Ok now I'm confused. Important notes: 1) the carrot aliquot accidentally took the fat layer so it's a different consistency, 2) the root veggies only boiled for 10 mins before adding the carrots. Sigh.... Redo time.

It works!! Super robust workflow, performed by a 2nd year undergrad. @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social

Plot twist!!!! It's the root veggies that make the strain this color! Color not fully developed yet, and it gets darker as the veggies boil longer, not because of new ingredients, imo. #bluesoup

Success!! Now to inoculate the strain when I get back to lab 😈

senior male academics giving a conference paper, after being shown the "one more minute" sign

Picking up soup sampling materials where I'm finally doing the long awaited experiment to remove aliquots of the soup after each added ingredient, as I have yet to find a non-soup medium that truly replicates the color.

This dude… It’s refreshing to have a politician that loves their city

I think it's important for people to hear that even my non-interview pile are incredible, the differentiating factor is specific fit for the call, where there are applications in the pile that just match/address the call's needs better. Not getting interviewed doesn't mean you're not awesome.

Reviewing faculty apps is heartbreaking because there are so many phenomenal people that our system is just spitting out and there isn't room for 💔💔💔

We composited soil cores and lost 49 AM fungal taxa doing it. Sequencing individual subsamples found them. The ones that vanish are rare, patchy, and phylogenetically clustered. Also drying vs freezing made no difference really. Sample at the scale your question lives at. doi.org/10.1016/j.so...

Officers shooting a man, running away from law enforcement, who is not a target of law enforcement, and who poses no threat to law enforcement, is murder. Federal officers do not have the power to commit summary executions because they are aggrieved.

OUR WORK IS NOT DONE. In unusual move, NSF issued a request for information on plan to conform grant policies to the proposed (unfinalized) OMB rule. Plan includes changes to grant termination provisions & disallowing publication costs. Comments due August 24. www.federalregister.gov/documents/20...

I wonder if watching these games counts for my Zone 2 training

If you have time to browse bluesky this weekend, you have time to submit your comment on the proposed OMB rule to politicize science funding agencies. This one is important. Here's my comment if some inspiration will help. 🧪 scienceforeveryone.science/submit-your-...

If we didn't give up on FIFA on moral principle before this we need to after literally every game full of BS and rigged calls.

The type and amount of bacterial DNA carried by virus-like particles in the gut microbiome is simply mind-boggling. Amazing work by PhD candidate Jessie Maier in my group and collaborators @duerkoplab.bsky.social and Ben Callahan www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

First thoughts on Sol 5.6. It's an absolute beast for actual work. It one shotted a hardness proof in 43 min that 5.5 & opus failed to resolve over days. Fable was utterly useless and refused to even attempt the proof. For actual research, it seems 5.6 sol is the current king!

SUPER MARIO 2026 JUST DROPPED!

My journey with @anthropic.com's Fable 5 model has been a very short one; characterized by "No". So, in my most recent blog post, I explain why I think "Fable is not a useful model" combine-lab.github.io/blog/2026/07...

I'm pretty sure stories about this WC will be told for decades....

Sadly put away my iSeq since it's pretty much not in use anymore now that they're phasing it out 😭 I remember I squealed with joy when it first arrived after I cobbled together the funds for it 6 years ago. Miss you, BB.

I turned on the Eng-Mex game 30s before Eng scored. After the 2nd immediate score I was commanded to turn off the game, which I promptly did, 30s before Mex scored. I may be a scientist but I'm scared to turn on the game anymore.

So it seems from my discussions with others in the field, that @anthropic.com's #Fable5 is ENTIRELY AND COMPLETELY unusable for any bioinformatics or computational biology. It rejects every prompt, not matter how benign or innocuous. It may as well not exist for our field ☹️.

Scientists amongst each other in the era of 47

🧠🧬 Our paper is now published in the Journal of Neurochemistry 🎉 dx.doi.org/10.1111/jnc.... During the review process, we received *exceptional guidance* from one of our reviewers, which led us to improve not only our paper, but the general Brain Data Alchemy analysis pipeline. Thank you! 🙏💛

Setting aside my pain and protestations about that last call, I just love how over past years, a small nation of scrappy no-longer-underdogs has won the hearts of people across the world 🇭🇷 ⚽ #Vatreni

Back on my bullsh

For the Monday crowd (with the fixed first link) : Oh noes; the first link is broken! It should be github.com/COMBINE-lab/...

I chatted with Bethany Brookshire for this important story in Verge on the proposed OMB rules changes. It's not too late to make a public comment if you haven't already.

Climate.us is live. Built by members of the team behind Climate.gov, this new independent nonprofit website keeps trusted climate information easy to find, easy to use, and harder to erase. #ClimateForUs #ClimateUS

So I'm finally thoroughly parsing through this preprint from @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social & Patrick Lypaczewski where they homebrewed targeted ONT library prep, and it's even more brilliant than at first glance. Plus they've been so generous in answering my questions. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Our pibble is in the late stages of dementia and we're at the stage where we need to make the call soon. Even harder because her body would last a few more years but her brain is gone. Experiencing this decline w/ a loved one is so painful, I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Nature is so cruel.

Sealant Team Six 💀💀💀

Very fitting personality match!! #believe

And a chemist would have told you that hydrogen peroxide is a paint stripper.

👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻

I curated a (mostly) exhaustive list of Juneteenth celebrations across the country. Chances are there’s one near you!

BREAKING: TRUMP WALKS BACK ENDING OUR OCEAN MONITORING SYSTEM!! www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/c...

salmon 2.0 (the rust re-write) is now live! It's also the version you get if you install via bioconda. This is a from-scratch rewrite in rust, and the base for future development. I'll post a more detailed thread tomorrow, but you can read the docs here combine-lab.github.io/salmon/

A federal judge just ordered the Trump administration to reinstall exhibits and signs relating to slavery ​and climate change that it ⁠had removed from ​parks and monuments nationwide

The "Check how people's names are spelled before hitting Send" challenge.

Musk buying twitter, Bezos buying WaPo, Ellison buying CBS—all are less profitable now. But they’re political investments that increase the value of the new owners’ portfolios Wealth concentration makes this possible, and that’s one mechanism by which inequality destroys democracy

Applied Math

Mapping the genetic landscape of the DNA damage response with Cas12a-based combinatorial knockout screens https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.07.728858v1

#ASMicrobe folks! Support our peer-mentoring program and then come find me and get a shirt! I’ll be in the exhibit hall near the ATCC booth around 1 PM! #MicroSky 🧪🦠🔬

Police pushed out a couple of the attendees at a diabetes scientific meeting. The crime: Passing out printouts of a recent publication calling out the administration for destroying our research infrastructure. The right to free speech was infringed upon. Censorship is real. We have to stand up.

"An online directory to help connect Black patients to Black doctors has been sued by an anti-DEI group and a white physician who says he was denied inclusion because he’s not Black." 1/ www.ms.now/opinion/nih-...

I have glow in the dark stickers this year! Come say hello! #ASMicrobe

Hey #ASMMicrobe, if you are interested in bacterial coexistence come see my colleague Jess Gronniger present on her work testing ecological theory in a synthetic community! Saturday (today!) at 2pm 145AB. A sneak peek into our recently accepted research!! #ASMicrobe #MICROBE2026

I now have (and hope to release soon) a version of oarfish that swaps out minimap2-rs for rammap (it's generally faster & more RAM friendly). This is, IMO, an example of generative AI rapidly accelerating software dev in a good way. The integration would have taken a lot more time by hand!