Mastodawn

How to cooperate for a sustainable future? We don't know (yet), but I'm thrilled to share that our new perspective piece has just been published in @PNASNews. Bridging complexity science and multiagent reinforcement learning can lead to a much-needed science of collective, cooperative intelligence.

Michael Szell 4d ago

Interesting interview: Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/16/why-a-professor-of-fascism-left-the-us-the-lesson-of-1933-is-you-get-out

Why a professor of fascism left the US: ‘The lesson of 1933 is – you get out’

Marci Shore made news around the world when her family moved to Canada. She discusses Trump, teaching history and how terror atomises society

The Guardian

Michael Szell 6d ago

SellaTheChemist Jun 10

It is with great sadness that I am doing what I would once have thought unthinkable. Following Salim Abdool Karim's superb Faraday Lecture 10 days ago, i have decided to return my own Faraday prize, awarded in 2014.

The silence of the Royal Society in the face of Elon Musk's rampage (a member of the RS since 2018) across US science is incomprehensible to me.

We must all draw the line somewhere in the face of authoritarian attacks and this is mine.
https://www.ft.com/content/877853df-1687-4d1f-940b-9eefc0cf69c0?accessToken=zwAAAZdYtYr2kdOHeFPfFodNH9OUC57vwM9pwA.MEUCIQDNG6kcQyHa-g6Kx4G9NHE2ofD36kR8OX0yEu-KfXlV0QIgcmMFKTaT90y42QfwQTWb05khk6thpQPe-JvIGkaZzQY&segmentId=e95a9ae7-622c-6235-5f87-51e412b47e97&shareType=enterprise&shareId=5fbecded-0dc9-419a-b064-cda0dee0d73a

Royal Society prize winner returns award in protest over Elon Musk

Andrea Sella is latest scientist to express dismay over UK science academy’s refusal to criticise tech billionaire

Financial Times

Michael Szell Jun 13

Global health and climate benefits from walking and cycling infrastructure
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2422334122
"If every city increased the extent of its bicycle network to the level of Copenhagen, Denmark, our simulations indicate reductions in private vehicle emissions of ~6% and health benefits of ~US$435 billion per year."

Michael Szell Jun 12

The cars are going to be alright: Examining micromobility infrastructure space allocation and potential improvement scenarios in Montréal
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2950105925000154

Michael Szell Jun 10

Dorothy Bishop Jun 10

this is weird, and not in a good way.
Springer Nature is starting series of MDPI-like journals
https://the-strain-on-scientific-publishing.github.io/website/posts/discover_nature/

Springer Nature Discovers MDPI – The Strain on Scientific Publishing

Michael Szell Jun 8

Sam

Jun 7

Hi folks, probably should’ve posted this on here earlier. I am no longer active on here and am no longer actively moderating this server. Registration requests and reports are ignored.

So long as there is money in the HCB account, the server pays for itself. I only pay $12 a year for the domain name.

If anyone is interested in taking over the server, please let me know. Please reach out to me on Bluesky as I no longer monitor this account. My account on Bluesky is @samw.dev. Thanks!

Michael Szell Jun 8

Network evolution analysis: a usage-centric approach applied on cycling infrastructure
https://josis.org/index.php/josis/article/view/379

Network evolution analysis: a usage-centric approach applied on cycling infrastructure | Journal of Spatial Information Science

Michael Szell Jun 6

The "Gollum effect" - wow didn't know this name, but yes, this is exactly what makes certain fields so terrible (like network science). It's just about old men behaving like Gorillas 🤮 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-01588-w

It's so nice when PhD students can establish themselves, and when you can be happy about your colleagues' works because we all create something together for the common cause!

Science’s ‘Gollum effect’: PhDs bear brunt of territorial behaviour

Survey respondents at all career stages report colleagues engaging in territorial and possessive behaviours — but early-career researchers are most often affected.