Two fully-funded PhD openings in my research group at the University of York. If you’re excited about viromes, phage biology, Nanopore sequencing, soils and the odd bit of alpine or agricultural field sampling, we’d love to hear from you! 🌱🦠🏔️ tiny.cc/c4pv001 tiny.cc/e4pv001

Breaking: Administration officials working overtime to find turkeys with sexual assault and crypto scam convictions so the President can pardon them

There’s a lot of political commentary about Marjorie Taylor Greene resigning, but one important point is this: she entered Congress in 2021 with an estimated net worth of about $700,000, and is leaving in 2025 with a net worth of roughly $25 million.

The correct answer to MAGA outrage over the Dem video is this: Are you effing kidding me? Of course it's reasonable to warn that Trump might be giving illegal orders. The evidence is strong that he actually is giving illegal orders! I went through that evidence here: newrepublic.com/article/2035...

Nice looking Jacques Monod conferences next year #1: Ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions in a changing world (chaired by Oliver Kaltz and @bkoskella.bsky.social) cjm.sb-roscoff.fr/en/conferenc...

If **Jeffrey Epstein** thinks you're a evil and demented sociopath, the odds are overwhelming that you are, in fact, an evil and demented sociopath.

NPR reported this morning that, based on their review of the #Epstein emails released yesterday, Trump’s name appeared more than 1,000 times in the document— "I have met some very bad people, none as bad as #Trump. Not one decent cell in his body." - Jeffrey Epstein

Super excited that the bulk of my PhD work is now preprinted! Here we used whole-community competition, or coalescence, experiments to quantify selection acting on genetically diverged strains within larger communities. (1/n) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

8 high level positions at NIH posted including 6 institute director positions (NIMH, NIGMS, NICHD, NIDCR, NHGRI, NLM). Only open for 2 weeks (applications due November 21). Application materials include a) CV b) vision statement c) a photocopy of doctoral degree. hr.nih.gov/careers/open...

I understand why we shut down American airspace for a few days after 9-11 to avoid a repeat attack but imagine shutting down American airspace to avoid releasing the Epstein files.

I’ve lost students in my school due to ICE. One of the most respectful students I’ve taught in 20 years. Someone who always helped me translate with students who had limited English. A kid who had the American Dream. He’s a senior. Instead of completing his year, he’s in an ICE facility.

Probably the most badass thing I've ever seen! AZ Rep Yassamin Ansari has set up a table outside of Mike Johnson’s offical Speaker Of The House office with a "Mike Johnson is using the government shutdown to cover up the Epstein Files - Change My Mind" sign!! 😆

All parents secretly eat their kids’ Halloween candy right? Tell me I’m not a monster!

Hi folks- I recently saw a call from a journal that was looking for novel findings in Plant sciences. I can’t remember if it was a special issue or what but it was specifically for results that might not be a full publishable paper but were nonetheless important data sets or findings. Any ideas??

AP: “A U.S. Senate investigation report released by @ossoff.senate.gov has uncovered dozens of credible reports of medical neglect and poor conditions in immigration detention centers nationwide…” apnews.com/article/immi...

unequivocally based. im writing some python tonight just because. go donate to the python software foundation for not being total fucking fascists

Let them eat shit

Best 3 minutes you will spend on the internet today.

Amazon is helping fund a $300 million build of a ballroom for the White House. Independent bookstores are donating to food banks and organizations that help with food insecurity. They are not the same.

"By flexing China’s near monopoly on rare earths and its purchasing power over U.S. soybeans, Mr. Xi won key concessions from Washington" Trump is a terrible businessman and terrible negotiator. More people need to know this! www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/w...

🔊 Applications for the tenure-track illuminate global challenge fellowships at Queen’s are now open! Comes with 5 years protected research time, a PhD studentship, & 60k start-up. I had one of these before getting my FLF, happy to chat to anyone interested! www.qub.ac.uk/Research/fel...

Today, Mike Johnson will keep the House adjourned for the 84th day out of the last 96. 12 days of work in over 3 months. With full pay and benefits. The senate has been working, so this is not about the shutdown. It is about avoiding a vote to release the Epstein files.

COVID’s not ‘over’ and neither are my sourdough bread making adventures #sundayisforbaking

ICE is stockpiling arms, including chemical weapons, guided missile warheads and explosive components. The spending dwarfs anything we've ever seen in the agency - a 700% increase. The President is building an army to attack his own country.

Nothing symbolic happening whatsoever.

Un-American insanity. The 28-page letter — whose full contents have not been made public — also lays out in sweeping detail how it wants the university to enforce new policies that adhere to the president’s conservative agenda. www.latimes.com/california/s...

This is what democracy looks like. #NoKings

Did you know that it only takes one spontaneous mutation in your bacterial culture to activate a phage, and trigger a subsequent cascade of bacterial/phage evolution? 🧪 Curious how you could detect similar events in your experiments? Check out Nanami’s work!

ICE kidnapped a 7th-grader with a pending asylum claim and spirited him out of state without notifying his parents, seemingly with the cooperation of the local police in Everett, MA. www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/12/m...

This is insane. I feel like I’m going insane when I’m watching this. Not just the fact that it’s clearly their fault, but the way a heavily-armed squad of masked thugs immediately jumps into the street and brutalizes the woman they just hit, despite having no idea who she is.

Kristi Noem, while governor of South Dakota, supplemented her roughly $130,000 salary by secretly accepting $80,000 donated to a political nonprofit she was affiliated with, records show. She never disclosed this income on federal ethics forms. (Published June)

Is a healthy microbiome one that is rich in phages? 🦠 Excited to share our paper out in Lancet Microbe with @bkoskella.bsky.social & @dholtappels.bsky.social where we test whether virome diversity can be used a broad signature of microbiome health 📈

The following is REAL footage from Portland, 2025. Viewer discretion is advised.

Cathy is an outstanding scientist and mentor! Definitely apply if your research interests align:

Very happy to share that I will be starting as an Assistant Professor in the department of Biological Sciences at the University of South Carolina in January! My group will be working on environmental phage ecology and evolution, and I am recruiting for the upcoming year (more info below).

Early voting is underway for Prop 50 in California. I urge anyone in the state to vote yes. This isn’t a race to the bottom. It’s a means of avoiding the bottom. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-blue-states-should-do-when-red

This.

Great to see this! I have Long been a fan of universal base income and I know it would be hard to roll out in the United States, but still! Every economist I’ve ever seen tackle this thinks it’s a great idea and here’s some (more) evidence that it is true

I spoke to a Venezuelan woman who was arrested in this raid and later released with her 4yo son. She said agents broke down their door, pointed guns at them and made sexualized remarks about Venezuelan women. When she returned to her apartment it was boarded up and all her possessions were gone.

“This is extortion, plain and simple. It is not hyperbole to say that the future of higher education.. requires that every university reject it…The only solution is solidarity and collective action against this effort at federal control over higher education.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/o...

I’m no Newsom fanboy, but figuring out how to change the incentives of institutions considering capitulation is one of the big tasks of our moment.

"Leaders inspire accountability through their ability to accept responsibility before they place blame." - Courtney Lynch

The Trump admin told furloughed workers to set out-of-office email messages blaming Dems for the shutdown, according to an email obtained by @jamieson.bsky.social

Dear @apnews.com The republicans control congress. Democrats did not vote down anything. If the GOP wanted to fund the government, they could have changed the rules to pass a CR with a simple majority like they did 11 days ago to approve 48 trump appointees at once. Fix your headline.

This is the secret the Trump regime tried so hard to keep about the Dallas ICE shooting The names of the dead and wounded Jose Andres Bordones-Molina Miguel Ángel García-Hernandez Norlan Guzman-Fuentes Fight Trump's dehumanization. Say their names. My new column www.inquirer.com/opinion/dall...

Well don't I feel stupid

If this is his impulse while surrounded by cameras and citizen witnesses...

The richest man on earth owns X. The second richest man on earth is about to be a major owner of TikTok. The third richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The fourth richest man owns The Washington Post. See the problem here?

They're about to shut down the government to protect the Epstein Files from disclosure. Whatever is in the files must be so unhinged as to be beyond imagination.