Flutterby™! (short)

Brain activity inhibition during Short Video Viewing: neurochemical insights

By integrating fMRI with ¹H-MRS, our study provides novel evidence that immersive viewing of preferred short videos deactivates the cognitive control network and that individual differences in this deactivation are linked to glutamate metabolism. These findings enhance our understanding of how digital media consumption interacts with neurochemical processes to influence self-regulation. Our study offers new insights into the neural mechanisms underlying short-video engagement and has implications for understanding excessive digital media use.

Via.

Always worth a read, but ResearchBuzz for August 22nd has a whole lot of "AI" related stupidity.

This is making the rounds, and it's well worth watching, or at least (as I did) listening: DefCon 34 - Stalking the Wily Hacker: 40 years later - Cliff Stoll (YouTube video). His chaos energy is completely infectious.

Among other sources, Via.

Ruth — of systems & design @RuthMalan@mastodon.social:

Given her recent death, with its reminder the Merrelyn Emery was in her 80’s, comes the realization that she did this study of Agile in her 80’s:

A Patchwork of Contradictions and Confusions: Inside the Software Industry by Merrelyn Emery, January 2023

After over 20 years of agile, this study shows that agile has failed to produce a coherent industry or sustainable organizations as the critical factors of high intrinsic motivation and organizational performance are in short supply. Highly desirable personal and organizational outcomes are few and far between. In a comparison with other organizations with DP1 structures and in danger of failing, the software industry came off second best.

I'm going to have to learn more about her!

In honor of Dolly's passing, may I again strongly recommend the "Dolly Parton's America" podcast? https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america

Well shit. Dolly Parton, dead at 80.

I have a whole bunch of Blüskî and Fediverse links saved up, from Target's extremely racist halloween costume (via) to Richard Berger: The False Affiant behind ICE in Minnesota’s fabricated cases, to Business Insider proposing that you raise your kids in an AI augmented throuple (1, 2, and in linking to her short story Wire Mother, Isabel J. Kim notes "IM RIGHT IM LITERALLY ALWAYS RIGHT" and Hypervisible notes "A consistent pitch by the makers of ai wearables is that they solve the problem of getting to know your child."), but...

...I just can't even this morning.

Goldman Sachs partner warns of ‘huge danger’ in letting AI replace bankers’ reasoning skills

“There’s a huge danger here that in the era of AI, we outsource our reasoning to these models, and we have cognitive atrophy that stops us being able to reason from first principles ourselves,” said Chris Churchman, who leads Goldman’s digital platform for institutional clients called Marquee> .

The comments came during the latest episode of the firm’s “Exchanges” podcast, according to a transcript provided exclusively to CNBC.

Via Tara Calishain @researchbuzz.bsky.social who notes that

Over the last 20 years, banks have showered money over people like Elon Musk and capitulated to DJT in his shady dealings. I'm not sure replacing that reasoning is a bad thing

But I'm pretty sure that the magic-smoke-up-ass-blower is not the right replacement.

lcamtuf @lcamtuf@infosec.exchange posted a screenshot of this book with the caption

rarely is the question asked: is our children learning?

A quick "look inside" of Practical Electronics for Inventors and Makers 2026: A Step-by-Step Guide to Circuits, Components, and Real Projects (The Practical Electronics & Electrical Engineering Series) by Wesley Crest verifies that it is indeed the worst sort of AI generated slop, you can scroll down as far as the diagram that lcamtuf posted in the free bits.

And for all that is holy, do not reward this crap by buying it...

It looks like it's an attempt to profit off of an O'Reilly book or something, but it's pretty bad.

Figured I should note that on Saturday we went to the Aqus Community's "Big Social" event, in which much conversing with people you didn't already know was encouraged.

I did find a bunch of people I didn't already know, but I learned that talking with random people isn't what I'm seeking.

I need a social filter other than "wants to socialize" to help find a larger proportion of interesting people to make a space worth putting energy into.

I never know how far to go in sanding and finishing outdoor furniture, I like texturing with an angle grinder, but the pores are gonna open, and some tooling marks give it character. Anyway, some scraps and a $20 piece of garage sale glass... And an awful lot of dust.