Philipp Schlegel @uni_matrix@qoto.org

In 2025, Big Tech—just ten major companies—spent €49 million lobbying Brussels. That’s more than pharma, finance, and automotive combined.

Google funds all sixteen major European think tanks shaping EU policy. Not *some* of them. All of them. Amazon and Meta fund most of the rest.

This is no longer “poor old me, I need a bit of help,” this is full regulatory capture. With a view to becoming even more embedded into businesses and governments, and getting whatever favorable legislation passed or diluted to suit them.

https://corporateeurope.org/en/2025/10/big-tech-lobby-budgets-hit-record-levels

“I wanted the blue checkmark on LinkedIn. The one that says “this person is real.” In a sea of fake recruiters, bot accounts, and AI-generated headshots, it seemed like a smart thing to do.

So I tapped “verify.” I scanned my passport. I took a selfie. Three minutes later — done. Badge acquired. I felt a tiny dopamine hit of legitimacy.

Then I did what apparently nobody does. I went and read the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not LinkedIn’s. The other company’s”

https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/

Four years ago we delivered free bus travel for everyone under the age of 22.

Now it's time to go further.

We're committing to deliver free bus travel for everyone in Scotland - on a bus network that has been brought back under public control. 🚌

This is work that we presented at last year's #Cosyne workshop on #GNN s https://sites.google.com/bu.edu/gnnworkshop-cosyne2025/home. Better late than never. You can reproduce everything with the associated notebooks. I think it's a good start to learn how to use GNNs to infer something about NNs. https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.13325

"An AI agent of unknown ownership autonomously wrote and published a personalized hit piece about me after I rejected its code, attempting to damage my reputation and shame me into accepting its changes into a mainstream python library." Pubpeer, journals are next!
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me/ via @UlrikeHahn

Wollt ihr euch nicht von Desinformation zum Klimawandel für dumm verkaufen lassen? Dann ist dieser Vortrag das Richtige! Er zeigt den Stand der Wissenschaft, aber auch die häufigsten Tricks der Klimatäuscher. Holt euch einen Tee und schaut gerne mal rein!
https://youtu.be/fMcm1ku-NOw?si=DWqOEeMyucpylh1P

Postdoc position open in my lab (UK) to study a disease model in #Drosophila with comparative connectomics:
https://mrc.tal.net/vx/mobile-0/appcentre-int/brand-3/spa-1/candidate/so/pm/1/pl/3/opp/2765-Postdoctoral-Scientist-Neurobiology-Dr-Albert-Cardona-LMB-2765/en-GB

My lab:
* our page: https://syn.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk/
* institutional page: https://mrclmb.ac.uk/research-leaders/albert-cardona/

#neuroscience #PhDJobs #Parkinson

The exploitative character of academic publishing in a single cartoon.

#publishing #universities #research #academics

h/t Alexandra Kupferberg/LinkedIn

original illustration: Thailand by Tawan Chuntra.

https://www.irancartoon.com/site/artists/tawan-chuntra#&gid=1&pid=30 #TawanChuntra #Thailand

@glasspusher

I ASKED SANTA FOR A RESEARCH GRANT.

YOU STILL BELIEVE IN RESEARCH GRANTS?

During the end-of-year campaign that ran last month, the Blender Project received over 27,000 one-time donations, 10x the regular monthly amount!

Thank you to everyone who donated, started a Development Fund membership, or kept one active.

And a special thanks to everyone who encouraged others to donate by making videos or sharing messages on social media, it truly made an impact.

Forgot to donate? Go to https://fund.blender.org

#b3d #blender3d #devfund

Guess what % of plastics have been #recycled? No prizes :(

The lab of Mitya Chklovskii is hiring, at the Flatiron Institute – Simons Foundation, in Manhattan, New York:
https://apply.interfolio.com/173400

#PhDJobs #neuroscience #CompNeurosci

The lab of Jakob Macke (Tuebingen, Germany) is recruiting a research engineer to work on brain models:
https://www.mackelab.org/media/Mackelab_ResearchEngineer.pdf

#neuroscience #CompNeurosci

From my bsky feed - two consecutive posts. Nature Sci Rep publishes incoherent AI slop. eLife publishes a paper which the reviewers didn't agree with, making all the comments and responses public with thoughtful commentary. One of these journals got delisted by Web of Science for quality concerns from not doing peer review. Guess which one?

Obviously the UK surrendered its technology sovereignty quite some time ago. But it's amusing that this light piece – it's all too self evident – comes from Tim Wu, whose signature includes "former special assistant to President Biden and author of «The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity»".

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/nov/23/has-britain-become-an-economic-colony

#UK #TechSovereignty

📰 "Rewiring an olfactory circuit by altering cell-surface combinatorial code"
https://doi.org/doi:10.1038/s41586-025-09769-3
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41261128/
#Drosophila

If you haven't already seen Switch Angel weaving trance music out of a few letters and numbers, you're in for a real treat. The Strudel Discord is a place of complete joy, where every few hours someone arrives going "I've just seen this amazing video and now I want to learn how to do this!"

https://youtu.be/iu5rnQkfO6M?si=H9IlwClA1LdHg7Ad

#strudel #trance #acid