I’m trying to figure out (like everyone else) how to reasonably use LLMs both for my work and teaching. This is fantastically written and clearly articulates a lot of ideas and concerns I had vaguely in mind. I’m considering suggesting this as a read to participants in my scientific coding courses.

I think it's very nice to read "here's what your $5400 a paper goes towards", but it's still charging $5400 so that we (scientists) provide content that we (scientists) review without pay and we (scientists) often have to pay to read at the end

We have some good news, regarding the 19th @openmicroscopy.org (#OME) Community Meeting from 28.-30.4.2026! To ensure that everyone can participate, we have decided to hold the event in a hybrid format. 👉 Receive further information about your online participation: gerbi-gmb.de/machform/vie...

I think the complete disconnect between what the bsky team thinks bsky is and what it effectively is in practice is genuinely fascinating. textbook "it's the children who are wrong".

Made very few changes to the latest build and was thinking maybe I'll be able to ship this one without incrementing the shame version (last number in a version number) and 2 minutes into testing, it's already getting bumped.

This is a really nice article about the things GDQ does really well, the things it still has work to do on, and the people involved in it.

the shipping date for my SuperStation one is getting close and I'm finding myself really excited about it. I am by no means a "retro gamer" but the idea of having an ersatz PSX in my house is something I am suddenly very much looking forward to

the last 10km of Milan-San Remo are probably the best cycling I've watched in ages. Pogacar continues to be an alien. (the drone shots of the downhills are incredible too.)

One week left for the OME2026 Community Survey! 📣 If you haven't filled it out, please do so. We'll be discussing it live at the #OME2026 meeting in April. bit.ly/ome2026-comm...

I could not be more proud of this wonderful set of people doing a thing that is daring and new in the scientific imaging space. Genuinely super happy this is off the ground and very excited to see where it goes!

Calling all OME Community members, contributors, and lurkers! Please take a minute to answer the OME 2026 Community Survey (docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...) to help us prepare for discussing the future of OME governance during the OME 2026 Community Meeting at the end of April.

since today is the day it is, I gathered the (about 3) thoughts I had about O Agente Secreto ('The Secret Agent' for you English-speaking folks) into a tiny blogpost. pages.erickratamero.com/personal-web...

took the evening to start playing Darkside Detective and Cube Escape Collection. Darkside Detective: less spooky than I expected. Cube Escape Collection: way spookier than I expected

Calling all OME Community members, contributors, and lurkers! Please take a minute to answer the OME 2026 Community Survey (docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...) to help us prepare for discussing the future of OME governance during the OME 2026 Community Meeting at the end of April.

We’re excited to share our latest preprint on Fractal: our approach towards FAIR bioimage analysis at scale with OME-Zarr-native workflows. Fractal defines interoperable tasks on OME-Zarr and provides a platform for TB-scale image analysis. (1 / 10🧵) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

wait no this is actually incredible youraislopbores.me

had to do this in the most of-the-cuff way possible to avoid being completely paralyzed for hours agonizing over my choices.

Why can’t people (especially scientists) see that AI generated figures and diagrams shout out that they were AI generated and look awful? You’ve spend many months designing and performing experiments only to cover the resulting masterpiece in clear plastic like a cheap sofa.

genuinely the biggest news of the year so far. Cookie Blair's long nightmare is over

🦊🤝👾 TUNIC creator Andrew Shouldice is playing 868-BACK on Twitch today! 1PM EST twitch.tv/andrewshouldice

YES THEY FINALLY DID THE THING

Rewrote my Python bioformats wrapper (from aicsimageio/bioio) as a standalone package: - fully bootstrapped Java setup (just pip install) - lazy, repeatably-indexable Array object - fully spec-compliant OME-Zarr group obj. - xarray/dask exports github.com/imaging-form... v0.0.rc1 on PyPI

I signed up for fastmail yesterday and I'm already at a dozen masked emails. Slowly migrating every single sign-up in my life to a fake email I can nuke anytime. I shall vanquish spam

smart microscopy postdoc position in Montpellier, France. Could definitely do worse. With @glyg https://forum.image.sc/t/up-to-4-year-postdoc-position-in-montpellier-smart-microscopy/119201 #foss #microscopy #getfedihired

ok I think SOMETHING might have gone wrong with my subtitle settings here

I am joining @joss-openjournals.bsky.social as an editor! I wrote a little bit about how much I hate academic publishing and why this felt like the right thing to dedicate some volunteer time to. pages.erickratamero.com/personal-web...

so true, Wako Izumi

Registration is now OPEN! Join us in Heidelberg 🇩🇪 to shape the future of the Global Image Data Ecosystem 🌏 #foundingGIDE will have its final community event from 4–6 May 2026 in Heidelberg, Germany, followed by a two-day hackathon and workshops on 7-8 May. Register at: tinyurl.com/GIDE2026

We are hiring a Research Software Engineer to enhance and maintain the SpatialData framework. We will work together with colleagues at EMBL, DKFZ, GSK, and across the scverse community. 🔗 Deadline: 15/02/2026 embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/d...

We are hiring for group leaders again — EBI is a great place to start your research group! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/EMBL/job/Hin...

AMAZING JOB OPPORTUNITY ALERT!!! @calm-stp.bsky.social is hiring a Data & Systems Steward! 🧬 🔹Manage #bioimage data & #OMERO admin 🔹Automate via #Python/#Bash 🔹Support #FAIR principles 🔹Work closely with @crick-ia-team.bsky.social ⏰ Deadline: 08 Feb 2026 Apply: www.crick.ac.uk/careers-stud...

The OME meeting has followed me from New England to Germany! consistently my favorite scientific meeting of the year, with the nicest community anywhere. Join us there!

I disappeared from the world for 4h and finished this in one sitting. Really fun one-of-these (solve mystery on computer). Just hard enough to be enjoyable, well-written, fun to interact with, cool little tangents you can go on. Strong recommend!

We Are hiring!! 👨‍💻👩‍💻 CALM's new Data and Systems Steward Role is live 🎉https://crick.wd3.myworkdayjobs.com/External/job/London/Data-and-Systems-Steward_R2551 closing date 8th Feb!

Big news! The Data Management team/Data Science Centre at EMBL (i.e. my team) is hiring for a position based in Heidelberg (but working across all sites!). We are looking for a scientific workflows developer that will focus on multimodal pipelines. embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Big news! The Data Management team/Data Science Centre at EMBL (i.e. my team) is hiring for a position based in Heidelberg (but working across all sites!). We are looking for a scientific workflows developer that will focus on multimodal pipelines. embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

The thing that's different this time is that the plausible deniability, the pretense, is fully gone. The US feels like it doesn't even need THAT anymore. The underlying violence and corruption have been there for decades, it's just cranked up to 11 and mask off now.

Spent the last day of the year (how else?) seeing up a self-hosted cloud drive, with auto-upload for the photos I take on my phone and everything. The "Erick self-hosts everything he's not forced to use for work (and email)" dream is dangerously close.

finally bothered moving from proton to mullvad for VPN and 1) one more step towards moving off proton for everything 2) my very brittle house-of-cards networking situation doesn't implode any longer when I connect my raspberry pi to the VPN

The two TV shows I want to watch over the break are Ludwig and Poker Face season 2. Which makes me think I should just bite the bullet and watch all of Columbo, finally

my gifts to the world on christmas eve: an UNBEATABLE speedrun (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzAp...) and corresponding SRC leaderboard (www.speedrun.com/UNBEATABLE)

is UNBEATABLE a fun speedrun? one way to find out. www.twitch.tv/ratamero

Idk if I posted this. I'm hosting a panel at MAGFest next month talking about how race and racism seeps into media and the spaces that surround it. If you're going, this is DEFINITELY one you should come to :) builder.guidebook.com/g/#/guides/m...

I sat down and wrote about every game I played in 2025, in no particular order. pages.erickratamero.com/personal-web...

I sat down and wrote about every game I played in 2025, in no particular order. pages.erickratamero.com/personal-web...

Did a little over 40km on the ebike today, in which was probably the longest bike ride of my life. Sure, I'm not putting 100% of the power that goes into it, but 80% of a lot is still a lot

We’re looking for a Community Manager to help shape and support the growing scverse ecosystem. Deadline January 10, 2026! More details here: jobs.helmholtz-muenchen.de/jobposting/d...

Ok, the Star Wars Holiday Special is about as bad as I expected it to be, but not in the way I expected: I went in prepared for a no-budget light adventure with questionable decisions and what I got was a tacky variety show.

re. last RT: I know "self host a Jellyfin server" is not an option for everyone but: have an mp3 library. Buy your music from the artists. Stop paying rent for it - especially when the landlord sucks and no money goes to the musicians.

if you desperately need analytics just plug your shit into LastFM and realise you spent an unreasonable amount of the year listening to the title theme from "space ghost coast to coast"