Michael Pascale

Society for Unusual Books | Online Bookstore | New and Preloved Books The Society is a bookstore specializing in fantasy, horror, romance, sci-fi, nonfiction, and other genres. We place particular emphasis on small press and independently published titles. We also curat...

My mom sent me a link to this bookshop website that curates interesting and unusual books. Great looking selection, here.

societyforunusualbooks.com

Opinion | A.I. Companies Are Eating Higher Education

Just Out: My @nytimes.com op ed on how AI companies are eating higher education. As educators, we have a duty to defend — and advance — human intelligence.

www.nytimes.com/2026/02/12/o...

“Remote proctoring is not ed tech. It’s academic surveillance software designed to monitor and control student behaviour during exams.”

A good read by @niniandthebrain.bsky.social

Research quietly progresses through self-correction, problem solving. This process came into the glaring spotlight in 2020 in real time. I observed how science was misunderstood. Misinformation was rampant.

🧪 techingitapart.substack.com/p/we-have-a-...

I'd like to add that like in all industries, when we stop understanding how our tools work, we become entirely dependent on the corporate entities that own the mold. We are trading the ability to build and repair for the convenience of being permanent tenants in someone else's infrastructure/subs.

7 Reasons Teens Say No to AI Some young people only turn to artificial-intelligence chatbots as a last resort, citing concerns about relationships, creativity, the environment and more.

As these teens describe, AI can diminish human relationships; devalue art; threaten the environment; lead to laziness; give unreliable results; pose privacy concerns; and be misused.

So, please, stop with the narratives of inevitability and let's embrace a pedagogy and politics of refusal.

Protest at the Massachusetts state house. peaceful and energetic. The crowd is in the street.

Eyeballing it from my vantage point I'd guess around 1000 people - but tough to say exactly.

Photos from Boston’s ‘ICE Out Everywhere’ protest Boston.com

Photos from Boston’s ‘ICE Out Everywhere’ protest #news
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2026/01/31/boston-ice-out-everywhere-protest-photos/

We're not anti-tech, we're anti-theft. If the future of “innovation” depends on stealing creators’ work without asking or paying, that’s not progress - it's stealing, and we shouldn’t accept it. #StealingIsntInnovation www.stealingisntinnovation.com/

Stealing art is one thing, but stealing a generation’s confidence in their own abilities is unbelievable

Folks at @brown.edu, be safe and well. A terrible and terrifying incident - you're in the thoughts of many this week.

Neuroscience funding: A source directory Our list features expected and lesser-known governmental and nongovernmental sources of funding for basic neuroscience research.

Most basic neuroscience research in the U.S. is funded by the federal government, but there is an entire funding landscape that lies beyond those federal agencies. To bring those sources together, @thetransmitter.bsky.social presents a funding source directory: bit.ly/4pBBF2B

#StateOfNeuroscience

Can democracy survive without reading? People around the world are reading less. In the U.S., the share of people reading for pleasure dropped by 40% in the last 20 years. Writer James Marriott says that puts democracy in danger.

Can democracy survive without reading?: www.wbur.org/app/playback...

@okaysteve.bsky.social sat down with @franciscorr25.bsky.social to discuss the inspiration behind the book, why he decided to write it partly as a memoir, and what he wants readers to take away from reading it.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/memory/how-t...

Our searchable repository of useful research can restore trust in federally funded basic science Called U.S. Public Research Benefits, the database showcases the value of basic science in an easy and accessible format.

U.S. Public Research Benefits is a searchable repository that showcases the value of basic science in an easy and accessible format. @baselesspursuit.bsky.social shares how he and his colleagues developed the resource.

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/science-and-...

Images show effortful pro-environmental behaviours of recycling and cycling and alternatives of an overflowing bin or driving

🌎 New paper in @commspsychol.nature.com 🌍

doi.org/10.1038/s442...

There is an urgent need to choose behaviours that mitigate climate change, but these are often more effortful. Can we increase pro-environmental motivation?

Joint w/ Luis Sebastian Contreras-Huerta & amazing international team 👇🧵

Maybe this is because individual level appeals rely on models that are relatively trusted within the behavioral sciences (e.g. RL) where the concern is with individual behavior.

And regarding the taboo of teleology, I do think plenty such appeals to evolution are still made at the individual level, especially w.r.t. exploration. Within behavioral sciences, it seems almost as if it's more okay to make such arguments about individual survival than it is about societal.

Therefore, understanding these decisions is the closest approximation to understanding free will.

Additionally, there is evidence that belief in free will affects behavior. These effects may be adaptive not only at the individual level but in a net diversification of knowledge in societies.

Sure! It was more a wild and speculative digression, though.

From the perspective that all decisions are mechanistic, specific exploratory choices often are those that are hardest to explain because the full history is unknowable and the choice has never previously been made.

One of my favorite facts: neurons and skin cells are 'cousins'.

Intelligence is a phenomenon that lives at boundaries. The semipermeable cell membrane is where the ball got rolling.

I wrote an essay riffing on this idea.

yohanjohn.com/axispraxis/f...

Aesthetics seems more willing to entertain this type of argument, or at least to take it into consideration.

I do also wonder how the drive for knowledge is related to experiential "free will" where it is among the forms of behavior that most obviously exhibit hysteresis.

Explanations of knowledge seeking I have seen seem always to invoke some teleological argument, often incidentally, and only ever at the individual level. You bring into consideration individualism as fulfilling a computational role at the level of civilization, heterogenizing distributed knowledge.

Experimental evidence of the effects of large language models versus web search on depth of learning Abstract. The effects of using large language models (LLMs) versus traditional web search on depth of learning are explored. A theory is proposed that when

Overall, this is pretty well-designed and -executed pre-registered (yay!) study. I don't really care about the self-report measures, but the analyses of the provided results is compelling. That said... (1/2) #PsychSciSky #AcademicSky #EduSky

From MRI to Ozempic: breakthroughs that show why fundamental research must be protected In these financially straitened times, funders must recognize that great discoveries often arise from work that was looking for something completely different.

Funders must recognise that great discoveries often come from studies that seeks to advance knowledge for its own sake

go.nature.com/47zrzYZ

Can we move towards calling "word-models" motifs and rigorously specified theories models? Maybe explicitly naming motifs vs. models can solidify ontology across fields.

Optimistic for Raja's idea that ecological perspectives seem to be coming back. See also the Simons found's decade long collab.

soxfanann on Threads: "I love Boston's public media scene." Accompanied by a GBH advertisement: "Congress told us to 'Go Fund Yourself.' And with your help, we can."

We love you right back. ❤️

In 2025, we have thousands of people show up to celebrate books; lectures and discussions made free to all; music, discourse, and community at #bostonbookfestival.

Can we make this happen everywhere?

Diving in with Nachum Ulanovsky With an eye toward realism, the neuroscientist, who has a new study about bats out today, creates microcosms of the natural world to understand animal behavior.

Naturalistic approaches such as Ulanovsky’s open up “potential opportunities to really reveal why the brain is structured in the way it’s structured,” says Iain Couzin.

By @claudia-lopez.bsky.social

#neuroskyence

www.thetransmitter.org/neuroetholog...