In Dec 2024, I had the great pleasure of participating in an Ernst Strüngmann Forum on the future of navigation research organized by @noranewcombe.bsky.social and Ken Cheng. The book from that meeting is now out...lots of great chapters to read...open access... link.springer.com/book/10.1007...

Hey Vision Science [email protected] is a candidate for the VSS board. He will do an awesome job...you could not ask for a better representative. Consider giving him your vote.

Congratulations to @nancykanwisher.bsky.social, winner of the 2026 Ken Nakayama medal from @vssmtg.bsky.social! Nancy is not only a brilliant scientist, she has also been an inspiring mentor to several generations of vision scientists (including me).

Come to the CRaNE conference in Atlanta in May. Some folks I know will be speaking about spatial navigation (one of them is me!)

Our new paper in @sfnjournals.bsky.social shows different neural systems for integrating views into places--PPA integrates views *of* a location (e.g., views of a landmark), while RSC integrates views *from* a location (e.g., views of a panorama). Work by the bluesky-less Linfeng Tony Han.

Some nice publicity on our recent "Neural compass" paper, from @sfnjournals.bsky.social.

This is a great Postdoc opportunity at UPenn, for recent Ph.D.s who want to collaborate with CogSci (psych, neuro, ling, philo, cs, etc.) faculty and have their own research direction.

Penn declines! www.thedp.com/article/2025...

Penn faculty senate passes resolution urging the Penn admin to reject the compact, as MIT and Brown have already done.

It's really not clear to me how U.S. democracy gets out of this one alive. Dems would need +6 on the popular vote to have a 50/50 chance of controlling the House. That's a recipe for a one-party state. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/u...

The administrations "invitation" to 9 universities is in fact just their latest attempt at extortion. I urge my @upenn.edu colleagues to sign the petition below. actionnetwork.org/petitions/ju...

Interested in navigation, VR, fMRI, aging? Here's a great postdoc opportunity in @stevenmweisberg.bsky.social's new lab at U Texas Arlington.

Our new paper Cognitive maps for hierarchical spaces in the human brain is out in Cerebral Cortex! Work by first-author Michael Peer. academic-oup-com.proxy.library.upenn.edu/cercor/artic...

Our new paper, “A neural compass in the human brain during naturalistic human navigation” is out in @sfnjournals.bsky.social! First-author @zhenganglu.bsky.social led the charge, with Josh Julian and collaborator @gkaguirre.com. www.jneurosci.org/content/earl...

This is some very cool work that @ainsleybonin.bsky.social did at Colby College, working with Derek Huffman. If you are fortunate enough to be at CogSci, give it a look.

The mass starvation & killing of Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli gov’t is a chillul hashem, a desecration of God. Jewish leaders who criticized Zohran Mamdani for three words he doesn’t use should raise their voices loudly here as well. forward.com/opinion/7575...

Supposedly AI is going to take over the world, but I just spent 30 minutes unsuccessfully trying to get ChatGPT to change the axis labels of a chart. Which it kept failing to do, each time saying "now I've done what you asked!" without changing a thing. So I am skeptical.

This little document is immensely helpful.

Democracies do not use their military to try and intimidate their own citizens with “shows of presence”. This is fascism.

We’ve bombed Iran. And dismantled our joint terrorism task force. And sent a third of the FBI to help ICE. And gutted the National Security Council. And a drunk guy is in charge at the pentagon. And our intelligence allies probably won’t share intel with us. Because people couldn’t vote for a woman.

Best footnote ever.

Democracy...use it or lose it. There are hundreds of events planned all across the country on June 14. Find one near you. Trump can't send the Marines to all of them. app.sosha.ai/s/lmwrRNh3

I signed this letter and I urge all my colleagues to do the same. I am very impressed by the bravery of the NIH staff who put their names to this. We should stand behind them. It's the least we can do.

The political theory behind IRA was roughly as follows: We have lost control of the information landscape and can no longer win rhetorical or purely political battles; however, if we make substantive policy progress that directly touches voters' lives, they will notice and reward us.

This week, I had the pleasure of talking (virtually) to the BIU vision science seminar about our recent studies on cog maps and navigational strategies. Highlighting work by Michael Peer, @cgahnstrom.bsky.social, and Zhengang Lu. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAkC...

Will Bunch: "The TV talking heads are clueless, because they are asking the president-who-would-be-king and his minions to do something that would cause the entire regime to unravel like a ball of thread: acknowledge that Abrego Garcia is a human being." www.inquirer.com/opinion/kilm...

Whew! Sen Chuck Grassley’s town hall should be a wake-up call for Trump & Republicans. Voters want Kilmar García brought home — and they’re pissed Trump’s thumbing his nose at a Supreme Court ruling. This isn’t “tough on crime,” it’s lawless, un-American trash — and folks know it. This is Iowa!

Harvard does NOT accede: www.harvard.edu/research-fun...

The Massachusetts governor, the city, and the university needs to drop everything to locate and free this girl and make sure this doesn't happen again. This is DEFCON-1. If they do this to someone who wrote an op-ed in a college newspaper, they will do this to anyone they don't like.

A little bit of good news from Lancaster County PA. In a special election for a state senate seat, Dems flipped a Ruby Red district.

My university @upenn.edu and others keeps saying "it's not really possible to spend the endowment" but this is a somewhat different perspective.

I'm just a nobody. and I don't think that anybody listens to me. Nevertheless, I feel obligated to say: I think that at *this moment* anyone who will might stand up needs to stand up. At *this moment* anyone who doesn't want fascism needs to say that they don't want fascism.

What happened to Columbia (and Penn) is illegal and unconstitutional.

Welp. Looks like the fascist wolf is at *my* door.

It is absolutely infuriating to me that they cancelled the individual fellowships of grad students and postdocs. But, that's what fascists do...punch down on the weak, just to show that you can.

I signed this letter and I urge my other Jewish colleagues to do the same. It infuriates me that this fascistic attack on the universities is--supposedly--being done to "protect" us. It is not. We should make this crystal clear.

Turnout at the Philly @standupforscience.bsky.social march was incredible! I'm not great at measuring crowds, but this was easily >1k. Wish I could have gotten an elevated view.

Friday, March 7 Join us for a poster-making session ahead of the March in 111 Levin. Poster supplies provided. +Coffee and doughnuts 9:30 – Poster Making 10:30 – Walk together to City Hall This is science outreach. This is science advocacy. @standupforscience.bsky.social

I will be at the @standupforscience.bsky.social rally tomorrow in Philadelphia--11 am at City Hall. For those of you at Penn @pennmindcore.bsky.social is doing a poster making session beforehand!

This is a case that I find especially interesting. Musk was not confirmed by the Senate, and in any case the Constitution says that appointments "shall be established by law." This would seem to mean DOGE is unconstitutional. But...will the courts agree? And can they do anything about it?

This webpage is extremely useful for keeping track of all the lawsuits against the DOGE coup. Most of what they are doing is blatantly illegal and/or unconstitutional. News reports don't always explain this clearly...the legal filings do. www.justsecurity.org/107087/track...

The purge at NIH is outrageous (as was the purge at AID beforehand). Truly we are hurtling towards a new dark age.

I agree with Nancy 100% on this.

Seems odd to post about minor work stuff in the middle of a constitutional crisis. But nevertheless, cannot resist sharing...I just got a review request for my own article! That's the good news. The bad news is that we submitted the manuscript *three months ago*.