iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026

Hey, ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson here. I’m taking over the account to tell you about my new story. For months, I posed as a problem gambler on DraftKings to test the company's "responsible gaming" safeguards. Spoiler alert: They made me a VIP — and I lost $10K. Here's how it all went down. 🧵

Selfie taken by ProPublica reporter Jake Pearson, a man wearing a backwards baseball cap and an orange T-shirt.

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John Stott @jpsastro.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Had a UKRI funded grant proposal rejected at the "AI triage stage". "This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review." 🧪 #academicsky

I am writing to let you know that, unfortunately, your application was not successful.

Review process

As part of the initial triage of the 179 proposals submitted to this call, each was assessed using an AI-based review. Every proposal was read independently by several different AI models against the same seven criteria used to shape this call (including cyber security relevance, research quality and novelty, importance of the problem addressed, feasibility of the project plan, likely outputs and impact, value for money, and responsible research practice), with each model asked to give a score and a written justification with supporting quotations from the text. To guard against any one model's idiosyncrasies, we also ran a second, independent process in which different AI models debated the merits and weaknesses of each proposal before reaching a judgement, again against the same criteria. Scores from both processes were combined to produce an overall ranking.

This AI-based triage was used only to identify approximately 50% of the strongest proposals to take forward to full human review. Projects selected for funding were drawn from those that progressed to the full human review stage. We recognise that AI-assisted assessment is a new and evolving part of the review process, and we are continuing to evaluate how well it aligns with the judgements of human reviewers on this call. We will soon produce a document detailing our method, so that others can build upon it and improve it.

Feedback on your application

Your application was not selected to progress beyond the AI triage stage. To provide transparency on the outcome of this assessment, we are sharing below the scores (out of 5) from each of the two AI review processes described above, together with the mean score across the two processes.

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André Marques @amarques.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

Out today in Nature: sex without crossovers. Rhynchospora tenuis makes pollen, fertilises and sets seed, yet 0 crossovers in 10,997 pollen nuclei. Chromosome drive and ~87% seed abortion rebuild the mother's genotype, so the offspring are clones. doi.org/10.1038/s415...

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The Onion @theonion.com · 16/09/2026

Gas Station Price Sign Using Scientific Notation

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Thread. Apologies in advance, I've been grinding away for weeks on a grant with maybe a 10% success rate. Canadian researchers work in buildings held together with duct tape, run labs on shoestrings, and spend more and more time competing for lower and lower success rate operating programs.

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Matt Bors @mattbors.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

It was exactly ten years ago today, on my 33rd birthday, that I posted this comic online.

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Nick Stroustrup @nstroustrup.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Did you know that the cells of old animals contain much less mRNA than the cells of young ones? Let me share with you some results from an ongoing project in the lab, where we are finding that a progressive depletion of total mRNA abundance is a crucial part of aging 1/22

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Data Colada @datacolada.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Colada[139] Artificial Deadlines Part 2 Evidence of fraud in the 25 year old gradesheet behind the key finding in an influential paper on deadlines and procrastination. datacolada.org/139

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Boston Review @bostonreview.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Biomedical scientist (and former editor-in-chief of @science.org) @jeremymberg.bsky.social defends undirected science and notes, “It is hard for scientists to support a party whose members seem to think that bringing a snowball to the floor of the Senate refutes the concept of climate change.”

bostonreview.net

In Defense of Undirected Science

Jeremy Berg responds to Zeynep Pamuk in our forum, “How to Save Science.”

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Fietser Brandon @americanfietser.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

The American mind could never comprehend such an enabling and accommodating system of transportation. 📍Finland 🇫🇮

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Zack Labe @zacklabe.com · 23/08/2026

🚨 Preliminary daily data shows we just broke the all-time highest global sea surface temperature in this record... Download high-resolution graphic at zacklabe.com/climate-chan.... This data (extrapolar ocean) is provided by @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social ERA5. 🌊

Graph showing daily global mean sea surface temperatures for 2026. This is also compared to the daily data from the 1981-2010 average and 1991-2020 average. Annotations are also shown to the current year with the other years from 1940 to 2026. There is a seasonal cycle. There is a long-term warming trend. 2023 and 2024 are also indicated, which were the warmest years on record. Data is from ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis and updated through 21 August 2026.

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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Let the shit show begin (actually continue)... www.nih.gov/news-events/... No NIH experience at all as far as I can tell. No significant management experience. Vaccine injury trial expert witness.

nih.gov

Pediatric neurologist Dr. John Gaitanis to lead NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

Dr. Gaitanis is set to begin his role on August 23, 2026.

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Grace Lindsay @neurograce.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

Teaching "AI use" in college (not related to teaching how AI is built) is silly because 1.) the tools are meant to be user friendly with minimal training and 2.) they change so often your education would be good for about a semester

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Dhruv Mehrotra @dmehro.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

NEW: Flock has said for years its cameras don’t identify or track people. We obtained the code for its police AI and rebuilt parts of it. The tool can find witnesses, surface associates, search people by race or physical description, and flag vehicles by how they move. W/ @dell.bsky.social

wired.com

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plate...

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Cameron Thrash @jcamthrash.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

As a component of aseptic technique, Bunsen burners do not universally decrease deposition of microbe-containing particles journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.... #jcampubs

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Jason Koebler @jasonkoebler.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

New: An "expert witness" in a $61 million lawsuit over an industrial explosion that killed three people and destroyed 200 homes used ChatGPT to write his report for the court. He prompted ChatGPT to "show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding" www.404media.co/show-how-3m-...

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Steve Held @peoplesfabric.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

lawyers in 2026 learning that words sent to a website are discoverable

Beyond this being a highly interesting case on its own merits, it shows that ChatGPT transcripts can be obtained by opposing lawyers in discovery or during depositions. Moye said
"every lawyer needs to make sure their own experts aren't generating work product in a way that's insincere, and then knowing you can subpoena the prompts [.] I've got lawyers all over the place saying, 1) 'Holy shit, man. How did you get the prompts?, and 2) 'How many cases do I have where this is happening to us?'"'

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Sarah T Roberts, PhD @ubiquity75.xyz · 16/08/2026

UCLA administrators, on a summer Friday, announced that they are closing the childcare centers on campus upon which faculty, staff and student parents rely — albeit expensive and exclusive options, but far better than none. The admin cited budget deficit. The story is hardly just that.

dailybruin.com

UCLA childcare program, which faced 2024 sex abuse case, to close amid budget deficit - Daily Bruin

UCLA will shut down two of its childcare centers – one of which employed a teacher arrested for child sexual abuse in 2024 – next June, university leadership announced Thursday evening.

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Chris Jackson @cajackson.org · 15/08/2026

I have the specific professional opinion that there are no PCA plots for genetics which accurately represent genetic distance between individuals (as most recent common ancestor or whatever)

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Robert McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

It is an indictment of algorithms everywhere that a new Mitchell & Webb show has been out for a year and I am only learning about it now. And this sketch, in particular.

youtu.be

Confused Teacher Crashes Out Over His Job | Mitchell and Webb Are Not Helping | Channel 4 Comedy

YouTube video by Channel 4 Comedy

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Subscribe to Radio Free America (link in bio) @kleinman.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

PETE HEGSETH: Napoleon, how do we defeat Iran? AI NAPOLEON: Vaccines? You have vaccines? PETE HEGSETH: Yes but they're woke and gay AI NAPOLEON: Send me typhus vaccine PETE HEGESTH: No, I need your help with Iran, we're running low on artillery AI NAPOLEON: Vaccines then Iran

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Michael Hendricks 🇨🇦 @michaelhendricks.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

CIHR is an incredible Canadian institution and a truly excellent system, and I can't decide whether the attempted self-immolation 10 years ago or the ongoing slow starvation is sadder. But open programs are once again in a death spiral.

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Deva Woodly @devawo.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

This is a very serious problem for libraries, archives, and knowledge-keepers of all kinds. If you don’t control access to your collections, *you do not have collections.* If we do not have permanent access to records, stories, & sources of knowledge then our histories and memories are not our own.

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Nina Friedman @ngfriedman.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Starting in Spring or Summer 2027 K99/R00 (under its new activity code KT1/R00) will only be available to US citizens, permanent residents, and non-citizen nationals. I am hearing this from many program officers, but NIH has yet to make an official statement to my knowledge.

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Tom Ellis @proftomellis.bsky.social · 31/07/2026

Our lab’s latest on synthetic genomics “Synthetic Combinatorial Minimisation of Cell Cycle Control” is up now on BioRxiv - covering ambitious yeast #synbio cell cycle work led by Anastasiya Malyshava and co-supervised by Matteo Barberis.

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Sarah Taber @sarahtaber.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

(And if you think upstate New York is exempt from that whole conversation, it took an armed revolt 2 decades before the Civil War to get the Hudson Valley out of a literal feudalism situation.) (Alexander Hamilton was SUPER involved in keeping feudalism legal in the US. It's a fun rabbit hole!)

en.wikipedia.org

Anti-Rent War - Wikipedia

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

As good as many of you said. I really appreciate the unambiguous point that this primarily a racist moral panic before unpacking the nuanced second-order explanations. dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to...

dannykatch.substack.com

We used to be able to buy things in this country

Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy

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Jeffrey Ross-Ibarra @jrossibarra.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

UC Davis will no longer pay the difference so that GRFP recipients earn the same as other students. So mid-PhD students will lose nearly 25% of salary & new students will make less than their peers. Apply for the GRFP, it’s a wonderful help to your career. Just don’t come here if you get one.

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Derek Lowe @dereklowe.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Thoughts on the various Trump administration proposals to revamp US science funding - and what they all have in common:

science.org

The Assault On Science Funding Continues

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Merriam-Webster @merriam-webster.com · 22/07/2026

Does Not Rhyme -through -cough -though -rough -bough Does Rhyme -pony -bologna

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samuel mehr @mehr.nz · 21/07/2026

the most realistic scene in Jurassic Park is when two scientists make a questionable decision — traveling to an undisclosed location with a strange man — on the promise of three years of modest funding

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bioRxiv Evolutionary Biology @biorxiv-evobio.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

A high aneuploidy supply rate underlies parallel evolution of fluconazole resistance in Saccharomyces cerevisiae www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20…

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Zeke Hausfather @zekehausfather.com · 13/07/2026

With all the July model runs now in, it is very likely that 2026 will see the largest El Niño event since records began in the late 1800s – and potentially by a truly mind-blowing margin. The median estimate is now 3.6C, roughly 0.8C hotter than the prior record (2.75C). www.theclimatebrink....

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Thomas Lecaque @tlecaque.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

To be a historian is to speak ill of the dead and the rest of you should take more history classes and join us.

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Jeff Berardelli @weatherprof.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

It appears the Super (Very Strong) El Niño ocean threshold has been reached at record pace (according to World Climate Service). This appears to be ~6 weeks earlier than any other time in history. The sea surface temperature anomaly in the main El Niño 3.4 region reached ~+2°C… 1/

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Pierre-Luc Germain @plger.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

How do >1600 transcription factors (TFs) bind across hundreds of cell types? Experimentally profiling every combination isn't practically doable. But relying on DNA motifs isn't a great alternative -- they lack both sensitivity and specificity. #Genomics #GeneRegulation 👇

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JM =^D @jm539581.bsky.social · 13/06/2026

Kazuma Okamoto hits this ... to the 500 LEVEL! 😱

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Mark Histed @markhisted.org · 11/06/2026

Neuroscientist here, who has talked about the US losing science ground to other countries: The biggest problem for generating future cures for brain diseases is the ongoing utter destruction of US basic neuroscience. It’s not about regulation.

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Michael Okun @michael-okun.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

I’ve officially resigned as Associate Editor for Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience. It used to be a reputable journal, but became a case study in how forced automation destroys academic integrity. 👇

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Has anybody seen my tambourine? @racicotleanne.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

Process chemistry win? Meth went from $20k/lb in 2005 to $1.5-2k/lb now with improved purity to boot. Full DEA report: www.dea.gov/sites/defaul... #RealTimeChem

dea.gov

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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 08/06/2026

New paper about zero-shot predictions of mutational effects. There's a lot of misunderstanding about what such predictions can and cannot do. In brief, they're good at identifying deleterious mutations but bad at predicting fitness improvements. 1/ www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Overestimating zero-shot fitness prediction: Broad benchmarks mask local failures and practical limitations

Deep learning models have emerged as promising tools for navigating mutational landscapes in protein engineering. These models can be used to predict mutation fitness without the need for task-specifi...

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Chris Jackson @cajackson.org · 07/06/2026

Same vibe as 'Cars could drive around Central Park until 2018'

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Ken Jennings @kenjennings.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

New kinds of Mad Syrup People I’ve discovered: 1. Canada?!? I’m from [US state] and we have syrup too 2. Canada?!? It’s basically all Quebec. 3. Canada?!? Indigenous people had syrup first you monster 4. Sugar water?!? Syrup is thick dummy. 5. “Maple” syrup?!? Lots of it is flavored corn syrup!

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Reese Richardson @reeserichardson.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

The Thermo Fisher situation keeps getting worse. We've now collected 450+ problematic images presented as verification data in TF's antibody catalog. This includes: 🖌️ Dozens more images with duplications or painting 🖨️ Hundreds of blots that all share the same background (behold slideshow below)

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