For me, the question isn’t whether generating art with AI is good or bad. It’s just definitionally impossible. Art is what humans create to express the nonliteral. An algorithm, however much data it has, has no sense of the nonliteral. It might make something that pleases you, but it can’t make art.

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds,—and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of—… (From High Flight by John Magee)

NEW: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been transforming a government that long championed vaccines into one that questions their safety. This is what could happen over the next 25 years if shots are unavailable even to the people who want them.

What would you say if a student were stress-vomiting outside the door of a required graduate discussion course?

FACT OF THE DAY. 26 March 1953. In a huge medical breakthrough, US medical researcher Dr Jonas Salk announced that he had created the first polio vaccine. Polio cases fell from 58,000 per year in 1952 to 6,000 by 1958. Salk’s vaccine was replaced by a new one developed by Albert Sabin in 1962.

💞 Cellular matchmaking: #Yeast condensin loop extrusion brings together broken DNA and repair donors during mating-type switching. Study reveals how SMC complexes facilitate homology search by creating specific chromosomal loops 🔬 #YeastResearch 🧬 #SGD 🧪 www.yeastgenome.org/reference/S1...

NIH is WAY under schedule in obligating its external research funding. Halfway through the fiscal year they're only at 15%! #AcademicSky #ResearchSky www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...

It is good to see that AAU is aware of and sharing information about the slowdown in NIH grantmaking. www.aau.edu/newsroom/lea...

really does capture it!

And if you have not been accepted, understand that this is a VERY weird time for grad admissions. Lack of acceptance may not be due to YOU, but due to uncontrollable factors at the university. Keep trying in the future.

#AcademicSky #GeoSky #EconSky

Scientific and medical research helps everyone, including MAGA supporters. Cancelling that research hurts everyone.

Only one of the 97 NSF awards made since end of February has been in biology. ONE.

Cancer knows no political boundaries. I wish Ms. Wiles a full and speedy recovery. I also wish a full and speedy restoration of funding to the NIH and other institutions doing essential work in cancer research.

7/25

Folks in Maine and Alaska: please call Collins and Murkowski to oppose the confirmation of Casey Means for Surgeon General. They are apparently still on the fence and MAHA is pushing them hard to vote in favor.

A short Bluetorial on plots of NIH application success rates as a function of percentile. 1/20

The Situation, March 6, 2026 www.lawfaremedia.org/article/the-...

We are waiting for the break down by mech, and total application numbers, but this graph was based specifically on on R01s/R37s (but not R35s). Back of envelope says NIGMS funded about 7% of R01 applications. So 23.2% in 2023, 14.4% in 2024, to ~7% in 2025. Disaster.

Quick question does anyone know how to restore virtue to a decaying society

Pls re-post: My department @oxfordbiochemistry.bsky.social are recruiting for several new faculty positions (links below). Broad search in molecular biology/biochemistry, across prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Interested in understanding life at the molecular level, this job might be for you! 1/n

You cannot really run a university like a business because our most valuable product is failure.

When someone says „Scientists do not want you to know“ you can dismiss everything from there on. Scientists want you to know. They are desperate that you know. They can’t shut up about what they found out and want you to know.

"Since Trump took office 13 months ago, NIH has posted only 84 NOFOs, down from 787 in the previous year. Many more are in limbo. NIH has 323 opportunities listed as 'forecasted.' ... many on the list were announced in 2024 and ’25 and still are not open."

"ChatGPT had invented a plausible-sounding citation out of thin air. And it wasn’t alone. Of those 47 citations, 31 were what we call 'hallucinations.'" H/t to our reference librarian for flagging this piece w/advice for students. #academicsky #polisky www.llrx.com/2025/12/how-...

This is bleak.

I am so very, very tired. I have fought long and hard.

A study in Nature shows that the single-celled form of a tiny, aquatic organism can turn into a multicellular version by three different routes. The discovery adds insight to the possible origins of multicellular life, suggesting a previously unrecognized degree of flexibility. 🧪

In which @gregggonsalves.bsky.social decries the attacks on NIH and research www.thenation.com/article/soci...

“Trainees are the most vulnerable people in science... They are the ones with new ideas, where a lot of our hope resides. Now they are losing their minds with worry about what comes next...” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see. His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert. Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.

Corollary: The more people use ChatGPT, the less I assume they know about anything.

My weekly NIH update (grants funded through 2/13/26) All projects... 1/4

This is the key point - it's not about Moderna's flu vaccine, it's about sending a signal to the rest of the industry that vaccine development isn't viable in the US. It's all part of the larger anti-vaccine agenda.

🧪🧬New preprint We present cryo-EM structures of reconstituted CTCF–nucleosome complexes, showing CTCF dimerization drives nucleosome oligomerization into defined higher-order assemblies. Disrupting CTCF–CTCF interfaces in mESCs reduces looping and impairs differentiation. tinyurl.com/CTCF-nucleos...

Welcome, piles of slop filling up the journals with clouds of useless wordy garbage. Case in point:

😳

1/10 Genome maintenance by telomerase is a fundamental process in nearly all eukaryotes. But where does it come from? Today, we report the discovery of telomerase homologs in a family of antiviral RTs, revealing an unexpected evolutionary origin in bacteria. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

NSF GRFP applicants (and mentors): Was your application Returned Without Review and deemed ineligible despite fitting in the allowed topics? 1) Write NSF 2) Write your Congressperson 3) CC us at [email protected] so we can compile + follow up Details and template at grant-witness.us/grfp-letter

I'm at the Willard Hotel where I've been denied entry and kicked out of the Reclaiming Science event with NIH director Bhattacharya & other top agency leaders. @jocelynkaiser.bsky.social and I registered for the event months ago yet were told capacity was full, even as they let in dozens of others.

Firmly believe this would serve multiple needs.

Watch this video if you want to cry over overwhelming decency rather than over rage about what some are trying to turn our country into.

Uh-oh

So we are the point of questioning polio vaccines. The chair of ACIP: “I think also, as you look at polio, we need to not be afraid to consider that we are in a different time now than we were then..." www.statnews.com/2026/01/22/v...

🔔 New paper alert 🔔 www.nature.com/articles/s41... Some regions in the genome replicate early and some late, but the why and how remain poorly understood. DNA replication and 3D genome organization appear linked, raising the question if one may regulate the other? (1/n)

The latest #GENETICS study shows that the sisters separate (Ssep) gene in #Drosophila is essential for centromere cohesion during meiosis and is probably a new member of the cohesin complex. buff.ly/Qo75cpB

Jose y Maria by Everett Patterson #ArtSky www.everettpatterson.com?p=1835 Alt text: illustration of a Joseph and Mary, at a payphone trying to find shelter for the night in the rain. References to the birth of Jesus are dropped all over the illustration including a hotel sign that reads: "man ger"

A Trump administration change to how the National Institutes of Health awards grants has sharply reduced early-stage investigators’ odds of securing funding, new data from the agency show. Teamed up with @aniloza.bsky.social for this @statnews.com story www.statnews.com/2025/12/18/n...