Eric DeWitt

@eejd@neuromatch.social
19 Followers
36 Following
26 Posts

"Libraries usually pay more than $65 for a two-year license on an e-book, which the average American would pay $12.99 for, and upwards of $100 for e-audiobooks. A print book that costs libraries less than $15 can be loaned out until it falls apart."

This is fascinating and also terrifying considering I see more and more people ONLY going to the library for e-books (myself included, I haven't gone to the library for a physical book in a couple years). How does this get justified?

https://www.denverpost.com/2025/05/25/denver-library-ebooks-audiobooks/

#reading #libraries #ebooks

Rising popularity, cost of e-books forces some Colorado libraries to limit access

The boom in e-book popularity is accompanied by a rise in cost, forcing some Colorado libraries to limit who can access their highly sought-after digital collections.

The Denver Post
Huge power outage brings parts of Spain and Portugal to standstill - https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/large-parts-spain-portugal-hit-by-power-outage-2025-04-28/

The State Department is changing its mind about human rights

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/18/nx-s1-5357511/state-department-human-rights-report-cuts

Google Quietly Walks Back Promise Not To Use AI for Weapons or Harm

Google has quietly removed a clause stating it will not manufacture weapons or surveillance technology with AI.

Futurism

I don't know who needs to hear this but khroma has beautiful scientific colour palettes #RStats #dataviz

Colour Schemes for Scientific Data Visualization • khroma
https://packages.tesselle.org/khroma/

Colour Schemes for Scientific Data Visualization

Color schemes ready for each type of data (qualitative, diverging or sequential), with colors that are distinct for all people, including color-blind readers. This package provides an implementation of Paul Tol (2018) and Fabio Crameri (2018) <doi:10.5194/gmd-11-2541-2018> color schemes for use with graphics or ggplot2. It provides tools to simulate color-blindness and to test how well the colors of any palette are identifiable. Several scientific thematic schemes (geologic timescale, land cover, FAO soils, etc.) are also implemented.

tesselle

Hooray! This #CCN2024 event, led by @ivanoransky and myself, will be live-streamed (and archived for viewing later).

Set your calendars: Wednesday, August 7, 8:30 - 10:00 am EDT.

Event:
https://2024.ccneuro.org/keynote-nicole-rust/

Live stream:
https://www.youtube.com/@cogcompneuro

Keynote Lecture: Nicole Rust

Another insight into the complex path to modern humanity…
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adi1768
Opinion | It’s a Myth That Americans Don’t Understand the Economy

Americans voters don’t think the economy stinks, actually.

The New York Times
Organizing memories for generalization in complementary learning systems - Nature Neuroscience

The authors derive a neural network theory of systems consolidation to assess why some memories consolidate more than others. They propose that brains regulate consolidation to optimize generalization, so only predictable memory components consolidate.

Nature
Neural patterns differentiate traumatic from sad autobiographical memories in PTSD - Nature Neuroscience

Perl et al. show that in PTSD, hippocampal representations of autobiographical memories are similar across people with similar semantic content only for sad but not traumatic memories, pointing to altered brain state during traumatic memory recall.

Nature