I presume that the parent finds it worrisome that Johns Hopkins University (prestigious, academic, intelligent, good) can't compete, on employing neuroscience researchers (intelligent, valuable, academic, good), with Pinterest (dumb, corporate, useless, bad).

But it's a mystery for now.

It's not pinterest and Kitty Xu, the trend for advance in neuroscience and understanding of brain mechanisms is to be applied in marketing and advertising to influence and manipulate people's minds.

Basically exploiting knowledge on how our brain works against us to profit a few among the richest instead of trying to improve everything for everyone.

This kind of behaviour is considered a marker of a declining civilization on the verge of collapsing, so yeah it's worth worrying about.

You haven't succeeded in making it any less depressing. I didn't take it to mean that the author was at some depressing place. Rather than it's sad in general that people trained to do that kind of research aren't able to keep doing it and advancing science.

Pinterest is among the website I dislike the most for their antifeatures and usual "social" trickery.