Happy New Year from Paris ‘y all!

"They found the coats on Thursday morning. Fifteen winter coats. Good ones, not garbage. Hanging on the chain-link fence outside Lincoln Elementary.No note. No explanation. Just coats zipped up like ghosts waiting for bodies. Principal Morris freaked out. Called the police. "Could be stolen"

This story about the mystery behind Fleming's discovery of Penicillin has an MSU connection! @msumgi.bsky.social press.asimov.com/articles/pen...

Fairly simple: I knew after high school that it was going to "science/math". In high school, chemistry (inorganic) was easy but boring. Biology (plants and cell division, basically) was boring. Math was a tool, not science. That left physics. So I went to Bonn University to study physics.

We should all share the name of the folder we use for those. Mine is called “Nuts”.

Mathematician and astronomer August Ferdinand Möbius was born #OTD in 1790. 🧪 🔭 He is best known for devising a surface that not even the New York Times could find a way to both-sides.

Interesting article in which the authors show that the vast majority of beneficial mutations (as determined by deep mutational scanning) do not fix because the environment changes so fast that those mutations lose their benefit before fixation. (1/2) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'd also like the Supreme Court to hear a complaint. You just go and ask them, right? That's how it goes?

Got to review my first fully AI-generated paper today. Fortunately as a pre-peer-review, so I could spare some other reviewers the indignity of writing a reply to a chatbot.

Come on!

That's not an insignificant point. This was precisely the reaction of my family living abroad: "Good to see that you are still fighting for your democracy". With "you" meaning all of us protesters.

#nokings Lansing, Michigan

For those of you in the area: I will be part of the MSU Choir at this Saturday's performance at the Wharton Center of Jocelyn Hagen's "The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci", which is a beautiful piece that marries orchestra, voice, and audiovisual effects. www.whartoncenter.com/events/detai...

1982-1986 Teaching Assistant 1986-1991 Research Assistant 1992-1995 Postdoc 1995-today Faculty That's it. Never had another job.

Can confirm.

Immigrants, particularly on H1Bs, are the lifeblood of American innovation. If you wanted to hurt US competitiveness in the next century, I can think of few more effective ways than a move like this Even when found illegal, the mere intent will have irreparably harmed our future

Of all the stupid things that this regime has done, this is right up near the top. Postdoctoral researchers come to the US on H-1B visas. This will further destroy the US science enterprise. Stupid stupid stupid.

This is really interesting! Mutations that affect a protein's foldability do not seem to impact org fitness if the protein is not important for function. But there *are* effects from mutations on those proteins (just not related to foldability). What are they due to?? www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...

My “I got the Covid vaccine” sticker from 2020 (which tells me which side is up on my laptop) got a bit ragged, so I replaced it.

Hey, local news!

With Jeff Barrick's return to #MSU, the #LTEE was restarted today after a short pause (frozen) for the move. Today was daily transfer 12,301. With ~6.6 generations per day, they are now at ~82,007 generations. 100,000 generations is fast approaching! Are you ready, #Spartans? @msumgi.bsky.social

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/s.... When David was President of Caltech he and I often ran on adjacent treadmills at the Gym, and we got to talking. He was very interested in the brain and consciousness, and we ended up friends. All around great guy.

I'm sorry, but genetic engineering is getting out of hand.

I’m told this is where you begin when on Bluesky (birthday present to myself)

Upgrade my baby grand piano...

I’ve seen this tool in action: it is awesome.

Look who's here now

The Xue lab at UC Irvine is looking for a staff scientist to support our work investigating how microbes interact and evolve in the gut microbiome! Open to a wide range of previous experience levels, see ad for more. recruit.ap.uci.edu/JPF09601

For anyone interested in early US history and its intersection with science and discovery, I highly recommend the book "The Scientist Turned Spy: Andre Michaux, Thomas Jefferson, and the Conspiracy of 1793" by Patrick Spero. www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10032/ #history #science #botany

I weep for the NSF and its employees

Lansing, MI

The "No Kings" organizers say that there are more than 1,800 protests planed for tomorrow.: www.nokings.org We'll have journalists at several of them, but you can tag @motherjones.com with your clips and tips.

Our Darwin-Wallace Medal is awarded to a person or group who have made major advances in evolutionary science. Know of a worthy recipient? Nominate by 30 September. www.linnean.org/the-...

If this works in people it would indeed be a game changer. This is the kind of payoff you get from decades of dedicated basic research. The kind that is currently being torn down by this administration.

Here’s the quantum information theory of it adamilab.msu.edu/wp-content/u...

Betül is fearless.

Please read and consider adding your name.

Reminder that my book "Evolution of Biological Information", which was pandemically overpriced by @princetonupress.bsky.social, is 50% off until May 31, with the checkout code "BLOOM50". That's a reasonable price. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

Terence is the kind of guy that will discover the polynomial-time factoring algorithm. Trust me, it exists. The Shor (quantum factoring) algorithm scales with the square root of that classical one. Like all other quantum algorithms.

America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.

What a relief. Imagine being in the student's and postdoc's shoes. I abhor bullying, and this is the worst kind.

There should be preliminary injunctions tomorrow. Where are the lawsuits?

The withholding of awarded research grants is also illegal. Where are the law suits seeking their reinstatement? Surely Harvard has some lawyers? @baym.lol

Really incredible. Trump sends his daughter's father-in-law, a convicted criminal, to be US ambassador to France.

People ask me why I chose to become a US citizen after all this time on a Green Card. Well, this is one of the reasons. What a country this has become, in so short a time. This could have been me.

This is illegal.

This video feels like a throwback to a simpler time on YouTube: 331 film clips edited together to recreate Eminem’s Lose Yourself. [kottke.org]

Finally!

Here it is! Bonsai. Now there is really no more excuse for using t-SNE/UMAP. Bonsai not only makes cool pictures of your data. It actually rigorously preserves its structure. No tunable parameters. Incredible work by @dhdegroot.bsky.social. I'm so excited about this! www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...