Dr. Lee Gilman (they/them) @neurallee@qoto.org

"Meet me in the middle," says the unjust man.

You take a step toward him. He takes a step back.

"Meet me in the middle," says the unjust man.

Hi #neuroscience #mastodon 🙋🏻‍♀️ I switched instances to neuromatch.social to join many of you here! By way of #introduction our lab is interested in the neural mechanisms of reward learning and value-based decisions. Here we are in the beautiful Santa Monica mountains near UCLA☀️Check the lab webpage to see what the team is up to: https://izquierdolab.psych.ucla.edu

#AcademicChatter #Academia 😭

Hi all-first post. I am a professor and researcher studying the underlying mechanisms and effects of non-drug treatments of chronic pain.
I am also an artist - my second career and my passion. My art is shows the beauty of cells within the body in both normal and disease states.
Visit my website where you can see my online gallery and shop: www.kathleenslukaart.com
#sciart #neuroart #neuroscience #painscience #chronicpain #neuron #slukaart #neuronart #science

Hi everyone, just wanted to share some cool news!

I am publishing my next book— a solo debut with Portfolio/Penguin Books. #TheDoubleTax will unveil what the extra costs between Black and white women reveal about inequality at pivotal stages of life.

If you know any women who would like to lend their voice, or have any tips around conducting surveys, please let me know!

Sign up here: https://forms.gle/DnAHQPkTs1TQku5BA

My favorite Out of Office reply from a colleague this🎄season: “I am off-planet until Jan 3. If you really need to get in touch with me, meditate real hard and perhaps we will meet on some astral plane.” ✨

New working paper documents considerable mortality decreases among Black patients with chronic illnesses with racially concordant physicians: https://www.nber.org/papers/w30767

"We find striking evidence that racial concordance leads to improved maintenance of preventive care – and ultimately lower patient mortality... we estimate that a one-standard deviation increase in the share of providers who are Black leads to a 15% relative decline in Black mortality among those with these manageable illnesses."

20’s: I am invincible!
40’s: I am very vincible

With the latest #migration I have been getting a steady trickle of #neuroscience followers without doing much. Nice to see the pack moving to this side.

Still waiting to see my #bat researchers though!

New instance, new #introduction! I'm a PhD student at UMich studying how we make sense of sound. I use patch-clamp #electrophysiology in #brain slices and awake mouse brains, where I investigate everything from receptors on individual #neurons to population level encoding of complex #sounds. I want to make science more diverse, accessible, and impactful for everyone. 👂​🔈​🧠​🔬​

The sun sets over Cook Inlet. Tikhatnu in the Dena’ina language.

The Dena’ina call the Kenai Peninsula Yaghanen, which means "the good land". Good it is.

Red hour during sunset over the Luagan Lalak freshwater swamp in Belait District, #Brunei. Photo: Kem Sin. #Borneo #nature

Just finished this fascinating interview on Black Twitter and the whiteness of Mastodon, by @shengokai: https://techpolicy.press/the-whiteness-of-mastodon/

We will be moving more and more short form content over here from Twitter, and while we're happy with Kolektiva, we think the larger Fediverse should consider these issues and take them to heart. We haven't seen this on Kolektiva, but many BIPOC users have had issues with racism on the Fediverse, often in the area of tone policing.

Here's a good quote from the piece:

"Now, having said all of that, right, Mastodon is a very white space. It draws upon some of the values and some of the interests of indie web producers, of the DIY tech community, wherein there’s this sense of rugged individualism. The open source nature means that you can make your own stuff, and this motivates some of the kinds of responses that Mastodonians will make to users who say that there are certain features that aren’t available, that there are certain content guidelines and moderation policies that tend to act as social norms on Mastodon itself."

One thing we would like to respond to is this section near the end: "You could easily have an entire instance of right-wing white supremacists pop up that would engage in targeted harassment of users of color."

This has actually already happened in 2019. The "instance" in question is Gab. While we weren't actively posting on Mastodon at the time, we follow and still follow people on Gab very closely, because many of them are hardcore neo-Nazis who use Gab to carry out IRL harassment campaigns and attacks.

When Gab moved from Twitter-like architecture to using a fork of the Mastodon software, it was quickly walled off from the larger Fediverse. (https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2019/07/statement-on-gabs-fork-of-mastodon/) Therefore, regular Fediverse users remain fairly protected: they/we are not in any more danger from the Gab basement Nazis than a regular person who isn't on the Fediverse at all. However, the larger point about targeted harassment still stands.

As more and more people move into the Fediverse, it's crucial to keep talking about open issues like the whiteness of Mastodon, answer questions by new users patiently, and not dismiss problems/concerns along the lines of "this is the way it's always been/just make your own instance/get used to it or go back to Twitter."

In 2022, I fell in love with writing for the public, covering topics like #corporate #diversity, #AbbottElementary, #studentdebt and editing #TheBlackAgendaBook.

Next year, I'll be taking a break from public writing to focus on #phdlife and my first book. That said, thank you for reading & sharing #mastodon

Here's a roundup of what I wrote and why it matters alongside a shortlist of other Black #women who write for the public:

https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/when-black-women-write-for-the-public-ab6dad59c94f?sk=5f5ace59f40d277580e9c51ee476ffb3

Choosing to "recommend" masks instead of requiring masks is a conscious choice. It's a choice to knowingly do the wrong thing while trying to maintain the illusion that you care.

#COVID #COVID19 #PublicHealth #BringBackMasks

Elon Musk continues to use his platform on Twitter to spread dangerous rightwing disinformation, most recently taking a swipe both at the trans community and Dr. Fauci.

In response, Dr. Fauci clapped back with a brutally accurate description of Musk's Twitter.

Definitely worth a watch.

https://www.comicsands.com/fauci-response-musk-twitter-description-2658958592.html?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=toot&utm_campaign=sand

A special extra warm cat bed, what else are dogs for?!

Want to join The Journal of Strggling Scientists email list?

Receive a monthly email with info on mental health, useful resources, cool science, and fun memes!

#academia #PhD #phdlife #science #xp @OpenAcademics @AcademicChatter

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My mastadon link at my pinned tweet on Twitter is now warning anyone who clicks on it that the sight may be “unsafe.”
You know what actually feels unsafe right now? Musk on Twitter.