anyway my favorite channel of late is the BBC Archive. they don't make lads like this anymore youtu.be/NKPApAsJbj4...

Amazing. Bypass model safeguards and get helpful responses about nukes, bioweapons, cyberattacks, etc., simply by putting the adversarial prompt in a poem. Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models arxiv.org/abs/2511.153...

Channelling its inner angry PE teacher, my lock screen now says "Have you completed your mandatory training? It's mandatory for a reason."

As a 10 year old who was beginning to REALLY LIKE chemistry, I thought this was amazing. Yes, I was that kid...

Confiscating jewellery from survivors of a war zone makes you look like a fucking Nazi. And the obscene thing is, that is the intention. It's there to look appropriately harsh. Indecent. Filthy. A moral stain. And no-one of good character would have ever proposed such a thing in the first place.

Industrial action works. Well done colleagues at Nottingham. As for us, we carry on @leicesterucu.bsky.social

Every university should renovate the disciplinary framework of its courses and ask whether it is responding to its global responsibilities. But no university should recognise any merit in withdrawing from the study of other languages, cultures & societies www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/late...

Pickets across the country. A march through Leicester. Hundreds of jobs on the line. We’re not standing by while the sector burns. We will continue to fight. Congrats to all involved for yesterday!

Come join us in beautiful Britanny, France in May 2026 for a workshop that I am organizing with @lucievirevolte.bsky.social and @psudmant.bsky.social on Rapid host adaptations to infections: sites.google.com/berkeley.edu...

UCU (@ucu.org.uk) has called a national demonstration against the planned redundancies at the University of Leicester. Please come and march alongside us in Leicester on 12 November. All welcome!

@leicesterchem.bsky.social dream team taking a stand ✊ Some of these fine minds are directly in the firing line! ☠️ 🪓 saveleicesteruni.com

New PhD studentship opportunity in my lab & with collaborators from the Pinniped Genomes Consortium. Come help us unravel the genomics of seal physiological super powers! Closing date 7th January 2026 🧪🦭🧬🌍🦑🐳 #marine #mammals #consgen #popgen #phylo #molevol #evolution yes-dtn.ac.uk/research/the...

Senior management at Lancaster University insist cuts of 1 in 4 jobs are “difficult but necessary” This means “we messed up the finances & you’ll be paying for it” www.lancasterguardian.co.uk/news/nationa...

It is a deep loss to the East Midlands that it will be impossible to take a degree in any Modern Language in the region's universities. Nottingham and Leicester closing thier ML degree programmes. No planning, entire regions will be without key degrees, all institutions chasing the same students.

Okay, here are some first reflections on Watson. Watson's life is a tragedy, really of Shakespearean proportions. He did not, as most bios will tell you, do one great thing when he was young and then collect laurels for it for the next 60 years. His career arc was unlike any in science.

Excellent response here, particularly how the restrictive post 16 system effectively limits choices to humanities OR sciences. Future scientists need training in the humanities.

We have a 4 year fully-funded PhD opportunity to join our group @earlhaminst.bsky.social on an Eng Bio project: Engineering stable synthetic chromosomes. Jointly with the BioFoundry and @cgrandel.bsky.social. Read more about the project shorturl.at/GZMbB and about our research shorturl.at/HR6p5

Morning noon and night, damn ilku-duty. I have no time to observe the sun and moon, nor teach my students the scribal craft!

*macca voice* Ozymandias Legs over there but his body is here in the sand Sneer of command. Look at his works, kings. Not much is left of his power and glorious reign. Nothing remains

I’m old enough to remember when everybody agreed that higher education was a “market” and offering “choice” was how the universities were meant to grow on.ft.com/3WTwBue

A neat tool I just came across: Viabundus, a digital road map of northern Europe 1350-1650, that lets you calculate contemporary travel routes/times. In 1500, going Amiens → Köln by horse took almost 7 days and 13 toll payments. #medievalsky www.landesgeschichte.uni-goettingen.de/handelsstras...

I am genuinely impressed by large language models - they can absorb disparate components of text into some consolidated view, they can produce extremely good language and - with the right model - translate pretty well between languages and they are an excellent text based UI for humans to use. But..

So for the first time in my career, I have completed the move into newly refurbished office and lab space. Thanks to my PhD students and trojan dept technician for helping me wheel and carry everything, including the cupboards! A space with clean draught-free windows and effective heating! Luxury!!

Monty Python understood p-hacking

The biologist's view of how flight works. Courtesy of Rory Maizels. #GenerativeBiology

New blogpost on my concerns about Wellcome LEAP new $50m program on autism/microbiome links. deevybee.blogspot.com/2025/10/a-le... #autism #microbiome #biomarkers #diagnostic

I bet they proudly show thier Athena Swan badges though...

If you're having a rough day, remember that in 1991 Tim Berners-Lee's paper for the World Wide Web was rejected and he was relegated to the poster session.

Interested in learning more about this topic? Check out these previous papers related to this session published in @ajhgnews.bsky.social: 📄 bit.ly/3IPKHt4 📄 bit.ly/48bStYG #ASHG

We're excited to be recruiting an NIH funded postdoc to work in the Coop lab at UC Davis. We're specifically interested in candidates who are want to work at the intersection of human genetics, GWAS, and population genetics modeling. Please RT

This an interesting example of the evolution of complexity, where there is an ever increasing cycle of byzantine requirements addressed by acessing a byzantine LLM based on all previous knowledge.

Ridiculous that Geography Geology and Environment at Leicester is under threat. @leicesterucu.bsky.social @ucu.org.uk . In the shadow of where David Attenborough grew up (house at the back), we are on strike to protest against this threat. #climatechange #attenborough

And this of course is the problem with nationalism whether from the right or supposed "progressive nationalists".

Lagman, Bergqvist & Kuraku analysed opsin gene evolution in jawless vertebrates, confirming tandem duplications of visual opsins before the vertebrate radiation. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf231 #evobio #molbio #opsins

Cambridge University launches project to rescue data trapped on old floppy disks | Tom's Hardware share.google/fN8pdBbPhQOB...

My first thought was “wow I hope this guy didn’t give out his name because he could absolutely be charged” and yup, he is correct to stay anonymous. This man’s account is shocking. His neighbors’ situation is shocking. The entire Chicago raid is shocking.

Hugely important report which identifies - to coin a phrase - a clear and present danger to UK scientific institutions. Time for the UK Scientific academy to use its contacts to urgently lobby govnt. Are you listening @royalsociety.org ?

@leicesterucu.bsky.social Our students deserve a big thanks for supporting us at the picket line every day, now in week 2. It means a lot to have the students backing for fighting the looming job cuts at University of Leicester in 6 schools

@leicesterucu.bsky.social Today we had s lovely showcase from modern languages and why it matters in a multi-lingual city as Leicester. And our students stand with us every day, thank you!

Excellent opportunity here! On a completely different level to anything else offered in the UK.

I am hiring! - looking for a Staff Scientist to co-run my research group with me. Staff Scientist is a senior professional scientist role at EMBL. Please forward to people you might know who could be interested! embl.wd103.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/EMBL/j...

Fascinating take on the current AI hyperbole… ashvardanian.com/posts/llm-ep...

Our latest work is out in Nature today. In this paper, we introduce an improved version of NanoSeq, a duplex sequencing protocol with <5 errors per billion bp in single DNA molecules, and use it to study the somatic mutation landscape of oral epithelium in >1000 people www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Honestly, why is @theguardian.com science reporting often so poor?

RFK Jr’s attack on science has close parallels to Lysenko’s attack on genetic in Soviet Russia. Speak in populist press, not journals Make quick solution to problems Blame failures on internal enemies He needed a supporting anti-elitist government A good podcast 🧪 youtu.be/MuikGTW1LvQ

Sad news. He was an excellent teacher, taught me as a naive undergraduate how to cut xenopus eggs. I was doing it all wrong (obviously) but he did not say so!

#MammothMonday factoids: A comparison of 23 woolly mammoths (how cool is it to have that many mammoth genomes!) and 28 living elephants identified at least 1.2 million mammoth-specific genetic changes, including 4,786 amino acid substitutions in 3,097 genes 1/n 🧪 🐘 🦣 PMID: 37030294

So very excited to be finally able to shout from the rooftops about my incredible friend Brenna’s new project. Reflected glory is the best glory to bask in, like a soft warm glow that makes you smile and —even better— requires no effort except finding happiness in other people