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Lauren

@gramnegativity.bsky.social
831 followers 360 following 540 posts

assistant teaching professor of microbiology | seattle enjoyer, king of the hill expert, tattoo enthusiast, & bacterial geneticist | she/her | personal account

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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
something not a single person told me about having a baby is that you spend like 70% of your time cutting these things and searching for the half you dropped on the rug
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Fenton reaction
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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Transphobia is an interesting case bc gender difference is such an ingrained aspect of our society and also if you give it ANY THOUGHT WHATSOEVER you realize that enforcing a gender binary on any population in any public forum is a fascist nightmare.
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Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
Eye popping. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1
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Josh Moretto @joshmoretto.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Art by @reforest-kelley.bsky.social. A reminder for Labor Day.
Fan art of Chief Miles O'Brien, Leeta, and Rom from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The three are seated in Quark's bar. Miles is explaining something to the other two. The upper caption reads, "The boss needs you, you don't need the boss"; the lower caption reads, "Labor is entitled to all it creates".
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
my toxic trait is that if I inherit a document with two spaces after every period I WILL go through and fix them all even if the document is an 80-page lab manual
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
(with sadness) back on my bullshit
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Chris @cperez.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
"Principal investigators need cheap grad and postdoc labor to boost their own research profiles. Treating them like workers by allowing them to unionize disrupts the feudal lord-serf relationship that exists in most labs." There I fixed it for you
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
In almost all ways I’m glad I waited until my mid 30s to have a baby, but one thing I could do without is waking up the baby with the sound of my joints cracking as I leave his room
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Starbucks Workers United @sbworkersunited.org · 25/08/2026
🚨BREAKING: Our union of over 12,000 baristas are officially calling for a Starbucks boycott. Read this statement penned by Starbucks workers on why a boycott from ALL customers, allies, and organizations is necessary to fight back against corporate greed:
BOYCOTT STARBUCKS is written inside a zig-zaggy speech bubble against crumbled paper. Beside it are the Starbucks Workers United logo and an image of a coffee cup being poured out.We, the 12,000 and growing members of Starbucks Workers United, call on everyone who stands with working people to boycott Starbucks until they finalize a contract with union baristas and stop union-busting.
What we’re fighting for is simple: a minimum $17/hr wage, enough hours to live on, better staffing in our stores, and basic workplace protections. Every year, our living costs rise but our wages don’t keep up – a growing pressure many American workers are feeling as corporate greed accelerates unchecked in our country. 
Starbucks is banking on customers' blind loyalty to the integrity and values this company once stood for in order to keep squeezing them for profits. At a time when working-class people across the country are struggling in a challenging economy, it is no longer possible to be both a Starbucks customer and in support of workers; choosing to spend money at Starbucks is choosing a law breaking corporation over the baristas who make your coffee everyday exactly as you ask for it.
Starbucks has violated U.S. labor law more than any other company in modern history–the NLRB and its judges have found that Starbucks committed hundreds of labor violations and there are currently more than 550 unresolved unfair labor practice charges still pending against the company. Instead of finalizing a fair and reasonable union contract, Starbucks has repeatedly demonstrated a lack of care for the workers who fuel the company’s profits by wasting millions of dollars on AI and technology that doesn’t work, launching countless gimmicky drinks designed to distract from real problems, and inventing pointless policies that do nothing but make our jobs harder. 
This ongoing, irrational behavior by Starbucks and its refusal to settle a fair union contract with workers leaves us with no other choice than to call for a boycott. We know when working people stand up together, we win. 
No Contract? No Coffee.
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
nobody warned me that putting the swaddles away would hurt so much more than putting the newborn/0-3m clothes away 😭
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Jay Van Bavel, PhD @jayvanbavel.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Using AI helps people get higher grades and get their work done faster, but they learn less & suffer on actual exams I saw this in my own large Intro Psych class: -the exam average is 85% -after AI, it shot up to 95% -after I made the final in person it went to 68% www.economist.com/graphic-deta...
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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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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
watching baseball
Mariners losing to the brewers 0-22 (and counting)
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
It’s @catranslation.org mail day hell yeah
A book of poems by trans poets called “splendor,” there are two jellyfish on a black background on its pink cover. Next to the book is a pink sticker that says “read trans poets” and a pink beer coozy with a calico logo on it
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
watching babylon 5
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Britt Lundgren @brittlundgren.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
It's syllabus time again, and I'm seeing a lot of example AI policies that tell students: "It's OK to use AI to help your thinking; but you shouldn't use it to DO your thinking."
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
10+ years of seeing the mountain goats live at every opportunity and tonight I finally saw them play you were cool for the first time live 😭
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Qing Tang @qing-tang.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
We discovered a pathway that contributes to anti-folate antibiotic resistance and the persistent of S. aureus TD-SCV in the lung
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
when you don’t want to waste a cute outfit on nobody seeing it but also you’re only two months old
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jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
I work at a public library. People who want to use AI seem to have no trouble doing so. People who don't want to use AI have a harder time. I crowdsourced and then finalized this document "How to disable or avoid intrusive AI" and then gave it a short URL: notoai.org Please pass along if it's useful
An aircraft passenger oxygen mask: a drop down passenger mask with air bag and yellow plastic mouth and nose cover, oxygen tube has been cut; Demonstration model used by flight attendant crew for passenger instruction. Has text on the side indicating that it's non-functional.
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
parental leave updates: realized I can add both a liquid IV and a caffeinated crystal light to the same huge water bottle and become basically unstoppable
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 18/07/2026
my baby is 8 weeks old tomorrow and has already completely outgrown 0-3 month clothes. what kind of superbaby have I created
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Jane @jane.meangirls.online · 16/07/2026
I think rural red areas should have hospitals and mail and broadband but I want people to be clear eyed about what rural America is and isn’t, and what it definitely emphatically isn’t is a sleeping giant of left wing revolutionaries in waiting or even a reliable source of potential Democrat voters.
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James Greenwood-Reeves @jgreenwoodreeves.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
As an academic, I have decided to pre-empt AI taking my job, so I am going to take ITS job! I am going to start hallucinating, lying to my students, and drinking 700,000 litres of water
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Two Lines Press @twolinespress.com · 13/07/2026
High temps, low prices: it’s the CAT Days of Summer Sale! From now until July 20th all our books are 30% off (40% off for members). 😎 www.twolinespress.com/books
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
when students ask me a question I don’t know the answer to
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
the four genders
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Standplaats Kraków could really use some cash! @standplaatskrk.pl · 24/06/2026
fantashic on tumblr:
Average Deep Space Nine A plot: "What are you willing to sacrifice for the chance at a better world? Who are you willing to hurt? Will the pain you cause now outweigh the peace that it might bring? When both choices are bad, and you do what you think is best, can you live with yourself after? Could you live with yourself if you made the opposite choice?" 
Average Deep Space Nine B plot: "What do we do with all this hot sauce!?"
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 16/06/2026
this onesie was such a good purchase
Baby outfit comprised of a onesie with a drawing of a skateboarding hedgehog and some cute lil baby jeans
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Isabel @isabelott.bsky.social · 15/06/2026
“In other words, unwritten science is not just incomplete; it simply does not exist for the purposes of the field. When you look at it this way, the job of a scientist - having ideas, testing them, and persuading others they are right - turns out to be, fundamentally, an act of writing.”
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 31/05/2026
two things that were worth the 9-month wait
My baby’s hand grabbing my fingerTakeout sushi
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Patrick S. Mitchell @psmitchej.bsky.social · 25/05/2026
Thrilled to announce that the Department of Microbiology at the University of Washington, School of Medicine is hiring at the Assistant Professor level (tenure-track)! The Pacific Northwest is an awesome place to live and do science 🧪🦠. Join us! apply.interfolio.com/185622 Applications due 8/1.
apply.interfolio.com
Apply - Interfolio {{$ctrl.$state.data.pageTitle}} - Apply - Interfolio
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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Welcome to Shrimp City! Teach your friends about a variety of crustaceans with this helpful visual aid - and set the record straight... bugs is shrimp. Shrimp is not bugs These shirts are designed by @the666cat.bsky.social & printed in Philly! Get one at SquidFacts.net (pls RT!)
A cream colored shirt with a red and blue design featuring 9 crustaceans and a fly. A scuba diving Fly Says a”am I shrimp too?” A pistol shrimp wearing a cowboy hat says “bang bang” a mantis shrimp says KO, the title says a”shrimp city and friends” a hermit crab uses a skull
As a shell, a jumbo shrimp is labeled himbo shrimp, and a yeti crab is labeled “snack bacteria cafe”. The fly has an asterisk next to
Him and underneath the whole design it says *the latest research shows that bugs is actually shrimp”
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Peter Chien @chienlab.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
We are hiring! Focus is on colleagues interested in protein homeostasis and human disease. Priority reviewing starts mid-June and will continue on a rolling basis. Here is the ad, hit me up if you have questions! careers.umass.edu/jobs/assista...
careers.umass.edu
Assistant Professor of Biochemistry - Protein Homeostasis - Amherst, Massachusetts, United States
Title: Assistant Professor of Biochemistry - Protein Homeostasis Executive Area: Academic Affairs College/School/MBU: College of Natural Sciences Department: Biochemistry/Molecular Biology Work Locati...
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the Mountain Goats @themountaingoats.bsky.social · 19/05/2026
Subscribe to @twolinespress.com. Trust me, just do this. Or @archipelagobooks.bsky.social or @deepvellum.bsky.social or @openletterbooks.bsky.social. All these are publishing the work of serious writers from around the world. Also Sandorf Passage and @sevenstories.bsky.social
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Jeremy C. Shipp @jeremycshipp.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
I love not using AI. I love reading books written by human beings, hand-sewing little creatures, watching for bats during dusk, listening to human experts to learn about a topic. Not using AI is very fun.
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 17/05/2026
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Guess who survived their last day of work before maternity leave 😎
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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 07/04/2026
This isn’t a lamentable side effect of these products. It’s the actual reason they exist.
tech.yahoo.com
College Students Losing Ability to Participate in Class Discussions Since They Offloaded Their Thinking to AI
"Everyone now kind of sounds the same."
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
update: the sequencing came back perfect so I guess life uh, finds a way 🤷🏻
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Prof Gavin Yamey MD MPH @gavinyamey.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Yup. It's so tiring hearing that we (as teachers) MUST "prepare our students for an AI future" & "get on the AI train or else be left behind," & I'm aware that some professors are using AI for grading or creating AI lectures using avatars of themselves, but I think if "AI is the future" we're fucked
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Teresa O'Meara @teresaomeara.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
We are hiring @umichmicroimmuno.bsky.social ! Tenure-track assistant professor position in our Microbiology and Immunology department. We are especially looking for someone working in bacterial pathogenesis
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Holly Brewer @earlymodjustice.bsky.social · 08/05/2026
In the comments: ”I'll just note that Canvas is no longer a pedagogical tool; in its current iteration and ownership structure, faculty and students are trapped in a digital learning environment that mines our labor without consent or privacy and intellectual property protections.”
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Lauren Palmer @laurenpalmer.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
🚨Faculty job search: University of Illinois Chicago Micro & Immuno department is hiring! Open rank and open area within host-pathogen interactions. Apply by May 31 to join us in UI College of Medicine in the heart of Chicago! uic.csod.com/ux/ats/caree...
Image of UIC sculpture, recreation center, and Medical Sciences Building
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Lauren @gramnegativity.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Did an experiment in our teaching lab where students clone GFP-FLAG into pUC18 & blue/white screen. Can someone tell me why despite the stop codon in our construct, removing 17 AAs from lacZ, AND introducing a frame-shift to the remaining sequence, the colonies are STILL FREAKING BLUE
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