Columbus was interesting. There was so much superstition and unknown in the 1400’s. The main motivation for finding new lands was basically to bring gold back to the Spanish King and Queen. By that metric, Columbus was a failure

When did football announcers decide to start saying ‘2-minute timeout’ and ‘red area’ instead of 2-minute warning and red zone

Hannibal was very cool in an ancient type of way. The whole elephant over the alps thing is pretty overblown though. They all died almost right away

seems necessary.

I need to settle a family debate. Is The Nightmare Before Christmas a Halloween movie or Christmas movie?

Submitting a 2nd R01 application to a gov’t bureaucracy that isn’t there. Do we have to meet deadlines to fulfill our obligation? Yes. Does the gov’t? No, apparently

This was super interesting. That trip would have sucked but they survived mostly intact

This was a cool book. The underground resistance in the Netherlands during WWII. So cool how women were so overlooked in some cases that they could do really covert espionage for the allies

Same vibe

This was pretty good. Short and fairly Euro-centric but still good

Original investigative journalism. Get yourself committed to an asylum and report on the horrible conditions. Pretty interesting but weird to call the ‘inmates’ lunatics or insane over and over

This was interesting. Had the expect racist words and remarks that I think were fairly common in the early 1900’s. Otherwise was an interesting struggle between Native peoples and European immigrants in the American west

A phylogenetic tree of plasmodial slime molds & their common features

This was super compelling. Definitely romanticized war in parts, and odd to hear German perspective in WWI. Didn’t know much about Ernst Jünger before. Interesting/controversial character

reviewing someone's biosketch who lists trainees like: name1 (male, American), name2 (female, African American), name3 (female, Indian)... not sure why anyone would do this, but if you do, Don't. Weird. Icky. Uncool. Morally/Ethically wrong....😵‍💫

1177 was tough to get through. Lots of facts but narrative was not my style. Guns, Germs, and Steel was good. I had to read Collapse in college and this was similar and also good.

PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!! The University of Texas-Austin is beginning a process to eliminate the Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies departments in the College of Liberal Arts. This is a grave threat to the educational liberty of students, faculty, staff, and the people of Texas. 1/

still waiting for Billy Joel's we_didnt_start_the_fire_v2.mp3

Have you ever wondered how to ensure a loss in Candyland though? github.com/mkiang/candy...

10/10 💀 Children are wonderful. However, there are situations in which parents must minimize time spent on an activity while maximizing a child’s enjoyment of it. Here, we analyze the problem of a bedtime routine that involves playing CandyLand w a toddler who does not take kindly to losing... 👇

This one was alright. Way too western and male focused. Don’t think South America was mentioned at all. Still interesting

Do people at UCLA not enjoy football? They’re trying to upset Penn state and nobody is there

Haven’t shared my latest books. All on a theme of WWII and the rise of fascism (wonder why). All good. Code breaking sisters WWII autobiography was my fav. Chinas good war was super interesting too

So, I’m waiting on advisory counsel meeting on Oct 29. Feeling pretty pessimistic about it currently

There have been two hosts in the history of Reading Rainbow. The Legend of Literacy, LeVar Burton! And... me, Mychal Threets, a librarian 🥹🤯 I am a reader, a librarian because LeVar Burton and Reading Rainbow made us believe and see we belong in books, we belong everywhere ✨ youtu.be/e7es7qdWVnU

For postdocs interested in spatial transcriptomics, UAB just launched a Spatial PRIME postdoc program which training and increased funds for postdocs in this area. Check it out if interested

Regionalized & Sex-dependent scRNAseq of 🐭Aorta Carotid Aortic Arch Descending Thoracic Abdominal Aortic #SmoothMuscleCell Arch #SecondHeartField vs #NeuralCrest SMC 339 Regional SMC mRNA features ➡️ cardiovascular trait GWAS #AortaEd #NatCardiovascRes 2025 www.nature.com/articles/s44...

There are fly meetings. I have never been. What is discussed? Why are there no mouse meetings?

I went down a short rabbit hole...apparently this is a real US gov't website. trumpcard.gov where you can "buy" US citizenship status for ~$1,000,000.

Costco is extremely overwhelming

Pretty cool update from GlycoScape: Sugar-specific visualisation, based on the sugar type. Should help for hypothesis generation since you can plot each sugar type and compare.

Loool 😭

For our #flowcytometry peeps, would you like to have a single fix/perm protocol that is optimised for everything? One that preserves fluorophores while allowing simultaneous TF and cytokine staining? How about 100-fold cheaper? You got it: currentprotocols.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

the elevator in my building is broken. only goes down. refuses to go up. its really getting me down

nice

"One stark fact: All of the Valkyries players combined make less than the lowest paid member of the Warriors, who have the same owners and play in the same building."

Four different papers, including one in Nature. The images appear to have been provided by a CDMO (Neurodigitech, LLC) to different teams in the US. Researchers have been adding these beautified and recycled images into their papers like they're filling up a sticker book.

Such a thoughtful, honest description of a really important question. Great thread & beautiful data. Most of the same cells seem to be present in mouse, zfish, and people but not a huge overlap in gene programs. Really interesting

Age-dependent changes in gene expression and regulation often unexpectedly (to us at least) represented homeostatic changes that potentially counteract the effects of inflammation and other deleterious aging-regulated processes. Reversing the age-dependent changes may prove counterproductive./34

Call me old fashioned but I don’t see how an AI chatbot trained on Aubrey de Grey’s old lab notebooks is going to “solve aging”. Weird move to name it after himself and give it a beard and stuff. If you don’t know about Aubrey, give him a google. Interesting character

Not sure Green Bay is a real place

It gives me great pleasure to present the latest from our lab, outlining a curious cellular and molecular pathway that limits thymic regeneration after acute insult. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

is this appropriate to include in a grant application? "The earliest research on atherosclerosis used larger mammals such as rabbits(120), chickens(121), dogs(122), and rhesus monkeys(123). In this historical sense, murine models could be considered appropriate NAMs to these larger animals."

Both of these were great. The evolution from cod to salt was really cool. Cod and fish were salted allowing Vikings and Basques to sail all over. Salary and “worth your salt” came about because people were paid in salt or brine. Yaw. Cool. Nice.

When do NAMs become OAMs?

Is this the new math?

Gift article. "A decade ago, Chinese Academy of Science was the only Chinese institution to figure in the top 10. Now eight of the 10 leaders are in China. If this does not constitute a Sputnik moment, it is hard to imagine what would." And we are smashing our Sputnik.

Why is Jonas Vingegaard still riding a yellow bike? Cervelo didn’t paint one red for him?

Excellent title. Bravo 👏 Actin up: Mrtfa regulates actomyosin and apical constriction

Didn’t post when I finished this one. Hesitated to read it but concluded that it’s better to be educated than ignorant. He was a slave owning confederate general and ‘grand wizard’ in the KKK. I think this biography was too kind to him but was interesting nonetheless