why are people arguing about bluesky this morning? it’s a rainy day. you could be out there getting drenched and falling ill

Highly amusing that people think the hantavirus outbreak 'doesn't line up' because they don't believe someone would go birding at a landfill

I am excited beyond description to lift the veil on what we have been working on in 2026: Please meet ggsql! A new extension of the SQL language for creating visualisations using the grammar of graphics. Read all about it in the blog post or visit the website at ggsql.org

Subacute sclerosing panencephalitis is a rare but fatal side effect of #measles infection, which manifests years after a kid recovers. This story of a family who lost a 10-year old to it is heartbreaking. Renae was too young to be vaccinated when she caught measles. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/o...

'author yap' is the whole point!!!!

This isn't shortread data, but alignments of genome assemblies with N50 > 100Mb. The plot is the # of bp per 100Kb window that are dropped because of missing data -- because those bp physically are not there in one of the other 25 genomes. This is what normal plant genomes look like, folks.

This is a big part of why basically every archaeologist who gets asked "when in the past would you want to have been alive?" will answer "the present please and thank you"

We are thrilled to announce the first official release (v0.1.8) of #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗿, the successor to one of our flagship tool, #𝗯𝗲𝗱𝘁𝗼𝗼𝗹𝘀! Based on ideas we conceived of long ago (!), this was achieved thanks to the dedication of Brent Pedersen. 1/n

One of the most exciting projects I have ever been involved in: Project Psyche! Read all about our ambitions and aims. It's ground breaking stuff, just mind blowing and even surreal (27 years ago we did single genes for lep phylogenetics)! @projectpsyche.bsky.social www.cell.com/trends/ecolo...

We've got a really cool preprint out in collaboration with @lpachter.bsky.social's awesome student Cat Felce. Using biophysical models and RNA-seq data, we explore the mechanisms of selective constraint on mRNA abundance, finding constraint on decay rate www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

It’s widely known (and, I think, pretty uncontroversial) that learning requires effort — specifically, if you don’t have to work at getting the knowledge, it won’t stick. Even if an LLM could be trusted to give you correct information 100% of the time, it would be an inferior method of learning it.

Aaah! New preprint from the Sethuraman Lab has dropped! Tamsen and I have been working on this for a while, and we can’t wait for your feedback. Short thread on our swanky new polyploid genome simulator, DemographiKs, and its functionality.

More really cool science news: Scientists have extracted the oldest known RNA! This is a particularly amazing feat because RNA degrades very quickly. (Also, we learned that Yuka here was a male, not a female as previously thought.) 🧪 (by @humbertobasilio.bsky.social for @sciam.bsky.social)

Every ad now

No no no begs every archivist. You are never going to be able to find anything. Please don’t start using emojis in file names. Who asked for this? What fresh hell is next?

bro are you fucking kidding me

🚨 NEW: The majority holder of the world's genetic sequence data is a bad actor who can cut off access to critics and competing services. We've tolerated this for years, and now it threatens the pandemic treaty. Time for WHO to step in. With @ctrlalttim.com: www.thinkglobalhealth.org/article/to-f...

At some point it has to become clear that this tech exists is to create a more toxic society and enrich its owners. These uses are not aberrations but rather the entire purpose.

Sharing our new paper, "Distinct haplotypes and reversed dominance at a single-gene balanced polymorphism controlling heterodichogamy in two genera of wingnuts". Genomics & evolution of a mating type system involving two morphs with alternating sexes in walnut relatives www.cell.com/current-biol...

Happy to chat with any potential applicants who want to work in plant phylogenomics!

tfw you think you're missing out on something but you're actually not

probably my most deeply-held belief: it is not possible for a slide deck to be both (1) a good presentation aide; and (2) a standalone document that can be read and understood in isolation.

Most chromosomes of any animal on Earth so far!

Look at her go! #invertebrates 🌿

Tusk by Fleetwood Mac has entered the chat

Look the mayor of Vaughan and the Premier of Ontario have said drivers are hard done by. Give them a break.

Ornithology is all about the process. #GoBills | #BillsMafia

being a cat person is so crazy bc you live with someone who is undeniably annoying and you're always thinking "maybe i should get another cat"

Jane Goodall, ethologist and conservationist, has died. She was 91

This was from banning trans girls from girls sports. Just so you understand the reality of what's going on here.

The new XKCD has to be a reference to the ant paper where ants just casually lay eggs of a different species, yes? Maybe? There are so many weird bugs its hard to know.

Please share broadly: I am looking for a postdoctoral fellow to work on a collaborative project on the temporal population genomics of invasive Capeweed (using contemporary and herbarium genomics), with ‪‪@shaky-dingo.bsky.social‬ and colleagues

It's Minnesota State Fair time! It's time for Minnesotan folk art! Here, for example, is Saturn Devouring His Corn, in the seed art category!

8 years of notes from research meetings, lab meetings, seminars, brainstorming sessions and to-do lists from 4th year undergrad to now. For most of this period finishing this PhD felt mostly impossible and overwhelming, glad to have made it through with the help of my slightly illegible scribbles.

even more on the flight attendants' side after spending an hour on AC's website trying to rearrange my travel days

Air Canada consoles stranded passengers with pictures of their executive bonuses

I'm a Dr. now!!! Very grateful to my supervisor, committee, labmates and everyone else who helped me get to this stage!

#Viewpoint: Measuring #NaturalSelection on the transcriptome John R. Stinchcombe & John K. Kelly 👇 📖 nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.... #LatestIssue

Legend says the ancient Babylonians once tried to sequence and annotate God's own genome, and for their ambition and hubris they were forever cursed to have different annotation formats and standards so they could never do genomics with ease again.

OrthoFinder just dropped a major update It’s faster, more accurate, and ready for thousands of genomes Let’s break it down (1/10) github.com/OrthoFinder/... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

chat are we cooked

Wrote a whole thesis, and not once did I spell 'dioecious' correctly on the first try

Elsa Lam continues to prove & document how corrupt & full of lies the Doug Ford closure of the science centre was & is. Read & share widely - not that it matters in Ontario, a province that seems ok w a high level of this. www.canadianarchitect.com/draft-engine...

There's nothing on Earth like a genuine, bona fide, electrified, six-bath thermal spa. What'd I say? 🎵Thermal spa. Thermal spa. Thermal spa. Thermal spa.🎵

We found Therme misrepresented itself in its bid to secure the Toronto lease. The company has intertwined itself with its German namesake, with the full knowledge of the German side by the way, weaving a narrative over the best part of the past decade. We unspooled that.

The NY Times has published an investigation into the Therme development at Ontario Place. It found that while the company told the province it had a proven track record of operating six spas around the world, at the time it had only ever operated one. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/w...

The only question for Doug Ford (and Ontario voters) on Ontario Place: is this your government‘s incompetence or your government’s corruption?

Sabrina Imbler spoke to fish biologist Sara Hugentobler about the extraordinary life of salmon, the warning signs of her termination, and the threats the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service layoffs pose to endangered species. defector.com/an-interview...

Interested in gene expression, machine learning, natural selection, and evolution? My former student, Georgia Henry just published a paper that may interest you. Her goal: understand how natural selection acts on the transcriptome, within a single generation experiment, *in the field*.