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Dave Carlson

@davecarlson.bsky.social
720 followers 965 following 639 posts

PhD in EcoEvo. Bioinformatics & High Performance Computing. Transposon enthusiast.

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Reposted by Dave Carlson
James O'Malley @jamesomalley.co.uk · 07/10/2026
Holy shit. Someone has decompiled the Adobe suite, rebuilt it in Rust and released it as open source. Either all software is dead or the US copyright laws are about to receive an update. getartcraft.com/apps
getartcraft.com
Crafting Apps: open-source creative tools
Image editing, vector illustration, video, photography, PDFs, motion graphics and page layout: seven native, open-source apps from the ArtCraft team, built in Rust and free to use.
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David Burbach 🇺🇸 @dburbach.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Beyond the lack of public transparency and accountability generally, this also means NSF put lots of social science researchers through the time and effort of writing proposals that NSF never had any intention of considering
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Dan Garisto @dangaristo.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
NEW: In March the White House released an FY27 budget request that zeroed out the National Science Foundation's directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). For months it was unclear what would happen. Now, with FY26 over, the damage to SBE is coming to light. My reporting:
science.org
‘Complete devastation’: How NSF gutted its social sciences research
Agency body that funds sociology, linguistics, and archaeology studies in U.S. gave 90% fewer new grants this year
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Nobel Prize @nobelprize.org · 06/10/2026
”I hope this reflects on the really courageous people who joined me in the beginning of this project when no respectable conservative physicists would have joined me, but many talented people did, and that's why I'm here.” - physics laureate Francis Halzen speaking at today's prize announcement.
A illustrated portrait of physics laureate Francis Halzen
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Dan Mauler 🎃 @meelar.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Yeah, blue state housing policy is so bad that it undermines a huge swath of all the good stuff they do. You can't be a sanctuary state if people can't afford to live there!
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Guillaume Hummel 🌱 🇪🇺 🇫🇷 🥨 🇮🇹 @guillaumehummel.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This year’s Nobel Prize is a great reminder of something fundamental about science: curiosity-driven research and unexpected angles of attack can reveal principles with implications far beyond the original question. Glad to see this beautifully illustrated through work on a photosynthetic organism!
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Erin J. Wamsley 🧠📈😴 @wamsleylab.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
The fiscal year is over. The dying Social, Behavioral, and Economic division of NSF ended up awarding 90 total grants this year, as opposed to ~700-800 in recent past years. Source: grantwitness.org/nsf/analyses...
The graph shows the cumulative number of awards made by month across this fiscal year, as compared to the last 6 fiscal years. The line for this year is total flat until June, but then finally gets up to 91 by October. In prior years the increase starts building earlier and ends on average in the 700-800 range (with variability, last year was only between 400-500).
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Dave Carlson @davecarlson.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Find someone who loves you as much as Claude loves Slurm arrays.
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Sergei Pond @sergeilkp.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
I've spent ~30 years writing HyPhy to study selection & evolution. That era is coming to a close. HyPhy is passing the torch to HyphAeon: a ~2M parameter geometric transformer running in the browser that does things we never built it to do. @nclark.bsky.social @brcanalytics.bsky.social 🧵👇
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Dave Carlson @davecarlson.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Man City delenda est
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Dave Carlson @davecarlson.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Very cool thread!
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Molecular Biology and Evolution @molbioevol.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Gaut et al. synthesize key lessons and outstanding challenges concerning the action of natural selection on plant genomes, revealing the power and some of the limits of population genomics to infer the dynamics of selection on plant genomes. 🔗 academic.oup.com/mbe/article/... #societyjournal
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 21/09/2026
Alright. Let me resolve this once and for all. The simple fact is that there are a few different things that can be reasonably meant by “thinking” and mixing them up is what’s making everyone mad.
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Seth Rosenthal @sethrosenthal.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
the concept of figuring out calvin's dads politics smells strongly of "greatest thread in history of forums, locked by moderator etc etc"
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Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 21/09/2026
That’s why they carved that poem that goes “Go back home, or at the very least stay in the designated zone” on the base of the Statue of No Transplants that stands in the harbor.
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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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BehavEcolPapers @behavecolpapers.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Sex without crossovers mimics clonal reproduction in Rhynchospora tenuis @Nature.com
dlvr.it
Sex without crossovers mimics clonal reproduction in Rhynchospora tenuis
Nature, Published online: 16 September 2026; doi:10.1038/s41586-026-11057-7Rhynchospora tenuis undergoes obligate, genome-wide achiasmy in both male and female meiosis.
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
We Need to Talk about AI, the ‘Rationalists’ and ‘Longtermism’ talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/we-ne...
talkingpointsmemo.com
We Need to Talk about AI, the ‘Rationalists’ and ‘Longtermism’
As I’ve suggested in recent posts I’m finding it quite challenging to...
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rachellcosby.bsky.social @rachellcosby.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
Infertility affects ~1 in 6 people, and up to 30% of cases are unexplained. I am excited to present my postdoctoral work from @toddmacfarlan.bsky.social 's lab, now available as a preprint: tinyurl.com/yync6f2r addressing a possible role for the meiotic gene PRDM9 in infertility 🧵/1
Link to preprint titled: "PRDM9-mediated meiotic hotspot specification is constrained in humans despite extensive sequence diversity"
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Dr. K. Lotterhos @drk-lo.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I'm hiring a bioinformatician! Review of applications starts October 1 with a start date as soon as possible. 🧪 #Genomics #popGen #CompBio northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com/careers/job/...
northeastern.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
Bioinformatician - Lotterhos Lab
About the Opportunity About the Center for Marine Ecological Genomics The successful candidate will be based at the Lotterhos Lab and the Center for Marine Ecological Genomics at Northeastern Marine S...
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Matthew Hahn @3rdreviewer.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
New paper with Trang Nguyen! Do you have only a single parent and offspring, but still want to calculate mutation rates? We've got the tool for you--OOPS github.com/TrangNg-Th/O... www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...
biorxiv.org
Estimating de novo mutation rates using parent-offspring pairs
Existing pedigree approaches to identifying de novo mutations (DNMs) require at least two parents and a single offspring, limiting applicability. Here, we introduce OOPS (Only One Parent Sequencing), ...
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Jim Shaw @jimshaw.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
The sylph metagenome profiler is v1.0.0! sylph-docs.github.io A new DB format + approach --> huge performance gains: GTDB-R232 (200k species) now takes < 5 GB of RAM and ~30s (2GB fq.gz). Huge thanks to @benjwoodcroft.bsky.social and his ongoing performance efforts (github.com/wwood/weebill)
sylph-docs.github.io
Documentation for sylph - ultrafast, precise metagenomic profiling
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Jeffrey M Kidd @jeffreymkidd.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
This is a very nice review article from @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social and @mathiesoniain.bsky.social . Figure 2 gives a very nice summary of the different ways selection tests are calibrated. They also offer 5 succinct summaries of the current state of the field for humans.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 12/09/2026
Cont’d
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Richard Easther @rjme.bsky.social · 12/09/2026
Folks, it's not often that physics-fans are asked to donate money to a small Scottish church, but this is going to be one of those times -- since the church is the last resting place of James Clerk Maxwell... www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding...
justgiving.com
Help raise £70000 to Save Parton Kirk – JustGiving Crowdfunding
Iʼm raising money to Save Parton Kirk. Support this JustGiving Crowdfunding Page.
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Colin @colin-fraser.net · 11/09/2026
There are indeed thousands of LessWrong posts, as well as papers and books, which make a particular theoretical case for why AI will kill us all that many people find convincing. I'm going to try to explain it as faithfully as I can.
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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Ultimately, this letter from NSF is an announcement that universities will be funded a lot less and politically-connected industry will be funded a lot more. Fancy words around old-fashioned corruption.
nsf.gov
NSF leadership in a new golden age of science
The U.S. National Science Foundation was established in 1950 to keep American discovery at the frontier. That mission has not changed. The science and technology ecosystem around it has...
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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
We had a couple of weeks of people flying American flags everywhere. I also regularly experienced people I once considered sane demanding that we "turn the middle east into glass."
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Ryan Gutenkunst @ryangutenkunst.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Increasingly powerful methods are enabling increasing complex models of ancient human history to be inferred from population genomic data. In a recent review, I highlight two blind spots in these inferences: limitations of the methods and choices of models to fit. arxiv.org/abs/2608.27591
arxiv.org
Two blind spots in the demographic inference of human origins from genomic data
Ancient DNA and new inference methods have transformed the study of human origins, but consensus has not followed. Evidence increasingly indicates that hominin populations were pervasively structured ...
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The Washington Sun @washingtonsun.com · 09/09/2026
Washington journalism is in a moment of generational change. We're rising to meet it. Welcome to The Washington Sun. washingtonsun.com
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Joshua G. Schraiber @jgschraiber.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
This is fucking insane. It's unclear what the future of mathematics looks like at this point. It's hard to express how big of an advance this is. Yes, there are serious issues about credit here, but all parties agree: this proof was enabled and perhaps principally shaped by AI.
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Dave Carlson @davecarlson.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
People who put normal sized backpacks in the overhead bins of a full flight have no business being part of society.
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
I think Van Gogh is the most Lives Up To The Hype artist in history. Simultaneously has a superlative reputation but is shockingly actually just that good.
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David Ho @davidho.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
Summers in the US are getting hotter due to human-caused climate change. 2026 will be the hottest and most humid in the contiguous US since records began in 1895. We need investments in clean energy, updates to permitting systems, and help for communities to adapt to climate hazards.
nytimes.com
Opinion | Summer Has Gotten Much Hotter. See How Bad It Is Where You Live. (Gift Article)
The notion of enduring the summer rather than embracing it has spread far beyond the Sun Belt.
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Faine Greenwood @faineg.com · 29/08/2026
The fact that the global horror and death unleashed by Trump and Musk’s destruction of USAID remains a very niche political topic in the US does make me feel like I’m going insane sometimes
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Dave Carlson @davecarlson.bsky.social · 29/08/2026
Make your favorite film sound as boring as possible without giving away the title. Aging hippie farms badly.
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David Roberts @volts.wtf · 28/08/2026
Narrative violation alert: "The plan would reduce bills by $79 million a year, saving the average residential customer about $100 a year. It also calls for freezing rates for three years. I&M says the plan is made possible by increased revenue paid by large customers including data centers."
wvpe.org
I&M announces electric rate cut plan enabled by data centers
Indiana & Michigan Power on Wednesday filed a rate cut plan with state regulators that the utility says would save the average customer $100 a year, and the plan would freeze rates for three years.
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Dr Craig R McClain @drcraigmc.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
America's national parks are being quietly taken apart: mass layoffs, record budget cuts, monuments shrunk by millions of acres, protected land reopened to drilling. None of this is speculation. Ten sourced examples, one at a time. 🧪
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Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Learned today about @stephenturner.us's "/deslop" skill. Very useful! blog.stephenturner.us/p/deslop h/t @ewels.bsky.social
blog.stephenturner.us
De-slop the text you shouldn't be writing anyway
A Claude skill to remove all the AI patterns from AI-generated text. Useful for the bureaucratic writing you don't want to write anyway.
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Adam Rutherford @adamrutherford.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Just in case anyone is in any doubt about the ‘academic freedom’ that Cofnas is somehow entitled to. ericturkheimer.substack.com/p/the-cofnas...
ericturkheimer.substack.com
The Cofnas Manifesto
The social consequences of hereditarianism
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Brandon Friedman @brandonfriedman.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
It's not just tumbling enrollment. Graduate programs rely on foreign students to sustain *critical mass.* Many (if not most) would collapse after a sudden 30% drop in enrollment. They think they're creating space for white, U.S.-born students, but they're actually destroying their own schools.
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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
This morning in Danbury, ICE was arresting parents at school bus stops. But it’s more sinister. ICE waited until the kids were on the bus so when they are dropped off at the end of the day, they are alone, scared to death they can’t find their parents. I’m heading to Danbury.
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It's ME(Jaime) @exceedhergrasp1.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
One of the more obscure facts I remember about Dolly Parton is this: just like Star Trek would not exist without Lucille Ball, Buffy would not exist without Dolly Parton. She was a silent producer of the movie and show. That's why Buffy Summers has the same birthday as Dolly: January 19.
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AFP News Agency @en.afp.com · 25/08/2026
#BREAKING: US country music legend Dolly Parton dies at 80: family
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Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
New salmon release 2.6.0! Now, salmon is deterministic-by-default (dbd)! This was an oft-requested features, & one that we had as optional over the past few released via the `--deterministic` flag. Now, salmon is deterministic by default with `--online` giving the previous behavior. 1/3
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Dave Carlson @davecarlson.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
When the revolution comes, people who leave their FASTQ files uncompressed will be first against the wall.
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Kevin Wilson @kwilsonhfx.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Shocking.
NTSB graph showing the relationship between miles biked per person per year and cyclists killed per billion miles biked. There's an obvious negative trend (people bike more in place where it's safer to do so.
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I Scare You Like Sound Dog @chadstanton.blacksky.app · 23/08/2026
Rolling out “academic freedom” as a rallying cry now, after the CRT panic led to a bunch of Black scholars and theory to be literally banned from classrooms, shit is too rich lol
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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
standard. SCOTUS allows Trump to continue to create literal facts on the ground while they 'consider' his his meritless challenge. nothing is more important than reforming the court and ending its corruption.
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Stephen Turner @stephenturner.us · 21/08/2026
I spent most of my time at the 2024 #Nextflow @nf-co.re hackathon working on genomeqc. Happy to see our preprint finally published: nf-core/genomeqc: a best-practice pipeline for comparing genome and assembly quality: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6... 🧬💻🧪 github.com/nf-core/geno...
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