Alexa Soares
@alexarsoares.bsky.social
A stressed brain studying stressed brains // Postdoc in the Iwasaki Lab at Yale // Feminist // #BiInSci // @AlexaRSoares on mastodon and twitter // she/her 🐀🧠🔬🌈
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Why do babies need the hepatitis B vaccine if they aren’t high-risk?
Short answer: Because hepatitis B is a tricky virus.
Longer answer: Continue reading ⬇️
🧵1/9 @kkjetelina.bsky.social @meganranney.bsky.social @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social
Short answer: Because hepatitis B is a tricky virus.
Longer answer: Continue reading ⬇️
🧵1/9 @kkjetelina.bsky.social @meganranney.bsky.social @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social
February 19, 2025 at 2:46 PM
Why do babies need the hepatitis B vaccine if they aren’t high-risk?
Short answer: Because hepatitis B is a tricky virus.
Longer answer: Continue reading ⬇️
🧵1/9 @kkjetelina.bsky.social @meganranney.bsky.social @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social
Short answer: Because hepatitis B is a tricky virus.
Longer answer: Continue reading ⬇️
🧵1/9 @kkjetelina.bsky.social @meganranney.bsky.social @jasonlschwartz.bsky.social @enirenberg.bsky.social
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Man this graf from @jpbrammer.bsky.social -- whew. Brilliant.
johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/cloud-danc...
johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/cloud-danc...
December 6, 2025 at 8:05 PM
Man this graf from @jpbrammer.bsky.social -- whew. Brilliant.
johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/cloud-danc...
johnpaulbrammer.substack.com/p/cloud-danc...
Reposted by Alexa Soares
None of the Sacklers of Purdue Pharma went to jail but they using the military to kill poor brown people in the middle of the ocean *suspected* of smuggling drugs in boats that cant even make it to the US.
December 6, 2025 at 7:00 PM
None of the Sacklers of Purdue Pharma went to jail but they using the military to kill poor brown people in the middle of the ocean *suspected* of smuggling drugs in boats that cant even make it to the US.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
onlooker: [insufferable whining] but Aslynn! Self diagnosis is baaaad 😠
👏🏻 tell
👏🏻 me
👏🏻 why
when adults w/ autism self-identify, risk of suicide goes down, psychotherapy becomes more effective, people find community, insight, coping skills, forgiveness for themselves & their families because… 🧵
👏🏻 tell
👏🏻 me
👏🏻 why
when adults w/ autism self-identify, risk of suicide goes down, psychotherapy becomes more effective, people find community, insight, coping skills, forgiveness for themselves & their families because… 🧵
December 5, 2025 at 12:53 PM
onlooker: [insufferable whining] but Aslynn! Self diagnosis is baaaad 😠
👏🏻 tell
👏🏻 me
👏🏻 why
when adults w/ autism self-identify, risk of suicide goes down, psychotherapy becomes more effective, people find community, insight, coping skills, forgiveness for themselves & their families because… 🧵
👏🏻 tell
👏🏻 me
👏🏻 why
when adults w/ autism self-identify, risk of suicide goes down, psychotherapy becomes more effective, people find community, insight, coping skills, forgiveness for themselves & their families because… 🧵
Reposted by Alexa Soares
It won’t work anyway. The student and the perpetually outraged will learn they can get what they want by this kind of performance, and the TA - and every other TA and non-tenured faculty member - will learn (again) that their university thinks they’re disposable.
Both lessons are toxic to academia.
Both lessons are toxic to academia.
December 1, 2025 at 2:43 AM
It won’t work anyway. The student and the perpetually outraged will learn they can get what they want by this kind of performance, and the TA - and every other TA and non-tenured faculty member - will learn (again) that their university thinks they’re disposable.
Both lessons are toxic to academia.
Both lessons are toxic to academia.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
The thing that strikes me even more than how objectively terrible that essay is is how readily OU threw the TA under the bus. They were perfectly happy to have her, a grad student, as the only person teaching the course… and now they’re going to sacrifice her to try and buy off the outrage machine.
December 1, 2025 at 2:43 AM
The thing that strikes me even more than how objectively terrible that essay is is how readily OU threw the TA under the bus. They were perfectly happy to have her, a grad student, as the only person teaching the course… and now they’re going to sacrifice her to try and buy off the outrage machine.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
On World AIDS Day, I’m reminded of all the positive folks who have fought, and continue to fight, secrecy, stigma, and shame. HIV is a chronic illness conditioned by state violence, poverty, inequality, and discrimination. We can end HIV by cultivating better healthcare and more inclusive societies.
December 1, 2025 at 8:15 AM
On World AIDS Day, I’m reminded of all the positive folks who have fought, and continue to fight, secrecy, stigma, and shame. HIV is a chronic illness conditioned by state violence, poverty, inequality, and discrimination. We can end HIV by cultivating better healthcare and more inclusive societies.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Since our fucking government isn’t observing World AIDS Day, I will. In 1990, I started taking care of people in the last stages of AIDS in their homes. I did this for nearly two years. The home care company I worked for had meetings for those of us who solely (or nearly solely) took care of PWAs.
December 1, 2025 at 12:16 PM
Since our fucking government isn’t observing World AIDS Day, I will. In 1990, I started taking care of people in the last stages of AIDS in their homes. I did this for nearly two years. The home care company I worked for had meetings for those of us who solely (or nearly solely) took care of PWAs.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Here it is with the byline and alt text
November 28, 2025 at 6:20 PM
Here it is with the byline and alt text
Reposted by Alexa Soares
lol tech companies forcing us to adopt AI features into everything is like when Apple Music forced everyone to download that one U2 album.
November 28, 2025 at 2:48 AM
lol tech companies forcing us to adopt AI features into everything is like when Apple Music forced everyone to download that one U2 album.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
I am begging people to *please* stop using these tools to make a point or make fun of them. We do not need to further refine them or kill the planet to make a point. We should stop using them to make them irrelevant.
November 24, 2025 at 8:11 PM
I am begging people to *please* stop using these tools to make a point or make fun of them. We do not need to further refine them or kill the planet to make a point. We should stop using them to make them irrelevant.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
November 25, 2025 at 1:57 AM
Google at its peak was basically the best information retrieval system in human history and they and every competitor decided going from there to “you didn’t want answers you wanted half-assed auto-complete 80%-wrong hallucinations” in a few years was the right idea
Reposted by Alexa Soares
What I’ve been trying to point out for years now is that there is a money maker behind this sentiment, invested in it staying set this way. You can’t have billion dollar industry forcing autistic children to mask without scaring everyone about autism first
I think my biggest problem with the "vaccines cause autism" bullshit is that, even assuming they did (they don't, actually), neurodiversity is...good?
"Oh no, instead of polio and measles, people are cool and have new and different ways of thinking about things" is, uh, a really weird flex
"Oh no, instead of polio and measles, people are cool and have new and different ways of thinking about things" is, uh, a really weird flex
November 23, 2025 at 3:31 PM
What I’ve been trying to point out for years now is that there is a money maker behind this sentiment, invested in it staying set this way. You can’t have billion dollar industry forcing autistic children to mask without scaring everyone about autism first
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Imagine, if you will, that NASA updated its website to suggest gravity might not exist, prompting CalTech and CERN to release statements saying, "With great sadness, we can no longer recommend listening to NASA."
This is what's happening in epidemiology.
This is what's happening in epidemiology.
November 21, 2025 at 8:58 PM
Imagine, if you will, that NASA updated its website to suggest gravity might not exist, prompting CalTech and CERN to release statements saying, "With great sadness, we can no longer recommend listening to NASA."
This is what's happening in epidemiology.
This is what's happening in epidemiology.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick.
Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Relying on ChatGPT to teach you about a topic leaves you with shallower knowledge than Googling and reading about it, according to new research that compared what more than 10,000 people knew after using one method or the other.
Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
Shared by @gizmodo.com: buff.ly/yAAHtHq
November 21, 2025 at 12:49 PM
It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick.
Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
It’s good to explain that the CDC is lying and vaccines still unequivocally do not cause autism, even if it just reaches one person on here who has doubts. But the fight is out there, not in here; and the time to let go of the information deficit model of science communication was decades ago
November 20, 2025 at 5:40 AM
It’s good to explain that the CDC is lying and vaccines still unequivocally do not cause autism, even if it just reaches one person on here who has doubts. But the fight is out there, not in here; and the time to let go of the information deficit model of science communication was decades ago
Reposted by Alexa Soares
it's almost as if being politically engaged as a scientist was always a necessity
The administration is building a legal pathway for ad hoc grant terminations:
"if the agency determines that the award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities"
Converting multiyear grants to 'at whim' coin flips will undermine the stability & leadership of American science.
"if the agency determines that the award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities"
Converting multiyear grants to 'at whim' coin flips will undermine the stability & leadership of American science.
Update on a significant development NIH grant terms.
On 10/1, a change to grant making regs went into effect that gives NIH more power to terminate grants for policy reasons.
But to use this power, new grant terms must include specific language. See @aniloza.bsky.social w/ the story from July.
1/
On 10/1, a change to grant making regs went into effect that gives NIH more power to terminate grants for policy reasons.
But to use this power, new grant terms must include specific language. See @aniloza.bsky.social w/ the story from July.
1/
November 20, 2025 at 4:21 PM
it's almost as if being politically engaged as a scientist was always a necessity
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Despite the evolution of patient protections in the western world resulting from horrors like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and medical experimentation in WWII concentration camps it's clear that the impulses that drove such things haven't gone away, they've just moved into the tech C suites instead.
“due to no legal or policy restrictions.”
Testing on brown people before using it on you. American voters, foreign policy is domestic policy. This truth can no longer be ignored for the panacea of a mythical lesser evil.
Testing on brown people before using it on you. American voters, foreign policy is domestic policy. This truth can no longer be ignored for the panacea of a mythical lesser evil.
November 20, 2025 at 1:45 PM
Despite the evolution of patient protections in the western world resulting from horrors like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and medical experimentation in WWII concentration camps it's clear that the impulses that drove such things haven't gone away, they've just moved into the tech C suites instead.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
the gulf between the swift brutality with which places like harvard treated students protesting genocide and the endless, endless latitude those same institutions have given people like larry summers tells you everything you need to know
November 20, 2025 at 1:36 AM
the gulf between the swift brutality with which places like harvard treated students protesting genocide and the endless, endless latitude those same institutions have given people like larry summers tells you everything you need to know
Reposted by Alexa Soares
![[Scene is a kitchen - a middle aged woman called JANET is boiling peas at the stove. A younger more colourfully dressed woman named LIZ approached her.]
JANET:
Ugh...
LIZ:
What's up?
JANET:
I am so bored of cooking peas!
LIZ:
Have you tried...
AI peas?
JANET:
AI peas?
LIZ:
They're peas with AI!
[Liz holds up to us a packet of peas labelled: Pea-i AI - Peas with AI].
LIZ:
Al-powered peas harness the potential of your peas
JANET:
What
LIZ [Now a voiceover as we cut to a whizzy technology diagram of peas all connected by meaningless dotted lines]
Why not take your peas to the next level with Al Peas' new Al tools to power your peas?
[Show a techno diagram of a pea with a label reading 'AI' pointing to a random zone in it]
LIZ:
Each pea has Al in a way we haven't quite worked out yet but it's fine
[Show Janet and Liz now in a Matrix-style world of peas]
LIZ:
With Al peas you can supercharge productivity and make AI work for your peas!
JANET:
What
LIZ:
Shut up
LIZ:
Our game-changing Pea-Al gives you the freedom to unlock the potential of the power of the future of your peas workflow
From opening the bag of peas
to boiling the peas
to eating the peas
To spending millions on adding Al to the peas and then having to work out what that even means.
JANET:
Is it really necessary to-
LIZ [Grabbing Janet by the collar]:
THE PEAS HAVE GOT AI, JANET
[Cut to an advert ending screen, with the bag of peas and the slogan:
AI PEAS: Just 'Peas' for god's sake buy the AI peas.
[Ends]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4m3we4apbjayclzcnhwe3pfp/bafkreiayqa37f7kik7l7s7fbtfp2sir5ckb662ry2lylinyjrfa2rkvvka@jpeg)
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Reposted by Alexa Soares
In 1999, a woman named Jessica Gonzales sought and obtained an order of protection against her physically abusive husband ("AH"), who had repeatedly threatened to kill her and their three children. The order included language specifically limiting when and where AH was allowed to see the children.
November 12, 2025 at 4:32 PM
In 1999, a woman named Jessica Gonzales sought and obtained an order of protection against her physically abusive husband ("AH"), who had repeatedly threatened to kill her and their three children. The order included language specifically limiting when and where AH was allowed to see the children.
Reposted by Alexa Soares
Really disappointing that our #NIH colleagues will NOT be at @sfn.org this year, will NOT be discussing science, will NOT be advising us on grants, will NOT be sharing results or advancing research. 🤐
Sigh. NIH normally sends several hundred scientists to the SFN annual meeting to learn, exchange info, come up with new ideas, and advance science. (The exchange of ideas is the very core of the scientific enterprise.)
This year, no one from NIH will attend due to the gov't implosion.
This year, no one from NIH will attend due to the gov't implosion.
Enjoy a broad range of lectures and network with experts in the field at #SfN25! 🧠
Gain valuable insights and tools to enhance your research and career.
Browse through to lectures and build your itinerary in the 2025 Neuroscience Meeting Planner
🔗 vist.ly/4de72
#neurosky #neuroskyence
Gain valuable insights and tools to enhance your research and career.
Browse through to lectures and build your itinerary in the 2025 Neuroscience Meeting Planner
🔗 vist.ly/4de72
#neurosky #neuroskyence
November 7, 2025 at 11:20 PM
Reposted by Alexa Soares
I yearn for a political party where not endorsing Mamdani while praising Dick Cheney gets you automatically booted out
November 4, 2025 at 11:37 PM
I yearn for a political party where not endorsing Mamdani while praising Dick Cheney gets you automatically booted out