Ben
banner
benmj.bsky.social
Ben
@benmj.bsky.social
Psychotherapeut i. A. | Systems neuroscientist (PhD)
Reposted by Ben
I wanted dinner recommendations so I scraped 13,000+ London restaurants and accidentally discovered Google Maps is running a shadow economy. Anyway here's a dashboard and a political economy thesis: open.substack.com/pub/laurenle...
How Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants - and how I built a dashboard to see through it
I wanted a dinner recommendation and got a research agenda instead. Using 13000+ restaurants, I rebuild its ratings with machine learning and map how algorithmic visibility actually distributes power.
open.substack.com
December 9, 2025 at 7:53 AM
Reposted by Ben
some significant part of this is just catch-all fear for “this is not the child I ordered” I think
Oh, here's a big surprise. The transphobes don't believe in ADHD either.
then, the transphobes , feeling victorious at how many people they have made unhappy and despairing in the previous week, move on to anything else that has a spectrum and the possibility of more colours than they can conceive - such hateful people - they cannot understand anything that is not THEM
December 8, 2025 at 1:09 PM
Why the Thought of Having Kids Freaks me Out
YouTube video by Philosophy Tube
youtu.be
December 6, 2025 at 10:03 AM
Reposted by Ben
Great essay by @sorayachemaly.bsky.social. Reminds me of when I was a Co-EP on a popular TV show and was asked to rewrite another writer's script over the weekend. I turned it in to the EP on Sunday night and the next morning the EP stopped me. "Great work," he said. "But I'm gonna tell Dave... 1/
The Real Way Schools are Failing Boys
“If we really want boys to succeed, we need to ensure that they know how to both beat—and lose— to girls."
time.com
December 2, 2025 at 3:17 PM
Reposted by Ben
70 teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute & observed weekly over 5 months. 80% of spoons disappeared; spoon halflife~81 days. Communal room halflife lower than in specific labs. 250 spoons annually required to maintain 70 spoon population.

pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute
Objectives To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom. Design Longitudinal cohort study. Setting Research institute ...
pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
November 20, 2025 at 3:44 AM
Reposted by Ben
Takeaways:

🔑 We need to talk about social media use more accurately and focus on addiction when it actually applies, rather than when it doesn’t.

🔑 For media and policymakers, don’t casually talk about ‘social media addiction’ as it risks pathologizing everyday behavior unnecessarily.
November 29, 2025 at 2:33 AM
Reposted by Ben
I'm always a bit mystified by people who head to Clearsky to see who has blocked them and get like, huffy about it. I know people who've gotten EMAILS asking why they are blocked!

My question is: Why?

Oh! Someone has decided they don't want to see what I post? Ok! That's fine!
November 28, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Reposted by Ben
Am I the only one who cannot hear about this book without immediately chanting LET THE BODIES KEEP THE SCORE, LET THE BODIES KEEP THE SCORE in my head
www.motherjones.com/media/2024/1...
What the most famous book about trauma gets wrong
People kept telling me to read "The Body Keeps the Score." I was shocked at what it actually says.
www.motherjones.com
December 21, 2024 at 2:30 PM
Reposted by Ben
icymi, Musk's Ai, Grok, appears to have been instructed to always say Musk is the best at everything. And, when you do that, it turns out there's a loophole!
normal stuff over there
November 21, 2025 at 10:11 AM
Where Do the Children Play? -
On the need for a world without us
Where Do the Children Play?
On the need for a world without us
unpublishablepapers.substack.com
November 20, 2025 at 6:57 AM
Reposted by Ben
This conversation between ChatGPT and the young man it encouraged to commit suicide is just...my god

www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/u...
November 7, 2025 at 2:49 PM
Reposted by Ben
Bundespräsident Steinmeier ist heute in #Angola. Ich war schon vor ihm da und habe mich umgehört: Wo steht das Land 50 Jahre nach der Unabhängigkeit? Zu hören im Deutschlandfunk: www.deutschlandfunk.de/angola-reich...
Angola - Reiches Land, düstere Zukunftsszenarien
Angola feiert seine Unabhängigkeit. Doch die Menschen werfen ihrer Machtelite vor, den Ölreichtum unter sich zu verteilen. Viele befürchten einen Bürgerkrieg.
www.deutschlandfunk.de
November 4, 2025 at 6:20 AM
Reposted by Ben
Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching
November 3, 2025 at 10:04 AM
Reposted by Ben
there have been big questions raised about the quality and reliability of the research suggesting that small nudges (like moving an entry field or asking people to tick a box) meaningfully affect behaviour
No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias | PNAS
No evidence for nudging after adjusting for publication bias
www.pnas.org
November 2, 2025 at 1:13 AM
Reposted by Ben
Am Wochenende mal in Befunde zur Bindungstheorie eingelesen und oh boy ist das ein unterschied zwischen dem was empirisch gesichert ist und dem was Psycholog*innen erzählen
October 19, 2025 at 6:21 PM
Reposted by Ben
The GSS asked the same people about their childhood income rank three different times. 56% changed their answer, even though what was trying to be measured couldn’t change! We dig into this in a new article at @socialindicators.bsky.social. 



doi.org/10.1007/s112...

🧵👇 (1/5)
Growing up Different(ly than Last Time We Asked): Social Status and Changing Reports of Childhood Income Rank - Social Indicators Research
How we remember our past can be shaped by the realities of our present. This study examines how changes to present circumstances influence retrospective reports of family income rank at age 16. While retrospective survey data can be used to assess the long-term effects of childhood conditions, present-day circumstances may “anchor” memories, causing shifts in how individuals recall and report past experiences. Using panel data from the 2006–2014 General Social Surveys (8,602 observations from 2,883 individuals in the United States), we analyze how changes in objective and subjective indicators of current social status—income, financial satisfaction, and perceived income relative to others—are associated with changes in reports of childhood income rank, and how this varies by sex and race/ethnicity. Fixed-effects models reveal no significant association between changes in income and in childhood income rank. However, changes in subjective measures of social status show contrasting effects, as increases in current financial satisfaction are associated with decreases in childhood income rank, but increases in current perceived relative income are associated with increases in childhood income rank. We argue these opposing effects follow from theories of anchoring in recall bias. We further find these effects are stronger among males but are consistent across racial/ethnic groups. This demographic heterogeneity suggests that recall bias is not evenly distributed across the population and has important implications for how different groups perceive their own pasts. Our findings further highlight the malleability of retrospective perceptions and their sensitivity to current social conditions, offering methodological insights into survey reliability and recall bias.
doi.org
October 10, 2025 at 2:05 PM
Reposted by Ben
Michael X Cohen on why he left academia/neuroscience.
mikexcohen.substack.com/p/why-i-left...
Why I left academia and neuroscience
Don't worry, this isn't yet another story of rage-quitting.
mikexcohen.substack.com
October 6, 2025 at 5:05 PM
Reposted by Ben
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...
September 24, 2025 at 12:04 PM
Reposted by Ben
wrote about this last year and sure I wasn't in any way the only one but imo people voting for populist politics in the 21st century *is* a sign that they do just have too much faith in institutions, as opposed to not enough - they want to have their little tantrum but assume things will just hold
September 19, 2025 at 8:23 PM
Reposted by Ben
TW: Traumatische Geburtserlebnisse❗️

Respektloses Verhalten, Objektifizierung, verbale und körperliche Misshandlungen: Frauen, die in Europa gebären, beschreiben respektloses Verhalten und Misshandlung während der Geburt. Mein (offener) Text beim #Ärztenachrichtendienst.

www.aend.de/articleopen/...
„Misshandlung in der Geburtshilfe ist ein Problem in Europa“
Respektloses Verhalten, Objektifizierung, verbale und körperliche Misshandlungen: Frauen, die in Europa gebären, beschreiben Misshandlung während der Geburt. Eine aktuelle Studie belegt die Aussagen m...
www.aend.de
September 9, 2025 at 3:32 PM
Reposted by Ben
Extreme views are heavily over-represented on social media

Social platforms’ tendency to reward hostile content creates incentives that systematically reward simplistic messages and extreme positions and this fuels populism www.ft.com/content/9251... via @jburnmurdoch.ft.com
September 8, 2025 at 10:02 PM
Reposted by Ben
Just finished "The Collapse" about the precise events that led up to the opening of the Berlin Wall -- struggle within the Soviet Bloc and demonstrations in Saxony (most prominently Leipzig), bureaucratic miscommunication, and the chaotic and improbable events in the night itself.>
August 14, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Reposted by Ben
New paper by @bsiepe.bsky.social & WARN-D team out now in JoPACS, on the (lack of) relation between EMA selfreport and Garmin passive data.

Guardian @theguardian.com coverage:
www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Paper:
psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?d...

🧪 #PsychSciSky #StatsSky #EpiSky
Smartwatches offer little insight into stress levels, researchers find
Academic study suggests devices cannot differentiate between someone being overworked and being excited
www.theguardian.com
August 11, 2025 at 10:51 AM
Reposted by Ben
Arguably the greatest thing ever committed to print
August 4, 2025 at 8:36 AM
Reposted by Ben
1/
Das Krankenhausanpassungsgesetz (KHAG), das Ministerin Warken nun vorlegt, ist kein technisches Update.

Es ist ein folgenschwerer Kurswechsel - weg von klarer Steuerung, hin zu struktureller Beliebigkeit.

Das ist keine mutige Strukturreform, sondern ein Rückfall in alte Muster.
August 6, 2025 at 7:41 AM