I finally got around to setting up a lab website! Have a look: the-steel-lab.github.io Just in time to start the new semester.

This paper had a pretty shocking headline result (40% of voxels!), so I dug into it, and I think it is wrong. Essentially: they compare two noisy measures and find that about 40% of voxels have different sign between the two. I think this is just noise!

Well, this is an utter disaster for science. This gutting of peer review is very likely driven by Project 2025/OMB/Vought, very likely is about funding junk science, and very likely is coming for #NIH and biomedical research next. 🧪

*shudder* Also, I feel like there is an analogy to LLMs here…

"With the news that the administration plans to link the COVID vaccine to child deaths using data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), it’s worth revisiting how we actually detect whether a vaccine is causing harm." Excellent explainer from @drjenndowd.bsky.social from 9/2025😷🛟🧪

Like you I am celebrating Tuesday's victories. However, my job is not to sugarcoat things and tell you it's all fixed. It is to warning about what to expect next and fight back. That is why I wrote this and why I hope you read and share. www.democracydocket.com/opinion/what...

I am glad about the election results, but yes this 👇👇👇

*siiiiigh* what hope do any of us have, in the face of this? www.npr.org/2025/10/31/n...

Not a Dodgers fan - but man, that was some good baseball

😞

Job announcement! UN Reno Psychology (Cognitive & Brain Sciences division) is hiring for a tenure-track position. Come join us! We have a great group! Deadline December 1. Please share! nshe.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/UNR-external... #neuroskyence #neuroscience

Refreshingly clear: the hypocrisy is the point.

👇👇👇

I didn't take pics but the feeling of being in a group of people with no visible beginning or end was so thrilling. The opposite of online anomie, and a living counterpoint to the wary, isolated, compartmentalized world the shitheads want to make. It's simple and obvious I guess but it means a lot.

Hell yes Reno. #NoKings

💯

If you like this demo, you will love the great demos by @pezlarson.bsky.social that can be found here: larsonlab.github.io/MRI-educatio... (Complete with python code to generate them!)

Whoa dude.

Sometimes I just think things. Maybe talk with my wife or a friend about them. Phone doesn't even enter into it.

The GRFP lives!! (due end of October) www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

What an ugly world this administration wants to create. www.npr.org/2025/08/26/n...

This is upsetting and clear and true. Quoting the Declaration of Independence is spot on.

A pleasant surprise from the Journal of Neuroscience RE the application of the updated NIH public access policy (authors deposit accepted manuscript in PMC, journal retains license to final copyedited version, no requirement to pay OA fee) www.jneurosci.org/content/righ...

Truck Tetris

Hell yeah. Love this.

Tell me again about cutting waste.

📣 CALL TO ACTION - Yesterday, the House Appropriations Subcommittee that determines the funding for NSF proposed a 23% cut to NSF’s 2026 budget. If one of these members listed is your representative, use our link to easily call your rep & demand NO CUTS to NSF➡️ actionnetwork.org/call_campaig...

Welcome news

Please keep it up, many of us really appreciate it

YES.

Out now in TiCS, something i've been thinking about a lot: "Physics vs. graphics as an organizing dichotomy in cognition" (by Balaban & me) relevant for many people, related to imagination, intuitive physics, mental simulation, aphantasia, and more authors.elsevier.com/a/1lBaC4sIRv...

IT’S STONE FRUIT SEASON MOTHERFUCKER

Still have this set with (I’m pretty sure) all pieces intact. Not in the box, obv. Who does that.

Hey, if you need a breather from the news, we have pretty brain pics to distract you! We made an interactive viewer showing images optimized to elicit responses from different places in the brain. Link to viewer in 🧵

🚨Paper alert!🚨 TL;DR first: We used a pre-trained deep neural network to model fMRI data and to generate images predicted to elicit a large response for each many different parts of the brain. We aggregate these into an awesome interactive brain viewer: piecesofmind.psyc.unr.edu/activation_m...

If you have not signed please do. If you have signed try to get several others to sign TONIGHT - NIH Director testifies before senate appropriations at 10am ET - lets make sure they know how many people are angry about what has been done to NIH

Here is a link you can blast out to all of your networks to ask them to consider signing on in support of our NIH heroes. actionnetwork.org/forms/add-na... We are at 5000 folks who have signed on. But we can do better Only for people who have ever been sick or knows someone who has been.

I confess to worries about consequences. But I signed, publicly. We hang together or we hang separately.

Hey #VSS2025! First presentation from my lab will be this afternoon! Come check out our work today, tomorrow, and Tuesday!

This is why I will be a bit late to #VSS2025, but very much looking forward to catching up with colleagues!

A good thing happened today: congratulations to Dr Matthew Shinkle @matthewshinkle.bsky.social , the first PhD to graduate from my lab!

Enshittification is everywhere.

To see why destroying the US science enterprise is so detrimental to the world, we have to realize that the US spends more on research and development than any other country in the world (by far), and if we remove China and Japan, the US spends almost as much as ALL other countries combined.

A great reminder that the world is often surprisingly and interestingly complex

I am so heartened to this seriously AWESOME #SaveNSF website go up today!!!! Has a take action toolkit with: 1. Press outreach templates 2. Social media toolkit 3. Elected official outreach 4. Talking points Check it out and share widely!!!! Likely more to come. www.savensf.com

BREAKING: NSF has frozen all grant funding, as of yesterday. It's unclear when they will resume funding awards, or why the pause has been put in place. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

New resource regarding terminated grants

Like nearly every other action this fascist administration has taken, this is a political wedge issue designed to divide their opponents. Trans sports, antisemitism, DEI: these all split off parts of the Democratic party coalition. So does animal research. That's basically the whole story. /2

📢 Today I was supposed to be in DC, highlighting what the NSF Social, Behavioral, & Economic Sciences delivers to US taxpayers. NSF had one of the highest returns on investment (ROIs) of federal grantors 👏🏻 (1) and NSF SBE funded 63% of US social and psychological science research (2). 🧵