Abby Polter

congrats to blackberry the hen!

one thing that helped me with this was to analyze my writing and make a list of specific ways that I tended to hedge- the words and constructions I tended to lean on. I then use that as a checklist while editing to search and destroy those.

daShareZ0ne "just walk out" meme with the text changed to: Room with sex criminal donor in it Even if he smiles at you Even if his publicist says he thinks you’re smart Even if he shares your passion for evopsych Even if it’s Jim Watson’s birthday

Let's empower each other.

no such thing as other people's children

The fact that there’s a secret network of doulas going around Minneapolis to help with home births for parents afraid of ICE should be front-page news.

These children, born in secrecy, are American citizens.

Meet the neuroscientist running for Congress Sam Wang, a neuroscientist running for the U.S. House of Representatives, has been interested in “fixing bugs in democracy” for decades.

I spoke with Laura Schenkman at The Transmitter about my candidacy for the House!

Going from the lab to public life is a huge transition. From a lifetime of research to biotech to democracy to running for office, here’s the story of one scientist: www.thetransmitter.org/policy/is-th...

Alysa Liu telling 60 Minutes “I love struggling, it makes me feel alive” is a legit revolutionary statement from a Bay Area native in a time when copious amounts of time and resources are being put toward convincing us to opt out of experiencing struggle, friction and self-actualization

Occasionally reminded that Georgia added a “post tenure review” process bc they were so certain that professors became deadweight once they had job security, and all the outcomes have proven JUST THE OPPOSITE! People work harder and in more complex ways when they feel secure in their employment.

Velveeta + Rotel

ok my question was more about the fish part than the dead part

...among other activities
www.thecrimson.com/article/2026...

Keri are those...dead fish?!?!

TGIF Kurt. TGIF.

good morning the pest control guys for my building just appeared in the flower beds in front of my window and one of them rummaged around and said "aww yeah a big dude today" before triumphantly holding up a giant dead rat and tossing it over the bushes into a bucket the other one was holding.

my first PhD student defended today (and did an outstanding job) and one thing I didn't realize before is that one of the real joys of being a mentor to graduate students is getting to meet their proud happy family at their defense.

I loved The Antidote!

Ok obviously this is very bad but everyone who has ever been to an academic conference is currently doing the arrested development "but maybe it would work for us" meme in their head

She never lived to see this moment, but it’s worth remembering that none of this would have happened without Virginia Giuffre.

She had the courage to speak out against power and privilege when it was just her word against Andrew’s.

Thanks to her, justice & accountability may finally have its day.

despite all that, Alysa seems to have eventually ended up... pretty much ok?

I am so proud to share @forrestdrogers.bsky.social’s postdoctoral magnum opus, now out in @nature.com! Forrest discovered a novel role for Agouti in the MPOA of the hypothalamus to integrate socio-environmental information to flexibly tune paternal behavior
www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Thread! 👇🏻

🚨 Please share! My lab is hiring a Research Assistant! This is a great opportunity to gain experience with cutting-edge systems neuroscience techniques in a collaborative research environment. If you're interested, check the link for further details: jobs.colorado.edu/jobs/JobDeta...

Writing is thinking.

It's not some marginal boring task you can skip. It's the heart of it.

Duration between rewards controls the rate of behavioral and dopaminergic learning - Nature Neuroscience Cue–reward learning rate scales proportionally with the time between rewards. Consequently, learning over a fixed duration is independent of the number of trials. This challenges trial-based dopamine ...

Very excited to post our paper led by @daburke.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41... where we uncover a simple mathematical rule underlying how brains learn that a cue predicts a reward. 1/26

See also collaborations. One of the greatest joys of my post-tenure life has been curating collaborations with genuinely *good* people in all senses of the word. Life is too short to tolerate less.

My (awesome) department @bcpsychneuro.bsky.social is looking for a Visiting Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology/Neuroscience. 3-2 teaching load and competetive compensation. Area of expertise is broad. Apply here. Email me with questions! apply.interfolio.com/178919 Please RT #Neuroskyence

butterfly meme 8 hours writing achievement: deleted two lines in this progress?

# AcademicChatter

also some more recent evidence that EBV causes lupus. A vaccine that could wipe out TWO autoimmune diseases and we're not leaping at the chance to get it into people as soon as possible?

If Moderna is no longer bringing vaccine trials for Epstein-Barr virus (good evidence that EB causes Multiple Sclerosis), herpes, and shingles because of Trump appointees, I want prison time for those appointees.

This might be dooming millions to disease they don’t have to experience.

It's corny as hell but the solution to fascism is loving thy neighbor

Happy birthday to one of my favourite haters, Charles Darwin