Another species no longer on the global Endangered list: Humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae). A few decades after a Star Trek movie where the central conflict was the total extinction of the humpback, their numbers are rising fast enough to put them at "Least Concern" on the IUCN Red List.

Breakfast: Shakshouka and freshly made pita.

James Watson has passed.

Health. And human services. And he dips out as fast as he can.

@benlangmead.bsky.social kicking off the start of Genome Informatics! #gi2025 @cshlnews.bsky.social

5-plate morning - working off that onion ring frustration.

Was on a line to order onion rings when my alarm went off and I woke up. Let’s see how the rest of this day goes.

Combination external hard drive/danish warmer.

Why do more than 287,000 researchers choose Dryad for their data? Dryad is built for everyone. We publish research data from every region, every research discipline, in all forms, formats and sizes Learn more on our blog ➡️ bit.ly/why-dryad #opendata #openaccess #FAIRdata #datasharing

Today, a global community of hackers gathers in Berlin 🇩🇪 for the start of #BioHackEU25. Since 2019, over 2200 participants have gathered together for an intense week of collaboration to advance 275 projects. Read the news: https://loom.ly/6sE_kdI

Dinner: King prawn rogan josh, channa masala, garlic naan, rice, mango chutney, mint raita.

Now what? Bombing a research building?

Trying to be productive today.

"In September, Riley pushed for the near-dissolution of the NIH’s CSR, a roughly 500-person division that reviews grant applications at the health research agency, POLITICO learned. [...]almost all the positions in the division were slated for elimination." www.politico.com/news/2025/10...

Looking for postdoctoral opportunities? ✅ Interested in working with me or any of the 30 other amazing @jhubiostat.bsky.social faculty? ✅ If yes, I encourage you to apply to our postdoc program in #DataScience and #AI in #Health and #Medicine! 🔗 apply.interfolio.com/174430 🧪🧬💻🧠

The most powerful string quartet ending in the genre.

Nighttime polar orbiter satellite photos of Jamaica before and after #Melissa show how the power grid was affected. Melissa knocked out power to about 77% of Jamaica’s customers, said Minister of Local Government Desmond McKenzie. Photos from worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov

🤯 1700 mm of rain in 24 hours 🤯 Previous record 990 mm in 24 hours in 1999

As Jamaica worked on Thursday to assess the damage from Hurricane Melissa, it faced a long and daunting road to recovery, particularly in the western part of the country. That region was hardest hit by the hurricane, among the strongest ever recorded in the Atlantic. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/30/u...

Remarkable work revealing how histone proteins in the closest relatives of eukaryotes package DNA 🧪

New story up on the non-existent banned words from NIH grants (based on my grant title, word cloud analysis) www.statnews.com/2025/10/29/n... 1/3

🪰 folks! I spoke to the Transmitter about FlyBase. As noted at flybase.org, bridge $ ran out and many staff were laid off. Good news is stopgap contributions will keep core FlyBase operations active. But community support remains essential. Please donate @FlyBase and share! 1/2 tinyurl.com/FlyBase

I'd love to say lots of nice things about this invaluable preventable disease tracker from @monscience.bsky.social and team at Think Global Health. It's an incredible resource. But I can't get over my anger & sadness that this resource is even needed. www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/vacc...

My quote of the day How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four. Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg. Abraham Lincoln

Jamaica could face one of the strongest landfall storms in its recorded history as Hurricane Melissa moves through the Caribbean. Forecasters predict it will hit the island as an “upper-end” Category 4 hurricane on Tuesday. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/w...

That time of day when the only people in the London Underground are confused New Yorkers wondering why trains aren’t 24-7.

On franchit une montagne et on bute sur un caillou.

I love AlphaFold—but please include PAE (Predicted Aligned Error) plots for every “interaction.” Pretty PDBs ≠ proof. If the PAE doesn’t show an interface, it ain’t one. Show the plots. Structural biology's reputation is on the line.

California is gone.

LLMs4All: A Review of Large Language Models Across Academic Disciplines www.preprints.org/frontend/man...

@joann-trejo.bsky.social, @marymunson4.bsky.social and I have a commentary in @natcellbio.nature.com on recent attacks on DEI in biomedical research: "If scientific research, especially biomedical research, is meant to serve everyone, then it requires that everyone has an opportunity to participate"

Short, powerful, and well reasoned. Take a read 👇👇👇👇👇

Concluding a fantastic @elixiruknode.org all-hands. Two days of exciting talks and activities including by the @biofair.bsky.social Fellows (below). Privileged to Chair the Science and Industry Advisory Board this year.

In the past 10 years, CZI has given $7.2B or so to science. That's great. But, the White House has proposed *cutting* NIH's budget by $18B in FY 2026 alone. That's another level. Supporting a national network of health R&D requires sustained federal investment. scienceimpacts.org/fy26

From genotype to phenotype with 1,086 near telomere-to-telomere yeast genomes www.nature.com/articles/s41... 'By incorporating the full spectrum of genetic variation captured across the species, we conducted genome-wide association studies across 8,391 molecular and organismal traits' wow.

I cannot believe our work is finally out there and in @journal-evo.bsky.social ! This was an enormous group effort! We provide an updated estimate of the number of buzz pollinated angiosperm species, genera, and families, look at consequences for diversification, number of transitions, and more!

i have about two million followers across three platforms. statistically, about 20,000 of you are in the top 1% in terms of wealth. if any of you feel like leaving me your home in a walkable neighborhood when you die, that would make for a very heartwarming social media story.

Very happy to see our work out examining guard cell transcriptomes over the course of a slowly developing drought. Thanks to @bradylabs.bsky.social and @kaisakajala.bsky.social for the inspiration, way back in Davis in 2013! The data are available in bar.utoronto.ca/eplant & doi.org/10.1093/plce...

This is potentially AMAZING

👀 www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

My NIH study section will not meet tomorrow because of the government shutdown. This may seem trivial but rescheduling these meetings will delay funding decisions for months to even a year! Let alone the uncertainty of what the FY26 budget will be. Awful for US scientists! 😓

Good times at the CZI open science meeting in San Diego. Onwards to London …

Four more measles cases reported in SC, linked to gym, school cases www.wistv.com/2025/10/21/f...

Visiting the imprisoned is a corporal work of mercy.

Here's the details for Elisabeth Bik's talk in Auckland www.eventbrite.co.nz/e/dr-elisabe... [sign-up required, but it's free] Monday Nov 3 on the Grafton campus (505-007). A workshop follows the talk

Not even that...just cronyism.

I'm so tired.

What a cool paper. Also note that this very careful analysis does not support the majority of synonymous variants being non-neutral in yeast