I think I understand how it can be that LLMs are both exceptionally good and quite terrible at programming. It's because there are two entirely different skillsets that we both call "good at programming." LLMs have only one of them. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/llms-excel...

If engine fell off it's most likely a maintenance problem. Look up American Airlines Flight 191, which was a DC 10 (closely related aircraft to the MD 11).

The 21st Century version of corvée work for academics is reviewing papers or grants, writing letters of recommendation, giving public outreach lectures.

If LLMs were actually intelligent—and not just stochastic parrots—they could read all the literature on random number generation, synthesize it, and conclude that always setting the seed to the same number is probably not a good idea. Alas, they don't have that kind of awareness.

Wait, set.seed(42)? What's that? I've never heard of it. 😉

Excellent idea to demonstrate the effect of color-palette choice on visualizations.

if you see this post, your actions are: - if you have a spare buck, give it to Wikipedia, then repost this - if you don't have a spare buck, just repost your action is mandatory for the world's best source of information to survive

My default assumption is all my grants will get rejected so a rejected grant doesn't particularly bother me.

LinkedIn accounts can be stolen easily. This now has happened to two people I know personally, most recently this morning. There appears to be no viable way to protect your account from this attack, as the attack goes through LinkedIn support. nazmul-ahsan.medium.com/your-linkedi...

A response to all the people who say "if your results depend on your random seed you have bigger problems." blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/random-see...

My NIH panel that was scheduled for tomorrow and Friday is now officially cancelled. Just received the notification. I was expecting this, but would have been nice to know with a bit of advance notice.

Just so we're clear about the scale of the problem: Half a million occurrences of `random_state=42` on github, and another almost 200k occurrences of `random.seed(42)`. (And that's just Python. There are also ~20k cases in R.) 1/2

Not sure if this is in response of my blog post of today. In case it is, I wrote clearly that the choice of random seed is arbitrary. Problems can arise when you're always using the same seed, or even worse, when everybody is. There are 160k occurrences of random.seed(42) on github.

We need to have a conversation about random seeds. Don't use 42. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/if-your-ra...

Don't trust a bed with a monthly subscription plan. www.dexerto.com/entertainmen...

"The internet of things will be great" they said. "Connect your cat feeder to the internet and it'll automatically order refills" they said. "Imagine a world where everything is connected and one AWS outage causes 100 million people to starve" they didn't say.

It's still down for me. Has been down since this morning.

My department at Emory is a hiring a tenure-track neuroscientist! Anyone who's talked to me in the last 4 years knows I cannot say enough good things about my dept and the neuroscience community here. My colleagues are so wonderfully supportive. Postdocs, please apply! apply.interfolio.com/174371

Super useful new feature! I've started to recommend plotnine to everybody who does data analysis in python and needs a plotting solution, so this is very welcome.

Excellent realistic assessment of what AI is likely going to be able to do in the short to medium term, from somebody who truly understands this stuff. “Agents don’t work.” “I don’t know why AI companies make these promises, maybe it’s to raise money.” www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXUZ...

Also, don't watch a bunch of knife sharpening videos on YouTube and then go around and sharpen all the knives in the house without telling your spouse about it...

The various people trying to shame me for using large language models to do actual research and produce detailed teaching materials on their harms, instead of simply preaching against them on a street corner—they provide a perfect illustration of wank.

Let's acknowledge how impressive it is that Wired was able to locate all seven Tesla Cybertruck owners.

Congratulations to LCID member Dr. Jason McLellan on receiving a 2025 MacArthur Fellowship for his groundbreaking work in structural biology and infectious disease interventions! cns.utexas.edu/news/accolad...

Most graduate students are too ambitious and need to be reined in. It's common for graduate students to want to do a lifetime of research during their PhD. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/most-gradu...

During these uncertain times, I’m very happy to see that my institution, @scripps.edu has an open tenure-track Assistant Professor position. Any field in Chemistry or Biology is welcome. I’d especially love to see fellow neuroscientists apply. Please repost! apply.interfolio.com/174756

We have a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor position in Microbiology available! Come and join great students and colleagues at Hofstra Biology. Please apply using the link below and/or spread the word! hofstra.peopleadmin.com/postings/6542

I think this is a misconception. If correlation was causation, everybody would always want to know which is cause and which is effect, and they'd expect you to figure this out. Instead, today, you can always say "Meh, correlation is not causation."

For no good reason, a reminder: Cash receipts in excess of $10k received during the course of a business transaction (for example, as compensation for services rendered) need to be reported within 15 days via IRS form 8300. www.irs.gov/businesses/s...

I'm very excited to announce that UNC Biology has 6 faculty positions open this year! The first is for an Asst Professor who studies organismal resilience using an integrative approach 1/n unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/307...

In my experience with blogging, there are often long periods where nobody cares about my posts, and then suddenly a post goes viral and I get a massive inflow of new subscribers. To everybody who just subscribed or started following: Most of my posts are boring. Sorry. I’m doing the best I can. 😉

"Biology is just physics and chemistry, and in principle we should be able to write down the equations of motion of any biological system and solve them numerically. In practice, however, any realistic biological system is way too large for this approach and we don’t have the required compute."

AI in biology: "I read about some new computational method...get excited because it’s exactly what I need...I try the method...Most of the time things don’t work...I have seen this play out so many times my default assumption is nothing is going to work" blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

As I tell my students, if you arrived at a simple answer in biology you have done one of two things: arrived at the wrong answer or asked the wrong question

A good, thoughtful article.

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

Really good post!

Biology is much more complicated than most non-biologists can imagine. And AI is not going to change this anytime soon. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/we-still-c...

Dear #microbiology and #immunology community- I took a break from social media after I deleted my Twitter account, but am back here. Please help me rebuild my community by following me and amplifying this message- I will follow you back. Thank you and I look forward to our many interactions!

as a girl with a PhD in natural language processing and machine learning it's actually offensive to me when you say "we don't know how LLMs work so they might be conscious" I didn't spend 10 years in mines of academia to be told ignorance is morally equal knowledge. We know exactly how LLMs work.

Job alert ‼️ UChicago Micro is hiring! Open to tenured/tenure track faculty at all levels in any area of microbiology. Come join our amazing and growing department. apply.interfolio.com/174404

Some thoughts about the research-plan component of the NSF GRFP application. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/how-to-wri...

In her latest video, @acollierastro.bsky.social tackles physics grifters and I'm so here for it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=miJb...

In her latest video, @acollierastro.bsky.social tackles physics grifters and I'm so here for it. www.youtube.com/watch?v=miJb...

I think the R01 is basically a non-starter at NIGMS now. Data from NIH Reporter for new and competing awards, comparing number of R01s issued relative to R35s (MIRA). This has major ramifications for basic science and basic science investigators that are not yet in the MIRA pool

How to write an NSF GRFP personal statement. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/how-to-wri...

How to write an NSF GRFP personal statement. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/how-to-wri...