Jonathan Quinn
@jonoquinn.bsky.social
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
A brilliant example of what Lewis Goodall talks about when he argues why right-wing radicals keep winning. They don't play by the rules and simply don't care. Whereas the institutions they want to destroy do even when said rules are contorted to absurdity and are blatantly being used against them.
The founder of Newsmax was just on the Today programme pontificating about bias. Boy, the BBC loves to submit itself to flagellation.
November 11, 2025 at 8:45 AM
A brilliant example of what Lewis Goodall talks about when he argues why right-wing radicals keep winning. They don't play by the rules and simply don't care. Whereas the institutions they want to destroy do even when said rules are contorted to absurdity and are blatantly being used against them.
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
Along with Baguettotron we release the smallest viable language model to date. Monad, a 56M transformer, trained on the English part of SYNTH with non-random performance on MMLU. Desiging Monad an engineering challenge requiring a custom tiny tokenizer. huggingface.co/PleIAs/Monad
November 10, 2025 at 5:33 PM
Along with Baguettotron we release the smallest viable language model to date. Monad, a 56M transformer, trained on the English part of SYNTH with non-random performance on MMLU. Desiging Monad an engineering challenge requiring a custom tiny tokenizer. huggingface.co/PleIAs/Monad
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
I appreciate @bmj.com follows a formal process, but just how much evidence do they need before adding an Expression of Concern.
Numerous PubPeer comments for stem cell for heart disease paper - which had huge media attention hailing it as a medical breakthrough.
pubpeer.com/publications...
Numerous PubPeer comments for stem cell for heart disease paper - which had huge media attention hailing it as a medical breakthrough.
pubpeer.com/publications...
PubPeer - Prevention of acute myocardial infarction induced heart fail...
There are comments on PubPeer for publication: Prevention of acute myocardial infarction induced heart failure by intracoronary infusion of mesenchymal stem cells: phase 3 randomised clinical trial (P...
pubpeer.com
November 9, 2025 at 10:42 AM
I appreciate @bmj.com follows a formal process, but just how much evidence do they need before adding an Expression of Concern.
Numerous PubPeer comments for stem cell for heart disease paper - which had huge media attention hailing it as a medical breakthrough.
pubpeer.com/publications...
Numerous PubPeer comments for stem cell for heart disease paper - which had huge media attention hailing it as a medical breakthrough.
pubpeer.com/publications...
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
Two new scientific papers dropped both claiming to show evidence for “Non-Terrestrial Artifacts” in astronomical photographs taken in the 1950s.
What are we to make of them?
From Everyman's Universe.
www.everymansuniverse.com/p/did-scienc...
What are we to make of them?
From Everyman's Universe.
www.everymansuniverse.com/p/did-scienc...
Did Science Just Confirm 1950s UFO Visits?
Well OK then... it's game on.
www.everymansuniverse.com
November 2, 2025 at 8:00 PM
Two new scientific papers dropped both claiming to show evidence for “Non-Terrestrial Artifacts” in astronomical photographs taken in the 1950s.
What are we to make of them?
From Everyman's Universe.
www.everymansuniverse.com/p/did-scienc...
What are we to make of them?
From Everyman's Universe.
www.everymansuniverse.com/p/did-scienc...
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
OpenFold3-preview (OF3p) is out: a sneak peek of our AF3-based structure prediction model. Our aim for OF3 is full AF3-parity for every modality. We now believe we have a clear path towards this goal and are releasing OF3p to enable building in the OF3 ecosystem. More👇
October 28, 2025 at 6:30 PM
OpenFold3-preview (OF3p) is out: a sneak peek of our AF3-based structure prediction model. Our aim for OF3 is full AF3-parity for every modality. We now believe we have a clear path towards this goal and are releasing OF3p to enable building in the OF3 ecosystem. More👇
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
Major events in the history of life are often about new possibilities for evolution. In The Giant Leap I contend that the emergence of space exploration is just one such event.
October 27, 2025 at 2:21 PM
Major events in the history of life are often about new possibilities for evolution. In The Giant Leap I contend that the emergence of space exploration is just one such event.
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
We found that forest mice have larger (~2x!) corticospinal tracts (CSTs; the axons of CSNs) compared to prairie mice! This is due to more CSNs in secondary motor/sensory ctx (M2/S2), but not primary sensorimotor ctx (M1/S1)
This led to the question: do forest mice have better hand dexterity?
This led to the question: do forest mice have better hand dexterity?
October 22, 2025 at 8:41 PM
We found that forest mice have larger (~2x!) corticospinal tracts (CSTs; the axons of CSNs) compared to prairie mice! This is due to more CSNs in secondary motor/sensory ctx (M2/S2), but not primary sensorimotor ctx (M1/S1)
This led to the question: do forest mice have better hand dexterity?
This led to the question: do forest mice have better hand dexterity?
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
The Everglades Coalition gave me an award last year and because I’m unfortunately me, I called them out in my speech for serving beef at dinner.
Meat is a blind spot for people who care about climate. When I used to have dinner with my colleague Wally Broecker, the climate scientist who coined the term “global warming”, he would always order a steak.
The climate movement’s biggest weakness
What the climate movement is getting dead wrong.
www.vox.com
October 4, 2025 at 9:14 PM
The Everglades Coalition gave me an award last year and because I’m unfortunately me, I called them out in my speech for serving beef at dinner.
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.
The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.
From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...
The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.
From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...
September 24, 2025 at 12:04 PM
A nice shift in perceived colour between central and peripheral vision. The fixated disc looks purple while the others look blue.
The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.
From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...
The effect presumably comes from the absence of S-cones in the fovea.
From Hinnerk Schulz-Hildebrandt:
arxiv.org/pdf/2509.115...
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
In 2011 I wrote a review of Alan Turing's 1948 paper Intelligent Machinery where he considered the case for embodied intelligence. My review was intended for a 2012 centenary celebration of Turing's birth, but no proceedings were published. So here it is. rodneybrooks.com/alan-turing-...
Alan Turing on Embodied Intelligence – Rodney Brooks
rodneybrooks.com
September 21, 2025 at 12:00 AM
In 2011 I wrote a review of Alan Turing's 1948 paper Intelligent Machinery where he considered the case for embodied intelligence. My review was intended for a 2012 centenary celebration of Turing's birth, but no proceedings were published. So here it is. rodneybrooks.com/alan-turing-...
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
In our latest “This paper changed my life,” @neural-reckoning.org explains how @fzenke.bsky.social's 2019 paper, and its related coding tutorial SpyTorch, made it possible to apply modern machine learning to spiking neural networks.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/this-paper-c...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/this-paper-c...
This paper changed my life: Dan Goodman on a paper that reignited the field of spiking neural networks
Friedemann Zenke’s 2019 paper, and its related coding tutorial SpyTorch, made it possible to apply modern machine learning to spiking neural networks. The innovation reinvigorated the field.
www.thetransmitter.org
September 17, 2025 at 2:33 PM
In our latest “This paper changed my life,” @neural-reckoning.org explains how @fzenke.bsky.social's 2019 paper, and its related coding tutorial SpyTorch, made it possible to apply modern machine learning to spiking neural networks.
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/this-paper-c...
#neuroskyence
www.thetransmitter.org/this-paper-c...
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
My Makeup
On my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers
.
on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage
.
for lipstick
I wear my lips
Rochelle Kraut
Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
On my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers
.
on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage
.
for lipstick
I wear my lips
Rochelle Kraut
Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
September 16, 2025 at 11:18 AM
My Makeup
On my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers
.
on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage
.
for lipstick
I wear my lips
Rochelle Kraut
Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
On my cheeks I wear
the flush of two beers
.
on my eyes I use
the dark circles of sleepless nights
to great advantage
.
for lipstick
I wear my lips
Rochelle Kraut
Image courtesy @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
I actually think continual learning is probably not the blocker for coherent agency, increasingly lean towards it just being that LLMs are great policies but poor planners, and we should do MCTS over ReAct blocks or similar.
Good paper on continual learning that validates my basic intuition from reading earlier literature on replay et al: That actually continual learning probably isn't that hard and the problem is mostly that people aren't trying.
arxiv.org/abs/2403.08763
arxiv.org/abs/2403.08763
Simple and Scalable Strategies to Continually Pre-train Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) are routinely pre-trained on billions of tokens, only to start the process over again once new data becomes available. A much more efficient solution is to continually pre...
arxiv.org
September 5, 2025 at 6:56 PM
I actually think continual learning is probably not the blocker for coherent agency, increasingly lean towards it just being that LLMs are great policies but poor planners, and we should do MCTS over ReAct blocks or similar.
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
I think about this a lot!
Medical professionals and their societies are sounding the highest level of alarm about the dangers of rejecting science and favoring conspiracy theories and it is hardly breaking through.
That's how far down the rabbit hole the US is.
This fight is hard.
Medical professionals and their societies are sounding the highest level of alarm about the dangers of rejecting science and favoring conspiracy theories and it is hardly breaking through.
That's how far down the rabbit hole the US is.
This fight is hard.
The fact that you can have all of these organizations calling for Kennedy's resignation (or the NYTimes op-ed by 9 former CDC directors) and it having so little discernible impact is a sign of how far the US has moved from valuing scientific advice and expertise and how big a challenge it faces...
September 5, 2025 at 11:46 AM
I think about this a lot!
Medical professionals and their societies are sounding the highest level of alarm about the dangers of rejecting science and favoring conspiracy theories and it is hardly breaking through.
That's how far down the rabbit hole the US is.
This fight is hard.
Medical professionals and their societies are sounding the highest level of alarm about the dangers of rejecting science and favoring conspiracy theories and it is hardly breaking through.
That's how far down the rabbit hole the US is.
This fight is hard.
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
I'm highly skeptical of such income comparisons. The vast discrepancies between what are private and public goods in the countries gets little consideration. For example, here in Germany, good public transportation means less money needed to buy cars. Also, how much is 6-weeks vacation/yr worth?
September 5, 2025 at 4:24 AM
I'm highly skeptical of such income comparisons. The vast discrepancies between what are private and public goods in the countries gets little consideration. For example, here in Germany, good public transportation means less money needed to buy cars. Also, how much is 6-weeks vacation/yr worth?
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
This paper finds LLMs' ability to understand that others have different beliefs (Theory of Mind) comes from 0.001% of their parameters. Break those specific weights & the model loses both its ability to track what others know AND language comprehension
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
September 4, 2025 at 6:43 PM
This paper finds LLMs' ability to understand that others have different beliefs (Theory of Mind) comes from 0.001% of their parameters. Break those specific weights & the model loses both its ability to track what others know AND language comprehension
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
Interesting implications for models (& minds?)
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
New planet orbiting a nearby star! Today we announce a second low-mass planet orbiting the nearby M-dwarf GJ 536. GJ 536 is the star in which I found my first planet in 2016. Maybe not the fanciest out there, but it has a special place for me #exoplanets 🔭
arxiv.org
September 4, 2025 at 8:17 AM
New planet orbiting a nearby star! Today we announce a second low-mass planet orbiting the nearby M-dwarf GJ 536. GJ 536 is the star in which I found my first planet in 2016. Maybe not the fanciest out there, but it has a special place for me #exoplanets 🔭
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
incredible Ada Lovelace quote highlighted in a talk by Steve Furber. She spells out the dream of computational neuroscience, 2 centuries ago. The sheer ambition 🤩
August 29, 2025 at 9:21 AM
incredible Ada Lovelace quote highlighted in a talk by Steve Furber. She spells out the dream of computational neuroscience, 2 centuries ago. The sheer ambition 🤩
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
The (semi) wilds of Northumberland in August - sun burning through hill mist, dew still on the grass, cows and sheep calling out, loud birdsong on top, butterflies labouring between wild flower blooms - a million miles from London and Cambridge
August 24, 2025 at 7:01 AM
The (semi) wilds of Northumberland in August - sun burning through hill mist, dew still on the grass, cows and sheep calling out, loud birdsong on top, butterflies labouring between wild flower blooms - a million miles from London and Cambridge
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
We are destroying the innovation ecosystem that makes America exceptional; blog post by Terrence Tao: substack.com/home/post/p-...
I’m an award-winning mathematician. Trump just cut my funding.
The “Mozart of Math” tried to stay out of politics. Then it came for his research.
substack.com
August 21, 2025 at 3:15 AM
We are destroying the innovation ecosystem that makes America exceptional; blog post by Terrence Tao: substack.com/home/post/p-...
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
The current administration loves to talk about AI, and hates to publicly fund science. But look at this latest big AI model out of Google: it's chockfull of publicly-funded datasets. You simply can't have one without the other.
The latest video is on a hot-off-the-presses paper: Deepmind's new AlphaEarth model www.youtube.com/watch?v=yX5i...
Using AI to Describe Any Location on Earth
YouTube video by 5 Minute Papers on AI for the Planet
www.youtube.com
August 19, 2025 at 12:07 AM
The current administration loves to talk about AI, and hates to publicly fund science. But look at this latest big AI model out of Google: it's chockfull of publicly-funded datasets. You simply can't have one without the other.
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
I think I remember Dan Werthimer telling me that he thought SETI@Home might have been the most expensive science experiment ever performed, even beyond LHC, given the retail price of electricity and all the cycles consumed!
* Don’t quote me (or him) on that…
* Don’t quote me (or him) on that…
I don’t think BOINC and the folks at Berkeley SETI Research Center like Dan Werthimer and especially Dave Anderson get enough credit for their role in the internet revolution of science and distributed computing.
There’s a great story here about very modest engineers here to be told!
There’s a great story here about very modest engineers here to be told!
August 12, 2025 at 2:08 AM
I think I remember Dan Werthimer telling me that he thought SETI@Home might have been the most expensive science experiment ever performed, even beyond LHC, given the retail price of electricity and all the cycles consumed!
* Don’t quote me (or him) on that…
* Don’t quote me (or him) on that…
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
This might be a hot take, but I think social media has done much more damage to humanity than AGI has the potential to do. At this point, I think AGI will likely be a net positive by ameliorating some of the catastrophic effects of social media.
August 11, 2025 at 12:27 PM
This might be a hot take, but I think social media has done much more damage to humanity than AGI has the potential to do. At this point, I think AGI will likely be a net positive by ameliorating some of the catastrophic effects of social media.
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
I think the "embodiment" of this connectome is going to be such a hit: For instance take the interactive "body part" maps on Codex, where you can simply click on your favorite external or visceral part and it will show you all of the neurons associated it! codex.flywire.ai/app/body_par...
August 1, 2025 at 10:41 PM
I think the "embodiment" of this connectome is going to be such a hit: For instance take the interactive "body part" maps on Codex, where you can simply click on your favorite external or visceral part and it will show you all of the neurons associated it! codex.flywire.ai/app/body_par...
Reposted by Jonathan Quinn
The Lost Land of Doggerland 🏺🧪
discoverwildscience.com/the-lost-lan...
Doggerland was once a sprawling landscape, stretching across what is now the North Sea, linking Britain to Europe.
discoverwildscience.com/the-lost-lan...
Doggerland was once a sprawling landscape, stretching across what is now the North Sea, linking Britain to Europe.
July 25, 2025 at 3:33 PM
The Lost Land of Doggerland 🏺🧪
discoverwildscience.com/the-lost-lan...
Doggerland was once a sprawling landscape, stretching across what is now the North Sea, linking Britain to Europe.
discoverwildscience.com/the-lost-lan...
Doggerland was once a sprawling landscape, stretching across what is now the North Sea, linking Britain to Europe.