iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

I'm not talking about the stated conclusions of the report. I'm talking about the stated facts in there that raise, to me, questions. There are a lot of "circumstances" here and a lot of opportunities for people to tamper with forensic evidence post hoc.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

Here is summary of evidence that seems legit (US gov) and that raises uncomfortable questions regarding what they were doing with coronavirus variants in WIV just near where the outbreak happened. Call this a Baysian prior, which raises some questions about the posterior www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/d...

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

PNAS concrete enough for you? "SARS-CoV-2 is, to date, the only identified member of the subgenus sarbecovirus that contains an FCS, although these are present in other coronaviruses" www.pnas.org/doi/full/10....

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

As in, these question are not concrete questions? Say, regarding the suggesting gain of function experiments? Said cleavage site?

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

There are many questions. about collection of CoV samples from bats, suggestions of gain of function experiments that happen to coincide with this specific virus, etc. These questions remain unanswered to the best of my knowledge.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

Thanks this was useful. I would like to consider it before replying in more detail. However, in principle, any claims made on data that could have been post-hoc adjusted by interested parties are to be treated as such. Regarding genome - why would it look different from gain of function in the lab?

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

The original post had specified that lab leak theory has been "contradicted by already available evidence". By contrast "intelligent design" is too vague a concept to contradict.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 01/03/2024

As far as I understand there is no single shred of evidence that "contradicts" the lab leak theory. Is there one? Would you like to enlighten me? Emphasis on contradict.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 09/01/2024

There is a deeper problem. By focusing on "justice" - a subjective concept defined by values that may or may not be shared - the focus on "climate change" is lost. Saying "justice" a lot is *great* for virtue signaling. Conversely, the climate is everyone's problem and should not be subjective.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 04/01/2024

Excellent review, summarizing a lot of the difficulties encountered and a lot of the techniques used.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 04/01/2024

Excellent review, summarizing a lot of the difficulties encountered and a lot of the techniques used.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 26/12/2023

This is a straw-man argument. Nobody said Arts & Humanities are useless. But there are astounding uses for large language models, yes, including generating text for e.g. sales and marketing. Ignore this technology at your own peril. Adapt or go extinct.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 26/12/2023

What is the *problem* your paper *addresses*. Assume that nobody wants to read your work, but they might *have to* because it will help them with their problem. So simple. So important. www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtIz...

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 26/12/2023

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Ben Good @benjaminhgood.bsky.social · 18/12/2023

Excited to share some new work led by John McEnany. We generalize random matrix approaches from community assembly theory to predict how the fitness benefits & fates of new mutations should scale with the diversity & metabolic overlap of their surrounding community. We'd love to hear your comments!

First-step mutations in randomly assembled communities

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 19/12/2023

Well, yes, but there is a broader definition: in the economic sense where several independent players "divide-up the cake" to exclude other competitors from entering the market.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 18/12/2023

How could that possibly work in experimental labs? (Most of science). Also - many student complain of remote work/zoom and request in-person meetings. Finally - local universities will never be on par with major centers because prestige breeds prestige. Even if possible (it isn't), it won't happen.

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 17/12/2023

Barrow's goldeneyes fly across the Brothers of the Olympic Range. 🪶

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Nittay Meroz @nittaym.bsky.social · 17/12/2023

Excited to share our new preprint! w @jfriedman.bsky.social #Microsky#evosky We tackle a simple question - How much of species evolution depends on the presence of other species? Bottom line: Most evolutionary changes were robust across strains that evolved with different biotic partners 1/

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 17/12/2023

Indeed. For me, the biggest shift was the "I believe her unless she's Jewish" regarding the rape victims of Oct 7. The woke hide not only a ton of antisemitism, but also a ton of hate for anyone perceived wrong, in a world view that neatly divides the world to right and wrong with zero nuance.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 16/12/2023

I love that several of the replies I got accused me of being a man and of being white. So predictable. Others just called me an idiot, ad-hominem as it gets. Also predictable. For the record, I'm not conservative in the least. I am a left wing, liberal, and feminist. I've always voted so.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 16/12/2023

Woke means seeing every human interaction naïvely as oppressor and oppressed, with the judgement who is who based solely on skin color and gender. This makes the "woke" *dangerous fools* who can be weaponized by cynical political activists. Don't agree with me? Just ask Liz Magill.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

Beautiful paper. Communicates well with the notion of "Microbial Cartels". elifesciences.org/articles/22644

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 15/12/2023

Beautiful paper. Communicates well with the notion of "Microbial Cartels". elifesciences.org/articles/22644

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

So now you want to actively discriminate against people coming from somewhere else? That's a slippery slope. What if the place a candidate came from has no academic options at all?

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 13/12/2023

Wouldn't normalizing *not moving* be damaging for people who *don't live* near major academic centers? Surely the locals have an advantage, and if a large percentage of PD are local, how much of a chance would the outsiders have? I'm not saying things are ideal now, but every policy has costs.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 11/12/2023

Surely the university presidents should be accountable for the disgusting outbursts of antisemitism they have allowed? Since they are so trigger happy to ostracize *all other* forms of racism, at the very least they should be held to their own standards? No matter who is holding them and what for.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 06/12/2023

It's not so easy to fix. The entire global economy relies of fossil fuels. Ozone was just about a single molecule with very specific uses. Acid rain was about adjusting what we burn, not the fact that we burn something.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 04/12/2023

It's our job to make bsky with more content and therefore more interesting...

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 04/12/2023

Interesting. But take note: it's owning a cat *as a child*. Meaning - growing up in a household with a cat. It is uncommon for schizophrenia to be initially diagnosed in persons over the age of 40.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 04/12/2023

Perhaps because the content here is less inflammatory and therefore less addictive?

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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 02/12/2023

It is now official: November was the warmest November on record by a wide margin in the JRA-55 dataset, beating the prior record set in 2020 by 0.3C. November 2023 was 1.6C above preindustrial levels, and the year-to-date temperatures are 1.4C above preindustrial.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 02/12/2023

I wonder how much money is being made from these 103K people and who's making it and who's paying for it. (The latter - our governments, probably).

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 02/12/2023

Maybe I haven't been playing this game long enough but at this point I honestly don't have any idea how to fix peer review. Perhaps the solution is to decouple career impact (jobs, promotions) from the peer review and somehow force committees to only consider the manuscript/preprint content.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

Fantastic talk, very timely with the current "woke" onslaught on Israel.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

Fantastic talk, very timely with the current "woke" onslaught on Israel.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

Well but the point is that 1984 is far too close to home to be hilarious

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

1984 would not be improved by muppets. I venture that none of Orwell's.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

Sounds like a lawsuit just waiting to happen. Never underestimate what the current generation of students might do. All you need is one idiot.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

Thing is, focusing on what *Israel* has done to the Palestinians while completely forgetting about what Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Kuwait, etc. have done is exactly what makes you a supporter of a faddish cause you don't understand. Educate yourself or be obviously ignorant (or biased).

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 30/11/2023

0% evidence. 100% made up lies. Typical terrorist apologist. Go back to twitter, this is the wrong website for this bullshit. Blocked.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

Can you call it "Nature Special Issues" or is the word Nature reserved?

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 28/11/2023

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

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Amir Erez 🦠🔬🧪🌍🧬💻🎓 @amirerez.bsky.social · 27/11/2023

These days my pronouns are microbial ecologist

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Ákos T Kovács @evolvedbiofilm.bsky.social · 24/11/2023

Metabolic exchanges are ubiquitous in natural microbial communities Nature Microbiology perspective by @kostchristian.bsky.social et al @sarilog.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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