Excellent read. My general experience is that AI isn't going to create good, complicated code from scratch...but if you have specific things to do or translation like this, it does indeed save time. I just wish it weren't being marketed as the be-all/end-all...coders no longer needed solution.

Good post.

I just published my weekly newsletter to >10K subscribers: The truth about AI coding for bioinformatics divingintogeneticsandgenomics.kit.com/posts/ai-po...

props to WSJ for once on a useful notion, ADMIN PARTY for everybody

They unilaterally canceled a faculty hiring initiative so successful it’s become a national model. www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...

BREAKING: In AAUP et al v. Trump (wall-to-wall union lawsuit challenging the administration’s unlawful use of TItle VI to reshape the University of California system), the faculty and staff of the UC system WON!!! We were granted our preliminary injunction! @aaup.org

Hey, Portlandia, did you know about this?! allevents.in/beaverton/po... I am so lucky to be hanging out with Kate Elliott next Friday night! You could be too if you live nearby. Heck, I'm driving 5 hours for this awesomeness! Come out and see us! We'll chat, sign books. Don't miss it, OK?

Yearly reminder for letters of recommendation: Double and triple check your language for gender bias!! It is super easy to counter our unconscious bias. Check, be mindful, and use a calculator like this one: www.tomforth.co.uk/genderbias/

Glad BlueSky did this. When I saw Patton Oswalt saying Megyn Kelly should be fed into a woodchipper feet first for defending raping children based on what age she thinks is okay, I thought, "yes, comedian Patton Oswalt is going to, in real life, feed Megyn Kelly into a woodchipper feet first."

Congratulations to Richard Durbin on being awarded our Genetics Society Medal!

Message from a student on lab slack: "Then I need to run it on 40000 samples and today I had to do a lot of changes to get it to run on 5 million." Yep, been there.

My department at UT Austin is looking to hire an Assistant Professor in Evolutionary Biology, broadly defined. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions you may have. apply.interfolio.com/177547

i wonder if haidt will revise his thesis about the excesses of left wing universities or if he just chuckles while sitting on a mountain of cash

Introgression impacts the evolution of bacteria, but species borders are rarely fuzzy www.nature.com/articles/s41... #jcampubs

The only reason we know anything about the Epstein files is because the survivors refused to give up. This release is about the the bravery & tenacity of the survivors who continue to fight for justice in a system seeking to crush, silence, and erase them.

america has a 2 party political system filled entirely with pedophiles. if you are fine with voting for pedophiles, you vote republican. if you are fine with voting for pedophiles but know that you should feel bad about it, you vote democrat. at one point, the parties were opposite but who cares

If you have MAGA people in your socials maintaining that the Epstein files will never be fully released because Dems want to protect Bill Clinton, here's what I keep on hand to reply with:

Somewhere out there someone who’s the best at what they do is terrified that they have imposter syndrome while a bunch of barely literate pedophiles are very calmly running the world

Well, it's a little clearer now why billionaires are so invested in technology that produces better written emails.

CAN LLMs write about science? @science.org decided to find out, and they did it the curious, scientific way. They did an experiment. Love this thoughtful convo. www.lastwordonnothing.com/2025/11/12/w...

If the Biden administration had sent federal agents to do a law enforcement operation 10X milder in a white suburban neighborhood in order to apprehend a serial pedophile and violent domestic abuser who happened to be a white Christian pastor, the MAGA crew would have reduced the country to rubble.

"There were 13 races for statewide office on the ballot—in Georgia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Democratic candidates swept all 13." @taniel.bsky.social has consistently had the best Election analysis this year- better than any pundits on mainstream media. He's my new go-to.

@safiyanoble.bsky.social, UCLA professor and author of Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism, explained how threats against educational institutions are intertwined with the threats against media and journalists. Watch the event recap: www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6Kq...

Another great quote "Progressive Delivery: delivering what users need when they need it at the least cost and risk to everyone involved"

I think this has to be the silliest thing I've read this week. And I've read a lot of silly things this week.

When you're inside a moment of change, you can't see its full shape. The entrepreneurs of 1985 didn't know they were living through a golden age because they were too busy wrestling with 300 baud modems. (Via Kevin Kelly) www.joanwestenberg.com/p/you-are-n...

If anyone is new since the last time I did the skittles, I have been freeze drying them and they are FREAKING AMAZING??? bsky.app/profile/most...

What the fuck, bluesky substack.com/@sarahkendzi...

This is actually good spin, or would have been. But the fact that the Democratic cave happened without even a coordinated, agreed-upon message like this indicates the depth of the leadership void.

Love this. Teens keeping the town informed in Pulaski, WI wisconsinwatch.org/2025/10/wisc...

This is terrible news - these kind of summer training courses are life-changing for many early career researchers. Thanks to @titus.idyll.org and @amydwillis.bsky.social for ensuring that many course resources are still freely available on GitHub (I often adapt your slides to teach my grad courses!)

With much gratitude to everyone who supported the wonderful #STAMPS summer course at the MBL, I share that STAMPS will not be offered in 2026. 💔😿

no quote about the US political system has ever gone harder than this one

Yes, I am going to keep re-upping this off & on until the end of the year because it is, alas, topical to the current situation in the USA (meant to take place a few decades in our future). Activism is also the small, ordinary, collective actions of people keeping their heads above water day to day.

Like… people want affordable groceries, housing, and healthcare, *And* they want their friends and loved ones the be alive and safe and free from persecution. These are not mutually exclusive ideas. They are in fact bound up together.

Earthquake Prediction Flowchart xkcd.com/3165/

Going to repeat this every time I see the GOP "plan": I have kidney failure. I require dialysis to live. Three times a week every single week. It costs $1000 per treatment. So either they need to give me a MINIMUM of $156,000 a year...or I'm going to die.

Went back to the history of the Sicilian Mafia to illustrate something obvious but worth stating explicitly: The Trump administration behaves like an organized crime syndicate running a protection racket, not a representative government www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/1...

Today is the one year anniversary of launching my podcast, Rebel Ever After! - 37 authors interviewed about writing progressive romance novels - over 10,000 downloads - 4.8 ⭐ rating on Apple Podcasts Big thank you to everyone who has listened, subscribed and bought a book by one of my guests.

Long. Live. Books. 📚 #books #booksky #booklover #audiobooks #bookban #bangunsnotbooks #bannedbooks

One of my all time favourite books, Holdstock’s great classic of British fantasy. Join us to see what Emma made of it!

Today I wrote about Zohran Mamdani's historic win, the energizing power of holding to shared principles of decency, and a taxonomy of the endlessly intertwined relationship between shame and vision. www.the-reframe.com/the-extraord...

The thing is, there was a demand from a small number of students to not be exposed to certain ideas, and the academy completely resisted those demands. Yes maybe there were trigger warnings but the warnings were there because the stuff was being taught!!!!

My reviewing style has changed over time. Rather than litigate every little thing, and pushing my own ideas, I focus only on 2 things: (1) Are the claims interesting/important? (2) Does the evidence support the claims? Most of my reviews these days are short and focused.

This is the way.

Hopefully you’ve all read this excellent piece by Peter Coviello, about why you should never talk to the New York Times, or in general any media with a preconceived agenda. But also see his “Is there God after Prince?”, written just after Prince’s passing… lareviewofbooks.org/article/is-t...

People gush about how great the CSHL meetings are. And I’ve seen some great talks there. But I’ve also never been at a conference more obsessed with celebrity, glamor, and the elevation of hero figures

A few weeks ago I zoomed with a group of high school students and their adult mentor to discuss taking social action. I am thrilled to report that this group of 10 students raised $10,000 in two weeks to support their local food pantry. They sent me a photo and it has them all jumping and I tear up.