Top recent posts by Computational Cognitive Scientists on Bluesky

A male White-breasted Nuthatch perches on a lichen covered branch along the nature trail.

Scarface soldiers on 🫡🍋🦈 #lemonshark #sharksofcoralcity #scarface #shark #coralcitycamera

This sign is a great example for helping to explain why chatbots present such a potent illusion. A probably not short thread 🧵>>

Even when LLMs write well, the lack of variety in style is crippling. Reading the same prose in your instructions & social media & advertisements & software & PowerPoint eventually makes one queasy. Prompting & temperature only gets you so far. Real variation is needed (and under-researched)

When the light hits the burrowing owl's retinas at just the right angle, you get this. #AwesomeOwls #birdoftheday 🪶

#BirdOfTheDay #AwesomeOwls Crested Owls are usually pretty elusive during the day, but this one was hunting in the light. The neighbor birds weren't very happy about it. #owls #birds #costarica

There is an infinite beauty to moving water, waiting to be discovered! The purple of a winter evening's twilight is softly reflected in the fast moving waters of the St. Lawrence River, Montreal, Canada. #100%human #photography #nature #landscape #bluesky #landscapephotography #naturephotography

This Green Heron found and plucked an insect off a water lily pad. The insect managed to wiggle free and flew off.

Rascal demanding his taco cheese tax

Thing I didn’t anticipate about living through civilizational decline is how many people responsible for the decline would be loudly convinced they were saving civilization.

A Belted Kingfisher giving a chattering call. I believe this is a young male as there's not much of a rusty belt - which the females have - and there's a good amount of brown feathers around the neck (adults would have all blue feathers.)

Song Sparrow in the yard. Slightly ruffled. Fully adorable. #birds 🌿

August is a berry good month. Here’s a Red-eyed Vireo checking out some local produce #birds

WOW Big surprise today, the Snail Facts Advent Calendars have arrived!!!! Scratch off a shell every day to reveal facts about the snails of the world 🐌 They were designed by Philly illustrator Kelly Nichols! (@KidNichols on instagram) I'm so excited to share these calendars with all of you!!

> Claims made by Jason Arday, who was the subject of a relentless media campaign over many aspects of his work and life and who was found dead on Friday, appear to be true[.] Particularly mocked was Arday's claim that he ran 30 marathons in 35 days. But [it seems he] completed the challenge. 1/

With today's #BirdOfTheDay theme being #AwesomeOwls, how could I not participate?! Here a few of my favourite owls. #birds #wildlife

No picture I’ve ever taken of squid will measure up to how beautiful they are in real life. I hope to get you get to see the living squid. In the meantime, have this Doryteuthis.

A disgruntled internet user has informed me that I am not authorized to speak on biodiversity because I let my arthritic-as-hell toothless cat sit out front with me while I water the plants. She needs help jumping onto the couch. I carry her up and down the stairs. They got me! Guilty as charged!

This Wandering Day in beautiful Slovakia...🌺 #Slovakia #Tatras #Photography #Travel #Canon

There are SO many deer babies around this year. Not so great for the plants but they certainly are adorable #mammals 🌿

🤣Binx, you got a little something... But TBF, I get pizza on my face when I really dig in too! #Cats #becurious

Update: it turns out it actually *is* much easier to make digital art if you invest $40 in a digital sketchpad and work in the free software Krita rather than drawing polygons in PowerPoint. Pretty pleased with my first attempt

CATBIRD BABY!! A Gray Catbird working hard to keep the young ones fed #birds 🌿

Go, little one! 🤩 My favorite bug and my favorite time of year ❤️‍🔥

Getting ready for another semester at the cutting edge of computing.

If you're confused by the conversations around sex testing and trans athletes and all that, I made a podcast that traces the history of this debate from the very beginning. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts: www.tested-podcast.com/listen/

I spend a fair amount of my time on here trying to convince people that genAI is not a good thing (at least not in its current iteration) But one real benefit of genAI is that all the "art is a process, not an end product, AI art isn't real art" talk convinced me to do art again and I'm enjoying it

Empirical proof Binx does, in fact, levitate when no one is watching...🔮 This is how I found her this morning. #Cats #becurious

More from the “butterflies aren’t all flowers and glamour” files. Two butterflies sucking up nutrients from some poo #invertebrates 🌿 #BugSky

Wow. Just found someone stealing our course materials and “selling” their “help” with my course. No sir! 1st, our book is open access. 2nd, our course materials are our property. 3rd, you have zero qualifications to teach this topic. 4th, if students need help, they can just come to me!

Last thread for #NeutronStarWeek! A collection of articles, visualisations and fun facts showing how awesome neutron stars (and esp. pulsars) are! Let's start with this .... Neutron stars are TINY! ~20km across. Let's zoom in to one hovering over Sydney! 📸 Daniel Wysocki and HanGyeol Suh

I am mildly obsessed with these two #invertebrates 🌿 #BugSky

You do not need more reasons to be off X. But at this point, if you are not, you are knowingly supporting the malicious degradation of women everywhere, and we see you.

Two years ago today 🌿 Black Powder Pass

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Equations cross-sourced across multiple tabs. Numbers that become dates that were never dates. #NAME cells glistening in the dark.

Getting wheatpastes ready for an upcoming trip. I have a speech bubble ready for the stag beetle but idk whether to give the squid a speech bubble or let him speak for himself.

Another view of the wonderful river braids that I often visit in the Highlands of #Iceland. #DronePhotography #DJIMavic3Pro

I accidentally photographed a ghost I think

in honor of voyager 2’s launch anniversary, here are some gorgeous images it took of the outer planets

Two years ago today 🌿 Penstemon whippleanus, our Whipple's Penstemon, blooming above Black Powder Pass #nativeplants

Who doesn’t love rainbows and horses? 🐎 🌈🥰 #rain

A magical day spent under & behind multiple waterfalls in the Daniel Boone National Forest. I somehow lucked out to have all of them to myself. The 10 miles of hiking was well worth it. 🙌✨

Game of Shadows #Shadow #Light #Photography

With sunset light this crazy little red & green volcano in the Highlands of #Iceland looked even more crazy :) BTW, there are still plenty of areas of the Highlands where you can use a drone without applying for a permit (which I believe is an option again). #DronePhotography #DJIMavic3Pro

Soft Hues…🌺 #BeachLife

Alright. Read through the study. Not my field, but in general: 1) the conclusions seem robust, all things considered 2) My god China collects a lot of data 3) We’re conducting an uncontrolled unethical experiment on a generation. Students are seeing devistating setbacks. We must regulate “A.i.”

It's not every day you get to interview a spacecraft - especially one as special as Voyager 2, launched on August 20, 1977. When I spoke to V2 via its Twitter account in 2012, it had not yet reached interstellar space. 🧪 🔭

Totally normal conversation

> [Altman] has an automated coffee machine that claims to save labour while doing the exact opposite because it can’t be trusted. His kitchen is a catalogue of inefficiency, incomprehension, and waste. If that’s any indication of how he runs the company, insolvency [is a realistic] a threat.

no www.economist.com/leaders/2026...

#BirdOfTheDay theme is: #AwesomeOwls 😊🦉 Any owl from the two owl families. Of the very few owl pic options I have going with Northern Pygmy Owl! Itty, bitty apex predator - they will take out a Northern Flicker! (Pygmy Owl = 6.5" 2.3oz; Northern Flicker = 11.5" 5.3oz) #birds #becurious🪶

Morning contemplation...

The subtext here is that they expect US-born workers to soon be so desperate for employment (whether because of AI-hype-fueled or DOGE-type downsizing) that they'll be eager to take the kinds of jobs that, historically, only immigrants were willing to do.

I can't believe so many people are outing themselves as spreadsheet people on here, losing so much respect for all of you (as a database person who finds spreadsheets to be a very haphazard way to store data)

seeing "ChatGPT/Claude/Anthropic would make your life better if you tried it in good faith" takes yes, I could do some things *faster* I'm sure but I'm more interested in the *process* of learning to do it myself (building skills!), knowing the biases of information production, and the environment

Making a definite statement...

Just realized there’s an episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring Darren McGavin and Telly Savalas as criminals engaged in a battle of wits and it’s probably the only time that Kolchak and Kojak have squared off

A spiral galaxy, observed with the Hubble Space Telescope in the COSMOS survey. It is at redshift 0.67 (lookback time 6.33 billion years) with coordinates (149.92438, 2.53935). 46 volunteers classified this galaxy in Galaxy Zoo: Hubble.

Two years ago today 🌿 Skyline cleanse, Black Powder Pass

I asked GPT-5.6 Sol to create the most Claude-y possible parody image and what it came up with is pretty great and dead-on.

Get one at SquidFacts.net!!

I know the AOC egg freezing discourse is so last week. But having done IVF, I have to add—I appreciate how her recent videos acknowledge that it's both physically uncomfortable (the bloating!) and logistically challenging (so many appointments; so much uncertainty around when you'll need time off).

2 common dolphins leaping. I was going for 3. Oops. Offshore San Diego. I don’t know anyone takes pictures while bracing on a moving boat in the wind on the ocean but more power to you. 🦑🌿

Nature's artwork When light finds a way to dance...

Have fully moved over to Sol for method consults. Claude is now a fascinating natural experiment: what happens when you take the legitimate ideal of “principled epistemic caution” and push that slider ALL the way to the right.

Why did Ghent hire a guy fired by Cambridge for blatant racism who had written things like "in a meritocratic system, black people would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports/entertainment" and thus "the number of black professors would approach zero per cent"?

A few photos from today’s post-work walk - can’t believe how autumnal it suddenly is! #iphone15pro #autumniscoming

Hola from San Diego. “Seas” the day.

Also: the ‘convenience’ is not for us but for employers, as we are slowly trained to think that it is normal and virtuous to have no time or energy left for seeing friends, being in groups, going to theatres and clubs, picnicking in parks, and browsing in bookstores and shops. It’s life *stolen*.

My beautiful fox friend

Dark-eyed Junco Looking for a snack along the forest edge. Hanwell, #NewBrunswick, Canada June 2026 📸 #birds #sparrow #DEJU #nature #wildlife #photography #Nikon #Z9 #Nikkor800pf

#BlockParty Oh, you'll make your rep off my photos...but give me credit? Cute. YOU try macro photography first...then tell me how that feels.

I had a great conversation about AI with @stevenstrogatz.com !

In case this is ever helpful when you’re stuck on the last line of a haiku, “I love sandbar sharks” is exactly five syllables.

Will stop for roadside swamp hibiscus (H. moscheutos) 🤍 #Bloomscrolling

Good Thursday morning Wishing you a day of perspectives and perceptions....

A barred spiral galaxy, observed with the Apache Point 2.5m Telescope in the SDSS survey. It is at redshift 0.018 (lookback time 257.3 million years) with coordinates (191.10915, 37.12121). 46 volunteers classified this galaxy in Galaxy Zoo 2.

If you missed out on the first round, I will be restocking my Project Hail Mary mini prints soon! I’ll also have a couple of new paintings in the mix of Rocky 🫶 #SciFi

We shouldn’t discount the possibility that she is making clear-headed, career-oriented decisions. She realizes that he wants a wounded daughter figure who is willing to debase herself while worshipping him. Every inappropriate action she takes in pursuit of him just proves that willingness.

AMAZE #Tucson my arms kinda hurt from standing outside & filming lightning several times last night lol

A smooth galaxy, observed with the Hubble Space Telescope in the COSMOS survey. It is at redshift 0.70 (lookback time 6.50 billion years) with coordinates (150.36405, 2.79273). 53 volunteers classified this galaxy in Galaxy Zoo: Hubble.

Rockhopper It rock, it hop (Tetrigidae, pygmy grasshoppers)

Someone please tell my employer this

Moments of awareness brought together...

#GoodMorningFromSaskatoon

Last week, my parents put up a new fence between their house and the neighbors'--neighbors they've been asking for years to take down the half-dead 90' oak hanging over their yard. This week, the tree fell on my parents' fence/yard/house. I guess good fences don't make good neighbors after all.

This is a really vital point about plagiarism. And how AI damages concepts generally, as well as specifically meanings of technical terms.

Note to the “ya gotta hand it to RFK, he may be a crank but he has a point about ultraprocessed foods” people: his tenure has resulted in Americans decreasing their consumption of fruits and vegetables. Thank you for legitimizing him.

Thoughts accumulating... creating a new awareness

I just learned I am in a starter pack called Heathcare Shitposters and I am so honored. I’m putting this on my CV. Sincerely. I’m glad I can bring some levity. 💜

Reflecting in a surreal world...

You are defending Natalie Harp from a brief mention in a candidate's speech. We are defending Daron Acemoglu from a hit piece in The Economist. We are not the same.

That’s a non-starter. I’m so sorry, I’m trying to delete this.

Vrrrrrrroooom!!! ⭐️ 💨 💨 💨 The fastest star in our Galaxy — and it gets real close to the supermassive black hole in our Galactic Centre! 🤯 Some neat science is gonna be coming out of this! Read the paper: www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🔭🧪

OK, so no one cares, but lately I've been feeling really jazzed about *social convention*! My paper "Convention for One" will be published in Thought, and argues we have conventions with ourselves that are very much like standard group conventions cailinoconnor.com/wp-content/u...

Tints, textures and hues Pondside pictorial pandemonium...

I hope people update this with all the new info

Bullfrog of the day! Thursday, 20 August 2026

Blue Dasher Dragonfly Moments of repose...

What a great place to work!