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). 🧵

Making the case very strongly for the economic value of research.

The research enterprise is invaluable. We can easily see its importance in the cures or technologies available today. But sometimes it's difficult to see what research brings to people in the shorter term. Here is one of our participants talking about what it's meant to her. youtu.be/Yn9ywYj3UYQ

I don't remember the "XUI" part of the login page for research.gov. (sign in link from main page now directs to identity.research.gov/sso/XUI) Am I misremembering? Anyone who knows more about this have any insight about the purpose of the changes this weekend?

Shout out to all the hard working program officers and administration staff holding on at the NSF (and other federal agencies). Your work is appreciated and more meaningful with every passing day.

Over 100 university, college and scholarly society presidents published a joint statement opposing the Trump administration's treatment of higher education institutions reut.rs/42Vhp3x

A little levity: Introduced my kids to this little gem of ‘90s culture that has lived rent free in my head for 30+ years, and they loved it. Baby Plucky still slaps. www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dkQ...

👀😳👀

This all alone is an open-and-shut cause for impeachment, yes there are dozens of others but sometimes it's clarifying to just look at one

I support the US garment industry. I don't believe in making life harder for immigrants or erecting blanket tariffs. So how can we reshore some of our US garment manufacturing without xenophobia or protectionism? Here's my view. 🧵

HALF. GRFP awards are already very competitive, and amazing investments in the future of science. The cuts are unjustifiable and cruel.

Hot off the presses: big update to our work looking at how adaptive decoders influence neural representations. We added heroic analyses to show in both experiments & models that the structure of what the brain learns is altered by adaptive decoders. Check it out: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

A useful reframing

Spring in Reno, when you get to play “Blossoms or snow?”

New — Here is a running list of Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) offices that have either been fully eliminated or gutted into non-functionality as a result of today's mass firings (provided to me directly by a CDC staffer):

Thank you, Senator Booker.

If you are a faculty member at a US university, please consider signing this excellent petition asking our presidents, chancellors, etc to work together to defend our institutions from the direct attacks by Trump administration: sites.google.com/view/we-must...

This is beautiful!

Hearing multiple reports now that Trump/Musk people are sitting in senior NIH leadership meetings quietly watching and taking notes. Like Soviet communist political officers (apparatchiks), there to enforce the authoritarian political agenda.