This semester I developed and taught a course on applied population genomics. Lab activities proceed from the basics of the command line and Git to variant calling with workflow managers and a suite of downstream analyses (e.g., ADMIXTURE). All materials can be found here: elinck.org/genomics_eco...

Please repost: My department at USC is hiring for a teaching-track faculty position. We are looking for someone principally to teach statistics for biologists, but there will be opportunities for other courses in statistics & algorithms applied to biology usccareers.usc.edu/job/los-ange...

zoomer grad student just referred to events between 1995 and 2000 as "the late 1900s" 💀

oh yeah my field notes totally look like this too ebird.org/checklist/S3...

shared that "accidental aRt" tumblr with a student and noticed it was last updated 6 years ago...feeling old

when people tell you not to buy a -80 freezer from VWR you should listen to them 🫠

In a sea of opinions about the role of LLMs in academics I offer my own. Apart from being harmful, exploitive plagiarism machines, LLMs rob us of the opportunity to experience the gift of friction in writing, which changes how we think. We must not give away that gift. doi.org/10.1002/fee....

We're hiring a post doc! Looking for a global change ecologist to work with Jenny McGuire & a multidisciplinary team including me and @jameststroud.bsky.social on the ecology side of things please share widely!

there is no greater grift than edutech software

Shout out to @elinck.bsky.social for putting me on to this album. Farewell Transmission in particular is in my personal pantheon

get your fresh hot highly contiguous Clark's Nutcracker genome here: doi.org/10.1093/g3jo... (lead by @peterinnes1.bsky.social & feat. @mdcarling.bsky.social)

"They lead very different lives than us" — @jasongregg.bsky.social on seabirds

student, to me: "has anyone ever told you that you have a wonderfully whimsical walk" (??)

grant rejected! currently 0 for 2 at NSF. onward 🫡

not saying English bird names aren't a mess, but it's good to remember that someone decided to call a fish "Dolly Varden"

The party told you to reject evidence that mouth pipetting is fun and cool and safe. It was their final, most essential command.

my Ph.D. student Lizzy & I contributed to this perspective on range-wide signatures of local adaptation in American Pika—her first coauthuored paper: doi.org/10.1111/mec....

baby is getting all four molars at once. our fates are ruled by an old and angry god

the student evals from onithology are in

the world is a wild place: occrp.org/en/feature/m...

gonna do the old science twitter thing and post my reading here this year

this joke was made in a lab to torment me

I've slowly been reformatting notes from my population and conservation genetics course at Montana State University into a web book—a rough draft is now live here: elinck.org/popgen_conge...

Fewer amounts of new specific solicitations and more broad ones going forward Panels larger and with larger suites of research grants to evaluate and broader expertise within them Probably longer waits to sort through funding decisions

what do we think this will mean, practically speaking

"Chlorospingus" has to be near the top of the list when it comes to humiliating bird names

graphic design standards at science have slipped precipitously over the last 50 years

I suspect this is a sign of things to come—that opportunities to pursue an open-ended Ph.D. in EEB (i.e., a project not tightly tied to a particular grant) will be increasingly rare (www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...)

anyone have experience fragmenting DNA for WGS library prep with a Qsonica Q800R3? effective covaris alternative, or ineffective trap for cheapskates?

I have organized my life around not having to drive regularly since ~2009. we're about a week into having to do so for childcare, and man this blows

We used to live in a society. hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/electr...

I can't help but notice polarization and societal dysfunction have increased since we stopped making websites like this

today is your last chance to comment on the feds' plan to rescind the roadless rule, which I urge you to strongly oppose on recreational and scientific grounds: www.regulations.gov/document/FS-...

you hate to see it

it's time for my class to learn about some Guys

Plant genome sequencing needs to go tropical. Check out this commentary I wrote with Felipe Zapata (UCLA) and María José Sanín (Montgomery Botanical Center) out today in Nature Reviews Biodiversity 1/5 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

i keep a facebook account open for the usual reasons (marketplace, that one aunt) and about two years ago began getting deluged with friend requests from random birders / nature guides around the world. when did this cultural norm get established?

my university information security office sends out fake "happy birthday!" phishing emails from an official address with a QR code and if you scan the QR code they enroll you in mandatory training

up for retention this semester; working off examples of dossier materials from colleagues. how are you people so productive??

Know an Evolutionary Genomicist looking for a faculty position? Join us in EEB @utknoxville.bsky.social Position is open for studying any organism, but personally I have some botany bias. 🌱 Apply before Sept 19 for full consideration. apply.interfolio.com/170735 Please share widely. Thanks!

looking for successful examples of applied / practical evolutionary / population / conservation genomics courses, at the graduate or advanced undergrad level. have you taught something like this? what worked?

1. Kevin Gross and I just posted a new science-of-science preprint. This one explores the looming peer review crisis. As many of you know, it's becoming significantly more difficult for journal editors to find scholars willing to serve as peer reviewers for submitted manuscripts.

🧪 BREAKING (good news): Senate subcommittee says NO! to Trump's proposed slashes to NASA & NSF funding. Today, the subcommittee said to keep NASA + NSF funding at $33.9 billion, the same as in FY24. See 7:15 below. Full Senate appropriations committee meets tomorrow about it. 🧵 1/3

the undergrad in my lab saw a wolf while doing bird surveys today. casual Montana morning

the ad is up! applications due 7/15: evol.mcmaster.ca/brian/evoldi...

trying to figure out the best way to cite "The Voyage of the Beagle" and descending into madness

parenting pro tip: babies LOVE glacial lakes

ad to come, but I'm looking for an M.S. student to study the conservation genomics of swift foxes on the American Prairie Reserve in Montana beginning 9/1. this is a collaboration w/ Smithsonian & Justine Becker; strong candidates will have prior genomics experience and be up for remote fieldwork

The 500 additional GRFPs NSF awarded were not very evenly distributed across fields, it seems. www.science.org/content/arti...

A process server delivered a letter regarding my "hostile" and "defamatory" attacks on #ColossalBio co-founder Ben Lamm, insinuating I'm a misogynist and a failed scientist. Nothing I've said is defamation, but you can read it a judge for yourself. I've redacted my home address 1/n