Kristina Atanasoff (PhD!)

bored and waiting at the airport, which means it's the perfect time to re-up an intro tweet thread, so: hi I'm Kristina!! currently a 3rd year (okay, almost-4th year... 😬) PhD candidate in NYC, perennially a nonbinary/"none gender with left girl" autistic and ADHD scientist

btw, belated shout-out to @AkiraYamaoka, @DarrenKorb, and Ryan Ike for writing video game soundtracks that collectively got me through writing my dissertation, my Spotify Wrapped this year is going to be hilariously skewed towards 100 hours of "moody goth instrumentals"

The Simpsons on PhD students - almost twenty years old & more cutting than ever

sorry it's kind of been a crazy six weeks, turns out that even after you pass your thesis defense the world does not in fact magically halt on its axis and you have to keep fighting snakes for awhile

okay this is like a month late but I guess I should make it official

Six+ kids have now died from football at school in just three weeks. We must understand this as the public health emergency it is and ask serious questions about the viability of this sport. Our latest, with comments from former players and @bachyns. theguardian.com/sport/article/…

The investigative team behind our podcast In the Dark has obtained photographs of the 2005 massacre in Haditha, Iraq—which the U.S. military tried to keep from the public for years. nyer.cm/rlvzkrJ

In 1995, treatment options for HIV were completely transformed. I made this chart with data from the NCHS, showing the impact of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). It profoundly improved the survival of people with HIV & reduced the risks of passing it on to others.

Tell your calendars and mark your friends -- wait, that's not right (DM me btwn now and the 11th for the Zoom link, if interested)

Today is @spocuaw’s 7th day on the picket line, as the first postdoc researchers in the private sector to walk out on strike. As @ShawnFainUAW said, “You produce scientific breakthroughs, so you deserve record gains. Groundbreaking research should mean groundbreaking contracts.”

@genomerambler Peru being at the bottom is a travesty

i used to want to visit italy and mexico but now i want to visit finland and peru

I have discussed this at length with my #ActuallyAutistic friends: Tons of us, and other #Nerudivergent folk, LOVE loud heavy metal music. (Same with hip hop).

hellmouth, netherlands, 15th century

this tweet will probably make sense to 5 people total but who cares. look at this sunflower I made

they have different departments (Ajahs) who constantly bicker and try to recruit from the new students (novices). trainees get tested to become candidates (accepted) before earning their doctorate (shawl). they literally live inside an ivory (white) tower. what's not clicking

so I've been curing my brainrot lately by crocheting while I listen to the audiobooks of Wheel of Time, and I cannot stop cracking up at how the Aes Sedai (tl;dr: magic Jedi ladies) are literally just a crowd of underfunded academics

another sentence heretofore undreamed of: "those brains sure get gooey real fast"

a career in science offers many opportunities to say sentences that you never even dreamed were possible, such as, "we are taking these human brains to the VA to grind them into dust"

New York City comes with built-in friends

what does it say about me that currently the work-related development I am most excited about is getting to mush up pieces of human brains

after two full years of training in this lab, I can finally predict what my boss wants from me with a whopping (checks notes) 45% accuracy rating 🥲

sent my PI some data including a preemptive caveat/explanation for why one control looked wonky and in his reply he said "thanks for explaining the control issue, glad to see we're thinking alike" and I'm? a little verklempt? why is this hitting so hard as positive feedback