iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 26/05/2025

The Rocky Mountain Labs does some incredibly important research.

Reposted by Brandon Fricker

Emma Vigeland @emmavigeland.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

A genuinely moving act of democratic representation. Chris Van Hollen showed up for his constituent. This is how you make the positive case for democracy. Chuck Schumer looks more incapable every day.

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Mark Lawrence @marklawrenceauthor.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

To celebrate the completion of The Library Trilogy with THE BOOK THAT HELD HER HEART, I'm giving away the full set of signed Locked Library special editions. To enter just repost. Contest held across my socials - enter elsewhere too to increase chances. Winner chosen randomly from all entries.

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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 08/04/2025

📣 GET IN, DORKS! We are going protesting...AGAIN! 📣 This time we are standing up for our core value of academic freedom and asking university leadership to STAND UP WITH US against Trump's attack on higher ed ✊ #StandUpWithUS Register/find an event: actionnetwork.org/event_campai...

NATIONWIDE CAMPUS ACTION
STAND UP WITH US
because science, higher ed, and democracy are for everyone.
Where: YOUR COLLEGE CAMPUS
When: YOUR LAST DAY OF CLASSES
StandUpForScience2025.org

It’s time for a Summer Send-Off

Stand Up, Fight Back - TOGETHER!

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Kara Swisher @karaswisher.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Finally Harvard lives up to its motto: Veritas view.hu.harvard.edu?qs=351b45ebf...

view.hu.harvard.edu

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Joe Katz @joekatz45.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

T-30 minutes from the start at #HandsOff Boston and Massachusetts is showing UP

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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

We have been working hard behind the scenes, y'all. Get your signs ready!

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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 04/04/2025

Hi hello good morning. This is fascism. Nazi Germany did this to support their messaging of a superior Aryan race. Hope this helps!

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eartha mae @endoeartha.bsky.social · 07/03/2025

My speech for the Philly #StandUpForScience Protest. Everything I do is for my community 💜✨

Hello Philadelphia!

I’m Dr. Eartha Mae Guthman. I’m a Philadelphian, a trans woman, a neuroscientist, and a proud card carrying union member with UAW. I first worked in a lab 15 years ago. I fell in love then and there with the scientific method, and I've worked as a scientist ever since.

Today, I want to talk to you about how this administration’s attacks on trans people and trans health research harm us all.

When I began transitioning seven years ago, I was terrified! For my safety. For my scientific career. Would my colleagues find me credible? Would they see a scientist who happened to be trans, or would they only see me through the lens of my transness? I decided then, regardless of the outcome, I would dedicate my life to improving healthcare for trans people.

For the past seven years I’ve worked towards this goal. I’ve spent holidays inventing new tools to study the brain and behavior. I’ve spent weeks going to work after dark, sitting with my mice to run overnight experiments, and then coming home, crossing the Delaware with the sunrise.

I’ve been fortunate to have achieved success in my work: I’ve published over a dozen papers, including guides on how to develop animal models for hormone therapy; I’ve been awarded highly competitive NSF and NIH grants; I’ve been appointed a fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies and at other academic organizations.

And, about a year ago, I received the best news of my career:

I had been awarded a prestigious NIH grant to not only fund my research at Princeton, but to provide me funding to start my own lab.

In my lab, I want to ask questions about how hormones impact the brain to influence mood, the body, and behavior. I want to apply this research to design better hormone therapies– yes, for gender affirming care, but also for birth control, menopause, endometriosis, PCOS, the list goes on! My goal, set so many years ago, was within my grasp. I had put in the work and sacrifice, taken the risks, and it had all seemed worth it.

But my dream grows less likely by the day because of Republican efforts to reverse decades of acceptance for various minorities. Through anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders and laws, the administration seeks to restore hierarchies centered around race and gender, resegregating America. A textbook example of fascism and fascist takeover of institutions.

Trump’s anti-DEI and anti-trans executive orders censor me and those like me. At the State of the Union on Tuesday, Trump complained that NIH wasted money on “transgender mice”, directly attacking the work my colleagues and I do. Wednesday, a White House press release called trans health research “fraud” and “waste”. Yesterday, Nature reported that the administration has bypassed congressional control of the budget to terminate ongoing grants related to trans healthcare. They report that the NIH will terminate hundreds of already awarded, active research grants if they support DEI or trans people in any way.

I don't know how or if I’ll get paid next month, and I don't know if I’ll actually get the funds that congress has already awarded me to start my lab.

I don't know what's going to happen to my career, and I'm really fucking furious. I've dedicated my entire adult life to this work. But to Trump and his supporters, I am not a scientist who should be judged for the work I do, who happens to be trans. To them, I am trans, and therefore cannot contribute to science because I’m inherently biased and unfit.

But I'm here speaking to you now because this moment is about more than just me. Under the guise of this anti-trans and anti-DEI moral panic, Republicans are weaponizing the state to attack all science. Their actions prevent us from making life-saving discoveries across all fields.

They see science as a tool to control people and carve their desired reality into our bodies and minds, not as a way to understand our beautifully complex world.

But we can stop them. Because we are many, and they are so, very, very few.

Right now we need to give our legislators hell until they start standing up for us. Push universities to establish contingency funds for researchers whose active funding is terminated.

And keep showing up, keep protesting. Keep standing up to cruel bullies and fascists. Don’t comply with unjust orders or demands, fight back! Fight for a world where the next scientist like me is seen for her contributions to science and human health, not seen only as trans. And lastly, fight for a world that loves and values trans people.

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

I can confirm that this is the worst timeline.

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Colette Delawalla, PhD @cdelawalla.bsky.social · 21/02/2025

🚨ATTENTION ALL SHOPPERS🚨 We will be finalizing rally locations on MONDAY, FEB 24th!!!!! IF YOU WANT A RALLY NEAR YOU, SIGN UP TO LEAD IT. Be the change you want to see in the world ❤️

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Stand Up for Science! @standupforscience.net · 21/02/2025

HEY BOSTON! 📣☀️ MARCH 7TH, MASSACHUSETTS STATE CAPITOL! Join us to #standupforscience2025 and make your voice heard! SEE YOU THERE! www.standupforscience2025.org #standupforscience20225

Flyer for Massachusetts stand up for science, at the Massachusetts state capitol in Boston on March 7th from 12-4 PM. More info at standupforscience2025.org

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Reposted by Brandon Fricker

Brian Lovett @lovettbr.bsky.social · 19/02/2025

I’m on the market! 🎉 What do I do? -I develop research questions and applied biotechnology to understand and disrupt insect symbioses. -I coordinate international teams to tackle interdisciplinary global challenges. -I train mycologists, entomologists and insect pathologists.

media.tenor.com

a cartoon character is standing in front of a table with the word science written on it

ALT: a cartoon character is standing in front of a table with the word science written on it

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Daniel Colón-Ramos @dacolon.bsky.social · 19/01/2025

Sharing our most recent paper, in which we find that electrical synapses in C. elegans drive action selection by "filtering" sensory information. C. elegans can learn temp, move across the temp. gradient and then track that temp. How? Configuration electrical synapses www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... 1/

cell.com

Configuration of electrical synapses filters sensory information to drive behavioral choices

Sensory information can be differentially processed, enabling similar sensory stimuli to elicit different, context-specific behavioral strategies. This study uncovers a conserved configuration of elec...

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

Is there a Fiji plugin that will both stitch tiles and stack the results…?

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 28/11/2024

There should be more mushroom-themed dishes at Thanksgiving.

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 27/11/2024

Brought the girls to my parent’s house for the holiday. Cautiously exploring their new kingdom.

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

My southern-born cat Amity, adjusting to the Boston weather.

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Walking around my house, looking at my phone muttering “don’t love that” over and over

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Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social · 13/11/2024

Gaetz news reminds me: where’d we end up on the Nestor story?

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 12/11/2024

His cabinet picks are actually bonkers.

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Claire E. Aubin @ceaubin.com · 07/11/2024

Obligatory "I should start using this again huh" post before I immediately forget and disappear for several months and return, only to make the same exact post

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 25/12/2023

The sous vide may be my favorite kitchen device.

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Dr. Cate Peña @cate-cholamine.bsky.social · 23/12/2023

One last paper for 2023, officially out in Hormones and Behavior! We tested the hypothesis that thyroid hormones are a missing molecular link between experience of early life stress and downstream transcriptional changes in VTA doi.org/10.1016/j.yh...

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eartha mae @endoeartha.bsky.social · 06/12/2023

I feel a fool whenever I type out "ventrolateral, ventromedial hypothalamus". Who named it that? It lacks panache. Zona incerta has all the fun. #neuroskyence

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 20/11/2023

I've seen kindergartens with stricter ethics codes.

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 17/11/2023

I’ve been getting a bunch of follows from bots (?) recently on the platform….

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Celtic Karla @celtickarla.bsky.social · 13/11/2023

If you are in #SfN23, please check out our graduate student Kaelan's poster Wed morning: "PSTR456.14 / D21 - Arc mediates a novel form of intercellular long-term depression" Wed 15 8:00 - 12:00 Abstract: www.abstractsonline.com/pp8/#!/10892... Have a chance to speak to Kaelan, he is fantastic!

abstractsonline.com

Program Planner

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 11/11/2023

Excited to be attending #SfN2023 this year! If you're interested in hearing about how the spiny mice vary their behavioral and neural response across conspecific types, come to my nanosymposium presentation on Sunday afternoon!

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eartha mae @endoeartha.bsky.social · 11/11/2023

Come check out my work tmrw at SfN! I develop new methods for unsupervised behavior identification, simultaneous imaging of 11 hormone-sensitive brain regions to study how gonadal hormones impact self-initiated social behaviors, network level encoding of behavior, and neural gene transcription 🧪

Maes poster for SfN 2023, 8am-12p 11/12, poster GG7

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 09/11/2023

Looking forward to attending SFN once again!

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 09/11/2023

What are these “candidates” even talking about????

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Jaclyn A. Siegel, PhD @jacasiegel.bsky.social · 09/11/2023

Ramaswamy is absolutely out of control this debate. They’re all terrible, but he has been AWFUL.

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 13/10/2023

Amity is learning from her big sister how to pose.

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 13/10/2023

It is the best day of the year. Happy Friday the 13th!

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 12/10/2023

Sometimes when I put on cat tv for my cats, it feels like I’m equally invested in watching the birds.

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 10/10/2023

excited to announce the latest work in spiny mice from the kelly lab: biased brain and behavioral responses towards kin in males of a communally breeding species out now in scientific reports! doi.org/10.1038/s415...

doi.org

Biased brain and behavioral responses towards kin in males of a communally breeding species - Scient...

Scientific Reports - Biased brain and behavioral responses towards kin in males of a communally breeding species

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 25/09/2023

Had to bring my car back to the mechanic so they can fix the “repair” they did Friday. I’m loving all this time spent wandering around a random neighborhood.

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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 29/07/2023

Do you guys ever think about how having SCOTUS Justices who think they’re above the law — and a congress that won’t do anything about it, like by passing SCOTUS ethics reforms — is bad for a constitutional democracy?

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Brandon Fricker @brandonfricker.bsky.social · 20/09/2023

The thing about surgery days I don’t love is that I run through my daily podcasts way too fast. #neuroscience

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