ok does anyone else think the phrase "clear cell renal cell carcinoma" is the worst

A friend of mine who was TA’ing for an AmLit course found a copy of Moby Dick a student had left behind. It had only one marginal annotation, around page 100, that simply said “whale is important.”

More on the destruction of US science. www.chronicle.com/article/they...

This is a disaster. Science is an international endeavor. Major steps forward happen through serendipity and collaboration. Grants fund science, but people -- Americans and non-Americans, both in our country and overseas -- create science. That makes us healthier, richer, and safer.

🚨first Bartman lab preprint! it's an LC-MS method to measure "total Coenzyme A" (sum of all acyl-CoAs). this will let us study coA synthesis flux using heavy-isotope tracing! huge congrats to first author Amelia Taylor and star coauthor @mzspectrum.bsky.social ! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

do you ever wish microsoft word automatically inserted closed-bracket when you type the open-bracket ()

New results published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds Moderna’s mRNA flu vaccine gave more protection against illness than the standard flu shot in a Phase 3 clinical trial.

Update I read the sequel, The Faith of Beasts. Highly recommend. Come for the aliens, stay for the PI most overcommitted to his projects that he can’t stop being himself even during an alien invasion

Here are new and competitive renewal awards. The pace of award making is picking up but still remains below the dismal performance from fiscal year 2025. 3/n

Adulthood is just cycling between "If I don't say yes to every opportunity, no new opportunities will ever be offered to me" and "Oh no, I have said yes to too many things" over and over until you die.

If you compare GWAS hits from two different studies you can make a Manhattan Volcano plot 🏙️🌋

Actually a cool idea I stole from @rachaelabay.bsky.social Everyone in the lab gets one to encourage applying for stuff!

Oreo is a rescue badger (Taxidea taxus) at the Northwest Wildlife Sanctuary in Oak Harbor, WA. www.northwestwildlifesanctuary.com She's being offered her favorite snack: cheese, to lure her from the safety of her dark void. Audio on for badger hissing. 🦡❤️🧀

This means that hundreds, if not thousands of labs all over the country will close. Tens of thousands of jobs will be lost. This is in defiance of Congress's will and in defiance of good stewardship of the US economy. This is entirely because Russ Vought hates science

Let’s see how this goes over:

Please take a moment to listen to the stories of early career researchers that have been negatively affected by this administration’s unruly decisions. Don’t forget their stories! ✊🩷 youtu.be/SvrAxKGniys?...

Some people say we don’t build beautiful things anymore and, like, lol. Motherfuckers, we built this:

Tapping the sign

turning on "billy jean" whenever i get to a party aka carrying out Michael addition

It's only "Competitive - Not Discussed" in the Bethesda region of Maryland. Otherwise it's just Sparkling Not Discussed.

study section more fun now that there is not discussed and sparkling not discussed

NHLBI has finally funded their first new R01 of this fiscal year. 208 days into the fiscal year

Let's be clear we didn't lose the plot - the current administration is actively and intentionally sabotaging clean energy in general (which includes electric cars) and gleefully letting China and other countries lap us with this technology. This is the intentional destruction of US innovation.

my most stupid problem is that a book came out, second book in a series, i desperately want to read it, but i don't want to buy it in hard cover because then it won't match the first book in the series

If you pop popcorn and counted the pops is that the exact number of popped kernels Or do some pop soundlessly

In the #NASEM chat with Bhattacharya, he talks about how supporting innovation will support early career scientists. Meanwhile, under his leadership, early career scientists have disproportionately suffered. Early career scientists were disproportionately affected by terminations.

Rheastat: When you are regulating the number of rheas encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn...

Still feel like "Musk and his crew of incels destroyed a bunch of stuff they didn't understand and thereby hastened the deaths of millions of children" did not get the public attention it warranted.

I like to take phone photos of new data graphs so I have something to look at on the train/bus/waiting for the elevator

scRNA-seq has partly ruined murmurations for me...

In 1999, I was playing a decker in Shadowrun, and tried to distract a guard by hacking a water fountain to overflow, and my GM said "why would a water fountain be on the network? That's fucking stupid. No you can't try." Well it's 2026 and I just want you to know, Phil, that I FUCKING CALLED IT!

American science is shrinking. 
A Post analysis found that, halfway through this fiscal year, the number of competitive grants awarded by the National Institutes of Health is down by more than half compared with the same period last year. https://wapo.st/3OgoHKV

Is the airline called Delta because the plane changes your location

For me the concept of non-inferiority will never not be witchcraft, and I almost always find myself revisiting this visualization in the linked FDA Guidance to figure out what's going on. www.fda.gov/regulatory-i...

Whenever I’m starting a project I’m like “wont it be so great to discover something mysterious and be in the Uri Alon cloud” And then it happens and I’m like “oh actually this is unpleasant I have no idea what’s happening “ www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/alon/sit...

Humble, it Sounds “massively parallel” to me

i am reading a paper about "multiplex screening" and it is 2-plex you can screen two things i love the confidence to call this multiplex

Rebecca Solnit: “The United States is being murdered, and it’s an inside job. Every department, every branch, every bureau and function of the federal government is being fatally corrupted or altogether dismantled or disabled.” [theguardian.com]

the realest part of The Metamorphosis is how on top of everything he is still expected to show up at the office somehow

Reading Maurice by EM Forster but the problem is it really upsets me how British people say the name “Maurice”

Ten years of CRISPR screens We should do a bracket of screens, winner is declared THE CRISPIEST

It often seems like there has been little progress in fighting back against The Regime’s war on science, but this is a major victory. The proposed cap of 15% for indirect costs for NIH funding has been defeated in court. Doesn’t mean they won’t try again, but this is worth celebrating.

Impossible to disagree with a single word that Ben Rhodes (Obama era NSC official) is saying here:

Pleased to share our recent work out today in @natmetabolism.nature.com. This study addresses a longstanding mystery - NRF2-driven cancers increase cysteine acquisition (via xCT) by ~5x - so where does all that cysteine go?

pretty tired of everyone on earth being involuntary contestants on Celebrity Apprentice Deathmatch

New PI presenting to senior PIs at faculty mtg

wrote myself a note last week. it says "don't forget to talk to that guy." amazing work, self.

just read Discipline by Larissa Pham. Short chapters talking about what it means to be an artist, and how the narrator can reconcile and move on with her life after a damaging encounter with her art professor. it was weird and i liked it! www.nytimes.com/2026/01/25/b...

learning that astronauts have to use microsoft outlook in space is unspeakably depressing. we have set microsoft outlook free from the bounds of earth. polluting the stars with that janky piece of shit

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