What a tragic and unnecessary loss brought on by cruel policies cruelly enforced. The broader picture is that while some of the GOP's war on science will be reversible, some won't. Never again in my lifetime will the best and brightest from around the world want to study and work in the US.

Oppression is never isolated to one group, even if it's initially sold that way. It's often a dry run for the next group. And there's always a next group. You ignore things because you erroneously think you are safe. You're not. None of us is.

I was around back then, but so young I sneaked into The Thing three different times with three different friends. I was blown away and couldn’t get enough. When the bad reviews came out, I wondered if we’d all seen the same movie. It’s now my 2nd favorite horror film ever.

This advancement in America was only possible through investment in education and science. Over the last year, we have absolutely destroyed our scientific and educational infrastructure. Look to other countries for the next major advancements.

I finally got to watch this stunningly clear explanation of transformers from the amazing Idan Blank. I agree with Ev, Idan is the best teacher I know. This lecture is a gift to the field. Thank you Idan! www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGMn...

Some first-rate science writing: For this story, @jdrakephd.bsky.social carefully read our recent paper and then we spent a very fun 90 minutes or so talking on zoom. His article that gets right to the heart of our model, explains it clearly, and then explores why it will matter in the future.

The weirdest and also most important election in Europe this year www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...

Your periodic reminder that there is a website that lets you listen to local radio stations anywhere in the world This is honestly one of the coolest inventions ever, imo. Global access to hyper-local imagined communities

Research vs. Research accomplishments, in a nutshell

57 of my fellow students were arrested, academically disciplined, and barred from campus 2 weeks before finals. And then the visas of some of those students were quietly revoked. And then the DEI office was killed. And then we watched our mentors’ grants evaporate over “woke”.

wow hard to squeeze this many falsehoods and speculations without evidence in a piece about other scientists tweaking their results. these people have written a book about science. this is pure rhetoric without engaging with theory or evidence. it's harmful and misleading. nautil.us/how-tiny-sho...

This is so different from the past membership. Deeply concerning where this might be headed...

I defended my PhD 10 years ago today. That was the least remarkable thing that happened that day. Sharing something I wrote about it last year. Since then "the horrors persist but so do we." And with dignity.

The financial problem with Sora was despite the massive interest, PR campaign, and downloads, only 1% of the userbase stuck around for more than a few days. A small, niche, devoted userbase does not a Trillion dollar company make. It was a toy, and not a very good one. Long live human creativity!

"Against The Pathologization Of Scientific Understanding" Preprint of a forthcoming commentary from Erkan & me. Pathologization of many scientific processes and practices has become increasingly popular w the replication crisis. Such pathologies do not accurately represent the scientific process.

Is your golden retriever friendly because of its breed? Genetics says: not really. A citizen science study of 18,000+ dogs found breed explains only 9% of behavioral variation in individual dogs. Personality predates modern breeds by thousands of years. #2026MMM www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Three major new studies on democracy and freedom all find the U.S. is slipping further away from democracy. Leaders of two of those studies say President Trump's goal is to rule as an autocrat. n.pr/4uG99Am

I suspect I know the answer...

UC Irvine criminologist Charis E. Kubrin keeps proving that immigration doesn’t increase crime. Why hasn’t her message broken through?

New piece for The Nation on the ubiquity of "performative" and "virtue signalling" as terms of derision. "Citizenship ... is inherently performative and that abandoning the performance of democratic life means courting democratic collapse." www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Just a reminder that in January of this year, Trump and Hegseth decommissioned EVERY US mine sweeper. Yep. Every. Last. One. Evidently they could never imagine a scenario in which the US needed minesweepers. In Trump's America, we are governed by idiots.

Visitors from Canada alone, dropped 21%. Friends in Europe have canceled their vacation and work trips here. All of our (America) collective friends are telling us something. Will you listen?

Proud fanboy moment here: I am at #SXSW and I just saw a screening of Hokum (it's fantastic!) from Damian McCarthy (Oddity, Caveat). I choked on asking questions but I got a chance to take a selfie with him!

A new Department of Cognitive Science is being created at Bocconi University in Milan, Italy. Here is the call for a cluster hire (for around 10 faculty) in all areas of cognitive science, at both junior and senior levels: www.unibocconi.it/en/faculty-a... Deadline: May 4th, 2026

For those not already paying attention, make note of this for when you finally decide to want to find out:

That was an amazing panel!

Jürgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. https://to.pbs.org/4bbc9gw

we are losing so much talent, progress, and hope for no good reason www.vox.com/future-perfe...

On Sat 21st March, enter a world of 1970s political paranoia with our back-to-back screenings of director Alan J. Pakula’s Paranoia Trilogy. Three of the greatest thrillers ever made - KLUTE, ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and THE PARALLAX VIEW! 🎟️: buff.ly/lucIbzc

I think Fodor & Pylyshyn's 1988 paper is possibly the most mischaracterized paper in the history of cognitive science. It's often cited as arguing that neural networks cannot achieve systematicity, compositionality, and productivity. But that's not what they actually argue...

Are you interested in detecting brain changes in individuals with higher precision over shorter intervals? Check out our new paper in Nature Communications. With Randy Buckner, @jingnandu.bsky.social, and others. Link - doi.org/10.1038/s414...

The more Epstein documents you read, the more you see every innocuous email as a lost scene from 120 Days of Sodom. “They could have, though, eaten that girl” becomes a thought you have. Everything is plausible and nothing is, each sentence impossibly banal and somehow ten times worse for being so.

Oh wow. I know people here have THOUGHTS. Write them up & submit!! I love that all essays have to be public before entering. This is exactly the type of conversation we need more of. (Also cash prizes + philanthropy is listening) Now which on my list should I pick 🤔? astera.org/essay-compet...

Science needs a culture of trust much more than a culture of interpersonal skepticism and suspicion. Verification is important but we cannot base verification systems on extreme distrust. Scientists' cynicism about their colleagues' values, priorities, and integrity leaves no room for social growth.

The reductions in the number of new and competing renewal R01s by topic (based on simple searches in NIH Reporter). The cuts are across the board: Cancer down 24%, Alzheimer down 45%, Obesity down 29%, Child by 21%. Transgender was down by 84% but represents only a small number of grants.

Here is the spreadsheet DOGE had ChatGPT produce, to determine which grants were too DEI www.historians.org/wp-content/u...

WSJ: “A WSJ investigation tracked U.S. citizens caught in the crosshairs of an aggressive government campaign to detain and demonize dissenters.” The Trump regime is cracking down on dissent. As authoritarians do. www.wsj.com/us-news/immi...

It's a sign of the times that AI companies are deciding whether or not to allow the military to engage in mass surveillance of US citizens and this is treated as a legitimate debate of two reasonable positions.

That column on the far right is the death of American biomedical science.

Incredible leadership from coaches across the country: “The unprecedented pressure by the federal and certain state governments on colleges and universities undercuts the values we have sought to instill in student-athletes.” ⬇️ www.coachesforcampusfreedom.org

Tragic. Please pass this along to US Chairs and Deans, and consider it when you sit on promotion committees. This, combined with the review backlog, is dire - especially for our early career researchers.

The American political class is utterly delusional, adrift in a dream of normality, unable to process the actual reality of events on the ground, where the US just launched a completely unprovoked war against a massive country, murdered its leadership, and demanded its conversion to a vassal state.

This is paper is so! 🔥🔥🔥

Every time you experience something new, your brain faces a decision: Should it update an existing memory or create a new one? In our new paper in @sfnjournals.bsky.social #JNeurosci, we isolate that exact decision, moment-by-moment during learning 🧵

Thrilled that this first empirical paper out of the lab is posted, led by Sandarsh Pandey, asking: Depression (and other internalizing disorders) involve profound changes to sense of self. How can we study these differences using rigorous decision-making methods? (alt link: tinyurl.com/2kk59dje)

This is very serious and I hope all the 1A orgs will meet the moment here.

On this day in 1922, German director #FWMurnau released the iconic expressionist silent movie #Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror).