iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Even their own ridiculous AI bot understands why a copper-nickel mine doesn’t belong near the Boundary Waters

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Charles C Roseman @evoroseman.bsky.social · 12h

If you are in the greater Washington DC area on Friday 6 November and have an afternoon to spare, I’m giving a talk at George Mason University. I’d love to see you there. (baboon skull diagram from Theibault et al. 2026) 1/7

Poster for a talk by Charles Roseman entitled "Spencer's Long Shadow: Why we should abandon the extended evolutionary synthesis" featuring a diagram of baboon skulls from Thiebault et al. 2026, some clipart mice, and a picture of the speaker whose father came in second in an uglyman contest.

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 16h

Breaking character: I hate to use this account for political strategizing but the ball needs to get rolling on this....when Dems take the House they've got to focus on impeaching Hegseth. He can be be blamed for the Iran war plus he's a drunk and a criminal.

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Dr. Stephanie @punkrockscience.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

CORNELL KEPT HER GODDAMN TUITION.

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ArtButMakeItSports @artbutmakeitsports.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Circus Performers, by Walt Kuhn, 1978, 📸 via @marisakabas.bsky.social

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Best Sen Schmitt meme yet

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Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com · 29/09/2026

extremely weird shit during the Jack Smith hearing -- Sen. Eric Schmitt's team briefly displays a poster board that Schmitt claims contains evidence Smith committed perjury, but then Schmitt's team takes it down before anybody can read it and refuses to show Smith what it says

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Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Speaking for myself, if anyone gave me a prestigious fancy award, I would immediately know it was complete bullshit.

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Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Ugh.. by the end of this week my To Do list seemed to approach that Navier-Stokes event everyone was talking about, where things start spinning so fast it will likely reach some type of singularity event.

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Lukas Schrader @shaggyschrader.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

1/ New paper: doi.org/10.1126/scia... 🐜🧬 Ants exploded into >15,000 species just after the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit Earth. We think we've found one catalyst behind that radiation: transposable elements. With @jannelrinke.bsky.social, @esthervandenbos.bsky.social & others not on here. 🧵1/11

A Pseudomyrmex ant walking casually on a drop of honey.

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Maya Voichek @mayavoichek.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Super excited to share my postdoctoral work at @imbavienna.bsky.social @viennabiocenter.bsky.social - We discovered that some retrotransposons, or "jumping genes" 🧬, are able to spread from cell to cell via a new viral infectivity route. A short thread: 🧵👇 (1/7)

AI-generated illustration of the soma-to-germline transmission of retrotransposons described in our work

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John Greally @greally.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Tim Bestor has left us. This obituary captures him well — you always had to be at your intellectual peak with him, while his trainees always spoke highly of their experiences. He made a massive contribution to epigenetics, a giant in our field. www.genetics.cuimc.columbia.edu/news/memoria...

genetics.cuimc.columbia.edu

In memoriam of Professor Timothy H. Bestor

In memoriam: Professor Timothy H. Bestor 1952-2026

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Mikko Kolkkala @xcsci.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Retrotransposon has gained viral-like cell-to-cell transmission capability, further blurring the conventional boundaries between transposons and viruses www.cell.com/cell/fulltex... (Tiukkaa tekstiä, vaikka ois joskus tehnyt gradunsa retrotransposoneista niin kuin mä)

cell.com

Direct cell-to-cell transmission of retrotransposons

Retrotransposons can infect neighboring cells using a mechanism that relies on a small fusogen-like protein rather than on the envelope protein that is typically required for infection.

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Yun S. Song @yun-s-song.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Please help spread the word! We are recruiting multiple Postdoctoral Fellows as part of the recently launched Bakar Computational Biomedicine Initiative (BCBI) at UC Berkeley and UCSF. BCBI website: bcbi.berkeley.edu Apply by Nov 1, 2026: berkeley.infoready4.com#freeformComp... (1/n)

bcbi.berkeley.edu

Bakar Computational Biomedicine Initiative | Bakar Computational Biomedicine Initiative

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Reconstruction 3 Enthusiast @squalortoballer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It is, in fact, phonics.

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The Bulwark @thebulwark.com · 22/09/2026

"Roger Marshall said he was 'frustrated' by the president’s actions, while Jerry Moran, apparently asleep for the past ten years as Trump has flattened every laissez-faire principle imaginable, urged the president to 'let the free market work.'"

lnk.thebulwark.com

What’s the Matter with Kansas’s Senators?

They’re tied to Trump’s anchor.

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Yuan He @yuanhejhu.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

A big week for the lab! Two new papers on how cells repair DNA double-strand breaks: one on getting NHEJ started in chromatin, one on processing the ends before ligation. Years of work by a fantastic team.

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FlyBase @flybase.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

FlyBase release FB2026_03 is live!

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Kevin A. Scott, PhD @sculpturatus.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

found at ucsf

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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I rarely dip into twitter these days but I do miss the juxtapositions 🤣 @phylogenomics.bsky.social

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Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Wait, what? Charli XCX is a xenocortical hyperpop star whose brain was partly derived from a mouse organoid?

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Transactions on Machine Learning Research @tmlrorg.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

TMLR has faced a deluge of submissions, necessitating stricter desk rejection policies due to limited reviewer capacity Co-EiC Nihar Shah reached out to authors of 10 papers slated for desk reject. Could they answer questions about their *own* submission? medium.com/@TmlrOrg/ask...

medium.com

Asking Authors About Their Own Papers

By Nihar B. Shah

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Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Unfortunately, no "can it play doom" assay was implemented.

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Anil Seth @anilseth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

1/6 An extraordinary @nature.com paper has just landed from the lab of @sergiuppasca.bsky.social. They found a way to create "xenocortical mice" which have ~92% of their cortex occupied by a cortical organoid derived from human stem cells.

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Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

It would have been funny if Warsh was like: Yes, we have heard the market and the Bloomberg terminal bros loud and clear. We are raising interest rates...by 25... .... from 3.75% to 3.775%

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Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

New preprint led by Zoe Rudnick: bramble 🌿 RNA-seq quantification makes you pick a side. Align to the transcriptome and your quantifier is happy, but reads from unannotated transcripts get misassigned to annotated ones. Align to the genome and you keep discovery, but limit quantification choices.

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Marta Grońska-Pęski @gronskapeski.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Can dietary interventions change how fast genomes accumulate mutations with age? We studied how caloric restriction (CR)—one of the most robust lifespan-extending interventions—affects somatic mutations across the genome in different tissues and cell types in mice.

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Juliette Mathieu @jujumathieu.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

And another choanoflagellate sp isolated in Bretagne this summer! Growing slowly in the lab 😍 #protistsonsky

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Corey Rayburn Yung @coreyryung.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

He got the good drugs

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Justin Blumenstiel @bdelloid.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

OMG, I have been SO stressed about this decision. What a weight lifted.

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David W (aka Flex NP) @rnflex.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Why is insulin resistance such a big deal? Because it's a canary in a coal mine for health! And why are all the latest GLP1 drugs focusing on it? This one is basically part one to explain everything. Part 2(and 3?) will be examining upcoming clinical trial results regarding exactly this topic.

the-incretins.beehiiv.com

(Insulin) Sensitivity Training

An intro guide to a misunderstood metric of diabetic and cardiometabolic risk

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Abdul El-Sayed @abdulelsayed.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

Today marks 50 days until the election and 10 days until ballots drop. Your task today is to make sure you and your friends and family are registered to vote. abdulforsenate.com/vote

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Ana Ignatieva @anaignatieva.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

We are advertising a 3 year postdoc position for a project on ARGs and structural variation! Based at Oxford stats. Closing date noon 12 October, full details here: my.corehr.com/pls/uoxrecru...

my.corehr.com

Job Details

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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

(11/X) the GOP will have a good 2030. We'll be told it was Democrats' fault for being too woke and out of touch, for doing too much and not doing enough at the same time. For trying to reform SCOTUS, for not having enough Sister Souljah moments, for allowing the Bluesky left to say LatinX.

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Journal of Evolutionary Biology @jevbio.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Can selfish genetic elements get away with their selfishness? This depends on ecology of their host organisms. Under certain conditions, selfish genetic elements may spread virtually unopposed by selection: doi.org/10.1093/jeb/... @martijnschenkel.bsky.social @arvidagren.bsky.social & M. Patten

doi.org

The ecological theatre of selfish elements

Abstract. Some selfish genetic elements enhance their transmission to the next generation by interfering with and eliminating competing variants within the

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