Simon Titone

I feared this in 2016, but now it’s happened:

The CDC is gone. Strike them from your list of reliable purveyors of information.

What is the most profitable industry in the world, this side of the law? Not oil, not IT, not pharma.

It's *scientific publishing*.

We call this the Drain of Scientific Publishing.

Paper: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Background: doi.org/10.1162/qss_...

Thread @markhanson.fediscience.org.ap.brid.gy 👇

I Want You to Understand Chicago Politics Chicago 2025-11-08 I want you to understand what it is like to live in Chicago during this time. Every day my phone buzzes. It is a neighborhood group: four people were kidnapped at the corner drugstore. A friend a mile away sends a Slack message: she was at the scene when masked men assaulted and abducted two people on the street. A plumber working on my pipes is distraught, and I find out that two of his employees were kidnapped that morning. A week later it happens again. An email arrives. Agents with guns have chased a teacher into the school where she works. They did not have a warrant. They dragged her away, ignoring her and her colleagues’ pleas to show proof of her documentation. That evening I stand a few feet from the parents of Rayito de Sol and listen to them describe, with anguish, how good Ms. Diana was to their children. What it is like to have strangers with guns traumatize your kids. For a teacher to hide a three-year-old child for fear they might be killed. How their relatives will no longer leave the house. I hear the pain and fury in their voices, and I wonder who will be next. Understand what it is to pray in Chicago. On September 19th, Reverend David Black, lead pastor at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, was praying outside the ICE detention center in Broadview when a DHS agent shot him in the head with pepper balls. Pepper balls are never supposed to be fired at the head because they can seriously injure, or even kill. “We could hear them laughing as they were shooting us from the roof,” Black recalled. He is not the only member of the clergy ICE has assaulted. Methodist pastor Hannah Kardon was violently arrested on October 17th, and Baptist pastor Michael Woolf was shot with pepper balls on November 1st. Understand what it is to sleep in Chicago. On the night of September 30th, federal agents rappelled from a Black Hawk helicopter to execute a raid on an apartment building on the South Sho…

Kyle Kingsbury is not a journalist. He is not an op-ed writer.

He is a computer safety researcher.

And he has written one of the most compelling, comprehensive accounts of the ongoing hell in Chicago that you could possibly imagine.

In under 1600 words.

aphyr.com/posts/397-i-...

This is not a call-out to any PI in particular, just an amalgamation of my feelings over the past 3.5 years of applying for postdoctoral positions.

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models - Nature Stereotypes of age-related gender bias are socially distorted, as evidenced by the age gap in the representations of women and men across various media and algorithms, despite no systematic age differ...

Age and gender distortion in online media and large language models

"Furthermore, when generating and evaluating resumes, ChatGPT assumes that women are younger and less experienced, rating older male applicants as of higher quality."

No surprise, but now documented:
www.nature.com/articles/s41...

If there’s one thing about the last decade that has truly done my head in, it’s seeing how many people - including many very well educated people with power - appear to be totally incapable of spotting an obvious bullshitter in the act of bullshitting.

Frodo: “I wish it need not have happened in my time."

Gandalf: "So do I, and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

J.R.R. Tolkien

My mom called me last night about the Kimmel firing, saying "This is how Hitler got started!" I quickly responded, "By firing the late night tv hosts?"

Turns out, mom was right.

Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime (Published 1939)

These are precedented times and the precedent is a loud ass warning

www.nytimes.com/1939/02/04/a...

Map of Regional Public Health Coalitions Northeast Public Health Collaborative (Blue) West Coast Health Alliance (Yellow)

IT'S OFFICIAL: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York State, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and New York City have formed the Northeast Public Health Collaborative.

The collaborative will issue their own vaccine recommendations and coordinate public health efforts.

Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads Philosophers are fond of saying that their field boosts critical thinking. Two of them decided to put that claim to the test.

Studying philosophy does make people better thinkers, according to new research on more than 600,000 college grads theconversation.com/studying-phi...

"You know the Reichstag fire? Where the Nazis, oh that's us in this analogy, they used it as an excuse to take over the government and then start WWII and commit heinous genocide? Yeah that's us right now. It's like the Mitchell & Webb skit except I'm saying we ARE the baddies. Like the Nazis."

🧠 New preprint! 🧠

As part of a forthcoming book on consciousness, we wrote a chapter on:

Spontaneous thoughts and experiences across wakefulness and sleep
osf.io/preprints/ps...

with @parboulakis.bsky.social @ademertzi.bsky.social and @jdsitt.bsky.social

A brief 🧵!

✨✨ We are excited to announce the OHBM Australian Chapter 2025 Annual Meeting! 🧠🇦🇺

📢 Abstract submissions & registration now OPEN (abstract submission closes September 15th at 5pm)

📍 Melbourne 🏙️☕
📅 Wednesday, November 12, 2025

ohbm-aus.github.io/posts/2025-a...

We hope to see you there! 🤩

Noradrenaline drives learning across scales of time and neurobiological organisation The noradrenergic system plays a diverse role in learning, from optimising learning behaviour to modulating plasticity. Work bridging across micro- and macroscale levels is revealing how noradrenaline achieves this diverse role in learning. Through its balance of targeted versus broad modulation of neurons and non-neuronal astrocytes, the noradrenergic system acts across multiple neurobiological and temporal scales to support adaptive learning. With a multiscale organisation that constrains behaviour and brain dynamics based on value-laden information, and the capacity to bridge the fast neural timescales of milliseconds with the slower timescales of natural behaviour, the noradrenergic system acts as an ‘orchestra conductor’ coordinating learning across scales.

Online Now: Noradrenaline drives learning across scales of time and neurobiological organisation

New paper in Imaging Neuroscience by Carinna Torgerson, Megan M. Herting, et al:

More similarity than difference: Comparison of within- and between-sex variance in early adolescent brain structure

doi.org/10.1162/IMAG...

Distinct theta signatures of involuntary and voluntary memory retrieval. A. Left, top: time course of theta power in significant electrodes. T-sum values above zero indicate significant time points. Left, bottom: time-frequency plot of theta-band activity as mean across all significant electrodes. Time-frequency plots are only displayed for illustrative purposes and were not used for inference statistics. Right: topographical plot of significant electrode clusters. Significant electrodes are highlighted as bold dots. B. Source localization of significant theta-band cluster and bar plot depicting mean theta-power of full-hits (FH) and correct rejections (CR) within source localized clusters. C. Corresponding time-frequency analysis for voluntary retrieval. D. Source localization of significant theta-band clusters during voluntary retrieval and bar plots illustrating mean theta-power of full-hits and correct rejections within source localized clusters.

Involuntary memory retrieval is a common phenomenon in autobiographical #memory, and a symptom of #PTSD. This study reveals the neural mechanism of #InvoluntaryMemory, showing that involuntary & voluntary memories rely on distinct neural processes @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4oQkb3e

A dream EEG and mentation database Nature Communications - The authors present a multicenter database to investigate the neural correlates of dreaming, including physiological, behavioral and experiential data. This database could...

Dream start for database that aims to improve our understanding of conscious experience in sleep

Free link to the paper in Nature Communication is rdcu.be/eAwni !

People living under fascism didn’t survive by giving up joy—they protected it.

They held onto the things fascism tried to erase: art, friendship, jokes, rituals, language, memory.

Not as escapism but as resistance. As proof they were still human.

Joy isn’t frivolous under fascism. It’s strategic.

It's like, how many warnings do we have to give?
Every disaster starts with scientists being ignored and that is not a movie... #BirdFlu #H5N1
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This increased functional connectivity continues to be robust in musicians (esp singers) - more evidence that learning to play an instrument is beneficial. 🧠🎶 (And yes, you can start learning to sing at any age!) #neuroskyence #music

BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed. Any unpublished manuscript mentioning certain topics, including gender and "LGBT," must be pulled or revised.

BREAKING NEWS: CDC orders mass retraction and revision of submitted research across all science and medicine journals. Banned terms must be scrubbed.

Goes beyond MMWR +other CDC pubs. Applies to research already submitted to top medical journals.

Take a look.
open.substack.com/pub/insideme...

As a licensed psychologist I am saying with my whole chest: Gender-affirming care for young people is health care. Medically necessary, age-appropriate, science-backed, life-saving health care, supported by EVERY major medical association.

It is our duty to protect trans youth at all costs.

The Chaos in Higher Ed Is Only Getting Started Grant reviews have been suspended at the NIH. This could be an omen.

The fact that NIH grant-making has been switched off so haphazardly, for reasons that remain unclear, and despite the scope of troubles it creates, suggests that higher ed will be profoundly vulnerable during the second Trump era, writes @ibogost.bsky.social:

A progress pride flag painted onto a street crosswalk, with crosswalk intersection striping on the left hand side.

Hello everyone! We compiled a list of Trans Inclusive / LGBTQIA+ health resources. Normally we wouldn't ask for engagement, but sharing this around would be deeply appreciated. Remember: You're not alone. We'll endure.

www.broadlyepi.com/lgbtqia-heal...

#MedSky #LGBTQIA+ #TransRights #HumanRights

Everyone who works at nasa must have come there with hearts full of exploration and wonder and love of humanity and I don’t know how you can read that email and not feel like you work at a place that is small and cruel

I'm new to the area, so any suggestions of groups or positions that may value experience in ephys recordings of human subjects would be super valuable at this point. ☺️

I'm experienced in experimental design, data collection, advanced statistical analysis, scientific writing, and public presentations, and have worked in academia and clinical research settings.