Trying to hop back on BlueSky. At first this place felt great but I grew to feel detached and isolated pretty quickly as very few people I know IRL are on here.

How does our biochemistry differ from that of Neanderthals & Denisovans—our closest extinct cousins—& how did that affect our success? One piece of the puzzle could be an enzyme called ADSL; a change in just 1 amino acid made a version of ADSL unique to Homo sapiens, & may have shaped our behavior 🧪

Shoutout to fireflies: maybe the cutest bugs out there, plus they gave us the first luciferase ever cloned! Check out our latest blog post to learn more about these alternatives to fluorescent proteins and bring bioluminescence to your lab. 🌟🌟 https://twp.ai/4ipdt0

(2 of 2) …the spread of misinformation, and the dominance of social media algorithms. These issues contribute to a decline in user experience and a sense that the internet is less fun and informative than it used to be…

I asked Google why the internet sucks now and I got a quite the concise and accurate response “The internet, once hailed as a space for freedom and connection, is now often perceived as frustrating and even harmful due to factors like rampant commercialization, (1 of 2).

My mother gave me this gasoline ration card from WWII. Her mother and father used this piece of paper to buy 4 gallons of gas per week during the war.

Edward Jenner is not a household name, but it really should be. The inventor of vaccination. So fundamental was his discovery that pus from cow pox wounds induced humans to gain resistance to small pox that the word “vaccination” derives from the Latin word for cow.

Working along with my 6-year-old learning how to block in all over again with my favorite “learn to draw” book!

Summer goal. Create art that can double as textbook diagrams to teach about nucleosomal array accordion structure, interdigitated arrays, and heterochromatin formation.

I’ve been having nostalgia for the internet circa 2010-2014 lately. This philosophical espresso shot from Jason Silva satisfied my longing to put my brain back in that mode of early excitement and optimism about this whole endeavor.

Cornell blocks Kehlani from Slope Day for pro-Palestine views www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/n...

Fun times in Chicago for the @asbmb.bsky.social annual meeting!

Ironic listening to former Chief Scientific Officer of Moderna; Melissa J. Moore talk about how women should take more risks in life. Encouraging young women to use poker as a good arena to learn how to take risks. It is ironic as I have lost thousands$ on Moderna stock I bought in 2022. 89% drop

Learning from Yael David Ph. D. that histones get glycated at a high rates in tumor cells and also in “exhausted” T-cells. American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center H3R17gly most common and stable

While de-extinction is grabbing the headlines. Stewart Brand, founder of the While Earth caralog has some thoughts youtu.be/U1s1edvJgqY?...

“When institutions & their leaders fail to fight back, it falls upon the people to stand up for the rule of law. The AAUP & AFT are doing what the Columbia board should have done: Fight Back.” — Jennifer Ruth

For years conservatives and some liberals complained incessantly about ‘cancel culture’ and the lack of ‘free speech’ on campuses. None of that stuff comes even close to what the right is now doing in power, in terms of the open bullying and pressuring of colleges and censoring of curricula.

The Water’s Andrew Plus making a quadrupl

BREAKING: We are suing the Trump admin on behalf of our members for unlawfully cutting off $400 million in federal funding for crucial public health research to force Columbia University to surrender its academic independence. Stay Tuned.

Columbia political science professor & scholar of post-soviet policy Tim Frye speaking out today as the rain fell at Columbia AAUP’s press conference in response to Columbia’s shocking surrender to the Trump administration’s threats to defund. #defendhighered #academicsky

The National Institutes of Health will no longer be funding work on the health effects of climate change, according to internal records reviewed by ProPublica. www.propublica.org/article/nih-...

Hey guys remember the Hillary Clinton email server? Seems kinda, small today, doesn’t it?

So, there's this 😬 #AcademicSky

Many conservatives who fought against cancel culture on college campuses and championed free speech are now behind a growing crackdown on political expression at universities, in ways that try to sidestep the Constitution’s free-speech guarantees.

"ICE officials’ activity at Columbia is the administration’s opening salvo in a battle against two of its most frequently invoked bogeymen: higher education and immigrants." www.insidehighered.com/news/global/...

The greatest dedication page I have read in the last 5 years. #PandemicInc

Winged Migration -2001- is one if the greatest films of all time. Change my mind

Trump’s administration governs by fear.

Logging on to BlueSky very much now feels like old Twitter. I love it!

I wrote this letter in collaboration with the Virginia Tech Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (VT AAUP) vtaaup.org/2025/03/14/t...

Beat that!

“Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now?”

It's hard to say this, but science (& research more generally) is just being **stopped** in the US right now. This is just one university, losing nearly a billion dollars in project funding pretty much overnight. That's people's jobs & the research that could save lives. www.wsj.com/health/healt...

😥 bsky.app/profile/jere...

We call for the immediate release of former Columbia University grad student Mahmoud Kahlil, a legal permanent resident of the US. His abduction is an assault not only on basic immigration law but on our 1st Amendment protections of freedom of speech & assembly. www.aaup.org/news/aaup-co...

HOT off the press: A MUST READ somber assessment of the war on American higher ed & the fight to save it. From Harvard AAUP member Dennis Hogan in the @defector.bsky.social “In the war between colleges & Trump, too many Americans are choosing Trump.“ defector.com/the-nih-cuts...

I have covered presidential politics for 40 years. This was the most juvenile display by a President and Vice President I have ever seen. Other presidents treated their enemies with more respect. This is a low point and a dark day for the US. Totally embarrassing.

FDA cancels meeting to select flu strains for next season's shots www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

Are there interesting words you’ve learned or become reacquainted with lately? Two stick out for me, the fist is amniote; a class in the phylogenetic tree encompassing all terrestrial and some amphibious tetrapod vertebrates. The second is equipoise which means balance between left and right sides

First measles death is reported in the West Texas outbreak that’s infected more than 120 people apnews.com/article/meas...

Precise. Thanks to Nick Anderson for drawing this!

President Zelenskyy has been one of the greatest leaders of our time, guiding Ukraine through the darkest period of its recent history, rising up to Russia’s unwarranted aggression, being an inspiration to the Ukrainian people and ensuring that Ukraine’s voice is heard on the world stage.

Hey congressional Republicans, still waiting for you to announce how much you’re cutting from congress’ own $6.5 billion budget….

Biden was an ally to the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Trump is an Ally to his hero - Vladimir Putin.

This is a vitally important point. Journalists need to start telling the story of people whose lives are being destroyed, upended, damaged as a result of the actions of this administration.

I hope the conversations at the 50th anniversary of Asilomar are even more productive than 50 years ago www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Marbury v. Madison FTW

If I were in charge of the US government I would remove the ability of pharmaceutical companies from advertising directly to consumers through Internet, TV, and radio advertising. Also, I would increase the corporate tax rate to 80% but make allowances for R&D expenditures to be tax exempt