This is wonderful! But [clears throat, shuffles feet] the neuron seems to be an interneuron without an axon. Not that there's, you know, anything wrong with that. At least it's not a glial cell (tags @liddelowsa.bsky.social)

Now on Bluesky: @darwin-online.bsky.social. Give 'em a follow! #HPS #histsci

1/28 New preprint up, which I think is the best theoretical idea I've ever had. We asked a simple question: what are the costs of investment into non-reproductive somatic cells? Turns out these costs decrease with the *logarithm* of organism size! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

Deadline Dec. 1! Please share with your network! lifescienceeditors.org/apply/

🎄 Day 4 of the 24 Days of Development ✨🧬 In 1984, Drosophila homeotic genes were found to be conserved across animals, including humans 🧬🐸. This article highlights a shared genetic toolkit for embryonic development 🔬🌟🎁  doi.org/10.1016/j.yd...

Took me too long actually 😆

Hot off the keyboard and gifted: Hegseth has to go. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Tom Nichols about Trump: “Places like Arlington Cemetery and people like Mark Kelly or John Kelly or Jim Mattis or others, they make him uncomfortable because they are a constant reminder of everything he is not.” @radiofreetom.bsky.social

Ten months into the president’s second term, Trump 2.0 is for the first time starting to resemble the chaotic original. That new sense of political weakness in the president has not just emboldened Democrats who have been despondent for much of the past year. www.theatlantic.com/politics/202...

Quote of the Day, from the marvelous new book by @rbratten.bsky.social

All of the time -- and I mean ALL of the time -- I get messages from people in tech that if we just promoted people with the right engineering degrees, and the Technical People were in charge, all would be fixed. That is why I wrote Why I Cannot Be Technical. You either get it or you don't.

Excellent thread, Tom This must be the 100th time Tom tried to explain, here on BlueSky, why we are not living in a fascist country right now. If you read this and you still do not understand why we are not a fascist country right now...you don't want to understand...you just want to complain.

“Our impression is that autism-microbiome research is an example of a field that has generated its own momentum, without necessarily going anywhere.”

Importance: High subj: An article for U (gift link) i wrote ,,,,,, about jeff epstein. s emails. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

An empirical approach to evaluating the prevalence of long-lived balancing selection in humans--and important limitations. Work by @hannahmm.bsky.social

The end of an era: the Tree of Life Web Project is going dark after 3 decades. Anyone interested in communicating phylogeny online should read David's account of goals, history, and future. @bembidion.bsky.social subulatepalpomere.com/2025/11/02/t...

@radiofreetom.bsky.social: "What can other American citizens do when faced with a government that offers trolling and obscenity as replacements for governing?" ...

'When Mendel began his investigation, his first inclination was to try breeding mice of different colors. However, before his mice experiment really got going, Mendel was forced to switch the subject of his experiments to peas by a prudish bishop uncomfortable with animals having sex in the abbey.'

We are delighted that @genesdev.bsky.social have selected our (w/ @adrianbracken.bsky.social) Weaver syndrome paper artwork as the November cover! This piece was made by my incredibly talented niece, Gina 'Dna Vinci' Ronan. @ucddublin.bsky.social @tcddublin.bsky.social @ucd-sbbs.bsky.social

Or one of my patented Ambien Haldol smoothies

Here's my latest contribution to the "Lost Science" series at the New York Times: Jay Falk, a scientist who studies why some female hummingbirds look just like males. Gift link: nyti.ms/4qF7Qje

Paging @ritastrack.bsky.social

I don't see a lot of people talking about this, so I want to highlight something GOOD Billie Eilish stood in a room full of billionaires and said "you're billionaires... Why?" She donated 11.5 MILLION DOLLARS to food equity and climate orgs, which Stephen Colbert announced to said billionaires.

1/ Hello Drosophila-philists and braino-maniacs! 👋🪰🧠🧪 The Caron lab has a new preprint, and it is about 🥁🥁🥁 democracy! Neuro-democracy, to be precise. So: drop EVERYTHING and listen up — a 🧶! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

What does mating look like when you only have a single shot at getting it right? Very excited to share our work on an almost-invisible female control, rapidly evolving mating recognition systems, and species that break the rules and take over the world. IN MOSQUITOES>

Does this really "change everything"? On hyperbole, and pedantry, and effective communication

First neurons didn’t appear overnight. We trace their roots to ancient secretory cells - showing how lifestyle & behavior shaped the evolution of first synapses.🧠🌊 #Evolution #Neuroscience Our latest in @natrevneuro.nature.com Link: rdcu.be/eMX3E @jeffcolgren.bsky.social @msarscentre.bsky.social

Psychedelics alter neurovascular coupling, which means we need to critically re-evaluate fMRI findings of acute psychedelic effects #neuroskyence #PsychSciSky www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Now online @nature.com! Want to change the consequences of receptor activation? Small molecules binding the GPCR-transducer interface change G protein subtype preference in predictable ways, enabling rational drug design 💥 So many new possibilities! 🧪🧠🟦 www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🧵👇

Most Nature papers are published in Current Biology

My rep, Juan Ciscomani (R, gerrymandering) is one of 11 invertebrates suggesting that Republicans look into healthcare subsidies *after the government reopens*. All of these toads voted for the BBB. The level of their sincerity can be gauged by the fact that they won’t discuss healthcare N O W.

FIRST PAPER OUT OF MY LAB!! Here, we examined the polymorphic Gouldian finch brain and found that the regulatory gene coding for head color, follistatin, exhibits morph and sex-specific differences in key areas known to regulate social behaviors! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

I wrote about tensions and troubles for Bluesky on @techpolicypress.bsky.social and then I wrote about the TPP piece on wrecka.ge and now I am posting about it the post on Bluesky. Look at this cloud. www.wrecka.ge/clouded-skie...

Erin Kissane says a bunch of smart stuff about the state of play in the open networks/social media space, which I recommend reading.

you know what they say, when the Lord closes 34 tabs, he opens 34 windows

I love my alma mater, @uarizona.bsky.social. We regularly visit campus and I commute🚴‍♂️ through it twice daily. So I was worried that it took many days for the UofA to respond to Trump's extortion scheme. I started to think about how to respond if they caved. I preprocessed the heartbreak and rage. /1

I am completely awestruck by the ease with which Mike Johnson lies on a daily basis. I'll never understand how such a transparently fraudulent "man of faith" can live with themselves. Life is too short to be that phony.

No notes

This prize-winning cheese, aged in caves, lost its signature green rind for the same reason that cave fishes and other animals have evolved to be albino: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/09/s... 🧪

Dang right

People are giving the Yankees a hard time for not scoring runs in Toronto, but in Canada, the law is completely different, judges have much more limited power.

You'll put down strangers, Kill them, cut their throats, possess their houses, And lead the majesty of law in line, To slip him like a hound.

👏💙

Our new PNAS paper "Enhanced PIEZO1 function contributes to the pathogenesis of sickle cell disease" is out: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... 1/3

If you’re white, your accomplishments are your own and you can resent and criticize the country all you like, but if you’re black and successful you should be grateful to white people for allowing you in their presence. bsky.app/profile/jess...

I wrote about Kash Patel's cringe, weird challenge coin. Perfect for him: www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I love my alma mater, the University of Arizona (BS 1984, PhD 1996). We live nearby, and I deliberately commute by bike through the campus, twice a day. I signed this, enthusiastically. (I'm kinda proud that we got targeted by the fascist goons.) Join me! alumni.controlshift.app/petitions/tr...

The October cover of Molecular Biology and Evolution features the work of Han et al., who investigated the origins of East Asian domestic pigs. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf214 #evobio #molbio #domestication