Professor Twain 🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

Tonight I went to see a dear friend, born in NY. He's dying of cancer. I told him that Yankees were in the World Series against Dodgers. He said that was the best news he'd gotten today. I promised to root for the Yankees, although I usually hate them. I love my friend more.

@WayneTyson11 @RaysFanGio @tommy_leverone @osugirl47 @Cliff_Wolf @pmay225 @DannCIII 👊

@RaysFanGio @tommy_leverone @osugirl47 @PrTwain @Cliff_Wolf @pmay225 @DannCIII Here for a long while. And Happy Birthday, Gio.

@tommy_leverone @osugirl47 @WayneTyson11 @PrTwain @Cliff_Wolf @pmay225 @DannCIII ⚾️

If you're worried about ticks, put up an owl box. The animal driving most Lyme disease in the eastern US is the white-footed mouse. Ticks that feed on them are far more likely to come away infected than ticks that feed on other animals. The bigger the local mouse population, the worse the next year's tick year. A single barred owl pair raising chicks can take hundreds of rodents in a breeding season. Owls also don't carry Lyme. The bacterium can't survive their digestive tract, so an owl that eats an infected mouse is a dead end for the disease. Researchers at the Cary Institute, the leading lab on Lyme ecology, have been explicit about this: "Landscapes that support predators have reduced Lyme disease risk." One owl box on its own isn't going to fix a tick year. But a yard with owls, foxes, bobcats, and weasels in it has fewer mice, and a yard with fewer mice has fewer infected ticks. If you have woods or fields nearby, a properly sized barn owl or screech owl box (different species, different boxes) is one of the most useful single things you can do for tick exposure at the landscape scale. Match the box to the owl that lives near you. The mouse is the problem, owls are the solution.

@DrCarlHindy We had a big hand in raising our granddaughter after parents' divorce. She's 15 now and I'm teaching her to drive. The gift of long life. psycnet.apa.org/buy/2000-05061…

@PrTwain Yes indeed. We just had our 2 year old grandchild stay with us for four days … and it’s both a flashback to the past and a reminder of our age!

I think of marriage as a lifelong set of conversations. Some are joyful, some painful, but the bond is built in the willingness to keep talking. The moment the conversations stop, the marriage quietly begins to disappear.

@DrCarlHindy Thanks. Met her in high school. We married at 21 before I started grad school. She wanted to move to the Northeast because she's a folk musician and the folk revival was going strong. It's been a grand adventure.

@PrTwain Congrats!! 💕

@Britannica @MerriamWebster The history is actually much older npr.org/2011/05/28/136…

Memorial Day began as Decoration Day, a day to honor soldiers who died in the American Civil War, typically by placing flowers on their graves. The date is thought to have been chosen because flowers would be in bloom across the U.S.

@iScienceLuvr @DrAnnieHickox Good for you. From a fellow PhD

(read to the end) As you may have heard, I have a Ph.D. 🤣 My Ph.D. (in Biomedical Engineering) gave me very valuable research experience and learned a lot about being a good researcher and managing research collaborations, skillsets that are serving me well at my startup @SophontAI. I am glad I got the opportunity to work on impactful research problems during my Ph.D. (applying AI to new microscopy technologies to improve cancer diagnostics and treatment decisions). I was working on generative AI in my PhD, earlier than 99.9% of people here even knew what it was. I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into my research, with many hardships along the way. I try (with limited success unfortunately) to use Twitter as a professional platform, which is why I have Ph.D. in my name. If you ask Grok, even it agrees that there's nothing wrong with saying Ph.D. in your account name especially in a professional setting. I do agree that in general it's stupid to overly focus on it, but it's not like I make anyone irl call me Dr. Tanishq or anything. Of course I don't deny there are tons of frauds who have PhDs and academia has its issues. But that doesn't mean a PhD is completely useless for everyone or has no signal, especially in highly technical fields. I don't even think everyone should do a Ph.D. For me it made sense since it allowed me to more easily do research in an interdisciplinary environment while getting solid mentorship. PhDs are often really good opportunities to progress in life sciences careers (although good alternatives are starting to arise now). However, if you're doing pure AI, a PhD may not always be a good investment of your time, and worthwhile AI research can be done in a variety of ways outside of a PhD program. At my startup we hire both PhDs and non-PhDs as researchers, and our non-PhDs are making tremendous contributions to our company! Many of the best researchers that I respect a lot never did a PhD. If you want to hate me simply for the fact that I worked hard to get a PhD and I indicate that on a profile I mostly use for professional purposes, so be it! I am proud of the hard work I put into it and I will not be ashamed of it :)

@RepGregMurphy What admissions questions do you believe would identify physicians likely to leave medicine early? I write at least a dozen med school references for undergrads . They ar uniformly smart, hard working, and dedicated to being physicians.

Unless our Medical Schools do a better job of screening admission candidates, we won’t have any Doctors. If you don’t want to practice FULL time for at least 20-25 years, pick another profession.

@tylerblack32 @sanilrege @psycheureka Agreed

@sanilrege @psycheureka hm interesting but i would flip obsessions and overvalued ideas - obsessions definitely to me the closest to psychosis, overvalued ideations and preoccupations under both obsessions and psychosis

Coin flips work when the problem is indecision. They are less likely to work when the problem is Rumination.🚨 The Phenomenology of Thoughts 👇 A 50/50 decision can often be solved by action. Choose the restaurant.
Send the email.
Pick the option.
Move on … But rumination is a distinct entity. 🚨 “Rumination may generally be construed as a process of repetitive thoughts.” “Rumination was described as “fixed ideas” (French: idees fixes) and the “compulsion to repeat” (German: Wiederholungszwang)” That older language matters because it captures something we still see clinically. The thought does not simply appear. It returns. It intrudes.
It repeats.
It perseverates. So the construct has at least two clinically relevant components: 1. Intrusion and repetition : the thought keeps forcing itself back into awareness because it has high salience. 2. Perseveration: the person struggles to shift set, disengage, or move flexibly to another mental frame. That is why rumination is not the same as ordinary worry or indecision. Worry is often future-oriented:
“What if this happens?” Indecision is often choice-oriented:
“Which option should I pick?” Rumination is often self-referential and affect-laden: 
“What does this say about me?”
“What have I done?”
“Why do I feel like this?”
“How damaged am I?” And in depression, especially melancholic depression, this can take very specific forms: 1. obsessional guilt
2. financial ruin
3. nihilistic 
4. somatic This is where phenomenology becomes crucial . In clinical practice a significant proportion of resistant anxiety / OCD / somatisation is rumination misclassified - also leading to missing melancholic depression Hence the definition : “Rumination, a phenomenon that is subserved (i.e., a result of) by brain processes relevant to cognition, is characterized as a cognitive-emotional process whereby individuals repetitively and passively engage in excessive malicious self-referencing and focus on the negative feelings, reasons, consequences and symptoms of their distress instead of engaging in proactive problem-solving (Tang et al., 2021).” That is the key point. This is not simply a patient refusing to decide. It is an all consuming ( almost ) thought (s) . The psychic equivalent of a repetitive movement. And if someone has a repetitive motor phenomenon, we do not say: “Here are two options. Pick one.” Because the issue is not choice. The issue is the system being unable to disengage from the loop. Neurobiologically it is a ‘loss’ of top down control with heightened salience . That is also why rumination is clinically serious.🚨 It is associated with depressive severity, hopelessness, impaired problem-solving and suicidality. It’s also transdiagnostic The question for clinicians in treating ruminations is “What has made this thought so salient that the mind cannot leave it alone” *image of thought hierarchy ( conceptual as thought quality may overlap ; obsessions may move to ruminations and have a ruminative quality ( obsessional guilt )

Dishonoring our dead veterans, shameful.

Great article. Pitting generations against each other is foolish and unhelpful. For those who do this--your turn will come.

@HQNewsNow He's a disgrace

Trump: 18,000 young men named William buried here. Over 20,000 named John, over 13,000 named James. Joined over time by Isaac, Elijah, Hanks, Helens, Juans, Margarets, Marys... Donalds. Not too many. Hehe.

@NewVoiceUkraine Not Greenland's job to plunder their oil reserves to address a problem that is completely the fault of a foolish US President

Greenland could export 2M barrels of oil per day right now to lower global energy prices amid Iran war, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, serving as U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, claimed english.nv.ua/business/trump…

@tomaskenn @tyson_mary Awful. Thanks for keeping us informed. I teach at @USF and every year I write letters for A students from immigrant families who have studied hard, and typically worked 20-40 hours a week. I'm proud to help them and don't ask or care about their documentation status.

New from me: after a bill banning undocumented students from public colleges was rejected by the Florida Legislature, the state is now trying to block these students from enrollment through a backroom process that limits public input. orlandosentinel.com/2026/05/25/com…

@bobsmailes @RaysFanGio @tommy_leverone @osugirl47 @WayneTyson11 @Cliff_Wolf @pmay225 @DannCIII Awesome! 89 Fahrenheit here in Clearwater 😎

@RaysFanGio @tommy_leverone @osugirl47 @WayneTyson11 @PrTwain @Cliff_Wolf @pmay225 @DannCIII In very hot U.K. watching

@RaysFanGio @tommy_leverone @osugirl47 @WayneTyson11 @Cliff_Wolf @pmay225 @DannCIII Here, Mrs T joining me in her new official Chandler Simpson jersey 😎🍀

@drseanmullen @erikmoldwarrior Wow, very informative

Yesterday, I opened my Big Green Egg and found what looked like mold spattered inside. Had I not known @erikmoldwarrior, I probably wouldn’t have taken it as seriously. Instead, I immediately went inside, grabbed an N95, and treated it like a real exposure risk. I carefully emptied the soot and old charcoal to avoid disturbing spores. I washed the grate. I even lightly wiped the interior with a soapy cloth, though that part probably wasn’t necessary and may not have been worth the risk. Then I replaced the charcoal and did a controlled burn for ~45 minutes above 500°F (occasionally pushing 700°F) while we stayed inside. I’ve never encountered mold in the Egg before, but honestly, I may start doing a high-heat burn before the first cook of the season from now on. And it got me thinking about Incline Village. I don’t know whether an environmental exposure such as invasive mold played a role there. But when you consider aerosolized particulates, contaminated buildings, and ventilation systems distributing exposures throughout an environment, it becomes biologically plausible enough to warrant serious consideration rather than reflexive dismissal. If I had heated that grill up and stood directly over it inhaling everything, or tried scrubbing it without PPE, I might’ve ended up very sick afterward. Now imagine symptoms lingering. Imagine poorly characterized illnesses. Imagine different people with different underlying causes being grouped together under one broad syndrome simply because they shared overlapping phenotypes like fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, PEM, pain, dizziness, or autonomic dysfunction. That is, in many ways, the history of ME/CFS. The Royal Free outbreak in 1955, Incline Village in the 1980s, post-viral syndromes, environmental exposure theories, psychiatric reframing, immune dysfunction hypotheses … over decades, potentially distinct conditions and mechanisms were compressed beneath overlapping terminology because the outward presentations often looked similar. And now Long Covid research is entering similarly complicated territory: heterogeneous presentations, overlapping symptom clusters, competing mechanistic theories, institutional pressures, and enormous urgency to consolidate categories before the science is fully mature. Phenotypes are not necessarily endotypes. Someone with hypoglycemia and someone who is intoxicated may both appear confused, unsteady, or cognitively impaired, but the underlying biology is entirely different. What concerns me is that this isn’t merely a historical problem. It already happened. It continues to happen. Distinct biological processes are still being grouped together beneath umbrella terminology largely because the phenotypes overlap. Once you see the smokescreen, it becomes much harder to ignore the fire behind it.

@tampabay28 Nice story, but it ignores the Southern tradition of Decoration Day that far preceded the Civil War. westvirginiawatch.com/2024/05/27/bea… My family observed Decoration Day in the rural Ozarks, meeting at a rural church and cemetery with other families, decorating graves and sharing pot luck.

Memorial Day is a U.S. holiday that is officially about mourning the nation's fallen service members, but it has come to signal the unofficial start of summer and a long weekend of travel. tampabay28.com/life/holidays-…

@BadreNicolas Ouch

Psychiatrists now prescribe less antipsychotics than NPs in the US per Medicare data. NPs have multiplied in the past decades, while the number of psychiatrists has remained nearly the same. Ref: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.3410 (March, 2026)

@MarioNawfal I hate cats but this is impressive

A cat fell from a stadium roof and was caught by a fan flag. Best use of team merchandise ever 👏