Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · 20d

Truly crazy - Texas groups are demanding absolute ideological alignment.

There are multiple TT job calls at Texas public universities right now. I will not be applying.

San Antonio Express-News @expressnews.com · 20d

Mark A. Welsh III resigned as president of the Texas A&M University flagship on Thursday in a stunning fallout that comes a week after a viral “whistleblower” video circulated that raised questions about a professor’s teaching on gender identity issues. bit.ly/4mrwjVD

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · 20d

Under the hood, this
1) gets the avg (pseudobulk) gene expression of each type,
2) computes the similarity matrix,
3) projects expression into a 3D space using MDS, and
4) interprets the space as a perceptually uniform color space (LUV)

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · 20d

To make these colormaps, I made an easy python package:

```
!pip install colormycells

# Create a colormap based on cell type similarities
colors = get_colormap(adata, key="cell_type")

# Plot your cells
sc.pl.umap(adata, color="cell_type", palette=colors)
````
github.com/ZadorLaborat...

github.com

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · 20d

When colors reflect the actual differences between cell types, you can see things you wouldn't otherwise. For the mouse cortex, see how the layers form a rainbow, indicating a gradient of gene expression.

I also think this makes pretty plots 🌈 so that's nice.

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · 20d

Good scientific plotting uses color to convey meaning. We don't want to distract readers. Yet with default categorical maps,

(-) some cell types jump out for no reason
(-) perceptual similarity between colors is meaningless
(-) fewer colors than types, leading to repeats

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · 20d

Do you plot transcriptomic data, coloring each cell by its cell type? ~ Don't use a default colormap! ~

Instead, use colormaps that capture biological meaning. If two cell types are very similar, their colors should be similar too. Read on 🧵

🧬💻

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Sep 8

This is real – Anthropic just agreed to a $1.5B class action settlement for authors of copyrighted works it stole. File your claim here: www.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com

Unclear if this is just 'books' or journal articles too, but I'm putting mine in anyway
www.reuters.com/sustainabili...

Ryan Estrada @ryanestrada.com · Sep 6

Just a reminder to check for your name in this list of books that OpenAI trained from. If your name is there, they probably owe you several thousand dollars.

OpenAI cried that if everyone eligible author files, the company will go bankrupt, so I'm alerting every author I have ever spoken to.

Search LibGen, the Pirated-Books Database That Meta Used to Train AI

Millions of books and scientific papers are captured in the collection’s current iteration.

www.theatlantic.com

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Sep 4

I think this is the right view. But it’s worth adding that a large section of neuroscience defines specialization by what areas ‘encode for’, defined predictively.

Rather than the bell tolling for local specialization, it might be tolling for that ‘functional’ stim-response paradigm

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Sep 3

what’s crazy is how they figured this out. makes for good science reading!

“Replication of an alien genome within one’s own cytoplasm echoes the endosymbiotic domestication of organelles [mitochondria]. Clonal males may thus be regarded as organelles at the superorganism level” 🤯

Alejandro Montenegro @aemonten.bsky.social · Sep 3

I've read the abstract 3 times and I still don't understand the phenomenon

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

One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants - Nature

In a case of obligate cross-species cloning, female ants of Messor ibericus need to clone males of Messor structor to obtain sperm for producing the worker caste, resulting in males from the same moth...

www.nature.com

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Sep 2

This interview of Monica López-Hidalgo by @analog-ashley.bsky.social is inspiring. All scientists’ job description should include this, great model

The Transmitter @thetransmitter.bsky.social · Sep 1

Neurociencias Para Todos brings neuroscience education to remote communities in Mexico. @analog-ashley.bsky.social‬ talked with founder Monica López-Hidalgo about the program’s efforts and the importance of making neuroscience accessible to all.

www.thetransmitter.org/community/br...

Bringing neuroscience to rural Mexico

Monica López-Hidalgo’s outreach program, Neurociencias Para Todos, gives schoolteachers tools to bring neuroscience to their communities.

www.thetransmitter.org

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Sep 2

who is liable when an error is made by a BCI-using human with AI intervening in the output? The human? The BCI manufacturer? No one?

Springer Nature @springernature.com · Sep 1

A brain-computer interface co-piloted by AI improved how a person with paralysis complete tasks, such as moving a computer cursor or operating a robotic arm, by up to four times, according to research in @natmachintell.nature.com: spklr.io/63322BHjsK

#Neuroscience #Neuroskyence #AI

Brain–computer interface control with artificial intelligence copilots - Nature Machine Intelligence

AI copilots are integrated into brain–computer interfaces, enabling a paralysed participant to achieve improved control of computer cursors and robotic arms. This shared autonomy approach offers a promising path to increase BCI performance and clinical viability.

spklr.io

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Aug 30

Get on my wavelength, man

Dirk Gütlin @gutlin.bsky.social · Aug 28

Large-scale cortical functional networks are organized in structured cycles

🧠🟦 🧠🤖

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

Large-scale cortical functional networks are organized in structured cycles - Nature Neuroscience

The human brain cycles through a repertoire of brain networks on a 1-second timescale during rest and tasks. This cycling appears to allow periodic engagement of essential cognitive functions, with th...

www.nature.com

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Aug 29

Oh no how is it that "neuromodulation" means such different things across communities? Who let this happen?

For the record, the right answer is serotonin, etc.

The wrong answer is brain stimulation in a medical context, DBS, TMS etc. I will endlessly defend this turf.

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Aug 18

www.colincornaby.me/2025/08/in-t...

In the Future All Food Will Be Cooked in a Microwave, and if You Can’t Deal With That Then You Need to Get Out of the Kitchen

Update 8/8/2025 – I wrote this the day before a certain post by a popular developer services company. I’ve seen some comments this is a rebuttal – it wasn’t meant to be! But…

www.colincornaby.me

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Aug 15

me: Dang I wish there weren’t such incentives for self-promotion all the damn time

also me: *logs on to see what papers folks are promoting today*

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Aug 15

“scientific progress can’t be cleanly separated from questions about our values. By aiming for a value-free science, we risk missing the political and moral values already implicitly embedded in the technologies we create.”

Georgia Turner @georgiaturner.bsky.social · Aug 15

@anne-urai.bsky.social , @weijima.bsky.social , Ili Ma and @tsonj.bsky.social organised an amazing workshop on 'Science for Social Good' at #CCN2025 @cogcompneuro.bsky.social

We wrote a blog reflecting on it:

anneurai.net/2025/08/14/r...

Reflections on the ‘Science for Social Good’ Satellite Event at CCN 2025

by Georgia Turner The day before the CCN 2025 conference kicked off in Amsterdam, attendees from career stages ranging from pre-PhD students to keynote speakers gathered together for an event focus…

anneurai.net

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Reposted by Ari Benjamin

Keith (vibe spreadsheeter) @mosheroperandi.bsky.social · Jul 13

I think it's now possible to make a poli-sci course that equips one for modern political analysis better than most classic theory and has a syllabus sourced entirely from random internet posts.

Text 1. Wilhoit's Law, born as part of a 2018 blog comment
crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/l...

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Aug 12

💯 yeah. On the bright side, if we ever build an alternative system to responsibly develop & regulate AI, it will likely find footing and early momentum in this angry crowd.

Fingers crossed I guess that this will actually happen

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Reposted by Ari Benjamin

Megan Fox @glassbottommeg.bsky.social · Jul 28

Holy shit. This guy saved a PNG to a bird.

(he drew a bird into a spectrogram, played that sound to a starling, and the starling reproduced it back to him with enough accuracy he got his bird drawing back in their call's spectrogram) www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCQC...

I Saved a PNG Image To A Bird

YouTube video by Benn Jordan

www.youtube.com

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Reposted by Ari Benjamin

Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · Jul 24

One man cannot, overnight, change a fact as written in thousands of copies of hundreds of different books across the world's libraries.

But under pressure from the politicians or guided by his own depravity, he can rewrite history overnight by altering the output of the LLM he owns.

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Jul 22

fascinating - will need to order this.

I was drawn to neural-network-compatible theories as an *embrace* of complexity.

But I often worry that the computationalism along for the ride, though useful, is a metaphor which likewise robs us of our agency

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Jul 3

criticality (in a time dimension) also seems nice for credit assignment through time, too. for the same reason that inits at the edge of chaos are good in DNNs

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Jun 27

Where might short-term plasticity fit in this mix? It’s fast, and most mechanisms don’t use CamKII. it’s also hard to avoid - any ongoing spiking activity will trigger some amount of STP

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Ari Benjamin @aribenjamin.bsky.social · Jun 27

Love it - this really captures how I relate to my own work

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Reposted by Ari Benjamin

Saganism @sagan.bsky.social · Jun 22

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

– Dwight D. Eisenhower, Former President of the United States

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