Amaury Rodriguez

Fmr. Programmer | Most importantly a proud father of two & husband • Recreational CLang/Kernel (UNIX BSD/Linux). I didn’t vote for the Felon 45-47. 🇺🇲🇺🇦

[Amaury Rodriguez @AmauryRodguez]

Without Dennis Ritchie, there would be no Jobs https://t.co/B1UTAHHOqw via @ZDNET & @jperlow

[Ihtesham Ali @ihtesham2005]

A Japanese neuroscientist put 48 people inside an MRI scanner and proved that writing your schedule on paper makes you remember it better than any calendar app on Earth, and the tech industry has spent the last 20 years hoping you would never read the paper.

His name is Keita Umejima.

He works inside the Sakai Lab in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Tokyo, and the paper was published in 2021 in a journal called Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.

The finding is clean enough that it should have changed how every person on Earth writes down their schedule.

The experiment was so simple. His team recruited 48 university student volunteers between 18 and 29 and split them into three groups of 16 each.

Every participant was asked to read a set of dialogues about personal schedules and then record all the appointments into a calendar.

One group used a paper notebook and a pen. The second group used a stylus on an electronic tablet. The third group typed the appointments into a smartphone.

Then the researchers made them wait for a full hour, with a deliberate distraction task in the middle so no one could quietly rehearse the schedule in their head.

When the hour was up, every participant was slid into an fMRI machine and asked multiple choice questions about the appointments they had recorded, while the scanner watched the blood flow through their brains in real time.

The behavioral results came in first, and they were already brutal.

The paper notebook group finished recording their calendar in about 11 minutes. The tablet group took 14. The smartphone group took 16.

The paper group was roughly 25 percent faster than the phone group at the exact same task, and when the researchers checked whether people who preferred analog in daily life were skewing the numbers, they found the difference held either way.

The speed gap was not about familiarity with the tool. It was about how the brain was actually processing the information as it went in.

On the memory test that followed, the paper group answered the straightforward recall questions more accurately than either digital group.

They had encoded the schedule faster and remembered it more precisely, using a tool the tech industry has spent 20 years telling you was obsolete.

Then the fMRI data came in, and the picture got sharper.

When the paper notebook group tried to remember an appointment, the scanner showed strong activation across several regions of the brain at once.

The hippocampus, which is the part of the brain responsible for forming and retrieving memories, lit up far more than in either digital group. So did the precuneus, which is the region that handles spatial imagination and holds visual scenes in the mind's eye.

Language regions and visual imagery regions were also more active in the paper group than in the tablet or phone group.

The reason turned out to be something Umejima's senior author Kuniyoshi Sakai spelled out plainly in his interviews.

A page in a paper notebook is a physical location in space. The top left corner is not the same as the middle of the page. A Tuesday appointment written next to a coffee stain is not the same as a Tuesday appointment written under a doodle.

Every entry has a texture, a position, a slight variation in handwriting pressure, a physical relationship to everything else on the page.

Digital calendars strip all of that away. Every entry looks the same as every other entry. The font is identical. The spacing is uniform. Every scroll is the same motion. Every tap creates the same visual signature.

The tool that was designed to make appointments easier to record also made them almost impossible for the brain to anchor to any spatial cue.

The hippocampus, as it turns out, is not just a memory organ. It is a spatial memory organ. It evolved to help you remember which cave had the water and which grove had the fruit, and when you write something down by hand on a specific page in a specific spot, you are giving your hippocampus the same kind of hook it was designed to grab.

When you type the same thing into a phone, you give it almost nothing to grab at all.

Umejima's team is not the only lab pointing at this. A 2014 Princeton study by Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer tested 327 students on notes taken by laptop versus notes taken by hand, and the handwriting group won on every question that required real understanding.

A 2024 Norwegian study by Audrey van der Meer scanned the brains of students writing versus typing single words and found that handwriting fires up neural connectivity patterns that typing leaves completely dark.

After 3 studies, 3 countries, and 3 different methods.. the answer was the same every time.

The paper notebook is not old-fashioned. It is a memory upgrade the tech industry has spent the last 20 years quietly convincing you to give up.

Every appointment you have ever typed into a calendar app was recorded through a thinner pipe than a handwritten one. Every schedule you set on your phone this year is sitting in your brain with weaker anchors than it would have if you had written it on a page.

You do not forget your own appointments because your memory is broken. You forget them because the tool you used to record them stripped out every cue the brain needed to hold on.

The fix is the thing your grandmother already knew.

Buy a notebook. Write the thing down. The slower road is the faster one.

[Devin Nunes' Cattle Dog 🇺🇦 🇪🇺🇺🇸🇨🇦 🇦🇺 @Kaos_Vs_Control]

This is why we record and post every single ICE interaction. David Brouillette was seen in this video threatening to shoot some one. Months later he killed Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Main

[James Tate @JamesTate121]

Mitch McConnell’s team released yet another hospital photo, and apparently they forgot that some of us grew up doing the “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” puzzles in Highlights magazine.
Because I have questions. A LOT of questions.
First, why does the sign above the door appear to say Room 411 while the sign beside the exact same door says Room 412? And why are the room numbers apparently INSIDE the room?
Then there’s what appears to be a paper chart hanging from the bed. Yes, I know some hospitals still use paper for certain things, but plenty of nurses are going to look at that setup and immediately question it. Charts aren’t beside beds anymore and haven’t been in years. If a place does use paper charts, they’re kept at the nurses station.
Now look at the IV. The bag appears full and doesn’t appear to be connected to Mitch. And what appears to be an Alaris IV pump setup looks like it has two channels but no control module—the “brain” needed to operate it.
Then I started looking around the room.
Why are there multiple hand sanitizer dispensers? Why is one positioned where it is? Why are an otoscope and ophthalmoscope mounted on the wall right beside the patient bed? Why does the angle and perspective of the bed itself look strange?
Now look at the glasses. The reflections caught my attention because what appears to be reflected in them doesn’t seem to correspond clearly with what’s around or behind the photographer. The apparent overhead lighting reflected in the glasses also doesn’t seem consistent with the way the room itself is lit.
Then there’s Mitch himself. Zoom in and parts of his face—particularly around his mouth and glasses—look strange to me. That could absolutely be compression from repeatedly uploading, downloading and screenshotting an image, but I’m looking at the entire picture, not one isolated pixel.
And after reportedly being hospitalized for weeks, he’s standing there, dressed in jeans and that familiar red checkered shirt, looking remarkably camera-ready.
Any one of these things might have a perfectly reasonable explanation. Maybe all of them do.
But when you release a photograph specifically to reassure the public that everything is fine, and I spend the next twenty minutes playing the nurse’s edition of Highlights magazine trying to figure out what the hell I’m looking at, your reassurance campaign may need a little work.
I’m not declaring the photo AI. I’m not declaring it Photoshopped. I’m pointing at the things I can see with my own two eyes and asking questions.
Because at this point, I don’t need another carefully staged photograph.
I need some answers. It's more AI slop with the same shirt on.
VIA Momma Dawn

[Ismael Sanz @sanz_ismael]

🧠 "La memoria es como un músculo: si la trabajas y la cultivas, crece y se hace sólida. Si no la ejercitas, se diluye ante el bombardeo de información constante." Aprender a fortalecerla. Enrique Rojas. 📚

[Mark Ruffalo @MarkRuffalo]

Hello @ElonMusk. This is how you are perceived. Not too late to course correct but it’s getting pretty late. You certainly have the extra money on hand to really help the people of the world instead of the hellbent road of chaos and destruction you are ludicrously barreling down. Put down the Ket straw. 🤪

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

AOC: “Donald Trump spent most of his speech rehashing the same big old tired lie that he actually won the 2020 election. We know he will stop at nothing to stay in power. We know it has nothing to do with true or false. They will do everything they can to try to overturn our democracy in November”

[Roger Seheult, MD @RogerSeheult]

Permanent DST gives golfers more evening light and schoolchildren more morning darkness. Guess who had the better lobbyist.

[Canada Hates Trump @AntiTrumpCanada]

If you think last night’s speech was an embarrassment, here’s another reminder that America handed the nuclear codes to a demented 80-year-old felon and adjudicated sexual abuser who turned a military ceremony into a fucking YMCA double-jerk-off spectacle.

[𝔗𝔯𝔲𝔱𝔥 𝔐𝔞𝔱𝔱𝔢𝔯𝔰 @politicsusa46]

THIS is how you deal with monsters.

Kudos to Rep Pressley for her unwavering, insightful questioning of Russell Vought.

🎥 TikTok - https://t.co/rkvQnpHzC9

[Ron Filipkowski @RonFilipkowski]

The constitution provides that states run elections. The federal govt does not. There is no legal authority for Mullin to take over elections, issue mandates & rules, or threaten elections officials with prison for failure to comply with unlawful orders. https://t.co/DYLOt47jAS

[Acyn @Acyn]

Jonathan Swan says that when President Trump returned to office, he pressured the intelligence community to produce some kind of evidence proving that the 2020 election was stolen, and that Trump’s Thursday night address was the best they could do.

Jonathan Swan: One way of looking at last night is as the culmination of an almost six-year effort. We have some reporting in the book that, in early 2021, Trump was telling people privately that he thought he could be reinstated as president that summer and was being encouraged by some people around him that this was a possibility.

When he came back into power this term, he started to put pretty intense pressure on the intelligence community to come up with some kind of evidence that could prove the 2020 election was stolen.

Last night, one way of looking at it is that this is the best they can do. Essentially, this was their best effort to prove that case. Of course, they didn’t. But that’s the genesis of last night.

[Bernie Sanders @BernieSanders]

Corporate greed is UnitedHealth making a $5.48 billion profit last quarter (up 60% from last year), spending $33 billion in stock buybacks since 2022, paying its CEO over $60 million last year while it works to hike premiums by up to 25% next year.

Yes. We need Medicare for All.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Trump just confirmed ‘Russiagate’ was real, lol

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

This speech by @StephenM is so deeply evil it’s hard to fathom it coming from a White House employee. This is pure Nazism.

The in-group is “morally superior,” “ordered,” “beautiful” & “normal.” The out-group is “abnormal,” “scarred” & “deformed.”

The in-group goes to church on Sunday (Miller is Jewish).
The out-group is “violent,” “junkies,” & “predators”

This is precisely how the Nazis spoke about their political opposition. It is a full-throated commitment to eugenics as policy.

In reality, you just need to watch Miller to see everything he claims to be afraid of: hatred, jealousy & violence. He is the most “deformed” man in America.

Finally, when Miller brings up the boogeyman of “Antifa,” it’s important to remember the original “Antifa” were antifascists in Weimar Germany who were the first people sent to Dachau.

There is no left vs. right anymore. There is life vs. death.

—

“The leftist is fundamentally motivated by envy, by hatred, by jealousy. The leftist looks at what is beautiful and what is good and what is natural and is filled with envy and hatred.

The leftist looks at a perfect family with the perfect life and a perfect job and perfect kids who goes to church every Sunday and is filled with the feeling of inadequacy and jealousy and they covet and they turn those emotions ultimately into a desire to subjugate, to oppress and to inflict pain and suffering.

It's not a coincidence that when you look at these violent antifa demonstrations and you see any photograph of those who were assembled to be blunt, not one of the people that is demonstrating looks like a normal person. Not one looks normal. They're all deformed in some way in their appearance, in their dress, in their mannerism.

Why is that? Why? You look at two photographs and you see a normal American street, you see an antifa protest. Why did the people that are violently demonstrating? Why is there not one normal looking person among them? Every one of them through the course of their life and their decisions has scarred their body and their appearance in many different ways.

The point in which their outer appearance becomes a manifestation of their inner hatred. Trust your instincts to all people and cross all civilizations. You know what normal is. You know what beautiful is. You know what good is. You know that families are right. You know that children are precious and beautiful and must be protected. You know that the criminal and the junky and the predator is a threat to normal, healthy living.

This is so much deeper than issues about taxation and regulation, although they're incredibly important. It's about normal, healthy, ordered living. And the violent leftists for these deep-seated reasons, going back to the earliest wisdom taught to us in the Bible about coveting.

And I'm not talking about rich versus poor. I'm talking about a much deeper kind of coveting. Coveting people who are morally superior. Who are superior in the simple, truthful way they live their lives. People that they look at who are happy and ordered and peaceful and contributing to the communities.

That burns an ember in them and that's how you end up with the horrors we've seen throughout history. Where good families are dragged that into the street and executed.”

[inCUBAdora @incubadorista]

Zurelys López: Entrevista a Edmundo Desnoes / ‘Las palabras mienten con sus verdades’ https://t.co/te3Xb3zC3b

[The Intellectualist @highbrow_nobrow]

Anne Applebaum: "There's a series of institutions that have been created, going back decades…, that are designed to prevent foreign interference and other interference, and … the Trump administration [has] pretty systematically dismantled them.”(2026)

[BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ @mmpadellan]

FUN FACT: If you're complaining about the "Deep State" when you're in complete control of:

- The House
- The Senate
- The White House
- The Supreme Court
- The Dept. of Justice

... you sound like a fucking idiot.
YOU ARE THE DEEP STATE, DUMMY.

[CALL TO ACTIVISM @CalltoActivism]

🚨BREAKING: Trump’s voter fraud speech is BACKFIRING as Americans flood social media with the recording of Trump demanding Georgia “find 11,780 votes” after he lost the 2020 election.

Trump is the last person on Earth who should be talking about election fraud.

[Molly Ploofkins @Mollyploofkins]

“He knows those computers better than anybody, all those vote counting computers, and we ended up winning Pennsylvania like in a landslide, so it was pretty good, so thank you to Elon!”
- Donald Trump, the day before he was sworn in for a second term

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

The documents are so damning in refuting Trump's own case that I wonder if anyone in the White House actually read them (or understood what they were looking at)