like Black Friday help channel our deep-seated shopping rage.

Fun fact I learned about while writing this: During the 2007 holiday shopping season, retailers sharply discounted HD-DVD players and turned them into doorbusters, which made them fly off the shelves—only for the format to get discontinued in February of 2008.

tedium.co/2025/11/29/b...

Meet the researcher aiming to halt use of ‘fundamentally flawed’ database linking IQ and nationality Rebecca Sear Rebecca Sear is on a mission to convince publishers to retract articles that use a database that purports to rank countries based on intelligence. To maintain the integrity of scientif…

. @rebeccasear.bsky.social is on a mission to get all studies using a database linking #IQ and race retracted. I spoke to her for @retractionwatch.com to find out more: retractionwatch.com/2025/11/25/m...

Figure 1 from a paper published in Nature (linked in post). The figure purports to be an infographic depiction of the "Overall working of the framework" for 'explainably' diagnosing autism spectrum disorder. The infographic is plainly nonsense, containing many spelling errors, nonsense words, meaningless images and graphs. Clearly created using generative AI and (crucially) NEVER CHECKED AT ANY STEP OF THE WRITING OR PUBLICATION PROCESS.

Hey @nature.com, have you got an explanation for how the hell THIS happened? & especially why you accepted a paper with such a bizarre piece of genAI slop in it?!
& more to the point, why we should take you seriously at all going forward?
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

It’s a myth that the Victorians created modern dog breeds – we’ve uncovered their prehistoric roots Dogs were already remarkably diverse more than 10,000 years ago, long before kennel clubs and pedigrees.

For all the dog people, some great research from my colleagues in The Conversation:

'Dogs were already remarkably diverse in their skull size and shape more than 10,000 years ago, long before kennel clubs and pedigrees.'

theconversation.com/its-a-myth-t...

The British library is in crisis: why does nobody care? The widespread indifference to the British Library's crippling cyberattack demonstrates a perilous failure to value the knowledge infrastructure vital for national prosperity

Good to see the problems facing our colleagues @britishlibrary.bsky.social being raised here by @hetanshah.bsky.social (of @britishacademy.bsky.social). If this had happened in France it would be considered a national problem to be urgently addressed! www.cityam.com/the-british-...

The Rockstar union case made its way into UK Parliament earlier today

Do you think staff at the University of Dundee were misled when we were told there would be no redundancies? Or when he told us they hadn’t said there would be no redundancies?

Milan prosecutors investigate alleged ‘sniper tourism’ during Bosnian war Groups of Italians alleged to have paid Serb soldiers to shoot Sarajevo residents during siege Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italians who allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army for trips to Sarajevo so that they could kill citizens during the four-year siege of the city in the 1990s. More than 10,000 people were killed in Sarajevo by constant shelling and sniper fire between 1992 and 1996 in what was the longest siege in modern history, after Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence from Yugoslavia. Continue reading...

Milan prosecutors investigate alleged ‘sniper tourism’ during Bosnian war

Sir Alan Bates agrees multimillion-pound settlement over Post Office scandal Government settles claim from former post office operator more than 20 years after he began his campaign for justice * Business live – latest updates Sir Alan Bates has agreed a multimillion-pound settlement with the government more than two decades after he began the campaign for justice for post office operators over the Horizon IT scandal. Bates has previously accused the government of presiding over a “quasi-kangaroo court” system for compensation, and last year said that post office operators may return to court over delays with settling claims. Continue reading...

Sir Alan Bates agrees multimillion-pound settlement over Post Office scandal

China intimidated UK university to ditch human rights research, documents show Sheffield Hallam University apologises to Professor Laura Murphy for restricting her academic freedom.

Sheffield Hallam was pressured by the Chinese state to shut down research into human rights abuses and gave in.

“It’s incredibly worrying that Hallam appears to have silenced its own professor on behalf of a foreign government.” Jo Grady.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Halloween Stories - JSTOR Daily Why are Victorians the default haunted house, what do ghosts have to do with the imagination, and why do we like to be scared?

A collection of #Halloween articles, from urban legends and vampires to witches and their familiars.

daily.jstor.org/editors-pick...

Renewable energy investment should come from defence budgets, say retired military leaders Former European officers say spending on low-carbon power would make nations more resilient to threats from potential aggressors

Energy security is national security.

Investment in renewable and low-carbon power should be counted as national security spending, say retired military leaders:
https://bit.ly/4o7oVRb

Opinion: Mamdani’s proposed Department of Community Safety would be a win for New Yorkers The proposal is well-grounded in existing best practices, and there is wide support for it among the public and City Council.

My latest on Mamdani's proposal for a Department of Community Safety in @cityandstateny.bsky.social. www.cityandstateny.com/opinion/2025...

The Wayback Machine’s snapshots of news homepages plummet after a “breakdown” in archiving projects Between May and October 2025, homepage snapshots fell by 87% across 100 news publications.

The Wayback Machine’s snapshots of news outlets’ homepages have plummeted in recent months — Nieman Lab reporters @andrewdeck.bsky.social and @hanaatameez.bsky.social found they declined by 87% starting in May of this year. They decided to find out why. buff.ly/rhtRGcr

EA employees and UVW-CWA slam Saudi-led EA buyout, call for regulatory scrutiny "If jobs are lost or studios are closed due to this deal, that would be a choice, not a necessity, made to pad investors' pockets—not to strengthen the company."

EA employees and UVW-CWA slam Saudi-led EA buyout, call for regulatory scrutiny

1999 Macpherson report found the MPS was institutionally racist

2022 IOPC report found instances of bullying, misogyny & aggressive behaviour

2022 HMICFRS report found misogyny, sexism & predatory behaviour

2023 Casey review found the force was institutionally racist, misogynistic & homophobic

Investigate This! | The Marshall Project Criminal justice datasets and reporting resources from The Marshall Project

We want to help empower criminal justice journalism in communities across the U.S. Are you a journalist, storyteller or concerned citizen? Check out our free toolkits with data and other resources to support your original reporting.

OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limi...

"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."

www.computerworld.com/article/4059...

This is incredible

Scholars eligible for grants straight after PhD under ERC rules Researchers will be able to apply for starting grant directly after PhD, while eligibility windows for grants will overlap, European Research Council says

'The European Research Council (ERC) has announced changes to its grant eligibility criteria for the 2027 calls for proposals, with scholars able to apply for a starting grant directly after finishing their PhD.' 1/3

"We are an image from the future" graffiti in Athens, 2008.

Many find comfort in thinking that Greece was (and remains) a peripheral outlier, with developments and reactions which are not applicable elsewhere. But its portrayal as an image of the future back in 2008 seems increasingly more apt. 1/

After 180 Years of Pain, Dutch Women Engineers Reimagine the Speculum with ‘Lilium’ Dutch engineers redesign the speculum with Lilium; a soft, sustainable, patient-centered innovation set to transform women’s healthcare.

It’s only taken a century or so, but would you look at that, some badass women have invented a better solution to the speculum (which is essentially a torture device).

www.brightvibes.com/lilium-specu...

Workers Governing Technologies: Collective Strategies Across Contexts. In-person workshop in Toronto on Sep 25 and 26 with 20 speakers from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Spain and US

Registration link and full schedule: www.eventbrite.ca/e/workers-go...

Yesterday Panteion University of Social and Political Science withdrew its patronage from the Eurocrim2025 conference in Athens
#eurocrim #criminology #crimsky

via @brunildapali.bsky.social

www.panteion.gr/wp-content/u...

Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Modern British History at UCL Explore an exciting academic career as a Associate Lecturer (Teaching) in Modern British History. Don't miss out on other academic jobs. Click to apply and explore more opportunities.

Precarious contracts keep getting shorter. Until recently short-term associate lecturer contracts were for 10 months. Now UCL advertises for 7 months. What does it say about our field, about how we treat the new generation of scholars? www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DNW277/a...

The average age of #videogame players in Europe and the USA has been early to mid-30s since the 2000s.

Authors celebrate “historic” settlement coming soon in Anthropic class action Advocates fear such settlements will “financially ruin” the AI industry.

AI advocates have warned that if every author in the class action filed a claim, it would "financially ruin" the entire industry.

Maybe they could all retrain as ballet dancers

Months Without Sunshine: The Unbearable Darkness of Jail Jails in St. Louis, Cleveland and Jackson, Mississippi, don’t provide direct access to sunlight and fresh air – even when their own policies require it.

Since jails primarily hold people pre-trial, courts have found that depriving potentially innocent people of sunlight violates their right to due process.

One judge called it ”simply punishment.”