@elmarkal.bsky.social
Senior lecturer in Physiotherapy @Brunel University London. Movement scientist with interest in balance, gait and motor learning.
Why did consciousness evolve at all? A superb special issue of @royalsocietypublishing.org brings together experts across disciplines to explore the functions of consciousness and why it emerged in some species but not others. @tecumsehfitch.bsky.social royalsocietypublishing.org/rstb/issue/3...
08.02.2026 12:47 — 👍 113 🔁 40 💬 4 📌 3
No joke: I got angry hate mail today for writing an obituary of a Black woman scientist—because the person felt she did didn’t deserve the recognition.
Which just makes me want to share it again: www.nature.com/articles/d41...
No wonder absolutely nobody was in favor of Brexit over at the Financial Times. They know their stuff.
03.02.2026 09:40 — 👍 31 🔁 12 💬 4 📌 1
There's an interesting appearance from @mattbelloni.bsky.social in the "Melania" documentary. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/triumph...
31.01.2026 16:16 — 👍 23 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 1
In de week dat ASML een winst van 10 miljard bekendmaakt en ING een winst van 6 miljard haalt het nieuwe kabinet de miljarden bij… de mensen.
Column! Vandaag zonder betaalmuur www.groene.nl/artikel/opto...
“For more than a century, scientific journals have been the pipes through which knowledge of the natural world flows into our culture. Now they’re being clogged with AI slop”
www.theatlantic.com/science/2026...
I think I might take one of these "under 20 minutes" AI skills courses the UK Govt. seems very keen on everyone doing and live-post it here... Maybe we can all learn something together! The press release sends me to aiskillshub.org.uk/aiskillsboost/ - let's go and see!
28.01.2026 12:07 — 👍 1127 🔁 507 💬 42 📌 346
Comparing registrations to published papers is essential to research integrity - and almost no one does it routinely because it's slow, messy, and time-demanding.
RegCheck was built to help make this process easier.
Today, we launch RegCheck V2.
🧵
regcheck.app
The national security assessment on biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse was supposed to have been published in October 2025. It wasn’t. “ Apparently there were two reasons: because its conclusions were “too negative”, and because it would draw attention to the government’s failure to act.”
28.01.2026 09:57 — 👍 41 🔁 21 💬 1 📌 0Worth remembering when looking at the horrific scenes in the US right now that both Reform and the Tories have pledged to bring in ICE-style organisations to the UK if they win power
24.01.2026 22:33 — 👍 3205 🔁 1512 💬 98 📌 63
New real-world field study *inoculating* against misinformation in live social media scroll feeds out in Harvard Misinfo Review @misinforeview.bsky.social
We targeted +375k users with a short ad on Insta using a novel quasi-experimental method (1/3)
misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/preb...
CAIL = prerequisite knowledge for a critical perspective, such as to tell apart nonsense hype from true theoretical computer scientific claims. For example, the idea that human-like systems are a sensible or possible goal is the result of circular reasoning and anthropomorphism. olivia.science/ai
🧵
Excellent new blog post from our 2025 Emerging Scientist Award winner, Dr Benjamin Filtjens, who describes his award-winning programme of research on enhancing the use of artificial intelligence in clinical gait analysis.
ispgr.org/using-artifi...
"Those 18-year-olds – the first guinea pigs, the class who matriculated in 2012 – are now turning 31. And belatedly, the impact of the loans they were assured were a rock-solid investment in their futures is becoming apparent."
Some thoughts on student loans
www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-...
Good website to find European alternatives: www.goeuropean.org
18.01.2026 10:15 — 👍 34 🔁 16 💬 2 📌 1Op www.bitsoffreedom.nl/campagnes/st... staat een heel draaiboek hoe je van de Big Tech afkan. @jorisluyendijk.bsky.social
12.01.2026 22:10 — 👍 21 🔁 9 💬 1 📌 1
Subtract the emotional element from religion, literature, and art and there would be left the merest dross, an utterly meaningless mass of symbols and responses. Emotionless, man could not produce poetry, music, the graphic arts, or any of the splendid products of a refined culture. The generous sweeps of the imagination that have brought forth romantic movements in the world^s history, the noble aspirations of the intellect that have led whole peoples to seek a higher life, the tremendous activities of organized groups which have spread the best tokens of their civilizations to other lands, the splendid achievements of individual pioneers, adventurers, craftsmen, artisans, composers, inventors, scientists, and spiritual leaders, would never have come to pass in an emotionless world.
There's much talk these days about what's required for "real" intelligence, such as world models and the like. One thing we know about the human evolution of it: it required/requires emotion. That may have been better appreciated in 1938 than today.
archive.org/details/in.e...
interesting parallel between Brexit and Maga: both fundamentally underestimate their country's dependence on the goodwill of its allies, because the very realization of that dependency contradicts their fantasies of omnipotence.
10.01.2026 18:33 — 👍 38 🔁 11 💬 2 📌 2I wrote about this last month. Overshooting on reducing migration is going to be very costly.
samf.substack.com/p/the-oversh...
Er is geen 'polarisatie'. Er is niets anders gebeurd dan dat mensen wiens politiek gebaseerd is op haat voor 'de ander' steeds luidruchtiger en agressiever zijn geworden.
Ik ben deze misleidende frame zo totaal zat. En het midden dat 'een beetje haat' een fijn compromis vindt kan ook doodvallen. 1/
Large Language models pose an existential threat to online survey research www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
An AI can now evade a comprehensive suite of data quality checks, achieving a 99.8% pass rate on 6,000 trials of standard attention checks.
The Royal Society continues to absolutely disgrace itself. Musk had no place being in the Royal Society in the first place, and continuing to keep him there despite the fascism and CSAM shows they are entirely discredited.
09.01.2026 20:30 — 👍 46 🔁 12 💬 4 📌 0Please everyone stop writing articles about "defense" or "economic" reasons to occupy Greenland, that's all irrelevant
09.01.2026 07:35 — 👍 2113 🔁 339 💬 69 📌 15I call on my party and my government to remove themselves entirely from X and communicate with the public where they actually participate online and can be protected from such illegality.
08.01.2026 12:31 — 👍 5324 🔁 1912 💬 234 📌 191
Graphic showing investment
#BMJExclusive A £40.5m programme to train doctors from overseas at a Midlands NHS trust has been discontinued after an independent review raised a host of red flags.
www.bmj.com/content/392/...
If your New Year’s resolution is to find a fantastic 3-year post doc position in a great city with a small, friendly lab group and national collaborators… you’re in luck!!!
Open for applications until Tuesday. krb-sjobs.brassring.com/TGnewUI/Sear...
@ispgr.bsky.social @ncmsociety.bsky.social
Hoe harder Trump en Poetin Europa bedreigen, hoe sterker het wordt
Mijn XL column in @nrc.nl
www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/...
New preprint out! (doi.org/10.64898/202...)
We examined how EEG activity during movement preparation and error processing distinguishes learning and error processing between motor adaptation and de novo learning.
New post just out:
"The Overshoot"
Net migration is collapsing, and will fall further over the coming years. We could even have net emigration.
What does that mean for the country and the political narrative as we head towards the next election?
(£/free trial)
open.substack.com/pub/samf/p/t...
