John Ball
banner
john-m-ball.bsky.social
John Ball
@john-m-ball.bsky.social
Computational vision neuroscientist and VGM enthusiast. Completely normal human person. Opinions expressed here are my own.
Finally: Check out the interactive 3D PDF of the reconstructions included in our Zenodo repository! For this kind of data, if a picture is worth a thousand words, a 3D model is a novel. I tested it thoroughly, and I'm optimistic it will broadly work for others. 🤞😂

zenodo.org/records/1718...
Retinal S-cone specific anatomical and physiological data in the thirteen-lined ground squirrel
Original data corresponding to the PNAS (2025) publication titled "S-cone specific circuitry in the outer plexiform layer of a cone-dominant mammal." Data is organized by type: Reconstructions, Electr...
zenodo.org
December 3, 2025 at 3:36 PM
For me, the most surprising part of the data was the H1 horizontal cell axon collaterals. *There are so many.* And they completely avoid S-cones! I now often find myself in the unfortunate position of lying awake at night pondering their role in vision. TBD. 3/n
December 3, 2025 at 3:36 PM
I'm very proud of this work and the quality of data produced by my co-authors. Happy in particular to see Yizhen's long summer intern reconstruction project get the recognition it deserves, as well as Shan's difficult recordings of S-cone bipolars and H2 horizontal cells. 2/n
December 3, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Also, they discover when a 10 year-old PC isn't running microscopy software due to a dead CMOS battery. (It's me, I did this today)
July 8, 2025 at 11:22 PM
Increased funding and support for early childhood care, across the board. Too many long-term consequences of early neglect and parental stress to ignore.
July 2, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Writing this and sharing it publicly is a huge act of courage. We're living through a time where every system critical for those who fall on hard times is under attack. We need these stories, and we desperately need people to listen.
July 2, 2025 at 11:36 AM
I see your Muscovy duck photo taken in Costa Rica with my Muscovy duck photo taken in Costa Rica. Your move (or still my move? I don't understand poker)
June 29, 2025 at 6:16 PM
Woof, I didn't realize how much I needed to listen to hear someone smart demonstrate critical thinking on this issue today.
June 28, 2025 at 12:03 PM
In the end, my savior was a post buried in a subreddit discussing an adjacent issue, which I could only find by searching the reddit app and digging deep. I sincerely fear for the internet if reddit goes away.
June 26, 2025 at 11:20 AM
One of the top results was an AI-generated forum discussion populated entirely by bots talking to one another about the issue (and of course, advertising things to me). But because the topic is so poorly documented online, the solutions these bots mentioned were complete gibberish.
June 26, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Yesterday I was trying to connect my new-to-me gently used Rock Band 4 guitar to my PS5 (trying to relive my old glory days as a rock star), and the pairing process is NOT intuitive. Taking to the internet search, I was dumbfounded:
June 26, 2025 at 11:20 AM
Update: Take 2 is perfect 😁 (basically looks the same though...)
June 24, 2025 at 4:32 PM