Esther Mondragón

Students begin Covid compensation claim against 36 more universities It comes after University College London settled a claim from students there over lost learning in the pandemic.

Perhaps we should all ask for compensation, but to whom? The Government, of course. Who else? The stupidity of our fellow human beings? Sure!
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Ars Technica Pulls Article With AI Fabricated Quotes About AI Generated Article A story about an AI generated article contained fabricated, AI generated quotes.

> He said he was sick that day and rushing to finish [so] used a Chat-GPT paraphrased version of Shambaugh’s blog rather than a direct quote.

As much as tech fash insist AI is a solution for illness: it's the opposite. Moving the deadline, resting, etc, is free.

www.404media.co/ars-technica...

I’m not concerned by a ‘lack of decorum’ since that is often used to tell people to be quiet when they raise important issues.

I am concerned about the lack of shame and basic decency.

I am deeply concerned about the lack of consequences to wealthy elites.

Indeed! Now just imagine what comes next when training ceases in favour of machine"intellectual" guidance.

arxiv.org/abs/2602.07519

Yep!

a brown and white dog is sitting next to a man on a couch and looking at the camera . ALT: a brown and white dog is sitting next to a man on a couch and looking at the camera .

Behaviourism, regarded as an aversive US, is now paired with other still more neutral terms in an attempt to transfer its negative value to those labels. I wonder whether Pavlov would have approved; Watson would most certainly have done so. 🤔
You cannot expect me not to point this out, right?

This piece is about CS conferences, but it speaks to a larger trend. What are we, as individual researchers and scholarly communities, doing to prevent epistemic poison? What can we do to preserve and maintain the quality of our knowledge in this era of bullshit and slop?

⚗️ 🧪 #SciComm #Ethics

Deep Dive: Understanding this winter’s remarkably persistent weather pattern This winter has brought an extraordinary spell of weather across the UK, marked by striking contrasts, record‑breaking rainfall in some regions and an unusually stubborn atmospheric pattern that has r...

Enough is enough, Mr Taranis! ☔
www.metoffice.gov.uk/blog/2026/me...

Top part of page 1 of: Henle, M. (1978). One man against the Nazis: Wolfgang Köhler. American Psychologist, 33(10), 939.

I found one of the chapters of Mary Henle’s book online, previously published as article, this one:

Henle, M. (1978). One man against the Nazis: Wolfgang Köhler. American Psychologist, 33(10), 939.

Let me see if I can find some of the other chapters too.

pure.mpg.de/rest/items/i...

6/🧵

even tho these examples are so tired, the reliance on these systems grows... it's so messed up

Absolutely wild!

I very much miss watching the waves here (not sure about this time though) Luckily, there is always a friend who sends a video. 🌊

Yes!

Bc it means certain people cannot play only by their own rules to determine who's in their club, plays their game, or who isn't. Feminization means democratization. It means access & sharing with others. It is skill-based participation, not hand-shake agreement. And some people cannot have that.

Jeez! 🙄

It's also not unrelated to this logic and behaviour bsky.app/profile/sexa...

🙃 Their absolute disregard for democratic principles always shows up ✂️🪄

Putting aside all other nonsense spat out by these terrified fools, what is the problem with the "feminisation of higher education"? Women make up over 50% of the UK population and nearly 50% of the world's population. Why should male views be more preferred over those of women? ✂️🪄

arxiv.org/abs/2602.07519

Whether you agree with all of the below or not, Berna is imo the person doing the most interesting thinking in the metascience space. It’s provocative (cuts against the accepted wisdom) but very important.

I do really strongly agree with her about the crisis/disaster narrative.

On the publication bias discourse, I regret that metascience has become a source of decontextualized, low-res, bean-counting-focused `science is in crisis' narratives. It is largely uncurious abt science, desperately lacking in theory & measurement. I'll quote a few takes I liked & add my thoughts🧵

Applications and code

github.com/cal-r/PALMS-...

PALMS: Pavlovian Associative Learning Models Simulator Simulations are an indispensable step in the cycle of theory development and refinement, helping researchers formulate precise definitions, generate models, and make accurate predictions. This paper i...

New preprint and simulator of associative learning attentional models. Have fun! 👁️
arxiv.org/abs/2602.07519
cal-r.org/index.php?id...
#simulation #associative_learning #attention

Always great to read the bible 🙂

a close up of a monkey looking at the camera ALT: a close up of a monkey looking at the camera

Modern times: Got a bit of good news, and now I am worrying when and where the slap will come from.

Access Now - A call to EU legislators: protect rights and reject the call to delete transparency safeguard in AI Act We, the undersigned organisations and individuals, urge you in the strongest possible terms to reject the deletion of the Article 49(2) transparency safeguard for high-risk AI systems that is proposed...

We are demanding that EU co-legislators reject attempts in the AI Omnibus to remove a key transparency safeguard from the AI Act.

We cannot open a loophole that would let providers exempt themselves from the AI Act’s high risk requirements with no transparency www.accessnow.org/press-releas...

YouTube video by Andrew Perfors Part 4: How do LLMs impact learning?

The relevant video about how LLMs impact human learning is below in case anyone is curious and hasn't seen it already (it's part of a 7-part series which is my pinned tweet and also findable from YouTube if you go to my playlists)