iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

Evoquant LLC has made significant and rapid breakthroughs in mapping the global biosynthetic space of natural products. The first image is a view of our new "Loom" platform as of today, the second image is of an earlier beta version presented at conferences only a few weeks ago.

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 27/08/2026

Before you sign up and start sharing your IP. Ask yourself why they waited until they opened their own in-house science unit.

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I'm at ACS 2026 Chicago for the afternoon! Representing @evoquant.bsky.social

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

I gave a talk this week on how @evoquant.bsky.social is using AI. For coding = really good, things have changed a lot since last year. For Bio/Chem = better but we still have no idea what the latest models can or can't do. That remains true today even with Anthropic's announcement.

https://www.anthropic.com/news/improving-fable-5-s-biology-safeguards

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 06/08/2026

I've been conferencing the past 2 weeks and people keep asking what it's like as a small biotech startup right now. In short– Big Pharma is risk averse, and VC numbers look good but 75% is concentrated in a few companies doing mega-raises. That continues today....

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

"How to dismantle Universities in piecemeal and divert funding meant for basic research to already enourmous companies that were already offering internships"

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Tariffs are/were being passed to consumers. If any Senators need literal receipts, I have plenty.

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

"White House admits it used keywords to kill billions worth of California research grants" apnews.com/article/cali...

"1. By using keyword searches to review hundreds of grants and terminate them en masse rather than reviewing them individually on their merits, the Trump administration targeted research it found politically disfavorable, which is a First Amendment violation.

2. In terminating 283 Department of Energy grants from states where a majority voted for Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, and leaving untouched hundreds of grants that went to “red” states, the Trump administration wrongly punished researchers for merely living in states the White House politically opposed.

3. And by terminating billions of dollars in grants, and never rerouting that money to other grant opportunities, the Trump administration violated the constitution by not spending money in ways Congress specifically required through laws it passed on how research funds should be used."

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

I still don't run these AI apps locally because I don't have a spare machine I can dedicate solely to it. When these first came out I was thinking just how easily the below scenario, or worse, could happen.

On file deletions. We’ve investigated a handful of reports where GPT-5.6 unexpectedly deleted files.

What we have found is that this most commonly occurs when:
- Full access mode is enabled and codex is run without sandboxing protections, including without auto review being enabled
- The model attempts to override the $HOME env var to define a temporary directory.
- The model makes an honest mistake and mistakenly deletes $HOME instead.

This is of course not how we want the system to behave, even when a user operates the model in full-access mode without the safeguards of our sandbox or without using auto review which checks for these kinds of high risk actions and rejects them.

We are taking steps to mitigate this risk including by updating the developer message, guiding more users towards safer permission modes, and adding additional harness safeguards. Even though this happens extremely rarely, we’ll share a detailed post-mortem in the coming days that goes into more details and what we are doing to minimize risks further.

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

When you buy something thinking it will be here this week and then you're told it will be a few months. #science

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

1/2 Lindsey Graham's sister being appointed to serve isn't without precedent but it is absurd. "Murkowski while a member of the state House was appointed by her father, Governor Frank Murkowski, to fill his own U.S. Senate seat... when he resigned from the Senate after being elected governor."

It is ESSENTIAL to such a government that it be derived from the great body of the society, not from an inconsiderable proportion, or a favored class of it; otherwise a handful of tyrannical nobles, exercising their oppressions by a delegation of their powers, might aspire to the rank of republicans, and claim for their government the honorable title of republic.

https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-31-40#s-lg-box-wrapper-25493394

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Reads like a child trying work out how to lie for the first time

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

"The Immigrants" www.nycgovparks.org/parks/batter...

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

"The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government"

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

The put up a new statue in Chicago?

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 10/06/2026

Stormy as hell here. There's a metaphor here somewhere...

Photo of american and "america 250" flag in stormy weather

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

I was tasked in 2014 with figuring out if it were possible to automate more of a GLP QC lab. Some of the tech existed then but was well over the company's desired budget. It's 2026 and more people are excited about automation but it's simply still very expensive.

$Image of HPLC fraction collection$

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 21/05/2026

Humanities thing is a bit of a red herring because the guides I've seen and are linked to by eds were written by scientists. One of the toxic things about academia (though not exclusive to it) are these "this is what everyone does" arguments which often are used as coersion to get around standards

hypocrisy

a situation in which someone pretends to believe something that they do not really believe, or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 03/05/2026

Do you see what I see? 🧐 www.frontiersin.org/journals/nut...

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Started to watch "Civil War" on the plane ride back to Chicago. Had too many feelings, stopped watching. People like Marsha don't actually care about Tennesseans.

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

I think we are beyond the we just need to vote on big and small elections. We need better, moral, engaged, normal people to run for office. In places like Chicago it always feels like we vote but there's no choice (both systematic reasons and lack of candidates).

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

What in the AI is this in the United app? How and why is this AI?

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

New strain is strikingly red. Moreso in real life.

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Bacterium: Here, look, I made this for you

Photo of a white bacterial colony excreting a yellow liquid droplet

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chasingmicrobes @chasingmicrobes.bsky.social · 16/04/2026

Agree Did some lawns of this one too and it doesn't excrete into the air like this but does have fuzzy aerial mycelia. Definitely threw away some Actinos early in grad school, thinking they were fungi.

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