Neil Lewis, Jr.
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neillewisjr.bsky.social
Neil Lewis, Jr.
@neillewisjr.bsky.social
Behavioral Scientist & Science Communicator.

Nancy and Peter Meinig Family Investigator in the Life Sciences and Associate Professor of Communication, Medicine, and Public Policy at Cornell University.

More here: neillewisjr.com
Personal account
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2/6. In a set of experiments just published in Social Science & Medicine, we found that Asian, Black, and Hispanic Americans were consistently more willing to engage in individual and collective efforts to address health disparities than their White counterparts. news.cornell.edu/stories/2025...
Those most willing to address health disparities tend to be overlooked | Cornell Chronicle
Cornell researchers found that by prioritizing the perspectives of white Americans instead of those from underrepresented groups, studies of pandemic disparities likely missed important insights from ...
news.cornell.edu
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
NYT: "you might think you're sleepy because you ate a bunch of turkey. In fact it's probably because you overate"

💀💀💀
So many food myths.

Sugar makes kids hyper? Nope.

You need 8 glasses of water a day? Nope.

Turkey makes you sleepy? Nope.

No, the Tryptophan in Turkey Won’t Make You Sleepy www.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/s...
No, the Tryptophan in Turkey Won’t Make You Sleepy (Published 2015)
www.nytimes.com
November 27, 2025 at 7:07 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
They did it again! NYC subway Thanksgiving 2025, via @scootercaster.com!
November 27, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
They're trying to break the pipeline for future social science research.

"There are no current DDRIG grants available for any discipline in the Directorate for Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences, as it appears that the NSF has archived—which means cancelled—the DDRIG grants in every SBE field"
November 27, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
data centers are driving up electricity prices for households — and price relief may not be coming anytime soon… Residential retail electricity prices in September were up 7.4%, to about 18 cents per kilowatt hour, according the Energy Information Administration... www.cnbc.com/2025/11/26/a...
AI data center 'frenzy' is pushing up your electric bill — here's why
Energy-hungry data centers that underpin artificial intelligence are contributing to higher residential electricity bills, say experts.
www.cnbc.com
November 27, 2025 at 12:40 AM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
This THREAD.
Being among the first interrogated and ultimately fired by DOGE, I certainly felt we were facing the business end of a right-wing conspiracy theory 🧵
DOGE was not a money-saving effort. It was an effort to chase down and prove right-wing conspiracy theories. They went after USAID to prove conspiracy theories about foreign aid. Then they went after SSA to, again, pursue conspiracy theories about Dems paying "illegals" to vote. 1/2
November 26, 2025 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
My wife was sexually harassed by Miles Hewstone as a phd student. He was still asked to review her (and other women he harassed) for jobs and promotions. This is so fucked up.

Thankfully, she and many other women testified against him and something was finally done. This is her take on his case:
November 20, 2025 at 3:55 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
Exclusive: FEMA and Illinois officials pulled dozens of personnel back from surveying flood-damaged neighborhoods in Chicago because immigration agents were conducting patrols nearby, messages show.
With ICE in the area, FEMA workers were pulled from storm damage work
The decision to halt disaster assessment work came amid the immigration crackdown in Chicago. Officials worried FEMA’s efforts could put residents and surveyors at risk.
www.washingtonpost.com
November 25, 2025 at 9:22 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
"My mentor always tells me, 'Kim, dogs don’t bark at parked cars." They’re coming after critical race theory, 1619, intersectionality because these ideas mobilized people. They gave them the language to actually articulate what they were seeing with their own eyes," says Kimberlé Crenshaw.
November 25, 2025 at 1:26 PM
Don't Experiment on Thanksgiving Auntie Carmel
YouTube video by Dai T’shari
youtube.com
November 25, 2025 at 5:58 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
Billionaires, who quite often do not see education as a common good, should not be guiding higher education policy.

“I kind of yearn,” Mr. Nassirian said, “for the gilded age when billionaires satisfied their extracurricular interests by collecting Fabergé eggs and prized ponies.”

#DefendHigherEd
Wealthy People Have Always Shaped Universities. This Time Is Different.
www.nytimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 1:41 PM
"Google needs to be able to deliver this increase in capability, compute, and storage networking 'for essentially the same cost and increasingly, the same power, the same energy level,' he told employees during the meeting."
November 25, 2025 at 12:03 AM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
I think @brendannyhan.bsky.social is exactly right in this piece, but I’d go one step further here. Elites very explicitly told young people to sit down and shut up. Society punished them for standing up for their beliefs, and targeted and vilified the organizers. Now we need need them.
November 24, 2025 at 2:27 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
One explanation for economic populism in the US is the recurring cycle of bubbles and bailouts that happens without any democratic input
November 24, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
So much this: "It’s all very stupid, but as far as I can tell, not actually illegal."

And yeah, it does look a little like Enron
November 24, 2025 at 9:23 PM
1/2. After California passed a law to curb legacy and donor admissions at colleges and universities, Stanford decided to stop accepting funding from state student aid programs “in order to comply with recent California legislation.”

www.highereddive.com/news/stanfor...
Stanford says no to state student aid, yes to legacy and donor admissions
The highly selective university will forgo California financial aid for students to circumvent a new law aimed at curbing the admissions practices.
www.highereddive.com
November 24, 2025 at 8:59 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
Also, treating international students like a money faucet that you can turn on and off is a choice
November 24, 2025 at 2:52 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
"Unis have relied on intl students paying higher fees to make up for deficits from teaching UK students, whose tuition fees have been eroded by inflation, but recent immigration and visa changes have triggered a fall in intl recruitment since 2023."

Sigh

www.theguardian.com/education/20...
Levy on international students’ tuition fees not in best interest of UK, says leader of top university
Duncan Ivison, president of Manchester University, says government’s 6% surcharge plan will ‘hurt the sector’
www.theguardian.com
November 24, 2025 at 2:51 PM
From CDC:

"As of November 18, 2025, we estimate that COVID-19 infections are growing or likely growing in 19 states..."

"As of November 18, 2025, we estimate that Influenza infections are growing or likely growing in 42 states..."

www.cdc.gov/cfa-modeling....
November 24, 2025 at 1:40 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
Irrational exuberance meets irresponsible accounting?
"It seems like a marvel of financial engineering: Meta is building a $27 billion data center in Louisiana, financed with debt, and neither the data center nor the debt will be on its own balance sheet."
AI Meets Aggressive Accounting at Meta’s Gigantic New Data Center
Favorable treatment off the balance sheet hinges on some convenient assumptions.
www.wsj.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:45 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
We always see a surge of infectious disease, including COVID, RSV, etc etc around Thanksgiving and Christmas. Unless you want to gift your fam with a few weeks sick this year, mask up as you travel!
November 24, 2025 at 12:24 AM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
This is a big deal bc insurance is one of the strongest levers for changing policy and behavior (the other being taxes).

AI companies may have so much money they can self insure. But their enterprise customers don’t and this will cause them think twice about how they adopt and deploy AI.
Insurers AIG, Great American, and WR Berkley seek permission to limit liability from AI agents and chatbots and to retreat from coverage of AI risk as multibillion-dollar claims mount

www.ft.com/content/abfe...
Insurers retreat from AI cover as risk of multibillion-dollar claims mounts
AIG, Great American and WR Berkley seek permission to limit liability from AI agents and chatbots
www.ft.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:27 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
Handing the keys of governance to unqualified billionaires and allowing them to far exceed the proper role of the Executive Branch in dictating to other agencies (i.e. Musk/DOGE) or institutions of civil society (as with Rowan/ Compact) sure does not seem "populist."
www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/u...
Wealthy People Have Always Shaped Universities. This Time Is Different.
www.nytimes.com
November 24, 2025 at 12:06 PM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
We’re in the “speculative-AI-debt-hits-Page-One” part of the cycle.

@wsj.com $HYG $LQD
November 24, 2025 at 11:42 AM
Reposted by Neil Lewis, Jr.
Twitter accounts are based in Russia. BlueSky accounts are based in homes with, frankly, too many books, plants, obsolete cables, and pieces of rustic pottery, that could do with a bit of a tidying up, to be honest.
November 23, 2025 at 8:29 PM