It’s been three years since I moved to New England and it’s still weird that people are still so freaked out about incoming snow. There are notifications everywhere warning people of wintry conditions. Like bro, it’s January….

These two furballs. #cats

For my #popgen nerds out there, I've finished building a Python package called hapnet - an easy to use, straight out the box tool for building #haplotype networks. Just plug your data in, run a single line of code and voila! A pretty color coded network. Still beta testing! pypi.org/project/hapn...

Upcoming preprint on arXiv. I've started applying quantum algorithms to population genetic data. Might be a dead end, might be something to it. Only one way to find out.

Angry seas in the #oceanstate today

It's rare to find me speechless but this morning I found out that my horror novella was accepted by an independent niche publisher. The story is called The Harvest, and is set in the Adirondacks. It's largely folk horror with a sprinkle of Lovecraftian imagery. #horror #lovecraft #firststory

Just signed my first book contract with Columbia University Press! It’s going to be a popular science book about #parasites. Details to come soon 🥳

We are cooked #nsf #dystopia

Fresh new preprint from the Davinack Lab. We tracked Polydora websteri infestation in eastern oysters for a year in an estuarine habitat with restricted tidal flow. #wormwednesday

Last week I helped lead an informative workshop on mud-blister disease and how it's affecting oysters on Cape Cape cod. Meeting with farmers and growers puts my research into a translational perspective, something that I have been focusing on much more recently. #polychaetes #aquaculture #newengland

We have overcome near-death experiences before. We shall overcome this one too. Not by denying we are in a constitutional crisis. We are. But we can and will prevail if we face the truth unflinchingly and never abandon the long twilight struggle against evil. open.substack.com/pub/roberthu...

Blustery day in Cape Cod, sampling Polydora infested oysters.

A number of federal agencies, from HHS to the USDA, have laid off employees only to rescind those terminations days later. An expert says it "suggests something about mismanagement of government."

The first university creditor bends the knee. ABET, the accrediting body for engineering programs, is removing DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility) standards from its accreditation requirements. 🧪 #AcademicSky www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-t...

My honors student and I are developing a mobile app to help Cape Cod oyster farmers estimate the level of Polydora worm infestation in their crops throughout the growing season based on water quality inputs. Our main issue is that we more data to train our model! #polychaetes #shellfish #diseases

Happy to see that my research is being used to calm people down when they find worms in their seafood. Think of polychaetes as just extra protein folks! www.themirror.com/news/weird-n...

For those interested in creepy crawly stuff (worms and parasites) infecting your seafood, I'll be in Woods Hole tomorrow to give a talk on New England aquaculture...it's hybrid too (zoom link in the link!). #parasites #polychaetes #oysters #scallops #newengland www.whoi.edu/event/biolog...