Wowowow 🔪 🦴 juliecupples.wordpress.com/2025/11/02/f...

DISCARD - The aim is to combine gene segments to create a new genome, but recombination events will cause localised or system-wide death.

Also our new book came out! It's technically a textbook, but should be a good primer for anyone trying to work out how to understand synbio in society using an approach global.oup.com/ukhe/product... #synbio #engbio #sts #governance

So happy this is finally out. The first paper in our attempt to begin to think about spaces for responsible innovation beyond the tired tropes of ELSI panels etc. #sts #rri #soba

In Boston public gardens there is a statue to ether. Is this strange? Or are there actually loads of monuments celebrating chemicals and medical technologies?

a collaborative researcher's packing list.

Sigh. This is such a terrible take on synthetic human genomes that just repeats tropes of the past. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

100% my motto

I'm still not sure what to make of a meeting that in many ways replayed the meeting it was thinking with (and all the tired tropes we've learnt since then), but I am VERY into it accommodating our weird events on the beach. #asilomar #sts #synbio www.science.org/content/arti...

The Edinburgh Joint Unions finance working group continues to do amazing work dissecting Edinburgh Executives' financial claims....and doing #sts in the process www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/3fzpaa5...

Then on Tuesday at 3pm UK time, Sarah Hartley and I will be talking about our squirrels work (↓↓↓). That's online as part of the Biological Engineering Collaboratory and very much open to all. (Send me a note if you want to come)

Some promo! On Monday I'll be talking about Asilomar, why old visions of governance repeat, why it's so tiring and whether there's any way out of that loop. That's in Exeter at the wonderful Egenis Centre.

What a line: "Big Potato controls 97% of the frozen potato market" pluralistic.net/2025/01/25/p...

Watching grownups pretend not to recognize a Nazi salute flashed three times is...expected in an authoritarian takeover. Next, they'll do it en masse to "own the libs." Refuse to normalize or be gaslit. We know what they meant all along. #ElonNaziSalute

I just drank a GMO enhancement to prevent my hangover, went on cybertruck safari and caught a robot to the airport.

Long but useful Christmas reading on the Tony Blair Institute's slightly weird infatuation with tech williamcullernebown.substack.com/p/big-tech-i...

In my latest piece for @science.org, I ask how we should think about experiments that take place outside the lab. It begins here, in St Ives, Cornwall. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

This is really rare! Synthetic biologists saying the path forward is 'don't do it'.... obvious parallel is rDNA in the 60s/70s, but that's probably a red herring... www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

ASU president Michael Crow talks to Cynthia Selin about the original motivation for the Centre for Science, Policy and Outcomes. Giant US inequalities, and innovation appeared to be implicated

thanks to all the #synbio folks for joining. now i can stop reading all your scientific papers again.

Meanwhile, on Twitter

If you submit your grants last minute, you're in good company. For the 2005 NIH Pioneer grant, half of the applications were submitted in the last two days. The red bars indicate the awardees. One awardee submitted 8 minutes before the deadline. bsky.app/profile/jere... @jeremymberg.bsky.social

#sts / #medsoc sky. Does anyone know any really good critical engagements with clinical trials, the knowledge they make and their governance? asking for a friend

A reminder to join your union... www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/2eppzf7...

Hello #STS #metascience #openscience at #bluesky. We have a starter pack with staff, students (past and present) that are part of the STIS community in Edinburgh. It's of course incomplete and boundaries will be porous. Leave a note below if you like to be added. go.bsky.app/N1RREbY

I love that the BBC's angle on this is that Peter is a hypocrite.

What do conservation managers, animal welfare experts, red squirrel advocates, foresters and land managers think about the idea of gene drive squirrels? I think this is the most evocative piece of work I’ve ever done 🐿️…made anti-charismatic by science policy. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

📣 Call now open for fully funded PhDs in 🔥Responsible NLP at University of Edinburgh! 📣 An awesome opportunity to look at AI through a critical lens. I'm especially keen to talk w/ applicants coming to this from #sts #sociology #digitalhumanities #feministtechnoscience www.responsiblenlp.org

What it's actually like to see the aurora in Edinburgh

museum makes outstanding #STS curriculum

So happy that Liliana recognises me as a contributor to the scholarly field of science...definitely gonna file it in the promotion case.

We wrote a paper about some of our experiences being in and trying to create spaces for responsible innovation in #synbio and #molbot. It's a preprint so thoughts and comments would be lovely to have! #sts Oh and it has my favourite title ever.... doi.org/10.31235/osf...

For anyone doing #sts or #globalhealth and mooching around in London tomorrow, we have this event on #genedrive mosquitoes and #malaria happening at LSHTM 🦟 www.lshtm.ac.uk/newsevents/e...

Edinburgh's AI transcription software has a brilliant new feature to autocorrect billionaires' names.

Absolute cover goals; sure the prose is quite good too.

“I am the law!”

Wondering how £100m for "UK #biotech firms to help pioneer new technologies" for flood protection and all I can come up with is giant beavers... www.gov.uk/government/n...

We have a slightly strange (long contract; part-time) but quite exciting job for an #sts person to work with an environmentally-focused #synbio lab led by the amazing Louise Horsfall in Edinburgh. Happy to answer any questions! elxw.fa.em3.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...

Science in Public 2024! Two weeks to submit your abstract - looks like being a lively conference and great #sts and #scicomm meet-up sip2024.co.uk

one for @benedetta.bsky.social

Seems plausible? Metascience stabilises reproducibility crisis narratives and reproducibility crisis narratives stabilise metascience...#sts #scipol link.springer.com/article/10.1...

My point is that we (that means government, media, and citizens) need to think very differently about both innovation and policy, in order to ensure that "use" actually produces social benefit. Our innovation and regulatory policy apparatus does not actually care much about it, and that's a problem.

My favourite time of year is the one where I get to read 405 independent ads for every 4S/EASST track on two different mailing lists. #sts

Shout-out to all social science and Humanities academics who work and try to change things in spaces/debates dominated by natural sciences. Reflecting on this a lot lately through personal experiences of trying to shift things from within power structures. Let's connect.

My article “The Substitute and the Excuse” is out in Cultural Anthropology! I analyze the traffic between sugarcane biological growth, biofuels industry growth, and economic growth amid the crop’s history of colonial expansion and environmental destruction. #sts journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca...

Coming April 2024 - a secret history of the Tor Project with @mitpress.bsky.social and preorder links here: mitpress.mit.edu/978026254818...

My friends and I have a new paper about the ways that funders enact ideas like 'responsible innovation', 'ethics' etc. and what the problems with that might be. Click the link to give us ++ metrics please. doi.org/10.1177/0306...

In a year where words like biology and biotechnology get you sthg. like 8 responses in the 4S conference programme, it's amazing to see @4sweb.bsky.social award the Ludwig Fleck prize to Aniket Aga for his work on transgenic crops in India. yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300...

Not exactly sure what to think of Steven Sinofksy's diatribe but the points about seeing new technologies in longer histories and not starting from some imaginary blank slate of governance do not get said enough. More please. hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/211-regula...

An uncanny likeness