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James Hemp

@cyan0bacteria.bsky.social
607 followers 1.1K following 110 posts

Scientist: Neuroimmune axis, mucosal immunology, microbial ecology and evolution, geobiology. Anti-fascist: Apparently I live in a country where that has to be explicitly stated.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by James Hemp
Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 26/03/2026
"The president's case against wind are literally the rantings of an old man. I've seen grandpa Simpson make more sense."
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
Right across the Bay, military cargo is being loaded and shipped to Israel. This must stop. I support the Oakland Arms Embargo and an end to U.S. complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Sign the petition at the link in my bio to urge Oakland’s leaders to support an arms embargo.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @ocasio-cortez.house.gov · 15/02/2026
We can't fall into right-wing populism’s lie that the most vulnerable in society are to blame for wealth inequality in our countries. We need to build movements that tell the truth: the story of wealth inequality is not a cultural one, but a class one.
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WeRateDogs @weratedogs.com · 10/02/2026
we need to talk about that Ring Super Bowl ad
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Jonathan Kagan @jkagan1.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
Too much data, too little thinking. A important essay from Ruslan Medzhitov on the importance of understanding data, not just generating it. A must read. @Yale www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
On the balance of knowledge - Nature Reviews Immunology
Ruslan Medzhitov shares his thoughts on the balance between generating data and developing theories in immunology, with a focus on exploring the rules that govern complex systems.
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
For too long, the only guiding principle of our nation has been profit, and that is leading to ruin. The question of our time will be what and who is the economy for? It will mean making decisions on what our goals are as a nation, and how to use our economy to achieve them.
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Philip Ball @philipcball.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
I had intended to post something about this new Google DeepMind paper that appeared yesterday in Nature, but the press coverage has added to what there is to say. So this is a long 🧵 www.nature.com/articles/s41...
nature.com
Advancing regulatory variant effect prediction with AlphaGenome - Nature
AlphaGenome, a deep learning model that inputs 1-Mb DNA sequence to predict functional genomic tracks at single-base resolution across diverse modalities, outperforms existing models in variant effect...
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Eric Topol @erictopol.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
Good summary of lack of evidence and potential for harm of components of the recommended diet www.technologyreview.com/2026/01/08/1... by @jesshamzelou.bsky.social
technologyreview.com
America’s new dietary guidelines ignore decades of scientific research
An emphasis on fruit, vegetables, and whole foods is welcome—but it’s wrong to suggest steak and beef tallow should be prominent.
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
A slap on the wrist isn’t regulation, especially for technology with the potential to wipe out millions of jobs. We need real rules for AI so its benefits are shared, not hoarded by a handful of billionaires.
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Waggoner Lab @labwaggoner.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
Neuro-epithelial circuits promote sensory convergence and intestinal immunity @nature.com @weillcornell.bsky.social www.nature.com/articles/s41...
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Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
New paper out in Current Opinion in Microbiology: MCR-encoding (potentially methanogenic) Thermoproteota are widespread and transcriptionally active in diverse anoxic ecosystems! @dr-zj.bsky.social, Matthew Kellom & @emileyeloe-fadrosh.bsky.social. Funded by DOE BER program. tinyurl.com/2fsyxswj 🦠🧪
Phylogeny and ecology of MCR-encoding archaea
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Pete Buttigieg @petebuttigieg.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
It's an old and obvious pattern. An unpopular president - failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home - decides to launch a war for regime change abroad. The American people don’t want to “run” a foreign country while our leaders fail to improve life in this one.
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
@rokhanna.bsky.social is right. We have to innovate while making sure a fair share of the new wealth is going to working people. Right now, we are on the verge of creating trillionaires while most people are struggling to afford the essentials. A small wealth tax is the bare minimum.
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Skye @simplyskye.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
AOC: "It's not just that Trump is corrupt. It's that everyone participating in this is corrupt — Elon is corrupt. Jeff Bezos is corrupt. Mark Zuckerberg is corrupt"
AOC speaking to reporters
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David Hogg @davidhogg.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
My thoughts on the DNC refusing to release a 2024 autopsy
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 18/12/2025
The President said some words last night about the economy. I'll help you figure out which ones were true. youtu.be/xtHjvS9yv5g
youtu.be
Inflation, Wages, and Recession Risks: Justin Wolfers' Truthful Takes on Trump’s Talking Points
YouTube video by Justin Wolfers
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Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
“Cultivation of Methanonezhaarchaeia, the third class of methanogens within the phylum Thermoproteota” by @kohtzarchaeota.bsky.social, Sylvia Nupp, and myself is out in Science Advances. 90% enriched culture of a methyl-dismutating thermoproteotal methanogen. #Microsky 🧪 tinyurl.com/bdcc3uzs
science.org
Cultivation of Methanonezhaarchaeia, the third class of methanogens within the phylum Thermoproteota
The cultivation of a group of methanogens illuminates their metabolic diversity and the evolution of archaea.
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Mike Feigin 🥯 @mikefeigin.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Petition for a NY Biomedical Institute. This is a no-brainer to support science in NY, similar to programs in CA/TX. www.change.org/p/support-a-...
change.org
Sign the Petition
Support a New York State Biomedical Institute for a Healthier, More Affordable Future
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Progressive News Service @prognews.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
Amazon workers go on strike world-wide. “From Germany to Bangladesh, thousands of workers walked off the job on Friday and marched against Amazon’s labor practices to push for better wages, working conditions, and union protections." www.commondreams.org/news/make-am...
commondreams.org
Global Black Friday Strikes Against Amazon Target 'Techno-Authoritarian' Assault on Workers | Common Dreams
"We are joining Make Amazon Pay to demand the most basic rights: safety, dignity, and the chance to go home alive," said one Amazon worker from India.
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 27/11/2025
I had my first ever go at one of those round table talking heads sort of shows, and promised myself ahead of time that I wouldn't turn into a shouting head. And then one of the panelists said something utterly silly... I didn't shout, but you might be able to hear my eyeroll.
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
No the Democrats in this video aren't "implying" anything. Members of the armed forces ARE required to refuse illegal orders. This is simple. Not controversial at all. And it's super revealing that MAGA is so worried that troops won't carry out an illegal order from Trump.
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Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 18/11/2025
Trump has ordered a massive military buildup in the Caribbean. After months of lethal strikes at sea, Trump is threatening to expand this illegal unauthorized war to Venezuela. We don’t need another war. We need health care for all.
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Aaron Parnas @aaronparnas.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
NEW: Epstein survivors release the most powerful PSA I have ever seen. Make this go viral so every member of the House of Representatives sees it.
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Here's the plan: Simply assume that there's a well-functioning market for health insurance and then let people buy insurance in that imaginary market.
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
We’re sleepwalking toward dystopia, and the other side is racing to get us there faster. We can’t afford elected officials with no fight in them, and we definitely can’t afford leaders who fight for corporations and lobbyists instead of the people.
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Justin Wolfers @justinwolfers.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
"Literally every single word the President said was wrong... We have enormous anxiety among voters. The cost of living is rising, and people are understandably upset. I just want to be crystal clear there's not a word coming out of the man's mouth that is correct."
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 12/11/2025
Release the Epstein Files. Investigate EVERYONE on it. Hold them all accountable.
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Ilhan Omar @ilhanmn.bsky.social · 11/11/2025
Unlike you, I can read and that’s why I know what the constitution says.
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 05/11/2025
Congrats Mayor Mamdani! Zohran proved it doesn’t matter how much money they throw at you. Organized people beat organized money if you stand for real change. We’re doing that in SF. 2k+ volunteers have knocked 40k+ doors because our campaign is about bold change. Join us!
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Daniel Swain @weatherwest.bsky.social · 03/11/2025
I just recorded a short video--essentially an updated version of my social media threads--on the Bill Gates climate memo. Despite agreeing with some points therein, I still think its framing is fundamentally flawed and thus also its key conclusions.
youtube.com
Thoughts from a climate scientist on the Bill Gates climate memo
I wanted to offer my thoughts, as a climate scientist, on the widely discussed memo published by Bill Gates in late October 2025. While I actually do agree with some of the specific points made therein regarding the urgent global need to accelerate efforts to reduce global poverty and improve human
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 01/11/2025
Prop 50 is a huge step in the right direction and the type of action we need to fight back against Trump. But we need to do more. Our representatives should act as organizers, bringing our institutions together to create a unified movement against Trump and his executive overreach.
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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
"We must recognize that there are thresholds beyond which we will simply exceed the adaptive capacity that human civilization affords us. This is the real lesson your readers should take away from the unprecedented summer we’re currently experiencing." @michaelemann.bsky.social nails it again.
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Senator Bernie Sanders @sanders.senate.gov · 25/10/2025
Trump gave Amazon a $16 billion tax break to accelerate its investments this year. Now, Amazon will replace 600,000 workers with robots as Jeff Bezos accelerates his plan to automate warehouses. No. Corporate tax breaks do not trickle down to workers. Never have. Never will.
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Nigel Goldenfeld @nigelgoldenfeld.bsky.social · 25/10/2025
🧪 EPA plans to cancel endangerment finding despite compelling evidence for increase in climate change. "Ignoring that evidence [shows] science, the best method the human species has ever come up with for discerning objective reality, has no role in this government.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/25/c...
nytimes.com
An E.P.A. Plan to Kill a Major Climate Rule Is Worrying Business Leaders
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Iris van Rooij 💭 @irisvanrooij.bsky.social · 18/10/2025
"In reality, AI erodes academic freedom, weakens critical reading, and subordinates the pursuit of knowledge to corporate interests." www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a... (archive: archive.ph/Y6855)
project-syndicate.org
AI Is Hollowing Out Higher Education
Olivia Guest & Iris van Rooij urge teachers and scholars to reject tools that commodify learning, deskill students, and promote illiteracy.
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Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 16/10/2025
New preprint: Methyl co-enzme M reductase encoding (potentially methanogenic) Thermoproteota are widespread and transcriptionally active in diverse anoxic ecosystems! @dr-zj.bsky.social, Matthew Kollom & @emileyeloe-fadrosh.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/cgi/content/... Funded by the DOE BER program.
A diagram showing the environmental distribution of methyl coenzyme M reductase encoding Thermoproteota.
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 06/09/2025
Finally! 🤩 Our position piece: Against the Uncritical Adoption of 'AI' Technologies in Academia: doi.org/10.5281/zeno... We unpick the tech industry’s marketing, hype, & harm; and we argue for safeguarding higher education, critical thinking, expertise, academic freedom, & scientific integrity. 1/n
Abstract: Under the banner of progress, products have been uncritically adopted or
even imposed on users — in past centuries with tobacco and combustion engines, and in
the 21st with social media. For these collective blunders, we now regret our involvement or
apathy as scientists, and society struggles to put the genie back in the bottle. Currently, we
are similarly entangled with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. For example, software updates are rolled out seamlessly and non-consensually, Microsoft Office is bundled with chatbots, and we, our students, and our employers have had no say, as it is not
considered a valid position to reject AI technologies in our teaching and research. This
is why in June 2025, we co-authored an Open Letter calling on our employers to reverse
and rethink their stance on uncritically adopting AI technologies. In this position piece,
we expound on why universities must take their role seriously toa) counter the technology
industry’s marketing, hype, and harm; and to b) safeguard higher education, critical
thinking, expertise, academic freedom, and scientific integrity. We include pointers to
relevant work to further inform our colleagues.Figure 1. A cartoon set theoretic view on various terms (see Table 1) used when discussing the superset AI
(black outline, hatched background): LLMs are in orange; ANNs are in magenta; generative models are
in blue; and finally, chatbots are in green. Where these intersect, the colours reflect that, e.g. generative adversarial network (GAN) and Boltzmann machine (BM) models are in the purple subset because they are
both generative and ANNs. In the case of proprietary closed source models, e.g. OpenAI’s ChatGPT and
Apple’s Siri, we cannot verify their implementation and so academics can only make educated guesses (cf.
Dingemanse 2025). Undefined terms used above: BERT (Devlin et al. 2019); AlexNet (Krizhevsky et al.
2017); A.L.I.C.E. (Wallace 2009); ELIZA (Weizenbaum 1966); Jabberwacky (Twist 2003); linear discriminant analysis (LDA); quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA).Table 1. Below some of the typical terminological disarray is untangled. Importantly, none of these terms
are orthogonal nor do they exclusively pick out the types of products we may wish to critique or proscribe.Protecting the Ecosystem of Human Knowledge: Five Principles
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 11/09/2025
Tech companies are stealing our books, music and films for AI. It’s brazen theft and must be stopped | Anna Funder and Julia Powles
theguardian.com
Tech companies are stealing our books, music and films for AI. It’s brazen theft and must be stopped | Anna Funder and Julia Powles
If we don’t refuse and resist, not just our culture but our democracy will be irrevocably diminished
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Saikat Chakrabarti @saikatc.bsky.social · 29/08/2025
50% of all consumer spending in America is now done by the top 10%. If we let this trend continue, we are going to end up with nothing being made that’s affordable for the vast majority of Americans. That’s one reason I am calling for a wealth tax on billionaires and centimillionaires
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Daan Speth @daanspeth.bsky.social · 11/08/2025
At the request of @bradleyph.bsky.social, we have now added the Bacterial and Archaeal trees (credit to @aroneys.bsky.social) used to infer the GlobDB taxonomy to the website globdb.org Feel free to reach out if there's other resources you'd like to see added. No promises, but happy to chat 🖥️🧬🦠
globdb.org
home | GlobDB
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James Hemp @cyan0bacteria.bsky.social · 09/08/2025
What C suite tech executives think "PhD level knowledge is".
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Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Thanks to NASA, NSF and DOE for generously supporting our Gordon Research Conference and Seminar on Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Starting in just two days! #microsky 🦠
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George Schaible @quantaofgeorge.bsky.social · 30/05/2025
New paper out! In the @environmicrobio.bsky.social lab, we measured deuterium incorporation in 543 single cells using Raman and NanoSIMS. This allowed us to directly compare each technique and resolve any possible methodological artifacts #NanoSIMS #Raman journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/...
journals.asm.org
Comparing Raman and NanoSIMS for heavy water labeling of single cells | Microbiology Spectrum
Accurate and reliable measurements of cellular properties are fundamental to understand the function and activity of microbes. This study addresses to what extent Raman microspectroscopy and nano-scal...
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Roland Hatzenpichler @environmicrobio.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Important advancement of BONCAT to achieve the sorting of viable cells and cultivation on solid media plates. This is achieved by incubating environmental samples in the presence of HPG, and sorting active cells via FACS onto plates. Isolates were identified using 16S rRNA gene sequencing.
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AlphaFold Unofficial @alphafold.bsky.social · 15/05/2025
Every AI model in science sits on top of millions of hours of unpaid, unthanked, unseen human labor.
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Immunity @cp-immunity.bsky.social · 06/05/2025
Our special issue on #neuroimmunology is online! Check out the collection, with reviews from @jonykipnis.bsky.social @michellemonje.bsky.social @ugolinis.bsky.social @bethstevenslab.bsky.social @movahedilab.bsky.social Matteoli, Butovsky, Kim, Artis, & Prinz! www.cell.com/immunity/col... #AAI2025
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