David Krizaj

Hypothalamic clock governs circadian pain by Wei, Lou, Li et al. Pain runs like clockwork. A brain clock circuit rhythmically tunes how neuropathic pain feels. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

The Iliad and the Odyssey are foundational literary works that are also about men doing manly things and feeling manly feelings — they’re about pride and duty, they’re about friendship and loyalty, they’re about fear of death and bravery in the face of it, they’re about striving and longing. These are stories that have taught men to be men for a thousand years, that celebrate the highest versions of masculinity, and that is why so many people who are hostile to these values and ideals try to mess with these works of literature, to claim them for other audiences, to “recontextualize” them, to “queer” them and to subvert them. Men barely read today. Boys are alienated and underserved by English instruction and are falling starkly behind in reading. The “literary man,” a common type in hipster Brooklyn as recently as the mid 2010s, is basically extinct. Men are now the most underserved, underrepresented audience in books and publishing, and anyone in publishing who claims to be interested in “equity” or serving neglected audiences should be focused on this disparity. English teachers and the publishing industry should be working to get men and boys reading again and to elevate works that speak to men and boys. And that means preserving and teaching Homer, in translations which preserve the majesty and the masculinity of the original works.

...its UT range is a tiny SE corner. So I asked Gary (grynaf@yahoo.com) who curates the site. His answer: 'this is a juvenile rattlesnake. In SLC it should be a Great Basin Rattlesnake. It's venomous, so I hope nobody tried to pick it up' 😬 Caveat emptor, friends.

So I went for a hike this weekend in the hills above SLC and found this little snake across the trail. Perplexity AI told me this 'beautiful little snake' was the 'completely harmless and non-venomous' Western Ground Snake (Sonora semiannulata).... however...

Where, exactly, does learning happen in the brain? Out now @Nature , we identify a synaptic locus of birdsong learning and show that the circuit can be tuned to make birds learn faster, but at a cost.🧵 #neuroscience nature.com/articles/s4158… Open link: rdcu.be/fiyrS

Researchers used administrative data from Florida and looked at the effects of teacher experience, advanced degree attainment, and professional development. Effects on student achievement were meager, and often not in the direction you'd hope:

@louisanicola_ More simply, brain aging appears to be conditioned by culture and likely epigenetics. Not all cultures equal

Your brain ages partially according to the country you live in. Not just your genetics. Not just your habits. Your environment. This Nature Medicine study analyzed nearly 19,000 people across 34 countries and found that cumulative exposure to pollution, instability, inequality, and poor infrastructure strongly predicts accelerated brain aging. Most people still think cognitive aging begins internally. It does not. The brain continuously models the environment surrounding it. Chronic unpredictability and physiological stress force the nervous system into long-term vigilance and adaptation. Over time, that becomes structural. The brain is not aging in isolation inside the skull. It is aging in negotiation with the conditions of daily life.

@CarlosEAlvare17 @LocasaleLab 🎯

Exactly. The overwhelmingly top priority of universities is concentration of power. This is supported by federal and state funding, tax exemptions, grants, and student loan guarantees -- without any accountability, and with the courts deferring to administrators' discretion under the guise of academic freedom. Compliance departments function as institutional risk-management units, just like HR. They have little if any interest in supporting the faculty and their work, or the university's mission. Rather, their primary role is to protect senior management and the institution's financial interests by ensuring that the government funding keeps flowing.

Another Nature piece that is completely detached from reality. This isn’t about preventing misconduct. It’s about expanding administrative power. Universities today are already so risk-averse that even the hint of an allegation can end a career—no due process, no meaningful standard of evidence, and deliberations that are far from fair or transparent. Now the proposal is to formalize that system across institutions—effectively allowing administrative bodies to coordinate and blacklist individuals they deem unsavory. This has nothing to do with truth or protecting anyone. It has everything to do with consolidating power inside bureacracies. As usual, there’s no mention of the falsely accused. Institutions are treated as infallible, even as they operate behind closed doors and face no real accountability.

nearly 80% of young faculty in medicine are women. 80%

@SashaGusevPosts @curtis_yarvin @AlexTISYoung @virologyanon @bubbling_creek >no selection for cog/behavior The paper states explicitly: "We detected negative polygenic selection against alleles associated today with psychoses such as bipolar disorder (γ = −0.63 ± 0.13) and schizophrenia (γ = −0.74 ± 0.12)"

@curtis_yarvin @AlexTISYoung @virologyanon @bubbling_creek You start by acknowledging the lack of sweeps but then claim recent evolution on brain genes. There is no evidence of this. The recent Akbari/Reich paper shows no enrichment of selection for cog/behavior. Reich even explained this in podcast form! theinfinitesimal.substack.com/i/148633581/fr…

That’s not a null hypothesis. Does the same “neutral theory” predict uniformity across groups in any other human trait? Height, skin color, nostril width, lung capacity, distance running? Why is the brain special? Reminder:

"The study found that evolution accelerated during the Bronze Age ~ 5,000 years ago... Combinations linked to years of schooling, household income and intelligence test scores in Europe and the Middle East increased over the past 10,000 years" nature.com/articles/d4158…

3D single-cell maps of embryos reveal "universal" geometry of blood vessels and nerves. More here: biorxiv.org/content/10.648…

Giving everyone a universal basic income will not reveal most people’s inner Mozarts or Emily Brontës. At bottom, this is about two competing views of human nature. One view holds that once basic material needs are met, people will use their free time to seek meaning and fulfillment. Unshackled from the burden of work, they will thrive. This is partly true. A small share of people would create, build, and explore. But for most, that is not what happens. When people are out of work, they do not spend their days painting or sculpting or learning another language. They scroll, they watch television, they play video games. Many advocates of UBI assume that people are simply waiting for the right conditions. Remove financial pressure, and they will pursue their creative passions. That may be true for a few. It is not true for most. Another view holds that meaning comes from the act of working. Earning your way, supporting yourself, and taking care of others provide structure and fulfillment. Effort, struggle, and self-reliance are not barriers to a meaningful life. They are part of what makes it possible. A society that removes the need to work risks removing one of the main sources of meaning in life.

@hjluks Fascinating parallels to deregulation of trabecular meshwork in ocular hypertension…

Tendon pain is the most common reason people come to see me. Most of it is self-inflicted — from doing too much, too soon, or from doing too little for too long. Let's review what most people (including many doctors) don't understand about why tendons hurt and how to fix them. 🧵

Boston biotech has been running the same playbook for years and everyone in the ecosystem knows it. Early-stage companies are built less on validated biology and more on signaling: a splashy Nature or Science paper, a thin patent scaffold, and the reputational gravity of well-networked academic founders. That combination is often enough to unlock large funding rounds. The problem is that high-impact publication has become a proxy for truth. It isn’t. It’s a selection mechanism for novelty and narrative. The result is predictable: – groupthink gets reinforced – weak or irreproducible findings persist for years – dissent is disincentivized – hype substitutes for validation In many cases, the goal is not to rigorously test whether an idea is correct, it’s to create enough mystique that it feels important. That perception alone can carry a company surprisingly far. So it’s not surprising to see the same voices recycled across boards and advisory roles—people who helped build and legitimize this model in the first place.

Sociology has been slow to adopt emerging standards of scientific rigor, in large part because of its strong political skew and embrace of activism over accuracy. stevestewartwilliams.com/p/the-worlds-f…

Orbitofrontal cortex drives predictive filtering of sensory responses | Nature Neuroscience nature.com/articles/s4159…

A beast of a paper from @byl015 @UCSDNeuro, dissecting the role of PFC interneurons (PV, SOM, VIP) controlling cocaine seeking. Normally, the PFC inhibits VTA DA neurons via a local GABA interneuron. Classic inhibitory role of the PFC over subcortical regions. Here, they show that chronic cocaine increases the activity of paravalbumin (PV) neurons in the PFC and their connectivity with the PFC pyramidal-VTA pathway, which basically removes the brake on the DA VTA neurons, leading to cocaine seeking. Only parvalbumin (PV) interneurons track and promote cocaine seeking. It's unclear what SOM and VIP do. It's a really incredible paper that demonstrates how powerful PFC interneurons are. Perhaps I'm biased because about 15 years ago we identified CRF interneurons in the PFC as being similarly recruited during withdrawal-induced craving for alcohol. I don't think that CRF colocalizes with PV neurons (probably more with VIP/SOM), so it's intriguing; perhaps it's a drug specificity (cocaine/alcohol), or model (limited vs extended access), or reinforcement specific (positive/negative). Now, the million-dollar question is if you get these mice to the point of dependence, would the VP interneurons still be the ones that matter, or would you see involvement of the SOM, VIP, CRF?

What actually happened is that over the last ten or fifteen years, appeals to consensus were used in support of so many obvious falsehoods that consensus ceased to be a good heuristic for the best available science, and started to be a good heuristic for somebody lying to you.