Trent Wirth

I (ironically, given the world circumstances) have greater inner peace and acceptance than any other time in my life.

Whether I get this job or not, I’ll be here and I’ll be okay. Maybe even good.

What initially re-inspired me to pursue a tenure track job was teaching Sensation & Perception. It reminded me that there are questions I’d spend my career trying to answer, if someone would let me.

I accepted the position I’m in thinking it was temporary, prioritizing location and family and deciding I’d see what happens.

During and coming out of my post-doc, I didn’t want to be in academia at all. I applied to almost 100 industry positions, I got really close at a bunch of major tech companies, but the mismatch mostly came down to location. I applied to one academic position and it’s the one I got 😆

I doubted my capability to succeed in academia my entire career; in part because I wasn’t a rockstar graduate student. Working as a teaching track professor for 2.5 years and serving on a search committee has changed how I see myself; I saw how hiring decisions get made on the inside.

Today, I submitted my first ever application for a Tenure Track position.

It’s my first application for a variety of reasons, but these are the main two:
1. I believe I’m capable of receiving offers
2. I want to accept them

That last point that “thinking precedes language” is great, and deeply tied to the fact (I’d argue) that language (and thinking) is embodied

Freedom from kings.
Freedom from fascism.
Power to the people forever. ♥️

Happy Independence Day 🇺🇸

I wish them both the worst.

My ongoing request:

If your NSF or NIH grant was terminated--whether at Harvard or elsewhere--please report it here.

NSF: grant-watch.us/submit-nsf.h...

NIH: grant-watch.us/submit-nih.h...

Our trackers are actively used in lawsuits and are often the only record that terminations ever occurred.

Screenshot of table showing number of grants and total value terminated by NSF directorate. STEM Education directorate is highlighted, with 417 terminations totaling 322 million dollars. CSV of table: Directorate,No. Terminated,Total Value Biological Sciences,46,"$27,960,075" Computer and Information Science and Engineering,85,"$44,630,113" Engineering,94,"$33,472,485" Geosciences,52,"$36,454,740" Mathematical and Physical Sciences,30,"$6,418,312" Office of the Director,7,"$4,859,738" STEM Education,417,"$322,680,063" "Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences",266,"$77,635,904" "Technology, Innovation and Partnerships",46,"$62,231,309"

UPDATE: We have data on >1000 terminated #NSF grants at grant-watch.us. Thanks to all who have been contributing data the past few days.

We've also added a "Reports" section with some analyses. For NSF, we see that the STEM education directorate has been absolutely pummeled.

I guess hoaxes and fake news stories are enough for Trump to fire you these days, who knew

/s

Am I losing developed resilience by not working through that friction? I could be. However, as a father of a toddler with a 3-4 teaching load, chatbots have helped me to submit a successful grant application I otherwise probably wouldn’t have written.

4/4

I don’t see chatbots (in this instance) very differently than other accessibility tools. They help me communicate by reducing friction in the work.

3/4

1. I’m an external processor, I do my best thinking when interfacing with something outside of my own mind

2. I’ve always had a hard time initializing writing, generative AI takes my unstructured thoughts and turns it into a (typically) bad first draft. Then I edit! It works well for me.

2/4

I appreciate your posts and your skepticism, it challenges me frequently in how much I enjoy generative text, specifically. Having thought a lot about it, there are two main reasons I want to do “that”:

1/4

Just like how studying gun violence isn’t a violation of the second amendment

I guess my new collective action study I’ve got in the works to study misinformation won’t be funded :)

You didn’t finish your last sentence:

— which is terrifying.

This is a completely tangential question but did you screen for people (like me) with aphantasia?

If you tell me to imagine a rotating circle, I “can”, but it’s not visual. Curious what differences you’d find

It’s weird to optimistically plan for the future in the midst of this bullshit

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Not neuroimaging data, but for the motion capture system I used at Northeastern we used something like this — I liked it a lot and would use it again

www.synology.com/en-us/produc...

FOOTSTEPPR, generate footstep sounds for your games
games.increpare.com/footsteppr/i...

Welcome to Bluesky @foovian.bsky.social !

#psychsky
#neuroskynce
#neurosky

The problem with most machine-based random number generators is that they’re not TRULY random, so if you need genuine randomness it is sometimes necessary to link your code to an external random process like a physical noise source or the current rate of US tariffs on a given country.

I’ve messed with fonts way too much and landed on Ubuntu being a font I really love

Why this Yale professor is fleeing America NPR's A Martinez asks Yale University philosophy professor Jason Stanley, an expert on fascism, about his decision to leave the U.S. and accept a position teaching American studies in Canada.

Martínez: But what war can be won without funding?

Stanley: You might lose anyway. But you can't win a war unless you recognize it's a war.

Yale professor on Trump defunding universities

www.npr.org/2025/04/01/n...

What a fire quote 🤣

I want to hit snooze on April Fools Day

Signed.