Ben Hayden

A brain-inspired agentic architecture to improve planning with LLMs - Nature Communications Multi-step planning is a challenge for LLMs. Here, the authors introduce a brain-inspired Modular Agentic Planner that decomposes planning into specialized LLM modules, improving performance across tasks and highlighting the value of cognitive neuroscience for LLM design.

Very excited to share that our work (together with co-first author Shanka Subhra Mondal and @neuroai.bsky.social ) on a brain-inspired architecture for planning with LLMs is now out in Nature Communications! www.nature.com/articles/s41... (thread below)

This Traditional Yogurt Recipes Secret Ingredient Has 6 Legs Scientists recreated a formula involving ants and milk that is used in Bulgarian villages to yield yogurt with an herbaceous flavor.

“Well ACTUALLY I’m making traditional Bulgarian yogurt” is going to be my new stock eyeroll response to appalled questions about the state of my kitchen

Facebook reminds me that this is the anniversary of when a magpie walked into the tutorial room and I had to evacuate the class as it started swooping around the room. It then pooped on a desk before leaving.

Pet Sounds was the Beach Boys' twelfth album.

A club statement from Blackpool saying Steve Bruce has been sacked along with coaches Steve Agnew and Stephen Clemence. Stephen Dobbie and Steve Banks will take temporary charge.

You don’t have to be called Steve or Stephen to work at Blackpool, but it does help.

The Ig Nobel is incredible , one year an Indian guy won it for calculating the average surface area of an elephant and during his acceptance they had an elephant hold up a sign with the surface area of the scientist on it, they do showbiz better than the Oscars

Composition in Color A

Composition in Color A https://www.wikiart.org/en/piet-mondrian/composition-in-color-a-1917

Right after "Don't use semicolons," "Don't use adverbs," "Don't use speech tags beyond 'said' and 'says,'" and "Always delete the word 'that,'" my favorite piece of writing advice is "Don't listen to people giving writing advice who are incessantly telling you not to do things."

Kitchen range, 1962 #popart #lichtenstein

The usual movie timeline is that STAGECOACH (1939) ushered in a new era of adult westerns, saving the genre from silver pistol white hats.

Actually, westerns had been plenty grim for decades and the chief practitioner of the movie western antihero was William S. Hart, seen in HELL'S HINGES (1916)

Screenshot of NYT YouTube channel introducing a recipe with “chickpea anxiety is real.”

I’m gonna say something controversial: I actually don’t think chickpea anxiety is real

A newspaper clipping from 1906 that reads: "Noisy, Hungry Frogs Sadden Farmer's Life. They scare his cattle and they also eat his flannel shirt."

Timeline cleanse.

Newspaper clipping, 1906.

It's sending me that this is quantified as "risk of becoming an academic faculty member"

We’re hiring in Quantitative Psychology at UNC Chapel Hill!

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the program and please share widely!

unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

We can remember Goodall’s accomplishments and legacy while recognizing that National Geographic created a narrative that erased the local people who contributed to her research. Her African colleagues deserve to be credited, not erased (10/10).

While Goodall received her PhD in the 1960s, it was not until the 2000s that Ugandan Emily Otali became the first African woman to complete a PhD on chimpanzee behavior. The networks that facilitated European and North Americans researchers impeded the same opportunities for Africans (9/10)

This Skeet should be taught to every freshman science major everwhere!

This is true and important and not just in primatology!

When we hear about a lone scientist who made groundbreaking discoveries on their own, it’s usually erasing the truth that science is a team sport, and field research builds on the local knowledge and expertise of the people that live there (8/10)

Leakey told Japanese primatologist Junichiro Itani that he could take over Gombe research in 1961, but when Goodall decided to stay on, Leakey denied them access, and the Japanese researchers spent several years exploring nearby sites before establishing long-term research at Mahale Mountains (7/10)

When Goodall began her research in 1960, she was not alone in the forest, but accompanied by game scouts in her fieldwork—Adolf, Saulo, David, and Marcel—and back at camp she and her mother had the company of a local cook and his family. She would have relied heavily on their local knowledge (6/10)

Goodall was the first to scientifically document chimpanzee using tools, but anecdotal reports date back to the 1600s. Leakey sought funding for her research from a tool company, and it's likely he was aware from local anecdotes that the "discovery" of chimpanzee tool use was a possibility (5/10)

Photo of Jane Goodall in the center, signing a book, with three women standing slightly hunched behind her. A very young Michelle is to the right, smiling.

As a primatologist, Jane Goodall was a huge inspiration to me. I admired the way she describes chimpanzee behavior with such detail and empathy, and she’s inspired so many people and advocated for chimpanzee conservation and welfare.

However, I'm dismayed at what her narrative leaves out (1/10)

Goodall’s research was facilitated by British colonial networks. When she began working as Leakey’s secretary, two women Leakey sponsored, Jill Donisthorpe and Rosalie Osborn, were studying gorillas from 1958-1960. Goodall’s fieldwork built on the insights they had learned. (4/10)

What the narrative leaves out is the contributions of the local Tanzanians who assisted and facilitated Goodall's early research, as well as preceding and concurrent research. Nat Geo created a story about a lone white woman alone with chimpanzees, erasing the Africans that were beside her (3/10)

Mailer that reads: Molly, Seasons may change, but the need for blood is constant.

slightly ominous mailer from the Red Cross

Pepsi had already dabbled with the idea of marketing pop for breakfast, partnering with both Wendy's and Dunkin Donuts in the mid-80's for small market testing to promote "Pepsi for Breakfast", but by 1989 they decide to actually change the formula to create a new product

In addition to the added caffeine, the formula for Pepsi A.M. featured significantly lower carbonation, to produce a smoother taste for easier morning drinking. However, consumers didn't bite. By October 1990 the experiment was deemed a massive failure, and the plug was pulled

Pepsi started conducting secretive testing in August 1989 "in select midwestern locations." In October, they rolled out larger scale testing and a media blitz in both Iowa (Waterloo and Cedar Falls) and Indiana (Fort Wayne), before small scale expansions into a smattering of other markets