I'm kind of fascinated with Oct4. That's the gene generally seen as a maintainer of pluripotency in stem cells. Crudely, as long as there's Oct4, the cells can stay pluripotent. It's one of the Yamanaka factors for reprogramming cells to iPSCs. So, a simple story? Get real: this is biology. 1/n

Folks have been telling me they’ve noticed I’ve gotten “a lot more political” on social media this year. Of course I have. The circumstances have gotten nightmarishly worse, and the consequences of inaction and staying silent infinitely more obvious. Everyone needs to get “a lot more political.”

(Ingle also kicked off the Lia Thomas controversy by straight up lying in a reported piece)

11 Nov 2025 -- As Fenway Health, Children’s Hospital LA & others abandon affirming care, NYC's Callen-Lorde Center refused to, so Trump withheld $2m in funding. Last week at its annual gala it raised ~$1m in donations for critical programs. [HT Kelley Winters] @rikiwilchins.bsky.social

Checked out my insurance options for next year. My existing plan will... • have higher premiums • have significantly higher deductibles • cover less care Great system we have here!

the entirety of the british press talked themselves into believing this woman is trans based almost entirely on JK Rowling's judgement of the athlete's appearance.

Being good at making money doesn’t mean you’re good at anything else. It definitely doesn’t mean your opinions on anything else are important. It most likely just means you’re ruthless, which is the primary trait of most rich people.

Relatedly, this email I got a few days ago is probably the hilarious/shocking/unhinged email I've ever gotten (and I've gotten a lot):

The senior civil servant who actually drafted the Equality Act before its passage in 2010 and who subsequently went on to monitor its operation in the Equality and Human Rights Commission (until she felt obligated to resign) has penned an article about what it really was intended to mean for […]

Today, we honor all who have served. Thank you for your bravery, sacrifice, and dedication. Your courage and commitment to protecting our freedoms mean everything. We are forever grateful. #veteransday #ThankYouVeterans

I publish every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. and I'm only 6 paid subscribers away from a big milestone.

Because a lot of people asked, you can indeed read the first chapter of the new book. Look for the little symbol below the cover, here: us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

11 Nov 2025 -- As happened at Washington State U, now Michigan State Medical Society has approved content from anti-trans hate group Genspect in its Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses intended to keep doctors up-to-date so they can maintain their medical licenses. @rikiwilchins.bsky.social

This is a stupid idea, but I wish there were a good app that used VR with LLMs for language learning via conversation. I think part of visiting other countries helps with learning is your brain automatically shifts into "oh God I have to speak now" and it's hard to recreate that at home.

11 Nov 2025 -- California Supreme Court rules that LGBTQ+ anti-discrimination law protects elderly trans residents in long-term care from being misgendered and mispronouned after a lower CA court held that employees could do so bec. of their 1st Amendment rights @rikiwilchins.bsky.social

11 Nov 2025 -- A group of transgender servicemembers who have served up to 18 years in the Air Force are suing after being promised pensions when the Trump ordered them separated from the military which there later withdrawn. @rikiwilchins.bsky.social

Axios ran a whole piece about Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico, a Christian seminarian, following a few models on Instagram. No scandal. No misconduct. Just "follows." Journalism is dead. Clickbait moral panic is alive. www.friendlyatheist.com/p/axios-trie...

Assigned Media is definitely NOT a legacy outlet. Our mission is to serve the trans community by providing the highest quality journalism on trans issues. You can help! Share our work and become a member by following this link: www.assignedmedia.org/newsletter

Billie's story draws on the work of @transjournalists.org and @mmfa.bsky.social and includes quotes from @petrinkae.bsky.social. It's essential reading to understand why and how things are likely to get even worse when it comes to coverage of trans issues by legacy outlets.

NEW: Firings of LGBTQ staff at NBC and Condé Nast have worsened an already dire picture for legacy news media when it comes to covering the trans community. From @billiejsweeney.bsky.social, a close look at our increasingly degraded media environment. www.assignedmedia.org/breaking-new...

Two years ago, I wrote this about how the COP climate summits are designed to fail, and how they could be designed to succeed. Sadly, nothing has changed. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

"Online climate misinformation often borrows the look and feel of scientific figures and charts to gain legitimacy, according to a new study. The analysis highlights the importance of images and aesthetics in spreading climate misinformation, in contrast to previous studies that have largely […]

Trust Democrats to run the table on election night Monday up and down the ballot and give us one week of joy, and takeaway from that that they should roll-over and cave to Reps just 1 week later. Is there another party like this anywhere?

The only thing Dems seem to have gotten for 40-day shutdown was agreement to vote on extending Obamacare subsidies. This will be uncomfortable for Reps, but nothing more. That's about all we got. These guys have no reason to be in DC anymore IMHO. They are a hood-ornament on the Rep party.

I just wish more leaders were ashamed, and more artists angry.

I just wish the cycle wasn't so predictable. Happens over and over, everywhere, always. Everything it touches becomes slop. Artists are forced to use generic formats and sentiments, while getting paid less. Users find themselves obsessively searching the app for feelings it cannot produce.

Finally deleted the reddit app, with regret. It was important to my career, and I like it, but the algorithmizing and infinite scroll turned it from the enjoyable experience of checking in with interesting topics into yet another app generically trying to addict you.

Maybe I’m too Norwegian, but it’s weird to me that Americans don’t consider health insurance a form of taxation.

Let's stop pretending that the billionaire media, endlessly attacking the BBC, has the slightest interest in balance, impartiality and accuracy. They won't be happy until the BBC is more rightwing than Vlad the Impaler. And then it still won't be enough.

History happening.

A trusted, widely followed source of news and information that is 100% in Finnish hands is in this day and age a strategic asset and capability, just like fighter jets or long range missiles. But the far right demonstrates again and again that their overriding objective is winning culture wars.

This is particularly sad as Lowell has long been a centre for Solar System planetary astronomy, a rare field internationally 🔭

The Zeiten, they are wending. 61% of Germans say their country invested too little in its military capabilities. 66% say we relied too much on the US for our security.

"Forrest, who describes net zero as “con,” argues that roughly 90 per cent of Fortescue’s operations can be eliminated through the use of technology that already exists and is betting enough investment and R&D can crack the nut on the remaining 10 per cent within less than five years. [Recent] […]

In some portion of the universal wave function, it is Hugh Everett III's birthday. If you're having trouble deciding whether or not to celebrate, use this quantum random number generator and do both! (Set Min to 1 and Max to 2 for the equivalent of a coin flip.) https://qrandom.io If you use […]

me: decides to watch acclaimed body horror movie me once the body horror part of the movie starts: okay I'm just gonna pause it right now, maybe I'll come back to it later haha

"Scotland’s Highland region becomes the backdrop for Britain’s most ambitious energy storage project in half a century. The government has approved construction of a massive pumped hydro facility at Loch Earba, marking a revolutionary step toward energy independence. This groundbreaking […]

"Fossil demand has been flat for industrial energy since 2014, for buildings since 2018, for road transport since 2019, & may peak for electricity this year. 2/3 of countries have already seen peak fossil demand in end-use sectors, & half the world has seen a peak in fossil fuels for electricity."

"Simon Stiell, the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, addressed the gathering of ministers and high-ranking officials from nearly 200 countries, in a stark portrayal of the price of failure on the climate crisis. “Not one single nation among you can afford this, as climate disasters rip double […]

"Rich countries have lost enthusiasm for combating the climate crisis while China is surging ahead in producing and using clean energy equipment, the president of the UN climate talks said. “Somehow the reduction in enthusiasm of the global north is showing that the global south is moving,” […]

[today’s hello wordl] https://hellowordl.net/?seed=20251111&length=5&game=1 hello wordl 4/6 ⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛ ⬛🟨⬛⬛⬛ ⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

We've posted #trunkandtidbits for October. It was a busy month, with a lot of coding behind the scenes to prepare for Mastodon 4.5, events and talks, Fediforum and our thoughts on packs, and some merch news. Have a read! https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2025/11/trunk-tidbits-october-2025/

The Democrats who engineered and/or voted for the odious shutdown deal are even more cowardly and reckless than anyone could have imagined. See this: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/shutdown-deal-would-let-senators-sue-over-jack-smith-searches

Reading this below on the 36th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and by extension the symbolic end of the GDR, the place I grew up in... with neighbors and parents of classmates belonging to the Stasi (east German secret police), the fear my own parents might be disappeared — years […]

In 2022, Peter Thiel protégé Balaji Srinivasan—formerly of Andreessen Horowitz and Coinbase—envisioned a Second American Civil War. He predicted it would be triggered by Bitcoin. This is how it would work:

Seattle's Mamdani is winning by an absurdly small margin over our incumbent mayor, who once pulled a gun on a pregnant woman in a parking lot. Vote in your local elections! www.thestranger.com/news/2025/11...

What Freedom Looks Like A cartoon by me and @nadinescholtes.bsky.social Read more cartoons! --> #PoliCartoon Support our cartoons! --> patreon.com/barry

Politicians love to warn that the other side has a radical agenda. Yet, they don't seem too concerned that first past the post means they can win a majority with less than 40% of the vote. Fear alone will not fix democracy. Proportional representation will.