Alex Silver

Alex Silver

@alexsilverlevy.bsky.social

Postdoc at Penn & Pitt playing with babies & studying how we learn math

273 Followers 661 Following 15 Posts Joined Nov 2024
3 months ago

A third infant in Kentucky has died of whooping cough this year.

Reminder: The best way to protect against whooping cough is to get vaccinated. Adults should get a Tdap booster every 10 years, so please check, you may be overdue!

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3 months ago

How awful. This is outright health disinformation, lying to the American people. Not only is there massive evidence showing no link between vaccines & autism, there’s not even a plausible mechanism based on what we’ve learned about the genetics of autism, some environmental exposures in pregnancy

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3 months ago
Submit a Claim

Hey authors! Check to see if Anthropic stole your book to train their slop generator on. You’re entitled to $1500 per stolen Work.

Look up your work, and if you’re in the database, file a claim
secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/lookup/

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4 months ago
NOT-OD-26-005: Interim Guidance on Reopening of NIH Extramural Activities NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices in the NIH Guide for Grants and Contracts: Interim Guidance on Reopening of NIH Extramural Activities NOT-OD-26-005. NIH

NIH grant applicants:

October and November grant application submission *deadlines* will be rescheduled (🤯). Specific dates TBD.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

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4 months ago

you could fact check this — there aren’t 30 million illegal immigrants and there is no evidence that the presence of an immigrant in say houston has any impact on housing in madison, wisconsin — or you could note straightforwardly that this is just nazi rhetoric

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4 months ago

BREAKING: The Supreme Court denied an attempt to challenge Obergefell v. Hodges, the case affirming marriage equality nationwide.

Our freedom to marry remains the law of the land.

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4 months ago

How about we shut down the government for this very popular and specific goal and then, hear me out, we hold out for like a month and a half and then, ok this part is important, after a watershed election where we ran the table, ONLY THEN, fold and don't get the one thing we said we wanted.

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4 months ago
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GitHub - hadley/genzplyr: dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap dplyr but make it bussin fr fr no cap. Contribute to hadley/genzplyr development by creating an account on GitHub.

Do you teach #rstats? Do your students complain about how lame and old-fashioned dplyr is? Don't worry: I have the solution for you: github.com/hadley/genzp....

genzplyr is dplyr, but bussin fr fr no cap.

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4 months ago

Watching RFK jr run away from someone collapsing feels like a harbinger of things to come

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4 months ago
Meme showing six logical operators illustrated with jack-o'-lantern images. 

trick OR treat 
trick AND treat 
trick XOR treat 
trick NOR treat 
trick NAND treat 
trick XNOR treat
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4 months ago

I love kids. I have two of them. They’re amazing. However, kids are the absolute least self aware, clumsiest little puffins on the planet.

Please don’t drive tonight unless you have to, and if you do drive, drive super slow and pay 100% attention at all times.

Happy Halloween! 🎃 👻 💀

#PublicHealth

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4 months ago

Pennsylvania has an important Supreme Court race coming up on Tuesday, November 4. If you live in the Keystone State, or know someone who does, vote YES to retain three justices who will protect your fundamental rights and freedoms.

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4 months ago

The Senate is still meeting and holding votes as normal despite the shutdown.

The House has not held a vote in a month and a half now solely because Mike Johnson wants to prevent the release of the Epstein Files.

They've killed our government to save their pedophiles.

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4 months ago
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Scientists had to change more than 700 grant titles to receive NIH funding. Health disparities researchers fear what’s next The titles of more than 700 multi-year NIH grants have been changed this year, according to an analysis by Jeremy Berg, a former agency official

New story up on the non-existent banned words from NIH grants (based on my grant title, word cloud analysis)

www.statnews.com/2025/10/29/n...

1/3

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4 months ago
Here's why Vanderbilt's response to the Trump higher ed 'compact' is not enough | Opinion With the deadline looming for colleges to sign Trump's "compact," Vanderbilt must resist, says one university professor.

"Vanderbilt is failing in its moral responsibility to push back against rising authoritarianism and political coercion."

My effort to convince Vanderbilt (and all universities) to take a stand for the rule of law, the Constitution, and our democracy.

www.tennessean.com/story/opinio...

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4 months ago

Today, the White House Press Secretary told the country that this ridiculous damn ballroom is “the president’s main priority”…not reopening the government, not lowering the cost of groceries, not lowering the cost of housing, not lowering the cost of healthcare….building a ballroom

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4 months ago

With millions at risk of losing SNAP in the coming days, a reminder: hunger doesn't happen in isolation. When food assistance disappears, families use rent money to eat. Then come evictions and homelessness.

Housing, food, healthcare—it's all connected. Cut one thread and the whole thing unravels.

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4 months ago
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio

Columbia Psych is hiring *two* junior faculty in Cognitive Science/Neuroscience this year! If you work on cognition (broadly defined), submit your application materials as soon as possible (review starts Nov 1). If you have questions you can reach out to me by email! apply.interfolio.com/175428

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4 months ago

"you will be intellectually transformed by the process of reckoning with the knowledge these courses are about"

Essential reading about why learning is important even if/when you forget the specific content (and is especially important in these times)

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4 months ago
An email appointing Kyle Walsh is director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

VERY TROUBLING NEWS REGARDING NIH INSTITUTE DIRECTORS

A new appointment for NIEHS

1/3

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5 months ago
Post image

There are reports that the *entire* office of special education at the US Dept of Education has been cut. These hardworking folks ensure kids with disabilities get equal access to a quality education.

America’s children deserve better than this.

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5 months ago
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Trump Administration Will Rehire Scores of Experts Fired in Error

Seeing a lot of celebration of this as a win.

But at NIH we have seen this exact play before.

It looks like it is the Vought strategy -and to stop the lawless firings we have to see the bigger picture.
A 🧵:

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5 months ago

I don’t know who needs to hear this but the CDC is being eviscerated right now. America is not going to have any kind of outbreak response capacity after tonight. Americans’ health data is no longer secure. Say goodbye to federal public health in any capacity. It’s a disaster. We won’t recover.

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5 months ago

aaand we are officially in the hide-your-neighbors stage

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5 months ago

Everyone who studies research methods just had an aneurysm

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5 months ago
photo of Google News search results for Amazon Prime Day (the second this year)

twice a year the entire U.S. press becomes a marketing extension of a single billionaire-owned retailer, and nobody in any position of editorial power thinks it's weird or gross

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5 months ago
Donald Trump Truth Social Post: Chicago Mayor should be in jail for failing to protect Ice Officers! Governor Pritzker also.

I will not back down.

Trump is now calling for the arrest of elected representatives checking his power.

What else is left on the path to full-blown authoritarianism?

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5 months ago
Poster-style graphic with bold text reading “TELL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES: THE QUACK RFK Jr. HAS TO GO!” A large photo of RFK Jr. is overlaid with a yellow biohazard sign, while a man’s shoe is about to kick him out. At the bottom, logos and text say “Stand Up For Science” and “Fuel the fight: standupforscience.net.”

🚨BREAKING NEWS: Congresswoman files articles of impeachment against RFK Jr. We've been sounding the alarm for months, sending 3k+ quack-o-grams, and collecting 25k petition signatures calling on our reps to impeach & remove RFK Jr.

We’re closing in on him. Help us WIN the fight. 🦆 zurl.co/vkZQV

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