Riccardo Capecchi

AI-Powered Toys Caught Telling 5-Year-Olds How to Find Knives and Start Fires With Matches AI-powered toys are flying off the shelves -- but they're engaging in horrifically inappropriate conversations with children.

sts researchers: :spend decades tracing the way well-intentioned design choices constrained by culture, capital, and the material environment can have negative outcomes in aggregate:

ai companies: lets put a chatbot in a doll that tells kids to set fires

futurism.com/artificial-i...

Critical AI On this page are some resources for Critical AI Literacy (CAIL) from my perspective.

All our articles with @irisvanrooij.bsky.social and others are collected here too olivia.science/ai

Time, space, memory and brain–body rhythms - Nature Reviews Neuroscience Understanding how the brain represents experienced time and how representations of space and time are integrated to form episodic memories has been a goal of much neuroscientific research. In this Per...

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Thrilled that this work is (finally) out! We argue that the human brain contains parallel systems for understanding people and places.

www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 1/

𝗜𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘅 𝗻𝗲𝘁𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸?
In a sense yes, but does network science help us understand the brain as a complex system? Intriguing paper.
If anything the paper has 800+ refs!
#neuroskyence #complexsystems
doi.org/10.1016/j.pl...

Insulin's High Cost Leads To Lethal Rationing Alec Raeshawn Smith was 23 when diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes and 26 when he died. He couldn't afford $1,300 per month for his insulin and other diabetes supplies, so he tried to stretch the doses.

Before ACA, many Americans couldn’t afford insurance

Alex Smith was a diabetic who got kicked off his Mom’s insurance at 26

He made 35k a year which was “too much” for Medicaid, but not nearly enough to cover insurance premiums

He had to ration his insulin & died a month after losing insurance

The Unraveling of Space-Time | Quanta Magazine This special issue of Quanta Magazine explores the ultimate scientific quest: the search for the fundamental nature of reality.

Earlier this year, we released a special issue titled “The Unraveling of Space-Time.” We cover black holes, holograms, and “alien algebra.” Explore the series:

John Cleese from Monthy Python film "And now for something completely different"

(this could be a slide)

The teachers told the children that this was when their continent was discovered by human beings. Actually, millions of human beings were already living full and imaginative lives on the continent in 1492. That was simply the year in which sea pirates began to cheat and rob and kill them.

Actually, the sea pirates who had the most to do with the creation of the new government owned human slaves. They used human beings for machinery, and, even after slavery was eliminated, because it was so embarrassing, they and their descendants continued to think of ordinary human beings as machines. • The sea pirates were white. The people who were already on the continent when the pirates arrived were copper-colored. When slavery was introduced onto the continent, the slaves were black. Color was everything.

tonster. Here was the core of the bad ideas which Trout gave to Dwayne: Everybody on Earth was a robot, with one exception-Dwayne Hoover. Of all the creatures in the Universe, only Dwayne was thinking and feeling and worrying and planning and so on. Nobody else knew what pain was. Nobody else had any choices to make. Everybody else was a fully automatic machine, whose purpose was to stimulate Dwayne. Dwayne was a new type of creature being tested by the Creator of the Universe.

Only Dwayne Hoover had free will. Trout did not expect to be believed. He put the bad ideas into a science-fiction novel, and that was where Dwayne found them. The book wasn't addressed to Dwayne alone. Trout had never heard of Dwayne when he wrote it. It was addressed to anybody who happened to open it up. It said to simply anybody, in effect, "Hey-guess what: You're the only creature with free will. How does that make you feel?" And so on. It was a tour de force. It was a jeu d'esprit. But it was mind poison to Dwayne.

I have somehow never read Breakfast of Champions and holy hell in three pages Vonnegut sums it all up - colonialism, racism, income inequality, and a guy who owns a car dealership who reads a scifi novel and takes away the wrong idea

Breaking news: US stocks have dropped as jitters over highly elevated valuations for many artificial intelligence companies intensified and top Wall Street executives said markets were vulnerable to a pullback. on.ft.com/4hIMmhj

"A good way to learn German is to read children's books to familiarise yourself with basic grammar and vocabulary"

German children's book:

We are excited to share our recent results on a new lncrna that functions to regulate proliferation in thp1 cells. This is the thesis work of Christy Montano.

Phagocytosis: a process that shapes immune responses to engulfed meals Nature Reviews Immunology - In this Review, Li and Underhill discuss recent advances in understanding the process of phagocytosis. The authors highlight how phagocytosis is integral for innate...

An authoritative review on phagosome immunobiology by David Underhill and Kai Li. Highly recommend for anyone interested in innate immunity, antigen presentation, infection and host defense.
@cedarssinai.bsky.social
rdcu.be/eNIFY

Immuno-functionomics reveals geographical variation and a role for TLR8 in mRNA vaccine responses The innate immune system plays a pivotal role in pathogen defense via pattern recognition receptor sensing, initiating responses upon infection or vac…

#Medssky🧪 #IDsky #immunosky #Publichealth The innate immune system plays a pivotal role in pathogen defense via pattern recognition receptor sensing, initiating responses upon infection or vaccination.

Making sense of complex systems functionality What slime molds, neural systems and quantum physics have in common?

A microscopic organism can survive the vacuum of space: yet our infrastructures collapse under a summer storm.

Why? 👉 Because structure isn’t enough.
Resilience depends on functionality.

And we need a lot of network science to grasp it.

📖 manlius.substack.com/p/making-sen...

#ComplexityThoughts

Highlights

Schematic summary of the molecular mechanism underlying DHCR24 knockdown-induced cognitive dysfunction mediated by the cGAS-STING signaling pathway.

#Medsky🧪 #IDsky #Neurosky #Immunosky #publichealth Studies in 🐁 & 33 AD patients . The researchers suggests that brain cholesterol deficiency can significantly contribute to the initiation & progression of #Alzheimer’sdisease (AD).

A Review of auto-Abs neutralizing type I IFN in patients with arboviral diseases:

Auto-Abs against type I IFNs: Strong, common, and global determinants of severe arboviral diseases url: rupress.org/jhi/article/...

It's a bubble

So I realize I’ve reposted this all day, but I cannot understate the scale of this story. If Anthropic is spending this much on Google Cloud - or even 25% - the costs of running their business are never coming down. It’s a huge scoop, and the first real discussion of the true costs of AI anywhere.

A screenshot with the following Learning statistics with R: A tutorial for psychology students and other beginners. (Version 0.6.1) Danielle Navarro (bookdown translation: Emily Kothe) 2019-01-11 Overview Learning Statistics with R covers the contents of an introductory statistics class, as typically taught to undergraduate psychology students, focusing on the use of the R statistical software. The book discusses how to get started in R as well as giving an introduction to data manipulation and writing scripts. From a statistical perspective, the book discusses descriptive statistics and graphing first, followed by chapters on probability theory, sampling and estimation, and null hypothesis testing. After introducing the theory, the book covers the analysis of contingency tables, t-tests, ANOVAs and regression. Bayesian statistics are covered at the end of the book.

A screenshot with the following Welcome! Welcome to the online version of “Doing Meta-Analysis with R: A Hands-On Guide”. This book serves as an accessible introduction into how meta-analyses can be conducted in R. Essential steps for meta-analysis are covered, including pooling of outcome measures, forest plots, heterogeneity diagnostics, subgroup analyses, meta-regression, methods to control for publication bias, risk of bias assessments and plotting tools. Advanced, but highly relevant topics such as network meta-analysis, multi-/three-level meta-analyses, Bayesian meta-analysis approaches, and SEM meta-analysis are also covered. The programming and statistical background covered in the book are kept at a non-expert level. A print version of this book has been published with Chapman & Hall/CRC Press (Taylor & Francis)

Here are two "I can't believe these are free" online stats texts books that cover both underlying principles and practical applications in R that I regularly refer to.

Learning Statistics with R
learningstatisticswithr.com

Doing Meta-Analysis with R bookdown.org/MathiasHarre...

Proud papa moment: my son J published a letter in the @nytimes.com today (in print tomorrow) on the need to think our definitions of autism.

I am Italian and I forgive you (we use courgettes very frequently, for example with pesto. Excellent)

Screenshot of a Facebook post featuring three of the Portland protesters wearing inflatable frog costumes with the following text: Episcopalians on Facebook Elizabeth Rose Elrod • 22h • Exodus 8:2-6 "But if you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs... The frogs shall come up on you and on your people and on all your officials."

you fucked around and now the Episcopalians are doing memes. are you happy now. are you

Finally, someone has solved a real problem with AI! No more having to take a paper in the format for a journal that rejected you, and reformat it for a new journal. Well done!! formatmypaper.com

A startling biopsy. Severe acute TMA in a pt with suspected scleroderma renal crisis. Massive vascular thrombosis, mucoid intimal edema, and early onion skin change associated with severe cortical necrosis. #renalpath #nephsky #pathsky

Autoimmune response to C9orf72 protein in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis - Nature An analysis of T cell responses in people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis shows that the C9orf72 antigen is a key target of autoimmune responses in the disease, and identifies C9orf72 epitopes that are recognized.

Amazing to see data from the Sette group that may help in the fight against ALS; a disease that my mum lost her battle with nearly 4 years ago. 🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41...

YouTube video by Institute for Systems Biology Mary Brunkow Wins 2025 Nobel Prize | ISB Press Conference (Full)

Dr. Mary Brunkow is a 2025 Nobel laureate. In today’s @isbscience.org press conference, she shares the FOXP3 story, from a puzzling mouse to a discovery that reshaped immunology.
🎥 Watch the full video: youtu.be/vg61fbycGEk

Spain’s Renewable-Energy Boom Loosens Gas’s Grip on Power Prices Soaring renewables output in Spain is weakening gas’s grip on electricity prices, setting the country apart from much of Europe where fossil fuels still dictate the cost of power.

"Spain’s rapid renewables build-out means its power prices were set by fossil generation just 19% of the time, down from 75% in 2019. As a result, wholesale electricity was almost a third cheaper than the EU average"

Imagine having cheaper power

Gift link: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious"

I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge.

We know exactly how LLMs work.