Our octopus population genetics preprint is up! This is Gabby Coffing’s final PhD chapter, and turned out pretty cool. Here’s a little explainer. 1/n

was the met theme “elden ring”

as usual, the technical bits are the easy part

'Beltsville Agricultural Research Centre', Maryland - I was privately commissioned to memorialise the BARC by a past employee after learning it will be shut down by the USDA after over 100 years of research. They wanted to focus of this aerial embroidery to be the field plots... 1/3 (see thread)

AI produces MORE editorial labor, not less. “[To weed out slop] the journal doubled its deputy editors from 6 to 11 & nearly doubled its sr editors from roughly 30 to 60. All of this is volunteer labor, unpaid academics donating time to maintain scientific quality.“ www.forbes.com/sites/johndr...

New PLOS Biology paper arising from a collaboration between us at the Sanger/U Cambridge and the U York and Sheffield, and many more collaborators across the Americas and Europe. Regulatory changes in the same genes (optix, ivory) led to the same colour patterns in mimetic butterflies and moths.

I got that trending globally on twitter in 2015 and got yelled at by my editors at The Guardian.

Being an industry bioinformatician is, as far as I can tell after 5 years, just patiently explaining the difference between fasta and fastq to people with MBAs until the heat death of the universe

Penn State Biology is hiring! We have an opening for a tenure-line faculty position in plant biology - if you'd like to pursue awesome science in a supportive and interdisciplinary community of researchers, consider applying! psu.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/PSU_Ac...

So psyched for @jrossibarra.bsky.social! Truly a remarkable scientist and person and couldn’t be more deserving of the recognition. www.ucdavis.edu/news/nationa...

Please repost: My department at USC is hiring for a teaching-track faculty position. We are looking for someone principally to teach statistics for biologists, but there will be opportunities for other courses in statistics & algorithms applied to biology usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

Any of my readers probably knows what a debt I owe to Cherryh. And if you don't, well, I'm telling you now. Go read something of hers if you're not familiar.

More details on the firing of the National Science Board. The NSF now has no director, deputy director, or board. They have issued almost no new awards in 2026. The plan appears to be to completely destroyed the agency. The details are horrifying and have Russ Vought written all over them.

as someone who once deleted all of prod the old-fashioned way, it’s funny to giggle at AI doing this but honestly a company where that can happen has problems deeper than AI

Eating a kumquat is what I assume sharks must feel like when they chew on the undersea internet cable

Since ChatGPT came online in late 2022, grant application numbers across 12 UK and EU funding bodies have increased by *57%*. For MSCA fellowships the number is *+142%*. I do believe that what we’re doing is insane and that we need to stop doing it IMMEDIATELY. www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Congratulations to the Harper's Letter signatories and the Heterodox Academy!

A big loss with the passing of Peter Raven. He was very encouraging of botany geeks like me; we once had a nice discussion about asexual reproduction in Danthonia and Hieracium two species I studied in my PhD

Plan your trip now!

Credit where due. This is rad.

If I were trying to sell AI to the public I would be saying “it’s a useful way to write code faster and automate some tedious tasks that couldn’t be automated well before” and instead they’re running with “get on board or get left behind” and “we WILL eliminate your job.”

We're looking for a junior specialist to work on a fun project exploring seagrass local adaptation across the whole state of California! It should be a good mix of field and molecular work. Please share with folks you think would be interested! recruit.ucdavis.edu/JPF07605

finally, someone has figured out how to allow people to put money on what’s going to happen with the S&P 500

Every time Matt Damon takes on a period role he ends up looking like a third baseman for the Phillies.

Me: [idly looking up info on popes] Wikipedia: This list is incomplete; you can help expand it. Me: wut? Wikipedia: [lifts eyebrows suggestively]

Palantir are about six months away from ordering their employees to leave audio logs scattered around their offices

Speaking of Canadian innovation… first time I’ve seen a product leaning into genetic engineering as a feature on the label

i'll take the bold (for bluesky) position that working for raytheon or northrup or whatever does not make you an irredeemable person, but palantir is very different because they are making karp's insane worldview the company's official public position, they're explicitly saying you believe this, too

Just now realized that I failed to commemorate the first birthday of my bean blog! A year and a few days ago, I made my first post: beantips.com/how-to-cook-... Got some exciting (yes, that seems weird, but really) bean tips coming in year two!

I'm hiring a postdoc (start date flexible) and a PhD student (for Fall 2027) to work in any area of computational phylogenetics! More info here: mhibbins.github.io I will be attending both PEQG and Evolution in June, so please reach out if you want to chat at these meetings!

the fuck is going on here

Is mandating an increase in the amount of corn and soy we burn in vehicles good for food security? No. Is it good for nature? No. But is it at least good for the climate? Also no. Read the latest from @mikegrunwald.bsky.social 👇🏻

I have a garage with enough gear to basically launch a small sporting goods store that would instead live in storage units at the edges of some wildernesses

We really only have labor for ~130 regular contributed virtual talks. So, yes! Get those talks in! Late submissions decided via Thunderdome.

So this arrived today:

Scientists just discovered 5.6 million bees under a New York cemetery www.scientificamerican.com/article/scie...

No one has ever been cooler than Masayoshi Takanaka

Our study featured in @nytimes.com! www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/s...

this is what teenagers in movies looked like during the iraq war

the passive voice store was visited by me and you were known by everybody there

I think the current state of things is that you can delusionally attack the Pope OR post a meme of yourself as Jesus, but not one right after the other

The NSF GRFP is now out! There are 2,599 awardees, which is the most ever—and a big shift from last year which initially halved awardees (1,000 awardees + an additional 500). I've thrown together a plot to break down the changes by field. www.research.gov/grfp/Awardee...

I love this result I love Paris Roubaix I love cyclocross, this is such a huge result for me because Wout has always made me want to ride my bike and this has got to feel fucking amazing for him

Okay CTA. This is a good sign.

There are only four continents.

France also isn’t real

In this movie, Jason Statham plays a retired [Metropolitan Police Officer] who is working as a [Longshoreman]. Events will transpire, causing him to have to spin kick [human traffickers] while [avenging] a [dead friend]

So anyway, amidst everything else, I've been spending this week figuring out how to deal with the death of a mentee Remembering Dr. Lea Richardson lab.jbyoder.org/2026/04/09/r...