Who do I know at UCSF or Berkeley that would be interested in taking a high school student to shadow for lab work? Kid is interested in bioscience, and lives fine detail work.

Brilliant, but kind of DC-centric. Marvel super-battles are like an argument at the bar after an especially eclectic philosophy conference

You will never believe what the dog who drops balls in places he can’t reach, so that he can stand around crying over it, just did.

Pizza and image analysis. Because there’s no hackin‘ without snackin‘. @damiandn.bsky.social @bethcimini.bsky.social

Ah heck, I made the best photo I took of Max (of sainted memory) my profile pic. I’ll never look that good.

Exactly one year ago today:

It should surprise no one at all who’d fall in love with a zero effort firehose of information that’s comforting, supportive, and totally unconcerned with factual truth. The Macedonians who invented fake news for click revenue gave up on the left bc no one shared it. www.wired.com/2017/02/vele...

Bowie’s paw on the large branch telegraphs his concern I might not know the rule that dragging a large branch around the yard for fifteen minutes means you officially own it.

After big dams on the upper Klamath River in far northern CA were removed in 2024, Chinook (king) salmon migrated upstream for the first time in 100+ years--and now they have hatched.

What is the interior dimension of this Waffle House, does it have a basement, can I choose where to teleport *within* the Waffle House, and does it continue being a Waffle House if I buy the property and build a fence around it?

The nonprofit that runs the successful, Pulitzer-winning Baltimore Banner is going to take over the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Of all the possible outcomes here, this is likely the best we could have hoped for. apnews.com/article/pitt...

Christ. Stay out of Target and avoid the self checkouts if you can help it.

I’m offering a lightly used set of regalia in UC Berkeley colors to a junior faculty member, preference for a mom and 1st gen scholar. DM me your details— I’ll ship for free.

Crab bucket. We can’t get out, so no one else will either.

You constantly hear Republican types say ‘imagine if…’. Well this is if. Eric Swalwell looks extremely guilty here, and if so I hope the story buries him.

Alien abductions are routine bag & tag wildlife field studies, and the answer to the Fermi paradox is that we are a nature preserve

One of my favourite photos 💕 Children at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena viewing Edgar Degas' 'Little Dancer' Photo via Red Tricycle

We’re in for a treat today. Our seminar speaker is Christine Strullu-Derrien: “Early terrestrial microorganisms revealed through advanced imaging techniques.” Exploring the insane hundreds-of-millions-of-years timescales that we rarely think about.

Things I Know Far Too Much About (that aren’t theater or movies): 1. Sharks 2. Paranormal whatever. I lterally read the library dry as a kid 3. Harappans

🚨New preprint and our results are rather concerning.. We find the "boiling frog" equivalent of AI use. Using large-scale RCTs, we provide *casual* evidence that AI assistance reduces persistence and hurts independent performance. And these effects emerge after just 10–15 minutes of AI use! 1/

Why does this happen? Two candidate mechanisms: 1) AI resets your reference point for how long things "should" take. Unaided work suddenly feels harder than it actually is, -- a kind of hedonic adaptation. 2) AI removes the productive struggle through which you learn what you're capable of.

Current AI systems are fundamentally *short-term* collaborators. They never say no, they always give you the answer, and they're indifferent to what that does to you over time. The best human mentors know when not to help and how to help for long-term benefit.

This is incredibly upsetting, and also weirdly close to home. I would have met him at Colorado College, I was at that SJ Gould talk, and this type of evening out disparities w better education is really impt to me. Donovsn should head an Institute. Plus Beth Jones was my department chair.

I gotta say, Daredevil writers know how to roll those chicken bones.

It was just 24 days between when Zuck went on Rogan and talked about how "never again" would he suppress info based on gov't demands (misrepresenting those demands) and when he texted top gov't employee Elon Musk to say "we're all set up to take down info you want removed." I wrote about it here.

Gary Snyder and Ken Kesey, Rachel Carson and Eugenie Clark. Hunter S Thompson and Galen Rowell, Mozi and Tocqueville. People who live in my head and I’d never dream of charging rent.

Our lab has an open postdoctoral position. Work in the lab ranges from trafficking of neuronal cargoes to developing gene editing therapeutics for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. I'm looking for the right person, project is flexible. Please apply immediately. www.roylab.org

As the first reanalysis data become available, I think I can say with a fairly high degree of confidence that the March 2026 heatwave will go down as the most anomalously extreme heat event ever observed at any time of year in the southwestern U.S.

As the author of an upcoming history of vaccines and their opponents, I'll be traveling a bit once it comes out, overseas as well as around these United States. It would be pretty embarrassing if I picked up a vaccine preventable disease if I did. Boosters all round! PS: preorders are resistance!

Crickets and cicadas at dusk, late spring

It's out! Happy to present ITEC, a semi supervised algorithm with an extremely low error rate that can track cells in files of any size (think Terabytes!). We used it in many organisms, including zebrafish, to study how organs form and linked it to gene expression www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... +🧪

It’s been 10+ years and I feel like The Magicians is one of the rare two-fers: an incredible book series that became a different, equally incredible multi-season show. I can’t even pick ten favorite moments, though the Mar-golem ranks up with the musical episodes.

Holy balls, Morgan Freeman just very seriously pointed out the ‘thagomizer’ on the Netflix/Spielberg dinosaurs show. Like 100% educational tone of voice, that is what professionals call it, because I looked it up and they do now? How cool is that.

I just discovered a biography of George Washington, written by Washington Irving and published just before the Civil War. It’s poignant reading, considering.

Excited to announce I’m starting a new lab at @gmivienna.bsky.social (Vienna BioCentre) in Sept 2026 We study how carbon fixation is inherited and maintained in algae using cryo-ET, imaging, environmental sampling&more Looking for people who want to build the lab together, get in touch! #teamtomo

Are you signed up for our 'Technology, imaging, and methods' updates? 🖥️🔬 Here's our newsletter listing upcoming meetings and training opportunities in the field – mark your calendar and join us this year, on site or virtually. https://s.embl.org/technology-2026 #datavis #imaging #bioimaging

Hello Bluesky, I'm working on a story about colorectal cancer in younger adults. If you're under 50 and have been diagnosed with colorectal cancer, or if you know someone else who fits this description who wants to talk about it, please reach out! DMS open. You can choose to be anonymous.

Typical Doberman aggression, right here: as soon as I’m in the shower, Bowie stretches himself out like this over all my clothes, sort of a whole body version of putting your paw on a stick to claim it.

This seems suboptimal.

What does GenX do when the unexpected happens? We 1. Stop 2. Collaborate 3. Listen

Writing forces your brain to coordinate memory, reasoning, and meaning-making simultaneously. Every time you write, you rewire toward clearer thinking. Every time you let an LLM do it, you rewire toward consumption.

City park, morning.

This sounds like someone actually found the hypothesized origin-of-life molecule! Without competition, this one molecule could propagate itself endlessly, fortuitous mistakes creating diversity, with a clear shot all the way to periwinkles and platypuses.

Post a banger that’s not in English. youtu.be/JJxbHNvTi1c?...

Do we really need ANOTHER national competition that Boston will keep winning?

Arnav Saha, Tushar Sherkhane and Nagaraj Balasubramania uncover a mechanosensitive pathway linking ECM stiffness to Golgi organisation and function in breast cancer cells. Highlight: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/... Article: journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/...

Compare & contrast: the dinner party in Dorothy Thompson’s legendary essay “Who Goes Nazi”, vs the cast of characters who show up in the horrorshow files dropped on Friday.

Somehow we ended up in the timeline time travel movies only show briefly to illustrate why you don’t go messing around with time travel.

Getting asked about how academics can continue to do science & inspire trainees even in the midst of a continued (escalated) assault on science, reason, truth, & human rights. I don’t have great answers. I would love to hear from mentors about advice they’re giving to trainees/ colleagues.

Press release on our paper: today.ucsd.edu/story/new-ai...