Vijay Marupudi

Watching more and more people use chatbots for hours everyday for science, work, and their personal lives and not seeing much concern about this... Welp

The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World How Textiles Made the World

Highly recommend reading The Fabric of Civilization by Virginia Postrel. It discusses the engineering, science, history, and culture behind textiles in an engaging but detailed way! Learned so many things...

bookshop.org/p/books/the-...

Your Iranian colleagues are cut off from family back home & are in a state of collective grief, which has many faces. We may appear more aloof or be more impatient, may self-isolate, have more typos, may freeze or overwork to numb the pain, or find fear, memory, or hope in unexpected moments.

We were wrong about being able to 'nudge' people to improve the world We thought we could address big social problems by steering individual behaviour. But "nudging" people doesn't work, say behavioural scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein

We thought we could address big social problems by steering individual behaviour. But "nudging" people doesn't work, say behavioural scientists Nick Chater and George Loewenstein

Persepolis (film) - Wikipedia

I recommend watching en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepo...

Been thinking about Mahsa Amini, Narges Mohammadi, and Erfan Soltani

With some trepidation, I'm putting this out into the world:
gershmanlab.com/textbook.html
It's a textbook called Computational Foundations of Cognitive Neuroscience, which I wrote for my class.

My hope is that this will be a living document, continuously improved as I get feedback.

Consider signing up to Skype a Scientist! Talk to children about what you work on, why science is important, and how we learn things!

www.skypeascientist.com

Still waiting for a major university to develop and adopt a productive no-LLM policy before it is too late...

I think we need to! In addition to specific instruction, I also think students need to be incentivized to write without LLMs. Students often say that AI generated writing is better than their own, so they feel like they have to use it to avoid getting a lower grade relative to their peers....

Poverty Is Expensive YouTube video by vlogbrothers

www.youtube.com/watch?v=btS0...

Science Homecoming

Please join @spiantado.bsky.social at @caltech.edu today for an in-person ScienceHomecoming event with The Caltech Y
www.caltechy.org/programs/sas...

hell yeah

Spotted on LinkedIn... a bad AI summary of our new paper on risks of AI in research.

Please make it stop.

Psychology friends, "the Professor" who Don is referring to here is cognitive psychology professor Art Markman.

Very excited to share a new preprint that’s been brewing for a long time! This work was led by the exceptional @traceym.bsky.social, and made possible by a developmental + comparative + computational dream team.

osf.io/preprints/ps...

AAUP Organize Every Campus: Core Skills Training (Oct 2025 Registration Form) Chapters are encouraged to send at least five people to the training. Please choose one person to serve as a coordinator for your chapter. *Only the coordinator should complete this registration* If...

The AAUP is doing a skills training for campus organizing. Is your school participating?

docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Trump offers universities a choice: Comply for preferential funding Who needs peer review? Plan offers easier grants to schools that agree to limits.

Sigh... Hoping universities say no

Very disappointed on behalf of all the second-year graduate students (including one from my group) who could have applied last year, but who waited until this fall, based on the rule that you can only apply once!

I hope people will speak out about the threats to freedom of sppech which are happening at this very moment

Pay. For. News.

Published authors by career stage: Pre-doc 42%, Post-doc 18%, Faculty 39%

Participation has been outstanding at every level, across diverse science fields. We’ve published nearly 300 articles in local hometowns. 🧪🏠 Write yours today with help here:

sciencehomecoming.com

UC Berkeley shares 160 names with Trump administration in ‘McCarthy era’ move Prominent professor Judith Butler among students and faculty investigated for ‘alleged antisemitic incidents’

From the home of the free speech movement

Saving the starfish | Andrew Perfors A parable for a struggling world

perfors.net/blog/saving-...

psych departments post a faculty job that has nothing to do with AI challenge

I've lived under multiple repressive and dysfunctional governments where political violence was a real possibility. Life in those places is horrible. I specifically wanted to come to the US to avoid this. What a shitty situation.

Political violence is bad, no matter who it is. When people's lives are at stake, the people who you want to be in power won't want it.

Just cause the the people in power are disgraceful doesn't mean that people should stoop to their level.

I'm a bit more enthusiastic about interdisciplinarity than other-Paul, but I endorse this 1000%:
"If you’re genuinely interested in a domain, you should be engaged with the work of other smart people who approach the issue—even if they are housed in different parts of the university."

‪Conrad Hackett‬ ‪@conradhackett.bsky.social‬ · 9mo We often worry about the wrong things. People killed annually by Sharks 10 Elephants 100 Hippos 500 Snails 10,000 Dogs 25,000 Snakes 50,000 People 475,000 Mosquitoes 725,000 🧪 This graphic, created for Bill Gates' website, shows that diseases transmitted by mosquitoes are responsible for vastly more human deaths than other animals. While sharks inspire fear in many, they kill few people. ALT 378 1.1K ‪Conrad Hackett‬ ‪@conradhackett.bsky.social‬ · 9mo Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction Graphic from Edward Tufte More graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d... 🧪 Graphic shows dramatic reduction in polio, rubella, mumps, measles, and hepatitis A cases after the introduction of vaccines for each disease. ALT 132 1.8K ‪Conrad Hackett‬ ‪@conradhackett.bsky.social‬ · 1mo About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported. www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/... About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported About four-in-ten immigrants (43%) say they worry a lot or some, up from 33% in March. www.pewresearch.org 98 1.1K ‪Conrad Hackett‬ ‪@conradhackett.bsky.social‬ · 3d Disease prevalence in US states before & after vaccine introduction 🧪 From Edward Tufte & graphics.wsj.com/infectious-d... 41 928 ‪Conrad Hackett‬ ‪@conradhackett.bsky.social‬ · 9mo Americans killed annually by All Islamic jihadist terrorists 9 Armed toddlers 21 Lightning 31 Lawnmowers 69 Busses 264 Falling out of bed 737 Being shot by another American 11,737 2017 estimates. The Royal Statistical Society gave this compilation its International Statistic of the Year award. Chart compiling statistics on the number of Americans killed annually various causes. Includes source notes. ALT 61 609 ‪Conrad Hackett‬ ‪@conradhackett.bsk…

In 2019, 70% of Republicans said science has had a mostly positive effect on society. A few years later, fewer than half of Republicans (47%) said so.
www.pewresearch.org/science/2023... 🧪🌐

Here's a #GiftLink for those who want to read the full NYT obit of historian of science & gender, Margaret Rossiter. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/29/s... #histSTM 🧪🗃️