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nicholdav.bsky.social
AKA NickleDave
@nicholdav.bsky.social
2K followers 2.8K following 1.4K posts
I'm interested in how animals communicate with sound and I try to make that easier for everyone to study: https://www.vocalpy.org/

Cat & dog dad, cold brew addict, video gamer, Florida boy, #altac, podcast fan, occasional espanglish. nicholdav.info
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nicholdav.bsky.social
I will also use this font because it's the coolest font name

Too bad the weirdo who designed the Event Center attached to a hotel I stayed at with rooms named after typefaces didn't know about Atkinson Hyperlegible
Event center sign that lists rooms whose names are typefaces, metal sign with cheesy green logo and room names written in all caps Helvetica Ballroom Courier Room Bookman Room Garamond Room Verdana Room Calibri Room
November 19, 2025 at 8:43 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Life update: had good borscht at our favorite random Uzbek restaurant
Bowl of borscht shop, very red with orange carrots and sprig of dill on top next to dollop of sour cream, against the background of white dishes and a white tablecloth
November 16, 2025 at 3:24 AM
nicholdav.bsky.social
oh no I'm making a connection between AI and video game discourse

bsky.app/profile/brun...
You wouldn't steal a car meme edited to say you wouldn't lawnmower an LLM
November 13, 2025 at 8:26 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Change my mind meme with Steven Crowder driving coffee sitting behind a desk outside with a sign that says the world is flat change my mind and the baby JD Vance image is pasted over Crowder
November 12, 2025 at 7:41 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Sorry this is how my brain works.

Yes I reposted to get the quote right. I'll post it again, see

bsky.app/profile/blue...
November 4, 2025 at 8:47 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Crop of pic in quoted post that says what with AI, Sloppy Mustard Man Text added that says I could smell the onions and mustard
November 4, 2025 at 8:45 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Rest in piss, Dick, you were one of Dave Barry's best jokes
Screen shot of Google search results for Dave Barry Year in Review Dick Cheney 2006, also heating up in November is the debate over Iraq, with even vice president Dick Cheney joining in, fueling rumors that he is still alive 2007, Dick Cheney did not shoot anybody, as far as we know Some other year, Former Vice President Dick Cheney, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, bites the head off a live rabbit
November 4, 2025 at 12:23 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Hampden knows
Phone booth in Hampden with print of drawing based off pic of Joan Jett in quoted post; stencilized black pen and ink on yellow background with Orioles logo colored in
October 30, 2025 at 6:01 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Bit-O-Honey

Like cardboard-flavored taffy laced with crunchy bits of dried tree sap
October 28, 2025 at 2:39 AM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Gotta get some more Maryland in these replies!
October 26, 2025 at 2:39 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
job interview: how many APIs have you hand-delivered keys to in the past year
Screenshot of a form with radio buttons, options are 1 to 3 APIs 4 to 6 APIs 7 to 10 APIs More than 10 APIs
October 25, 2025 at 11:52 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Me transmitting my xillennial cultural ideaplex across generations via LLMs
October 22, 2025 at 3:39 AM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Between 10-15 years ago I drew this pigeon ethogram.

Posting here jic it helps anyone
Two drawings in red sharpie of a pigeon. Left side says shows pigeon bowing from top down and is labeled 1 bowing. Right side shows pigeon facing viewer holding a book with a thought bubble that says "starving, hysterical" and is labeled 2 reading beat lit
October 21, 2025 at 11:58 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
RIP Broca you would have loved functional localization memes
October 21, 2025 at 9:21 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Got a cool bandana at #NoKingsDC

And got to hear Bill fuckin' Nye repeat "no thrones, no crowns, no kings" to a crowd of >100K
Selfie, with a yellow bandana tied around my neck that says No Kings
October 18, 2025 at 11:42 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
@olivia.science @irisvanrooij.bsky.social @alexhanna.bsky.social @emilymbender.bsky.social
Donnie Darko I made a new friend meme I made a new tool to help scientists review papers Real or sparkle emoji AI slop sparkle emoji (7 posts later) AI slop
October 17, 2025 at 2:26 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Salesman: *slaps roof of Cybertruck* this bad boy can fit so much women not liking it
Car salesman slaps roof of vehicle meme but the car is a cybertruck
October 16, 2025 at 10:23 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Cybertruck guy cucked by semi:

women don't like the vehicle
AI slop image of a pregnant woman in front of a semi, both in profile, the woman holding her belly in the tractor headlights with its hood slightly open as if looking down at her, all in that Thomas Kincaid lighting that AI slop images have
October 16, 2025 at 10:16 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Geriatric xillennials post pictures from the CD collection you still have for some reason and let people roast you challenge
Stack of CDs on a shelf very clearly not organized Includes Belly Star, Chuck Mangione Feels So Good, Rasputina Cabin Fever, Lee Morgan Expoobedient
October 15, 2025 at 11:42 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Posting angry takes about LLMs, then installing cuda toolkit and watching @gpumode.bsky.social videos
Meme, lord forgive me but it's time to go back to tha old me Bugs Bunny in profile holding an old pistol that kind of looks like a pipe
October 14, 2025 at 1:15 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Under this model, neural response to song where a syllable is replaced with a gap + noise burst (GB) should look like response to the continuous syllable + noise (CB)

Single N recordings support this: firing rate during GB is most similar to CB vs control

#prattle 💬
#neuroskyence

3/5
Figure two showing single unit response to occluded song. Top panel A shows example raster plots of 3 single units responding to the five different conditions, including the gap noise burst condition GB that should induce the illusion of the syllable, the continuous burst condition CB that represents the illusory percept that the syllable is still present beneath the noise, and the three control conditions. Bottom left panel B shows population distribution of tone-noise similarity index values, see paper text for description. Panel C shows log X-Y plotting average firing rates on log scale during the critical interval during GB for all units, plotted against the other four conditions. Notably, the values appear by eye to be most similar during the GB and CB conditions.
October 11, 2025 at 3:03 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Authors look at single neuron (Ns) activity in ZF homolog of mammalian auditory cortex

They test a model where internal dynamics bias a population of neural activity towards states driven by external input of song

#prattle 💬
#neuroskyence

2/5
Figure one from paper, panel A on left shows conceptual model where external input and internal network dynamics work together to drive a population of neurons through a sequence of states along a manifold, but when a syllable is occluded by noise the internal dynamics bias activity towards the state corresponding to the missing syllable. Internal dynamics is shown as a set of syllable labels A through E connected by arrows to form an oval, with external input coming in as an arrow in the lower left. There is an inner and outer set of arrows in the loop, with the inner set representing the internal dynamics, the outer set representing external input. Between syllables C and D, the outer arrow is replaced with a dashed line representing noise that would push the population activity off the manifold without the bias of the internal dynamics. Panel B is two spectrograms of zebra finch song, the one on the top shows the example gap plus noise burst stimulus, GB, and the bottom shows the continuous plus noise burst stimulus, CB. If internal dynamics fill in the missing syllable, then the GB stimulus should evoke the same neural response as CB despite not physically containing the target syllable.
October 11, 2025 at 3:03 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
This is so good that it made me deadlift 3 heirloom pumpkins and then go get a Pumpkin Spice Gladiator smoothie from Smoothie King 💪🎃
Picture of 3 heirloom pumpkins on a concrete porch stoop
October 9, 2025 at 1:23 AM
nicholdav.bsky.social
Dawn chorus (DC) redux -- lots of recent work on DC!
Here authors look at zebra finches (ZFs) in lab

- Found DC-like song when delaying AM lights-on time (LT)
- ZFs awake hours before LT, corr. w/melatonin drop
- DC singing increases AM change in song syllable structure

#prattle 💬
#bioacoustics
Figure 5 from paper showing dawn chorus singing accelerates morning changes in song syllable structure. Panel A shows changes in acoustic distances of syllable structure for -3h LT and +3h LT condition. Mean shows +3h LT is lower. Panel B is X-Y plot of differences in slopes fit to raw data from A for individual syllables, slope is smaller for -3h LT. Panel C shows the same data as a function of singing rate. Panel D shows the data as a function of syllable order insead of time.. Panel E shows the X-Y plot here with syllable order. In this case the difference was not significant, supporting the claim that changes are due to singing rate, not just passage of time
October 6, 2025 at 7:29 PM
nicholdav.bsky.social
I definitely don’t worship peepee poopoo, but I am a pragmatist about learning how to use peepee poopoo that can’t be unpeed before they poop us.
Screenshot of post from jay.bsky.team I definitely don’t worship it, but I am a pragmatist about learning how to use technologies that can’t be uninvented before they use us.
October 3, 2025 at 5:20 PM