Suburban Trees. Something I wrote to work myself out of a strange mood. #poetry

A interesting read. At least for me, with attempts at creative thought, an image "appears" first, and is subsequently attended by words that try to bring it forth. T.S. Eliot wrote "between the conception and and the creation falls the shadow". Sounds like AI is too insubstantial to cast one.

Thanksgiving is the holiday where we get to reconnect with the eternal cycle of fall midterm grading. For all who celebrate.

Interesting read on really key issue. Seems like (if followed correctly) even twins raised apart inflate heritability. Wonder why...how mom specifies a maternal program into egg cytoplasm? So like not the code but the hardware. Or is that just an equally deterministic metaphor?

I'm not a fashion dude. Nonetheless, I can't help but wonder-is this autoclavable?

A huge district court victory for the University of California. District courts find facts. This one found "overwhelming evidence" that the Trump administration has pervasively violated the First Amendment in its efforts to coerce and intimidate the University of California. News story here—

I hear you. I'm old but seems to me science, like so much else, has been caught up in what Paul Virilio calls the dromocratic society, the tyranny of acceleration, compressing everything. Give me a good old fashion 35 page Genetics article, reclaiming slowness, collecting thought.

"This urgent order to clear away the entire, centuries-old idea of disciplinary governance in one fell swoop is both radical and without even a functional ideology—an especially pure plane of the empty-mind austerity satirized from Office Space to Severance." Adam Rzepka wp.me/p8xr4h-dil

Geeky thing but for my cell biol class I've long wanted to build a teaching model of the Sec61 translocon big enough for a large lecture hall to demonstrate how START and STOP signals are read to make trans-membrane proteins. Here it is-behold. Students seemed to like it-fun class session.

An informative, clearly written article for anyone seeking insight into the "whys" underlying the current malaise of today's universities. The why of increased tuition for larger classes, the why of bloated admins disconnected from university mission, etc. stevenmintz.substack.com/p/the-univer...

A nice summary. Bridge pieces like this integrating theoretical and practical pedagogical considerations are valuable. I wish more of them explicitly considered scale as a factor. What you can do with 50 is much different than with 300.

Long view on epically shitty day. Shut down reveals evolution in D's ability to fight. But caucus fractures, fumble at end. If true, prediction would be internal push for caucus leadership change. D's respond to electoral pressure and shame. R's respond to ridicule. Message is keep piling both on.

H5N1 jumping back and forth between migratory sea birds and pinnipeds, spreading around the southern Pacific. 97% pup mortality in some colonies. Koyannisquatsi.

A nuanced read, bringing in the importance of DEI as an antidote for dealing with the complexity of individual legacies and science's past.

Another bad look for UC system leadership. “Due to the severe budget constraints currently facing UC, the PPFP faculty hiring incentive is sunsetting as of fall 2025,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “ Yeah, that's not the reason.

Strange, I suppose, but with the election results coming in tonight I find myself thinking of Liz Cheney. We have little in common, but I reflect that the life of a father can fit a pattern, has a sensibility, while the life of a country, with teeming millions, moves in fits and spasms.

I guess this is a piece about ballooning spiders, the big and the small, the horror and transformation that attend all scales. It was influenced by artist Tomás Saraceno's work. #poetry Ballooning

Wow, the microtubule networks they are visualizing in these organisms are nothing short of jaw dropping. Anytime you swell a specimen for a look see you have to worry about artifacts...but, overall, damn. This is discovery at its best. 🔬

I get Haaland is a generational athletic talent. And Bournemouth has to stop coughing up the ball midfield. But criminy... If I wanted to watch "kick the ball to the big fast kid up front" futbol I could go to the Ulittle AYSO fields. Baggy shorts and screaming parents would be more interesting.

First morning with white crowned sparrows under the feeders in good numbers. They've arrived. That, and light angle, most dependable signs winter has come to SoCal. It's good to see them again. Welcome, my Zonotrichia fence row friends. Make yourselves at home and enjoy the season.

Example of how science is moving towards activism. All the individual stories and motivations that prompt a decision. Interesting in that NC-11 is quite the cultural leap from Chapel Hill. But if he can flip it that would be amazing. Go Paul!

What It’s Like to Watch An Internet-Based Ideology Break Containment talkingpointsmemo.com/tpm-25/what-...

Need to exorcise words or what needs to get done will not get done. Kutya'i is a Cahuilla word for Wind Spirit, like the strong Santa Ana winds we get in SoCal. And in SoCal no matter north, south, east or west you see foothills and then big mountains. so this piece kinda flows from that. #poetry

Read this and then think through the implications of the whole UC Trellix debacle.

The UC Regents finally released the “settlement agreement” the Trump administration proposed in August. It’s a doozy. UC alumni, faculty, staff, students, parents, donors—and all citizens of California: Now is the time to let the UC Regents know you do not want them to sign this bad deal.

American Nations was a pivotal book for me. Looking forward to getting a copy of his new one and seeing how Woodard's thinking has cast forward in light of....events.

I have seen too many junior-to-mid career people making this mistake so I need to get this message out there: Once you get your first big award (R01, CAREER, standard NSF, BL2 DoD), your most important task is to publish papers that cite that grant for support.

A timely read deserving of broader dissemination beyond the readership of Nature Cell Biology.

Thinking about my kid tonight. Finishing his NSF GRFP application and sending out emails to possible graduate school mentors. 21 years. Hard to believe. They say days go slow, years go fast. I guess this piece is kind of like that. #poetry

Perception #poetry

Read this, and the authors are right. It is the best training. But I am old and cynical. I find myself asking "training for what". So they can get an R01 to conduct a single cell transcriptome analysis where they tweak a variable and generate a database?

Before this is over, I now strongly suspect we will see amplexus emerge as a resistance tactic. OTOH I am totally down for it. OTO, I will need to go someplace quiet and rethink the universe from the ground up.

💡 Kudos to Lara Goudsouzian, DeSales University, on receiving ASCB’s 2025 Innovation in Education Award! This honor celebrates a novel educational accomplishment in the past 3 years that advances ASCB’s mission. #ASCB #CellBiology

Free of context, still words to aspire to and live by.

This is a great read on Forster. I've been skimming back over Abbey's "Monkey Wrench Gang". Two pre-internet contemplations of technology, isolation and authoritarianism. “We are caught...in the iron treads of a technological juggernaut. A mindless machine. With a breeder reactor for a heart.”

Gotta give lecture 15 min whose synthetic point is role of cholesterol in Lo domains and lipid rafts. But only words rattling in my head: "When finally the bottom fell out I became withdrawn The only thing I knew how to do Was to keep on keepin’ on like a bird that flew Tangled up in blue."

‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Singers Set Debut Live Performance on ‘Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ deadline.com/2025/09/kpop...

New: After a long wait, the GRFP solicitation is live! Deadlines have been extended to early November, so applicants have a bit over a month to submit. www.nsf.gov/funding/oppo...

I am begging you to read even just the Early Life section, which is an absolute roller coaster

This musician is obviously a virtuoso, but at about 2.5 minutes in on this piece he also just gets all the wave under his board. Its a good one to play when feeling down. www.youtube.com/watch?v=puSk...

Reflections from a BRCA1 pioneer.

Battle doomscrolling by posting five small pleasures. 1. Warblers through binoculars 2. Telemark turns in powder 3. Dalton points from cornfields 4. The inside of mesquite 5. A country too big for anyone to hold (I suppose that's not small, but...).

Hopefully, as a future issue, we can take a closer peek into what a "structurally unsuited" administration means, how we got there, and how to fix it.

The Trump admin "has now set its sights on one of the nation’s leading institutions—the University of California system—prompting UC faculty,academic and other staff, and students to band together to file this federal court action challenging...violation of the First Amendment and federal laws".

Tough early test for UCLA's new chancellor. Additionally, UCLA is to provide data access to “all UCLA staff, employees, facilities, documents".

"Kirk...figured out the action is with the cult of personality." IMO, Sharlet is deeply correct here. Grew up with nascent MAGA. What changed is the media/internet allowed a potpourri of BS to cohere and form a culture. That culture has a hierarchy and can adopt what ever shape it is told to be.

🚨New peer-reviewed commentary that I co-authored with Chris Beyrer is now out in the journal Vaccine, gift link below We show the ways in which the MAHA & MAGA guys—RFK Jr, Makary, Bhattacharya, Prasad—have dismantled the US vaccine regulatory framework authors.elsevier.com/a/1lbDt,60n7... 1/5

#poetry 1/4 LITTLE AMERICA It's a big country no one can hold it a hot night in Nebraska windshield gummy with midges. A skin-picking man pumping gas twitching a cigarette eyes collapsing asphalt stars fluorescent lights buzzing with nighthawks.

"tenure reform can assuage the anxieties of a generation of junior scholars, now functioning in a new ecosystem, many of whom were taught to practice a science of yesterday that no longer exists".