Ashley de Marchena ☕️

Furloughed NIH worker: Left office with 'pit' in my stomach about future of our country On day three of the government shutdown, around 750,000 federal employees are furloughed as the White House threatens mass firings as early as today. Furloughed NIH Program Director Jenna Norton joins...

Shared how the greater shutdown of NIH science has been underway since January on @msnbc.com today.

We need Congress to stand firm to protect science, democracy and the American people.

www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/wat...

Yes! I’ve been dying for someone to make this figure.

General reminder that people who engage in political assassinations often have pretty muddled world views.

That and fever reduction! You know fevers, that are harmful to both the pregnant person and the fetus? Yeah, keep those raging.

The .5 is pretty much diagnostic.

BREAKING: Robert F. Kennedy Jr poised to surpass gun violence as leading cause of death among American children.

The pretexts for these paramilitary takeovers don’t matter

They’re lies

Don’t buy into their narrative

They’re normalizing military takeovers

That should be the opposing narrative, not crime rates which let them steer the conversation

WE should steer it
What they’re doing is unacceptable
Period

With @jamestrujillo.bsky.social

New Research Recommendations for Supporting Autistic Adults to Ensure Their Communication Success To better understand the communication difficulties experienced by autistic adults and help the clinicians and researchers who have autistic people in their lives, researchers from Drexel University’s...

Want to be a better communication partner for the autistic adults in your life? Here are some of our top recommendations:

⏳ Allow time for processing.

🗣️ Focus on explicit communication.

🔍 Check in for understanding.

📏 Use direct, concrete language.

💬 Offer alternatives such as writing.

a cartoon of a man and a dog with the words now 's the time for action written on the bottom ALT: a cartoon of a man and a dog with the words now 's the time for action written on the bottom

IMPORTANT UPDATE IMPORTANT UPDATE

Regarding APHU/ACLU et al. vs. NIH Lawsuit

Thanks for sharing our work, @thinkingautism.com!

Psychologist here! As a field, we completely agree with you (look up “biopsychosocial model”, eg). This is why change is so hard! Not impossible - but really really hard.

Really appreciated Peter’s discussion of children’s rights to an education vs. parents’ rights to control their education. Would love to learn about more cases in which parent/child rights are potentially in conflict.

Teenage boy holding a series of six images based on his favorite podcast.

@michaelhobbes.bsky.social @notalawyer.bsky.social @ifbookspod.bsky.social

My son turned 14 today so of course we had to gift him an AI-generated “we deserve this cheese” poster. AI was not especially cooperative, but that made it all the more enjoyable.

Thank you @thinkingautism.com for highlighting our new study on nonverbal communication experiences of autistic adults!

This one was an absolute treat to work on.

With Holly Radford, @drstevenkapp.bsky.social, and Bronte Reidinger

Study author here! Thanks for sharing, @thinkingautism.com!

@jamestrujillo.bsky.social took us on a post-conference joy ride around the canals of Utrecht! Way better than a Zoom meeting and especially great spending time together after catching up on all of his great work at @isgs2025.bsky.social!

With @jamestrujillo.bsky.social, Maci Brown, Emine Gurbuz, Nicole Cuneo, and Jennifer Bergstrom

Communication in Autistic Adults: An Action-Focused Review - Current Psychiatry Reports Purpose of Review This review focuses on recent research (primarily published between 2020–2024) describing unique aspects of communication in autistic adults. We review research on communication-rela...

Our new review explores how autistic adults experience & express communication – and how environments & partners shape that. We spotlight AAC, nonverbals, double empathy, & more. Plus: practical tips for clinicians & researchers to be better communication partners and allies.
#autism #research

A Dem lawmaker and her husband were killed by a guy for their political views and it’s already out of the news.

I signed!

Seems a good time to invite Sen Britt to watch an NIH review panel (aka study section) analyze piles of grants over several days to identify the <10% that win funding. Applications that scientists spent months preparing, whose peers spent weeks poring through in advance of review mtg at NIH.

Another thing I’m increasingly frustrated with is every we find evidence of real harms associated with, eg, school closures, it is immediately interpreted as a mistake in policy. Folks seem to be comparing outcomes with a fictional no pandemic scenario, and not with the reality of the crisis.

🤯

So then Elon goes "Kill the Bill!" and Trump goes "Elon has TDS!" so Elon goes "I'm the reason Trump won!" so Trump goes "we waste billions on Elon!" so Elon goes "Epstein!" and a corpulent flunkie goes "Deport Elon!" and Elon goes "Impeach!"

And THAT'S why women are too emotional to be President.

We need 3.5% of the population to get and make their voices heard on June 14th. That’s 230,000 per state with CA and NY augmenting WY and the Dakotas. We can do this! PS. Canada, we need your help!!!!

Scientist and science-loving friends: urgent call to action!

Anyone who says they’re tough on crime but have no intention of being tough on poverty doesn’t really care about crime.

Wouldn’t mind some time in Europe but personally I’m not very mobile at the time, and pragmatically, nowhere in the world spends nearly as much on science as the US does, so there’s not much to go around. Always something that made me proud to be an American.

@robinity.bsky.social last week we were at the meeting of the International Society for Autism Research and not a SINGLE person I spoke with knew a SINGLE person working or consulting on the new RFK “study”. 😬