Diversity of people and landscapes

I'll summarize this: Mamdani asked NYers to keep air conditioning at 78 degrees. A wave criticism hit online. A MSNBC broadcast pointed out the US Department of Energy recommends that 78 degree figure. Immediately after, the US Department of Energy deleted 6,000 web pages related to energy saving.

It’s going to be a nightmare. I also have heard from those in the know that the Indy race next month will require complete repaving of the streets along the route and sealing of all manhole covers and storm drains along the route. More $$ and pollution yay.

When friends ask me what it's like in DC right now, I tell them -- he's literally trying to kill us.

Some thoughts on my professional society’s re-branding, which drops “American Society for Microbiology” for just ASM Here’s the rationale: asm.org/about-asm/ab... “ASM today is more than American, more than a traditional Society, and we reach beyond microbiology.” Let’s take these one-by-one.

Hi all, we are experiencing technical difficulties with our original Zoom link. Here is an updated link: ucdavis.zoom.us/j/7241356569...

Excited to present at archaea power hour this week! We’ll be talking about microbial ecology in Great Salt Lake, as per our recent pre-print. Head to archaea.bio to sign up if you haven’t already!

Water your tree.

Hypersaline ecosystems display remarkable consistency across the world, but how do they change over time? Our new preprint shows off our first foray into investigating this with 16S seq and hydrodynamic modeling in Great Salt Lake during an especially variable water year. tinyurl.com/hc3zkvrf

Some keen Observations in Our October issue! 🦠 Cancer microbiome 🌊 Marine microbes in warming oceans 🌐 broad-range phages 🧬 genetically minimised Salmonella 🔧 Viral infection mechanisms 🧪 Oxaloacetate antiviral defence and more, here: www.nature.com/nmicrobiol/v...

CoE Deputy Director of Research, @chmoei.bsky.social @medunigraz.at, was on ArchaeaCast! She discussed human #Archaea, why there are no pathogenic Archaea (yet!), and her favorite topic – the human cow 🐄. Tune in! rss.com/podcasts/arc... @fwf-at.bsky.social #archaeasky #microsky

We're getting a wave of articles that are like, "gee willikers it sure seems like the people who complained about 'cancel culture' for years really like canceling people." Yes! This was extremely obvious at the time and a lot of us pointed it out!

Our article on equitable reuse of public sequencing data is out! Led by @alexjprobst.bsky.social, @lhug.bsky.social, Cristina Moraru, @geomicrosoares.bsky.social, @folker.bsky.social and myself -, co-authored by Anke Heyder, and developed in consultation with 167 scientists. tinyurl.com/n6yeanmk

This new video by @hankgreen.bsky.social is one of the best arguments for better science policy I’ve ever seen. Also I learned a ton about where these autism numbers are coming from. Necessary viewing IMO m.youtube.com/watch?v=BdpS...

Instant watch when the nebula notification came through.

Heads up: ignore samtools dot org, similarly minimap2 dot com and likely others. It's owned by a known phishing site and while the binaries they offer look valid currently (but note they may be serving us different binaries to others), that could change. Ie: it's not us (Samtools team)! Be warned

Not an original observation but I’m remembering that he internet is a machine that distributes information, collects every possible take, and delivers the most viral and engagement-baiting ones right to your senses in a death spiral that is driving the world insane.

Here's a new episode of Archaeacast! Listen to @archaealex.bsky.social and Priyanka discuss the many unique viruses which affect Archaea. Afterward Dr. Rachel Whitaker tells us about her labs work investigating these infectious virions! rss.com/podcasts/arc... #SciSky #AcademicSky #Microbiology

MAHA gold-standard science. By @glaucomflecken.bsky.social

ArchaeaCast: A podcast about the coolest domain of life: Archaea. rss.com/podcasts/arc...

Back at my old postdoc after my science policy fellowship and, boy lemme tell you, turns out I really do love looking at DNA on the computer and then writing about it.

The White House is taking new steps to undermine every international student at our universities. It has approved a new rule restricting student visas to 4 years max. That's not long enough for PhD students, or about half of undergrads, to finish their degree. Likely to enter force within days.

Just to give the TL;DR on this one: *The* main purpose of the EO is to move funding priorities and decisions away from experts and career professionals over to political appointees. With the ultimate power held by Vought / OMB.

Boosting because Drew is brilliant as well as being a very good hang.

Flood risk Thursday bumped to a Level 3 out of 4. NWS warns of localized 8-inch totals possible, with 2-3 inches in an hour in some spots. Details on the rain and heat @ cwg.live.

The Central Collection of Algal Cultures (CCAC) at @unidue.bsky.social is advertising a 3-year PhD position supervised by the current Curator, Dr. Olga Matantseva! This PhD will take place in close collaboration with the @jgi.doe.gov. 🦠🧬💻 Apply here: www.uni-due.de/karriere/ste...

Today is my last day as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow contracting with USDA. I was laid off a month early as part of cost saving efforts. I rolled the dice applying for the fellowship this year and.. wow.. they certainly came up a certain way.

Everyone is acting like US scientists will just go get science jobs elsewhere and sure some will but there are not anywhere close to enough science jobs elsewhere. The end result of this will be much, much, much less science, not science happening in different places.

#ArchaeaSky #MicroSky

Congratulations, Miguel, this is super cool!

Elated to have our pre-print now published in @natcomms.nature.com #ArchaeaSky #Microbiology #MEvoSky rdcu.be/euila Our main results stay the same: S. islandicus follows a cell cycle akin to that of some eukaryotes, like the budding yeast, with cellular processes cycling similarly. old🧵cited below👇

Our preprint on estimating how many more prokaryotic taxa can be discovered in the unbinned fraction of metagenomic samples. We predict that there are 10 archaeal and 145 bacterial novel phyla across all habitats. #MicrobialDarkMatter #TreeOfLife #Microbiome #Archaea #Bacteria #Metagenomics

Being a scientist on the job market right now means getting bombarded with AI training “jobs” and I cannot emphasize enough how much they need to fuck off. It’s probably 30% of listings on LinkedIn, and I get multiple messages per week (sometimes per day), it’s insane.

Our paper demonstrating that within-species warfare interactions are ecologically important on human skin is now published in Nature Micro! www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm not pointing fingers at anybody but I do see #USDA left out of a lot of the reporting on cuts to federal research funding, and USDA funds a LOT of research!!! Food safety! Ag sustainability! Making our food supply chains more resilient!!!

Preprint🚨 #microsky 🦠 “Cultivation of Methanonezhaarchaeia, the third class of methanogens within the phylum Thermoproteota”, authored by @kohtzarchaeota.bsky.social & Sylvia Nupp, expands the diversity of methanogens! 90% enriched, methylotrophic culture from a hot spring. A 🧵 tinyurl.com/yw8ku2bj

The real AI arms race is between one another 🥰 nymag.com/intelligence...

As historian David McCullough expressed in a 2003 interview: “Writing is thinking. To write well is to think clearly. That’s why it’s so hard.”

It was 90 with high humidity at 9 PM in Arlington yesterday, feeling like an actual sauna.

Just few days left to apply to one of these postdoc positions in my infectious disease modelling Unit at @pasteur.fr in Paris!

It’s 10000% cope; obviously it’s better to live in paradise than to suffer 8-10 months out of the year. That being said, the spring rush IS fucking incredible. Joy is always momentary and comparative and so I get why they say it.

I’m haunted by John McCain’s ghost. Unbidden, I see him, a rictus grin stretched across his withered face, croaking out the bastardized lyrics of a Beach Boys song.

When the smoke coming out of the Vatican is black and white checkerboard:

I hope everyone knows that it's very easy for any social content platform, including Bluesky, to be a misery machine and that if you aren't intentional about it, they will absolutely decrease the positive impact you have on the world while making you less happy.

Between the heat and everything else, 🫠 is officially the top of my most-used emoji list.

This but grad school for me. I did quite well at my state undergraduate institution, but grad school was a real kick in the head. Impostor syndrome lessened when I (& the other working class people I gravitated to) realized that the people struggling less had doctor/lawyer parents & knew the rules.

Seriously, they should use pictures of what this actually would look like - elderly people being carried away in an ambulance, or like a friend of mine who lives in a home with flat roof no air con and broken down car having to sit in the bath all day on hot days due to a health condition