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Dan MacLean

@danmaclean.bsky.social
176 followers 575 following 83 posts

Head of Bioinformatics at The Sainsbury Laboratory, Hon Professor UEA Computer Science. Likes genomics, stats, proteomics, bioinformatics, R user, Python wrangler. Wiganer.

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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
The Metropolitan Borough Council Strikes Back
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Make a band bigger: The Hercules Beatles
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
“I got Claude Fable to do this analysis and write this paper. I’m posting it here, but I haven’t checked it yet.” WELL CHECK IT THEN. WHY ARE YOU POSTING THINGS YOU CAN’T BE BOTHERED TO READ.
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
I delete almost every post I write.
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Post a perfect album from the 90’s that isn’t Nirvana, Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, or Alice In Chains
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Mick @mick002.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Fucking bluesky intelligencia wanking each other off while criticising the crowds at the football singing "Wonderwall". It's not about the song, it's about shared joy & social cohesion. Having travelled thousands of miles to support the team, they can sing whatever they want. Good luck to them.
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
bambamramfan.github.io/ai-compass/
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Karsten Konrad 🇪🇺 @zabong69.bsky.social · 17/06/2026
The fractal Mandelbrot set is sometimes called "Apfelmännchen" ("little apple man") in German. My local Gemma 4 model and I clearly had a misunderstanding when I asked it - in German - to write Python code that draws a Mandelbrot set.
Apfelmännchen
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Jordan Harper @jordanharper.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
How long is a million seconds? ​

First, let me ask you a question: How long do you think a million seconds is? In terms of days, weeks, years, decades, or whatever.

Turns out it's 11.5 days. That's it. Less than two weeks.
How long is a billion seconds? ​

Now, how about a billion?

A billion seconds is 31.7 years.

So a million seconds ago was last week, and a billion seconds ago was 1993.
How long is a trillion seconds? ​

Okay, last one. How long do you think a trillion seconds is?

A trillion seconds is 31,689 years.

A trillion seconds ago, humans were still in the Stone Age. Writing hadn't been invented. Agriculture hadn't been invented. We were hunter-gatherers using basic tools.
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Amy @lolennui.bsky.social · 12/06/2026
guy has a trillion dollars, 0 friends, and has never landed a joke. I know a pact with the devil when I see one.
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 03/06/2026
Ha! The British public are being asked to vote what's going on the new edition of the banknotes. How will we Boaty McBoatface this one? www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
bbc.co.uk
Puffin and bumblebee among 18 creatures shortlisted to feature on banknotes
The Bank of England is asking the public which animals should appear on future banknotes.
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part time xyla @xyla.zip · 13/05/2026
faith in humanity restored
Cambridge Dictionary • @CambridgeWords

slopper
noun

someone who relies too much on Al chatbots to make decisions, find out information, etc.

He's become such a *slopper* that he won't even choose a restaurant without asking an Al.
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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
Britain is home to almost half of the world’s bluebells, found in ancient or semi-natural woodlands, flowering in April and May. 'Bluebell woods' by contemporary UK painter Susan Entwistle #WomensArt
Painting of a woodland carpeted with light purple blossoms
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
It's not a staycation if you actually go somewhere.
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CRAN Package Updates Bot @cranberriesfeed.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
New CRAN package peppwR with initial version 0.1.0 #rstats cran.r-project.org/package=peppwR
cran.r-project.org
CRAN: Package peppwR
Estimate best fit distributions and do power analysis for hypothesis tests on phosphopeptide abundance data.
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Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 18/10/2024
Penguin Classics cover of John Marr and other Sailors by Herman Melville. Cover image is a b/w promo photo of The Smiths
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Ursula K. Le Guin Bot @leguinbot.bsky.social · 29/11/2025
Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 07/11/2025
LLMs are now widely used in social science as stand-ins for humans—assuming they can produce realistic, human-like text But... can they? We don’t actually know. In our new study, we develop a Computational Turing Test. And our findings are striking: LLMs may be far less human-like than we think.🧵
arxiv.org
Computational Turing Test Reveals Systematic Differences Between Human and AI Language
Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in the social sciences to simulate human behavior, based on the assumption that they can generate realistic, human-like text. Yet this assumption rem...
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Adam Kucharski @adamjkucharski.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
(With apologies to Randall Munroe)
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Andrew Heiss @andrew.heiss.phd · 08/10/2025
I really really really liked The Oatmeal’s take on AI here theoatmeal.com/comics/ai_art
theoatmeal.com
A cartoonist's review of AI art - The Oatmeal
This is a comic about AI art.
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Nick Talbot @talbotlabtsl.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
New pre-print from our group showing remarkable synchrony of proliferative growth and regulated cell death during plant infection- each conidial cell has a different fate - by the rice blast fungus. Led by Alice Eseola with @osesmir.bsky.social Lauren Ryder @danmaclean.bsky.social and Martin Egan
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Ben McKennaaaargh @benmckenna.bsky.social · 25/09/2025
Great to hear Burnham's been to Mancwalk 2000.
Walk like a Manc classes
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Christian Minich @christianminich.com · 16/09/2025
Normalize never saying "leverage" or "utilize" as a verb. Tempted? "Use" is right there! Simple words are better words
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SomersetWhovian 💙 🇺🇦 @clairecopperman.bsky.social · 01/09/2025
"It has never been clearer: this is a class war, mediated through one person." Love this article from @zoesqwilliams.bsky.social. I snorted several times, but she makes some serious points: in the eyes of the tabloids, the working class Rayner can't win, whatever she does.
theguardian.com
Why are the tabloids so enraged about every aspect of Angela Rayner’s life? | Zoe Williams
Whether it’s her housing, clothes, the restaurants she goes to, or the fact she watches opera and drinks wine, she can apparently do nothing right, writes Guardian columnist Zoe Williams
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 31/07/2025
$ ls -laht drwxrwsr-x 3 uname grp 27 Nov 16 2006 .nautilus drwxrws--- 3 uname grp 26 Nov 16 2006 .metacity -rwxrwx--- 1 uname grp 26 Nov 16 2006 .dmrc 😐
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GigaScience Journal @gigascience.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Chris outlining the different AI coding agents that can be used for ontology development. Working on documenting best practices for this ai4curation.GitHub.io/aidocs #BOSC2025 #ISMBECCB2025
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GigaScience Journal @gigascience.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
Today #BOSC2025 and #BOKR (formerly Bioontologies) COSI’s, Chris Mungall is doing the keynote on Open KBs in the age of generative AI #ISMBECCB2025
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Darakhshan Nehal @darakhshann.bsky.social · 22/07/2025
*Learning visualization in Python as an R user* #ggplot
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fesshole 🧻 @fesshole.bsky.social · 21/07/2025
I work with a lot of very intelligent people - the experts in a very select field - yet every morning they fight over the parking spots in the shade. By lunchtime they're all in full sun and my unwanted "sunny" spot keeps my car nice and cool. They never learn.
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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 12/07/2025
AlphaFold is great, but contrary to public opinion it has not completely solved the protein folding problem. Much work remains to be done. clauswilke.substack.com/p/no-alphafo...
clauswilke.substack.com
No, AlphaFold has not completely solved protein folding
Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
open.substack.com/pub/clauswil...
open.substack.com
No, AlphaFold has not completely solved protein folding
Biology is hard. Yes, even for AI.
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Michael Love @mikelove.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
I recently ran a session at CSAMA with Laurent Gatto and this is the way. "Good enough" with knowledge of the tools that can help you get there. Here's some of the recs from the paper.
Recs from the linked paper
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 06/07/2025
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Mel Brooks @officialmelbrooks.bsky.social · 12/06/2025
I told you we’d be back
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da share z0ne @dasharez0ne.bsky.social · 14/05/2025
"AI" - dashare.zone ADMIN
A SKLEATON RISIN UP OUT OF DA GRAVE 2 REMIND YOU THAT DA A.I SHIT THATS GOING AROUND NOW IS DA SAME AS EVERY OTHER COMPUTER SCAM , AND THE BEST ITS GOT AFTER TRILLION'S OF DOLLARS OF MONEY AND SO MANY COMPUTERS  THAT WE HAD TO OPEN NEW POWER PLANTS TO RUN THEM , IS : 1. VIDEO'S OF PEOPLE WHO ARE MOVING AROUND SLOWLY IN A WEIRD WAY, 2. PHOTO'S OF JESUS WHERE HES IN A SHOPPING MALL WITH THE PRESEDENT, 3. CODE THAT DOSENT WORK, 4. INCORRECT SUMMARY OF INFOMATION THAT YOU PASTE INTO IT, 5. NOW DUMB GUYS THINK THAT THE COMPUTER IS SAD OR SMART!!! THERE ALL BAD BUT THE WORST PART IS THAT THE WORST GUYS IN THE WORLD ARE MAKEN A SHIT LOAD OF MONEY OFF OFF IT AND IT DOESNT EVEN WORK, ANYWAY THE TEXT SAYS " REMEMEBER NFT'S? SORT OF? NOT REALLY? THE SAME GUYS WHO MADE THAT BULLSHIT ARE NOW TELLIN US AUTO COMPLETE IS INTELEGENT AND IT HAS FEELINGS" - DASHARE.ZONE ADMIN
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 04/05/2025
Afternoon stroll
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so."
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Dirk Eddelbuettel @eddelbuettel.com · 01/04/2025
#Rstats is being rewritten in Rust, and the R Core already has a book coming out!
O'RLY book title 'Rewriting R in Rust' with a subtitle 'How Hard Can It Be?' and a 'A Compelling Weekend Project' header written by the R Core Team
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
The frightening thing about the Vogons was their absolute mindless determination to do whatever mindless thing it was they were determined to do. There was never any point in trying to appeal to their reason because they didn't have any.
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Oded Rechavi @odedrechavi.bsky.social · 28/03/2025
"A GO term analysis? how is this helpful?"
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 15/02/2025
This excellent interactive tutorial on misleading data visualizations explores the idea of a "counter chart" — the graph you draw in response to refute a misleading claims flowingdata.com/projects/dis...
flowingdata.com
Defense Against Dishonest Charts
This is a guide to protect ourselves and to preserve what is good about turning data into visual things.
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Lonni Besançon @lonnibesancon.bsky.social · 20/03/2025
Plenty of tortured phrases (arxiv.org/abs/2107.0...) in this #IEEE paper. ieeexplore.ieee.org/... My pubpeer report: pubpeer.com/publicat...
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Mostly Harmless @whalepetunias.bsky.social · 13/03/2025
"They would appear," said Ford doubtfully, "to have turned into a bowl of petunias and a very surprised looking whale..."
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Christian Minich @christianminich.com · 07/03/2025
I don’t know what vibe coding means and I don’t intend to find out!
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 06/03/2025
Im often frustrated by my lack of time, and resentful of how much busywork I have to do in my job, but reviewing is never a "wasted workday". Im often late with them, but reviewing is about respect, reciprocity and being part of a community of scholars--those who review my work are similarly busy.
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Matthew Facciani @matthewfacciani.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
“Language behavior cannot, in its entirety, be captured in representations appropriate for automation and computational processing. Written language constitutes only part of human linguistic activity” www.theregister.com/2024/08/30/a...
theregister.com
Have we stopped to think about what LLMs actually model?
Claims about much-hyped tech show flawed understanding of language and cognition, research argues
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Reuben Binns @rdbinns.bsky.social · 25/02/2025
Every major UK newspaper - left, right, broadsheet, tabloid - is running a front page campaign against copyright carveouts for AI training. I can't remember the last time any political cause had such broad support, let alone one so anti-big tech and so economically consequential.
Newspaper stand with newspapers all carrying the front page Campaign 'make it fAIr'
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Dan MacLean @danmaclean.bsky.social · 22/02/2025
Wordle 1,344 2/6 ⬛⬛⬛⬛⬛ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Blimey.
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Andrew Male @andrewmale.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
In 2020 this was merely a very funny tweet. Now it’s the top answer when you ask Google “What is soup?”
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Richard McElreath 🐈‍⬛ @rmcelreath.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
Amazing to me how useful looking at data in 2D PCA continues to be, even though the approach sounds crazy on paper—"p-dimensional ellipsoid", rantings of a madman. PCA is the cockroach of dimension reduction. I expect it to be present in any advanced galactic civilization.
PCA can be thought of as fitting a p-dimensional ellipsoid to the data, where each axis of the ellipsoid represents a principal component. If some axis of the ellipsoid is small, then the variance along that axis is also small. Figure 1b from https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08531-5/figures/1
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