In case of proton poisoning, the US Surgeon General recommends grounding yourself and sucking on a live wire. ok that’s a guess

My number one piece of writing advice is: don’t do it if you don’t actually like writing

Is anyone else suddenly getting no hits when searching for titles on google books? I use it just to grab biblio info, but the last couple days, it’s come up blank several X, incl for at least one book I know I’ve found there. The book shows up qua book in a general search. What gives?

If you're in Manchester this afternoon and fancy listening to me chuntering about Francis Crick and why it sometimes matters who does science, come along! Details here:

Fascinating history. Related: My colleague Elizabeth Fenn's cleverly titled, Pox Americana.

Spotify just introduced a “prompted playlist“ feature. Me: Maybe if I give it a really careful prompt, I can get it to introduce me to new music! Woot! It: Here’re 2 new artists to maybe check out +piles of stuff you’ve queued up! Gauntlet down! I WILL force it away from what it knows I know

...and, as @matthewcobb.bsky.social likes to say, they should have minted a 51p coin!

Intro Philosophy w/ Paul Feyerabend Evolution, w/ David Wake Ichthyology w/ George Barlow American Intellectual History w/ Sam Haber Javanese Gamelan African percussion and polyrhythms All profound influences on my life. And all free— only $1000/yr in Uni fees!

Uncle Albert would be appalled to learn that both are on the rise

Agreed on both points.

"The ENCODE debate certainly contributed to... a notion of the genome as highly active and plastic" Superb piece by @duhe.bsky.social. Not easy to get both the science and the history right. My only regret is no explicit reference to B. McClintock & the genome as sensitive organ of the cell :(

Vital point, often lost: "As the team notes, the heritability of any trait isn’t a fixed number that is true for everyone, everywhere, anytime. Rather, it applies to only a specific population in a specific environment."

Yall I found my writing mug. Words cannot express. Time to get to work! #amwriting

... which is exactly what basically everyone in my last book said about eugenics

I can personally attest to the harmful effects of alarms, sirens, low-flying choppers. But call me crazy, maybe having your door beaten down and being shot in the face, say, is even more stressful than your neighbors whistling for help, no matter your IQ

🗃️

Read the Save HHS open letter! www.savehhs.org/letter-we-wi...

Was kinda hoping he'd go, "And to combat this reckless encroachment on our freedoms, this Tuesday I will be leading a peaceful—but extremely well-armed—march across Minnesota that will provide, let's say, strong _incentive_ to any ICE militia to leave the state—immediately." <mic drop>

Da-amn...

Take a break from the misery And enjoy a moment of SNOW DAY with Seeker

What might American politics look like if Dems had the courage of their convictions? Something like this: 🧵

Storm prep: good beer - check gin - check bourbon - check big pot of bison chili - check Extra large back of tortilla chips - check Bags of stove pellets - check Hatches? Battoned. I think we're good.

It’s CONGRESS that can stop ICE and CBP deployment to MN. The Dems (and any responsible Rs?) should introduce legislation and agitate for a vote: “No federal funds may be used for further activities of ICE or CBP in the state of Minnesota, except for their prompt withdrawal.”

This misuse of children's data has been known for years by NIH. Accountability is overdue. We need real enforcement and an honest reckoning with how genomic data can be weaponized. We are witnessing a renaissance of scientific racism--federal institutions are both ignoring and encouraging it.

History of Genetics, Prof. Comfort, Final exam Question 1: Read this NYT article, noting this passage: "In an interview, Dr. Pesta denied misleading the N.I.H. and defended his work. 'I am not a eugenicist,' he said." Was he a eugenicist? Does it matter? Why or why not?

ICE has now carried out two summary executions of innocent people in the streets of an American city. If you work for ICE, there's no denying that's the mission you're supporting now. You don't get to claim in one year or ten or twenty that you didn't know what ICE was doing. You're complicit.

Ah yes, tbe old, “I have a crazy medical idea about American children; let’s test it on West Africans” trick. Mm. #thiscanttberacistitsscience #ididmyownresearch

He should be saying, “Make sure to eat it before the timer if you want to see the little people” "At a mushroom hot pot restaurant there, the server set a timer for 15 minutes and warned us, 'Don't eat it until the timer goes off or you might see little people,'"

How long do you give it till djt gets Bored of Peace?

Looking at the weather, hoping for snow days, and thinking of Calvin and Hobbes. Eggplant casserole tonight? Why, yes! onceuponageek.com/wordpress/20...

I make it a general rule not to patronize businesses whose name starts with "Ameri-". It just never seems to work out well.

Last weekend I had this idea to make chili. So I got veggies, meat, tomato sauce. But forgot I didn’t have chili powder! Tonight, I managed to get some and also ground buffalo & gd tortilla chips. I can’t wait, mmm. And then I realize, I don’t have beans! This is my life right now.

yeah, that tracks

In a lot of ways, ICE really isn't that different from the SS.

Compromise budget: "$32.0 billion for FEMA," incl. "$26.4 billion for the Disaster Relief Fund, and funding for grant programs that help modernize emergency response, ensure fire departments are adequately staffed, and protect local community organizations from terrorism."

Oh man, that was exactly what I needed.

"In the next ten to twenty years, automation will grind jobs to dust as it grinds out unbelievable volumes of production . . . labor will have to intervene in the political life of the nation to chart a course which distributes the abundance to all instead of concentrating it among a few." #MLKDay

“It seems that our legislative assemblies have adopted Nero as their patron saint and are bent on fiddling while our cities burn… That is the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism. Not only is this our nation’s dilemma, it is the plague of western civilization.” -MLKJ, 1967

I can’t help thinking how Barbara McClintock would have responded to papers like this. I mean, beyond, I TOLD YOU! Many thanks to the folks who responded to my #TEsky query about transposable elements. Wow, what an amazing field that’s become.

Minnesotans know something about fighting ICE w/ ice.

ICE and MAGA really did bet the farm on all of Minneapolis’s white people going “oh yes, please take away our disgusting, evil non-white-foreigner neighbors, oh thank you so much.” it’s beautiful that they’ve been proven incredibly wrong about that - may the rest of the country do the same.

"'The key here,' Huq writes, 'is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather...dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state.' It’s the continued existence of the normative state that lulls a population to sleep."

Giving this a bump. I’ve had lots of friendly likes and follows, thanks— but no citations! Pls drop a reference into the cup to support a poor historian who’s trying to get the science right! #TEsky

Hey, good folks of #TEsky— Looking for good recent review, suitable for undergrads, of the fnxns of transposable elements in the genome, for class session on the nonlinear, highly regulated, 4D nucleome. Suggestions welcome! (I'm the author of the "other book" on Barbara McClintock) TIA!

Do we need Minneapolis freedom rides? I mean, literally fuck bovino with his literal taser

This is a terrific archive, now digitized and searchable. Lots of great material on Mississippi segregationists. This description of the US Army rolling into Ole Miss in 1962 after a white riot left two dead is my favorite. The MSSC investigator writing this is *so* close to getting it.

Say what you want, but Massie has game.

well played

Ooh, I'm putting this on my reading list. #amreading

Well played