Greetings from Kyiv, where the night brought missiles and drones. Explosions still continue this morning. Emergency power outages. Heating problems. Residential buildings hit.

Christmas Procession in Kyiv. View from the bell tower of St. Michael's Monastery. I want the world to see this.

anyone got any advice on the following situation? I wrote and did a big chunk of the admin for a large MRC grant which also also awarded. I am named in the Staff breakdown on the grant as "researcher co-lead" with 100%FTE, and I am mentioned by name as "postdoctoral researcher Maria Niedernhuber"

The Tasselled Wobbegong is a master of disguise that can eat a fish almost as big as itself in one gulp. It's classified as a shark, but when it lays on the sea floor it looks like a harmless rug if you manage to see it. But with powerful jaws and sharp teeth they are no fish to mess with.

This is such a great visualization of the carbon cycle and of how humanity has completely altered it within a geological instant, by @rarohde.bsky.social:

Relatable Corvid

This is a scandal. Public universities should be banned from paying these insane buyouts for college coaches. No pro sports teams are paying $33 million to fire their incompetent coach, so why are colleges paying this kind of money?!?

And I swear, once again, this is not dunking on kids. We are seeing this at all levels--even grad students. AI + social media has had a profound impact on how we think and process our world, and we can't stop to reflect on it, because billionaires keep hurling addictive tech at us.

“Our findings challenge the conventional focus on low-dimensional coding subspaces as a sufficient framework for understanding neural computations, demonstrating that dimensions previously considered task-irrelevant and accounting for little variance can have a critical role in driving behavior.”

Hello New York! Giving a Swartz seminar at NYU today, come say hi! as.nyu.edu/departments/...

Tonight was a very bad night.

“I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time.” aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

We’re hiring a technician!! We’re an inclusive team of behavioral neuroscientists trying to discover the brain circuits of learning, decision making, and habit. More info👇 wassumlab.psych.ucla.edu/join-the-lab/ Job posting: jobs.ucla.edu/jobs/8968

Today, as the Fed cuts, is another good day to note how we’ve just totally normalized & moved on from the unprecedented violation of central bank independence that Stephen Miran represents. This would’ve been a huge scandal requiring his resignation from at least one post in any prior admin. Now? 🤪

The whole Third Term Project isn’t actually about Trump. The people behind it know he will likely be dead or enfeebled by 2029. It is about them, the vastly unpopular group around Trump, wanting to grift us forever without elections.

A year ago, I launched my book #OnFreedom in a war zone – in Kharkiv, Ukraine, 35 seconds from Russian artillery. Today, I'm launching the paperback in Portland, Oregon. Which is NOT a war zone. There is a difference in the real world between what's a war and what is not, and between truth and lies.

once you understand that we never outgrew wanting to watch gladiatorial battles and throw tomatoes at people in the stocks and eat junk food at public hangings the internet makes a lot more sense

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings

Cops led us into the street as the new “protest zone” and then beat us repeatedly. Got hit in the face with a baton. Leaving to pick up my friends who were arrested. Stay safe out there.

This month’s Discover ASAP features @rgast.bsky.social, PhD, of CRN Team Surmeier 🧪 He introduces PyRates, an open-source tool for generating code across languages to model complex biological systems. See how it advances computational neuroscience and #Parkinsons research. 📺 Watch: bit.ly/4h7Y5Wk

Great option for supporting Ukraine and getting something visible to show that support. Also check out @memorysteel.bsky.social if you want something to add to your key chain!

Please join me in a new campaign to help protect Ukrainians in a very special way. My Ukrainian friends chose to call this campaign Freedom is Action. They are making an important point. One way to find our own courage is to act in support those who are showing it snyder.substack.com/p/freedom-is...

“I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney.” - George Retes, U.S. citizen and veteran.

Dr. Jane Goodall filmed an interview with Netflix in March 2025 that she understood would only be released after her death.

what's worse is that they don't even know they're being excluded

President Macron: “We were very naive to leave our public space to social media networks controlled by US or Chinese companies that don’t share our interests and not interested in survival of our democracies.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=MggN...

A couple of related-unrelated thoughts that have swirling in my head: 1. This is a bad time to become a new PI in the US. Probably the worst since WWII. If you're negotiating for a position, know your road is way harder than it was for the people on your TT committee. Negotiate accordingly.

Troubling scenes from an Arctic in full-tilt crisis The heat that hit Svalbard in February was so intense that scientists could dig into the ground with spoons, "like it was soft ice cream." grist.org/climate/trou... #Arctic #Climate #Heat #Ice #Svalbard #Environment #Geography

I know antifa isn't a real organization because I don't get 40 texts a week from them asking for donations.

WGA Statement on ABC’s Decision to Pull Jimmy Kimmel Live!

If professors can be fired for discussing topics not explicitly mentioned in the course description and/or not toeing the ideological line of elected political leaders, there is no academic freedom in Texas.

Today, after one of the biggest attacks on Ukraine, I saw an appalling indifference from the world. Thank you to those who still care. There are truly so few of you.

The streets of Chicago are full with tens of thousands of people standing up to ICE and Trump. Join us.

The Department of Energy hired five academics to raise doubts about climate change. 85+ climate experts (organized by @andrewdessler.com) reviewed their report. Our conclusion, detailed in 450 pages of analysis: it is biased, full of errors, and not fit to inform policy making.

I think 182 year old research articles should be free I want to read about the man

Day of Mourning in Kyiv. No music in public spaces, no concerts, no festivals. Yesterday, russia killed 23 people in Kyiv - among them four children 💔 I’m having my warcoffee in mourning silence.

Estonia is exploring whether reviving depleted peatlands can help protect the Baltic nation against a Russian attack while also locking away planet-warming pollution, the country's climate ministry told POLITICO.

3 am in Kyiv. I woke up to loud explosions. Ballistic missiles, as the monitoring channels report.

one thing i really like about campus architecture is that there is an expectation of gathering so there is a lot of communal seating and i think it would be neat if cities adopted that idea

I will always be grateful for the immense -- and unique -- contribution the Swartz Program made in supporting theoretical neuroscience over the past 30 years. Its closure leaves a profound void. doi.org/10.53053/FPR...

It’s been going on for decades, & everyone keeps falling for it

As a German speaker and former student of Frank, I am very much looking forward to reading it!

OUT NOW in Communications Biology from Jude Mitchell: Marmosets are more easily distracted than macaques. Their brain cells have more dopamine receptors, which may make it harder to stay focused when unexpected things happen. #URochesterResearch doi.org/10.1038/s420... @uor-braincogsci.bsky.social

I've worked on climate change for about 20 years, and don't recall significant recognition of the fact that about a third of the US population, and perhaps half of the wealth, lives downwind from one of the largest forests on the planet, & that forest is increasingly flammable. ciffc.net/statistics

A government-sanctioned "truth arbiter" will soon arrive at CBS. Their role will be to ensure that journalists do not criticize this Administration or express views that conflict with its agenda. This is a betrayal—not just of journalistic independence, but of the public trust. 🧵

It's another good reminder of the profound state of corruption of the current federal judiciary that these kinds of openly/criminal actions can take place and citizens have no recourse to the courts. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/08/u...

Very happy about my former mentor Sara Solla having received the Valentin Braitenberg Award for her lifelong contributions to computational neuroscience! Sara will be giving a lecture at the upcoming @bernsteinneuro.bsky.social meeting which you shouldn't miss. bernstein-network.de/en/newsroom/...

Every reputable expert I know considers mRNA vaccine technology to be one of the most revolutionary advances in medicine in our lifetimes. Its inventors won the Nobel Prize in 2023. Shutting it down now is pointless self-harm to humanity.