Giorgio Gilestro
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giorgio.gilest.ro
Giorgio Gilestro
@giorgio.gilest.ro
Neuroscientist & Professor (Reader) at Imperial College London. Geek. Curious. Opinionated.

https://lab.gilest.ro | lab website, science blog
https://giorgio.gilest.ro | politics and science comms
https://drosophila.social/@giorgiogilestro | mastodon
Pinned
Wanna learn what we know about why we need to sleep? Here's a fun podcast I recorded for the excellent @npr.org "Seeking a scientist" show, conducted by Kate the Chemist. Enjoy!

@imperiallifesci.bsky.social @imperialcollegeldn.bsky.social

www.kcur.org/podcast/seek...
Why do we need to sleep?
Humans spend one-third of their life sleeping, yet the purpose and function behind this regular state of unconsciousness remains a biological mystery. Sleep researcher Giorgio Gilestro is trying to un...
www.kcur.org
Dear US colleagues, can you please let me know if you are actually using these ridiculous evaluations you keep asking for? Are you aware that giving percentiles within a distribution is absolutely useless unless you know something absolute about that distribution? Such a waste of everyone's time.
November 10, 2025 at 8:26 AM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
OMG @giorgio.gilest.ro really coming in hot opening this preprint with a lady scientist (Maria Manaseina) from the 1890s killing puppies with sleep deprivation! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
www.biorxiv.org
October 16, 2025 at 6:59 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Exciting news for #drosophila #connectomics and #neuroscience enthusiasts: the Drosophila male central nervous system connectome is now live for exploration. Find out more at the landing page hosted by our Janelia FlyEM collaborators www.janelia.org/project-team....
Male CNS Connectome
A team of researchers has unveiled the complete connectome of a male fruit fly central nervous system —a seamless map of all the neurons in the brain and nerve cord of a single male fruit fly and the ...
www.janelia.org
October 5, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Palestine Action was labeled a terrorist organisation for spray painting walls. X, on the other hand, a platform where countless people claim "mustache guy was right" is still legitimised by the government that uses it as one of their official platforms. Let's think about that.
October 3, 2025 at 8:06 AM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Big protest at Place de la République in Paris against Israel’s seizure of the Global Sumud Flotilla.
October 1, 2025 at 9:54 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Colombia has expelled the Israeli diplomatic delegation after the Gaza flotilla interception.
October 1, 2025 at 9:53 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Dear JEDIs,
as we are self-organizing using the #EDRC as a nucleator we decided it is time for a JEDI database to boost our network! If you identify as a JEDI, please contact us here or send a mail to katja.rust@uni-marburg.de to be added to our database.
#Drosophila
@fly-eds.bsky.social
September 26, 2025 at 3:43 PM
Unless they actively want to end up like the Tories, the labour party must change all their leadership, now.

Starmer and Mahmood may as well walk across the aisle and join Farage.
Just fuck off with this. How about start the conversation by highlighting how much immigrants contribute to the UK - not least by propping up the NHS and social care system!

Also - forced volunteering is not volunteering, it's unpaid labour.
September 29, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Keir "island of strangers" Starmer
🗳️ BREAKING | Starmer is now the most unpopular Prime Minister in history - WORSE than Truss

🔴 Starmer – 13% satisfied, 79% dissatisfied

🔵 Liz Truss – 16% satisfied, 67% dissatisfied

Via @Ipsos_in_the_UK, 11-17 Sep
September 27, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Pretty remarkable analysis. The authors admit that the effect of vast cuts may be an underestimate. Grant funding also supports graduate and post-doctoral research careers. I’ve worked in biotech and all of our projects came from NIH-funded research.
September 26, 2025 at 10:14 AM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Netanyahu: ‘These So-Called Genocide Experts Have Probably Never Committed A Genocide In Their Lives’
Netanyahu: ‘These So-Called Genocide Experts Have Probably Never Committed A Genocide In Their Lives’
JERUSALEM—In response to an independent United Nations inquiry concluding that Israel is committing an ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a defiant...
theonion.com
September 18, 2025 at 6:00 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
And we are live!

Excited to announce the 2025 Multi-Agent Behavior Challenge on cross-lab supervised action recognition in mice 🐁🐀🖱️

Running on Kaggle until December 15th, with a $50,000 prize pool going to the top five submissions!

www.kaggle.com/competitions...
September 18, 2025 at 6:24 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Mini-scoop: After resisting pressure to strip Elon Musk of his fellowship for months, the Royal Society is meeting on 1 October to discuss his removal – following his decision to address Tommy Robinson's far-right rally on Saturday.

www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-r...
Royal Society to debate throwing out Elon Musk
One of the most prestigious scientific bodies in the world is considering expelling Musk after his appearance at Tommy Robinson’s extremist London rally
www.thenewworld.co.uk
September 17, 2025 at 4:37 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Another thing I love about the present moment - Musk regularly goes 'don't worry, we are going to change THAT' whenever Grok produces an answer that doesn't align with his priors, yet the British Labour government thinks that they are going to be able to land an argument on there in 2029.
Grok is being sent to the reeducation camp
September 14, 2025 at 10:06 PM
900 arrests for elderly and disabled people peacefully opposing genocide.

9 for drunk thugs attacking the police.
They are attacking the Police again, at the 'peaceful march'.

Imagine if Pro Palestine supporters did this (they never do), they would all be instantly in jail.
September 13, 2025 at 8:21 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Elon Musk has gone completely out of his mind.

He's ranting and raving violently by the hour now.

I believe this is what is called stochastic terrorism. It is a direct attempt to incite mass violence. He even reposted a *hit list*.

As dangerous a man as America has ever seen.
September 13, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Esp given assassination of Kirk in US i find Musk's intervention here, calling for dissolution of parliament and a new govt, really scary .

Also UK govt bodies should get the fuck off X.
September 13, 2025 at 4:44 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Elon, speaking at the Tommy Robinson march today: “This is a government against the people and not for the people, this is why everyone is gathered here today…we don’t have another four years…there’s got to be a dissolution of parliament”

And the government just…continues to use X.
September 13, 2025 at 5:29 PM
PSA: #Google charged me £300+ for having generated 4-5 images in Gemini last month. Even though I have a paid subscription to the service as #gemini pro user. Try nano banana, they said. They should have pointed out the price is not included perhaps!? Goodbye Gemini.
September 8, 2025 at 2:23 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Another day, yet ANOTHER stupid, pointless announcement on immigration from this stupid pointless government.

Today: you are a student - we're going to write you a stern letter about how you better not be thinking of staying!

Insanity. Racist, cowardly, insanity. #r4today
September 2, 2025 at 7:27 AM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
Today Nick Ferrari asked if treaties like the ECHR & the Refugee Convention that were drawn up in the wake of WWII are still relevant to modern Britain.

I said the context of racial hatred towards Muslim immigrants now echoes the hatred of Jewish immigrants in the 20th century. We need these laws.
September 1, 2025 at 10:00 AM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
This whole summer only one story has dominated our entire politics & it comes down to literally 30,000 people in hotels. Ridiculous.

The government needs to get a GRIP it’s pathetic.
August 30, 2025 at 12:05 PM
My son's Microsoft account got hacked by some other kid. The best @microsoft.com can do is acknowledge the intrusion and show us the middle finger. Five years of progresses gone and buy the game again thank you very much. All this because their own security is sub par.
July 28, 2025 at 8:20 PM
Gemini-cli is an utter joke. It's like the crazy cousin of Claude code. A complete disaster for me. Here I have asked to replace a js widget and it went on opening random files that had nothing to do then told me he cannot perform sexual stuff. Excuse me?
July 25, 2025 at 2:13 PM
Reposted by Giorgio Gilestro
When you lose Nick Fuentes

Nick Fuentes to Trump: "Fúck you. You suck. You're fat, you're a joke, you're stupid, you're not funny... This entire thing has been a scam. We're gonna look back at MAGA movement as the biggest scam in history. The liberals were right we will see Trump as a scam artist."
July 17, 2025 at 7:57 PM