Anyone Else Here xkcd.com/3188/

🐦‍⬛ Ornithologist @corinanewsome.bsky.social says a flock of blackbirds is a good omen and a sign of a healthy habitat. She reflects on an early morning visit to a wetland in Georgia, where she saw—and heard—hundreds of thousands of blackbirds. Hear her full account: buff.ly/fSIhNjE

I have a slack channel with two extremely smart friend-colleagues. Most of the traffic is trash talk 😆 But I can also ask ANY question, including the most basic how-am-I-this-dumb questions and get kind, useful, thoughtful information back. It is my *most valuable* professional resource

Credit where it's due - shortly after the service pause from the Journal of Consumer Research, I got a similar message from the Journal of Marketing Research. Go ahead and criticize the field of marketing if you want, but I appreciate a discipline that *applies* its behavioral insights!

The University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public is looking to bring on new postdoctoral scholars to join our research community starting in 2026-2027. Come collaborate w/ our amazing, interdisciplinary team working to understand & help people navigate our complex information ecosystem!

I'm an AE for a journal whose editorial board just sent the most welcome (and *humane*) message - Service responsibilities (reviews, new assignments, etc) will be paused for a winter/holiday break. 🙌🏽

Me: “When I eat Alphabet Soup, I only eat the vowels.” Coworker: “Why?” Me: “Sometimes.”

Research/teaching postdoc job option! Danny Oppenheimer posted a notice about a "psych/behavior science post-doc position that takes training in teaching/pedagogy as seriously as training in research" Link here: apply.interfolio.com/178893

There's definitely a trend for faster (or sped-up) videos, whether the pace is accelerated by the creator or by the viewer. Cool to see a direct study of the consequences - congrats to @yeli.bsky.social and colleagues! pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...

TIL that the CEO of IDEO was a Berkeley cog neuro undergrad, so that's awesome. www.ideo.com/leaders/mike...

This is Charles Clyde Ebbets, the photographer who took the iconic “Lunch atop a Skyscraper” picture. Look at this fearless, dapper fuck wearing spats, suspenders, and a tie 850 feet above the ground. Absolute legend.

#Instacart users may be paying wildly different prices—on the same groceries—according to a new study. Here's what to know if you use the online grocery delivery and pickup service. My latest for @fastcompany.com www.fastcompany.com/91458229/wan...

One of the things we've enjoyed the most about the six-seven phenomenon is the way it comes with a gesture, which we've also seen represented in emoji form as: 🫴 six-seven 🫳

The kids literally labeled it brainrot. Definitely more savvy about their slang than like, my like teenage self, y'know. (also : mushroom mushroom)

Holy shit. But beyond the tech outrage let me also appreciate that this (with subsection titles like "Building a Counterfactual City with Machine Learning") is intellectually sexy AF

Okay, this is fascinating!

This story does a great job of illustrating the connections between social media consumption and commercial consumption. I am struck by the the absence of satiation boundaries on both 😬

ohhhh, no. This is a terrible twofer of bad science AND unethical usage in the dataset. (Glad to learn of the removals.)

Danseuse espagnole, by Joan Miró, 1945, 📸 by Max Molina

"When a female AFP reporter changed her settings to male, LinkedIn's analytics data showed the reach of multiple posts spiked compared to a week earlier."

Curious what these stats would be in the US given the explosion of luxury advent calendars (jamvent, I'm looking at you), and relative absence of their cultural tradition here.

The AEA has imposed a lifetime ban on Lawrence H. Summers’ membership and participation in AEA activities. See the full statement here. www.aeaweb.org/news/aea-sta...

Consumer behavior in the field: "Thomas leads the Kearney Consumer Institute, a think tank inside a consulting firm used by some of the biggest retailers and brands" www.npr.org/2025/11/28/n...

WINNING ANSWER.

*The most precious commodity you have is your attention* Hits hard to suddenly realize from my own professional expertise that this is LITERALLY true. Off to spend it well.

Apparently the quest to live forever offers adults the chance to re-do "late night dorm room", but fancy this time.

Scientists have pinpointed how the brain generates ‘aha’ moments. Neuroscientists have identified a clear brain pattern behind the phenomenon of sudden insight, by scanning volunteers as they deciphered hidden images. buff.ly/pW93qmK #ShareGoodNewsToo

I read a lot of sci-fi. Like, a LOT of sci-fi. Then I read Neuromancer, followed by Snow Crash shortly before discovering my university offered a major called "Symbolic Systems" with a concentration in neuroscience.

I feel a little guilty when I’m introduced as a neuroeconomist in these shopping advice pieces, because the most useful ideas are pretty traditional behavioral ones. urldefense.com/v3/__https:/...

New paper in @cognitionjournal.bsky.social, where we show how attention impacts political choices. With an eye-tracking study, we find that people's votes aren't set in stone - they take longer to vote on divisive issues and can be swayed by gaze manipulations. authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S...

Oh. Oh dear. Well, it’s a nudge alright, but not a “take a break” one.

These posters for the South Korean stage production of Macbeth are the greatest thing ever? #art

A plea to students from an aging & awkward academic: If we last talked over a year ago, please be kind and reintroduce yourself. Recognition is so much easier than recall. (Please DO NOT ask "do you remember me?") My garbage memory is not a reflection of my interest in engaging further 😅

I think they signaled this a few months back, but... here we go. Persuasive agent persuades.

Academic intros that go hard

Somewhat related - if you ever wanted to talk to someone doing neuro-related work on the faculty of a business school, I have a whole list of them here: sites.google.com/view/ukarma/...

Favorite question at the #sfn2025 "alternate career" workshop- how can we (PIs and institutions) better prep and support trainees for a larger portfolio of career options?

some other familiar grocery store names that are brands for producer-owned agricultural co-ops: Blue Diamond Bob's Red Mill Land O'Lakes Tillamook Welch's

How do we succeed at self-control? In a new paper in @pnas.org with James Wilson, David Kalkstein, and Melissa Ferguson, we use mouse-tracking of ~47,000 decisions of long-term over short-term to show that 'willpower' is too narrow a conception of self-control www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Caught part of a talk from @dcrockett17.bsky.social , @twbradford.bsky.social about consumer culture theory research. They gave an analogy that I found helpful- thinking of CCT as a logical argument that draws conclusions from a body of symptoms/evidence, akin to a medical diagnosis

Loving today's news that the mysterious "fedora man" outside the Louvre heist was actually a 15-year-old museum visitor who dresses like a 1940s French detective all the time, just because. apnews.com/article/louv...

And that's important, because she was a working scientist with agency of her own and she collaborated willingly with so much more of that work than is usually mentioned. Both by Watson AND his critics. Franklin was a great scientist. Don't sell her short.

I LEARNED THE ANSWER TO THIS Chris's Steakhouse was a New Orleans landmark Chris Matulich periodically got bored, sold it, waited for the new owner to fail, and bought it back cheap The sale conditions: Can't move it, can't change the name He did this six times Then he sold it to Ruth Fertel

Great 🧵 Particularly useful advice on personal statements: "This is an EXAMPLE of the KIND of thing I would like to study" ➕ please don't recap other parts of the app in the personal statement. Great to incorporate specific points to support your narrative, but no need to merely repeat info.

🤭

VISUAL AREAS ARE THE ONES YOU USE FOR VISUALS.

The forks glitch is hilarious and I'm glad someone ran into it today and posted, since I missed it entirely the first time around.

This news was surprising until I found out the French are suspending Shein's e-commerce site because its listings include "childlike sex dolls." Other reporting also suggests weapons listings. www.bbc.com/news/article...

Two things can be true: 1. I think it's absurdly hilariously wild that we're in a place where a don't-*don't*-be-evil tech firm has PR for a merch drop. (Facebook-branded Labubu when?) 2. For a hot second, I absolutely coveted the Chrome T-Rex Xmas sweater.

OMG, a decent "dopamine detox" press article that also uses my preferred (Parkinson's) example for why the term is nonsense. "That is not how dopamine works...Fully “detoxing” from it would be disastrous. Parkinson’s disease, for example, is caused by the loss of dopamine-producing neurons."