Tootfinder

🔊 #NowPlaying on #BBCRadio3:
#RoundMidnight
- Maddy Coombs in concert
Tonight Soweto presents concert highlights from rising tenor saxophonist Maddy Coombs and her band, recorded live at the Fickle Pickle as part of Southend Jazz Festival.
Relisten now 👇
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002m25v

Prefrontal scaling of reward prediction error readout gates reinforcement-derived adaptive behavior in primates
Tian Sang, Yichun Huang, Fangwei Zhong, Miao Wang, Shiqi Yu, Jiahui Li, Yuanjing Feng, Yizhou Wang, Kwok Sze Chai, Ravi S. Menon, Meiyun Wang, Fang Fang, Zheng Wang
https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09761 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.09761 https://arxiv.org/html/2512.09761
arXiv:2512.09761v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Reinforcement learning (RL) enables adaptive behavior across species via reward prediction errors (RPEs), but the neural origins of species-specific adaptability remain unknown. Integrating RL modeling, transcriptomics, and neuroimaging during reversal learning, we discovered convergent RPE signatures - shared monoaminergic/synaptic gene upregulation and neuroanatomical representations, yet humans outperformed macaques behaviorally. Single-trial decoding showed RPEs guided choices similarly in both species, but humans disproportionately recruited dorsal anterior cingulate (dACC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC). Cross-species alignment uncovered that macaque prefrontal circuits encode human-like optimal RPEs yet fail to translate them into action. Adaptability scaled not with RPE encoding fidelity, but with the areal extent of dACC/dlPFC recruitment governing RPE-to-action transformation. These findings resolve an evolutionary puzzle: behavioral performance gaps arise from executive cortical readout efficiency, not encoding capacity.
toXiv_bot_toot

The Ackermann family claims to be descended from French kings, posts QAnon type screeds, and has fascinatingly bad taste in just about every aspect of life there is.
http://famille-ackermann.com/

Okay, here's the promised follow-up with more authors I respect who didn't make it onto this list. I won't do deep dives but I'll list at least one work per author:
YA novelists:
- Randi Pink ("Girls Like Us")
- Louisa Onomé ("Twice as Perfect")
- Emery Lee ("Meet Cute Diary")
- Robin Benway ("Far from the Tree")
- Angela Velez ("Lulu and Milagro's Search for Clarity")
Children's book authors:
- Jacqueline Davies ("Bubbles Up")
- Freya Hartas ("Slow Down in the Park")
Novelists:
- Rimma Onoseta ("How You Grow Wings")
Graphic novelists:
- Linda Medley ("Castle Waiting")
- 🖋️Magsalene Visaggio 🖌️Paulina Ganucheau ("Girlmode")
- Ursula Vernon ("Digger")
- SJ Sindu ("Tall Water" w/ Dion MBD)
- Hope Larson ("Be That Way"; "Salt Magic" w/ Rebecca Mock)
- Lily Williams Karen Schneemann ("Go With the Flow")
- Maia Kobabe ("Gender Queer")
- Kay O'Neill ("Tea Dragon Society")
- Marjane Satrapi ("Persepolis")
Mangaka:
- Kaoru Mori ("Young Bride's Stories")
- Ryoko Kui ("Delicious in Dungeon")
- Natsuki Takaya ("Fruits Basket")
Anime writers/directors and/or Japanese light/fantasy/SF novelists:
- Nahoko Uehashi ("Moribito")
- Sayo Yamamoto ("Michiko & Hatchin"; "Yuri!!! On Ice")
- Mari Okada ("Ano Hana: The Flower we Saw That Day"; "Toradora!")
Game designers/programmers:
(Upon review I was pretty remiss in skipping over a few of these people, some of whom I wasn't aware of but most of whom I just didn't remember when writing my short list. Subconscious misogyny in action. Short & Thorson probably would have squeezed out some of the YA authors I included, although I have no real regrets.)
- Junko Kawano ("Suikoden")
- Elizabeth LaPensée ("When Rivers Were Trails")
- Momo Pixel ("Hair Nah")
- Zoë Quinn ("Depression Quest"; narrative designer on "Solar Ash")
- Kellee Santiago ("Cloud"; "Flower")
- Tanya X. Short ("Moon Hunters")
- Kim Swift ("Portal")
- Maddy Thorson ("Celeste")
- Andi McClure @… ("Jumpman")
Note: I haven't included composers or artists here, but there's a deep bench.
Games journalists/steamers:
- Tanya DePass @… (#/INeedDiverseGames; twitch streams)
- Anita Sarkeesian (Feminist Frequency)
Game/play scholars:
- Mary Flanagan ("Critical Play")
- Tracy Fullerton ("Game Design Workshop")
- Brenda Laurel ("Toward the Design of a Computer-Based Interactive Fantasy System")
- Janet Murray ("Hamlet on the Holodeck"l
- Susana Tosca ("A Pragmatics of Links")
- Jichen Zhu ("Agency Play: Dimensions of Agency for Interactive Narrative Design")
- Magy Seif El Nasr ("Design patterns to guide player movement in 3D games")
- Kate Compton ("Causal Creators"; also "Spore")
P.S. upon consideration I've decided not to include any authors who are men in this coda.
There are definitely others who probably deserve to be here that I'm forgetting...
#GsmeDesign #Authors

🇺🇦 #NowPlaying on BBCRadio3's #InTune
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Romain Guyot, Lorenza Borrani, Mats Zetterqvist, Pascal Siffert & Richard Lester:
🎵 Clarinet Quintet (4th mvt)
#WolfgangAmadeusMozart #RomainGuyot #LorenzaBorrani #MatsZetterqvist #PascalSiffert