June 3, 2025

Foreigners sure talk fast, don’t they? When you listen to someone speaking a foreign language, you’re sure they’re speaking very quickly, far faster than you speak in your more refined native language. It turns out they think exactly the same thing about the way you talk. It’s the “Gabbling Foreigner Illusion.” Speech scientists have studied it…

May 6, 2025

AI is taking over online searches. At the moment, that’s good news – the AI summaries are increasingly reliable and helpful. In the long term, they might be so good that paradoxically, they contribute to the enshittification of the internet. It’s a big, complicated, nuanced AI world! Let’s go through a little history, then talk…

February 11, 2025

Psychologists use various terms to describe disorganized speech. “Word salad” – words and concepts so disconnected that there is no logical thread. “Neologisms” – made up words that have no literal meaning. “Loose association” – associations that are irrelevant or out of context. I’m going to briefly describe some of the AI updates from the…

December 17, 2024

Spotify Wrapped, King Gizzard, and the year’s best songs Spotify Wrapped kinda sucked in 2024, missing a bunch of the cool info from previous years about genres and favorite albums and more. Did you notice? Spotify ended 2023 with massive layoffs, including Scott Macdonald, the person whose insights about data analysis and genres was apparently…