iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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It still bothers me that @biodivlibrary.bsky.social is invisible in Google Scholar. It is as if BHL didn't exist, and yet so many articles that are dead ends ["citation"] in Scholar are available in BHL. The magic "citation_" meta tags are there, but there is nobody to ask "why isn't BHL indexed?"

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Annie Waldman @anniewaldman.bsky.social · 5h

NEW: As Trump’s White House and influencers keep touting the unproven benefits of raw milk, hundreds across the country are falling ill from outbreaks. Some people get severe indigestion. And some nearly die. Here's the story of one toddler who drank it. 🧵👇 www.propublica.org/article/cali...

propublica.org

A Girl Nearly Died After Drinking Raw Milk. The State Did Little to Punish the Unlicensed Farmer Who Sold It.

California is teeming with black-market dairies, propped up by consumer demand fueled by misinformation. With evidence against one raw goat milk farm, regulators could have sought punitive action. But...

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Hypervisible @hypervisible.blacksky.app · 16h

Eugenics 🤝 ai www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/h...

One of the things that is going to change is that we’re never ever again going to be able to be dominated by public officials who tell us, ‘Trust the experts,’” Mr. Kennedy said during the Tuesday session.

“If somebody tells you, ‘Masks work, trust the experts,’ A.I. may tell you otherwise,” he added. “If somebody tells you, ‘Social distancing works, trust the experts,’ A.I. may correct that. And if somebody tells you that a vaccine will prevent transmission and infection, or you need to take it to protect your grandmother, A.I. may say it actually doesn’t do that.”

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Pleuni Pennings @pleunipennings.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I am hiring a postdoc! Are you interested to work on population genetics/ drug resistance/ data? Want to work in Montpellier, France? Fastq files don't scare you? PhD required, start date hopefully Nov 1! (end date Sep 30 2028) Please share! abetterscientist.wordpress.com/2026/09/29/p...

abetterscientist.wordpress.com

Postdoc position on drug resistance evolution in Montpellier, France

I have some exciting news (again!). I got money from the region (Occitanie) to hire a postdoc (and later an engineer / technician) to work on drug resistance evolution in malaria (P. faciparum) and…

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Alexandra Petri @petridishes.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

absolutely gutting

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Melody Schreiber @melodyschreiber.com · 29/09/2026

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spoke yesterday at a MAHA Institute event. As many as 26 people (including me) tuned in. He detailed exactly how US health agencies are gathering data to try to link vaccination to autism, for instance. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

theguardian.com

RFK Jr outlines expansive vision for collecting US health data at Maha event

Health secretary calls for medical and lifestyle details to be sent to doctors and AI to address ‘chronic disease epidemic’

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Matt Novak @paleofuture.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The tweet that immediately came to mind:

We're a modest company with modest goals:
1: sell a quality product at a fair price
2: drain the world's oceans so we can find and kill god
6:19 PM • Oct 21, 2014 • Twitter for iPhone
9.8K Retweets
32.7K Likes

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Erin Kissane @kissane.myatproto.social · 29/09/2026

A thing I learned about Meta when I was trying to understand how their statements relate to their actions a few years ago is that *they just tell absolutely indefensible lies* and journalists almost always let them. They believed no one would ever punish them for it in any way that matters.

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Chenxin Li, PhD @chenxinli2.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Requiring scientists to be political neutral is to require scientists to shut up when the facts are inconvenient.

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Vivek Mutalik @vivekmutalik.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Happy to share that @averynoonan.bsky.social paper “Phylogeny-agnostic strain-level prediction of phage–host interactions from genomes using machine learning” is now published in @natmicrobiol.nature.com 🎉🎊 👉🏽 rdcu.be/nR2NizD7H5va

Machine learning workflow for GenoPHI platform

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Jesse Shapiro @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

9. In previous LEAP work, we found that the glyphosate-based herbicide (GBH) Roundup selects for MAGs (metagenome-assembled genomes, a proxy for bacterial species) that encode more efflux pumps. This explains much of the community-level response, but what about the population level, within species?

Slide showing a plot of MAG success being predicted by efflux pumps in their genome

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Jesse Shapiro @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Our latest, spearheaded by the truly indefatigable @emderrick.bsky.social in which we search for selective sweeps in nature and genetic targets of selection within a species in the context of a diverse background community @isme-microbes.bsky.social doi.org/10.1093/isme... 🧵 1/n

doi.org

Validate User

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Emily Gorcenski @emily.gorcen.ski · 28/09/2026

Here’s the most incredible story you’ll read today. A small plane with four people aboard crashes in a field. Another pilot witnesses it. That pilot happens to be flying a bunch of skydivers. They offer to jump to assist, are given permission. The skydivers happen to be EMTs. Everyone survives.

wisn.com

Skydivers alert emergency crews, assist after plane crashes near East Troy airport

Four people were aboard the single-engine plane when it went down in a cornfield near Carvers School Road in East Troy at about 1:30 p.m.

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Indiscreet Function @homotopic.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Interesting comments from Third Way here

“On this issue, the dynamic has really shifted,” she said. Republicans and the right have grown far more extreme, while advocates for trans people have moved to a “more pragmatic place.”

“The MAGA folks took from the 2024 election that this was a great issue for them, that it was one that united their base and made Democrats uncomfortable,” Erickson said. “And that was all true at that moment, but now they’re going way beyond any concerns the public had.”

She added: “Going after healthcare for adults, kicking people out of the military, taking people’s driver’s licenses away, they can’t pick up their kids at school – these are well beyond the pale for most American voters. We’ve got an HHS secretary right now who believes the only appropriate healthcare for transgender people is conversion therapy. That’s crazy.”

“I think protecting trans people, trans kids in particular,” Erickson added, “has become an important part of the agenda for the entire progressive movement.”

Addressing trans issues directly while refocusing attention to Republicans’ policy failures – including a war with no clear goal, economic distress and rampant corruption – is the tactic widely promoted among strategists advising the Democrats. Translating that into effective responses at the ground level in the heat of a campaign has not always gone well.

“I’ve implored folks to practice talking about it,” Erickson said of the candidates. “You know, practice saying ‘I trust parents in my district to make decisions for their kids more than politicians.’ Practice saying, ‘sure, we need rules but politicians aren’t the right ones to make it.’”

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Pat Schloss @patschloss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Let me get this straight. There's a title. There's a commentary article. There's an abstract. There's a set of bullet point highlights. There's a graphical abstract. AND YOU STILL THINK I NEED YOUR AI AGENT TO SUMMARIZE THE ARTICLE FOR ME?

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Kate Baker @ksbakes.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

We have an open Assistant/Associate Professor position in Pathogen Biology at the Department of Genetics - come and join us! 🦠 🧫 🧬https://www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assistantassociate-professor-in-pathogen-genetics-pc51175

cam.ac.uk

Assistant/Associate Professor in Pathogen Genetics

Applications are invited for an Assistant or Associate Professorship in Pathogen Genetics to be held in the Department of Genetics. We are searching for a talented individual with a track record of fu...

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Elle @biknmusicmama.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

This a very good explainer of what I was just explaining to a friend recently: the settlements build roads between their towns and greater Israel that Palestinians can’t use, forcing them to take long detours driving around the West Bank.

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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

You know this is my third or fourth go around with this kind of technological innovation for consumers and citizens. And a lot of it is the same. Same pattern of exaggerated benefits, underestimated challenges. What’s new this time is the sector isn’t even pretending to care about the consumer.

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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Americans need to recognize that the coup already happened, and is mostly complete.

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 29/09/2026

There’s no scientific basis to many of the public health concerns some critics have with solar development, an expert told ProPublica. “People try to come up with a rationale to justify their dislike of things they dislike for other reasons.” (Published April)

propublica.org

Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash

Across the U.S., critics are pressuring public officials to stop or stall new solar projects, often citing unfounded health concerns.

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Carl Zimmer @carlzimmer.com · 27/09/2026

Four days ago, a scientist was surprised by the news that Anthropic discovered new virus genes for making DNA. He says he’s been studying them for years—and feeding his data to Anthropic’s AI as part of his own research. Coincidence? Here’s my story. nyti.ms/3VSWayc

nyti.ms

Did Anthropic’s A.I. Really Make a Scientific Discovery on Its Own? (Gift Article)

An expert at the University of Copenhagen said his team had been sharing its research with the company’s A.I. model, Claude, and that its new finding matched their work.

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Vaughn Cooper @vscooper.micropopbio.org · 27/09/2026

How do Burkholderia multivorans bacteria adaptively evolve during infections of the cystic fibrosis airway? A longtime collab and intensive study of 8 patients links bacterial adaptations to disease progression. Our findings also unite prior studies. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.6...

biorxiv.org

Convergent genetic evolution within Burkholderia multivorans chronic infections correlates with lung function decline in cystic fibrosis patients

The patterns and pathways of pathogen adaptation during chronic infections can reveal the gateways microbes must unlock to colonize and persist. In chronic lung infections of cystic fibrosis (CF) pati...

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Ryan Hisner @ryanhisner.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Mink farming is a massive pandemic risk. It's insane that they are allowed to exist. Now we have an active H5N1 outbreak on a mink farm, & "state officials have no clear plan to rein it in." Imagine if uncontrolled H5N1 transmission in mink were allowed in a research lab...

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Kylie Cheung @kylietcheung.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

By nature of being enrolled at a university, student rapists dont fit the caricature of a rapist—ie a "dangerous" stranger in an alley, a false narrative meant to frame rape exclusively as a street-based crime justifying ever-more police funding. So they face no consequences:

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Ellen Muehlberger @emuehlbe.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

One option for humanities classes going forward: don't schedule the class, schedule the work

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Brad Johnson @climatebrad.hillheat.com · 26/09/2026

There's a lot more happening around the world

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Brad Johnson @climatebrad.hillheat.com · 26/09/2026

The ocean has taken New York and New Jersey.

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Brad Johnson @climatebrad.hillheat.com · 27/09/2026

Long Island under the sea

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Journal of Experimental Botany @jxbotany.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

🍅🧬 EXPERT VIEW 🧬🍅 Phosphate starvation in tomato activates anthocyanin biosynthesis, in which crosstalk between the phosphate starvation response and the jasmonate pathway may play a key role - Junco et al. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/jxb/... #PlantScience 🧪

Fig. 1 (shortened, full legend in paper): Phosphate starvation (PiS) induces anthocyanin accumulation in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) leaves through jasmonate (JA) signaling. Under high Pi (HP, Pi sufficient conditions), elevated levels of inositol pyrophosphate (InsP8) promote the association of SPX with PHR/PHL proteins, maintaining PHR/PHLs in an inactive state and keeping phosphate starvation response (PSR) genes turned OFF. Under low Pi or phosphate starvation (LP/PiS) conditions, the proposed sequence of events is organized into three regulatory modules: (A) Pi sensing and PSR activation; (B) JA pathway engagement, and (C) regulatory integration and anthocyanin output. (A) Pi sensing and PSR activation: (1) Pi starvation is associated with a decrease in InsP8 content, while the Pi-responsive enzyme MIPS2 contributes to the adjustment of the cellular myo-inositol/InsP pool.

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Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. @sarahmackattack.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

We’re not going down without a fight

A bunch of people protesting in front of the Academy of natural sciences

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Harmit Singh Malik @harmitmalik.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Yeah, which of these people doesn't belong on this list? 🤔

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I don't disagree with the thread below but frame it somewhat differently as an academic who regularly sees people who read for a living fail in the way described here. From that perspective it seems more a cultural crisis than an educational one

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Again speaking in the academic case: bad reading is downstream of an audience that does not require good reading. Things that I'd guess contribute to that include: increased specialization (fractures the audience), metrics based evaluation (diminishes importance of audience feedback)

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bijan @bijan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

i think about this post all the time. you might too

Snooby
@DoBiddley1
I am paid a very high salary to design new ways to hurt innocent people. Please don't hurt me. I want to live. My job is to hurt your children. Please, don't do anything to me. I want to be safe. My job is to make your family sick. I want to live. Please, I deserve to live. Pleas
12:45 AM · Apr 1, 2026
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728K
Views

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Alexander Harms @aharms485.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The final version of our manuscript on TnSeq in bacteriophages (“HIDEN-SEQ”) is out today – if you have an interesting phage phenotype and want to know the underlying genetic basis, this one is for you! 1/4

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

The only way to reverse the trend is to mitigate pressure on ecosystems, but (1) futures where we have pre-1950-like impacts on ecosystems are probably not attainable and (2) some changes, like the effects of a century of land use change on Ebola, may be irreversible. www.medrxiv.org/content/10.6...

medrxiv.org

Pandemic risk in the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways

For over a decade, the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) have served as the principal framework for quantitative modeling of the socioeconomic dimensions of global environmental change. The SSP sce...

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

This narrative is part of a broader one that places the blame for pandemic risk on the Global South, and demands that they think less about how colonialism has entrenched poverty and denied them vaccines, and think more about how to responsibly manage their rainforests and wildlife populations.

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

3. Our new study further complicates this narrative, showing that in this and many systems, records of outbreak geography primarily tell us where we have surveillance infrastructure - and, when you take those signals out, the land use *change* story often drops out. bsky.app/profile/coli...

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

There's also this much newer paper, which makes a really interesting (and to me, compelling) argument using viral phylogenetics and landscape history to argue that fragmented landscapes accelerated viral circulation over the last century. esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com

<fi>Ebolavirus</fi> evolution and emergence are associated with land use change

Anthropogenic land use change facilitates disease emergence by altering the interface between humans and pathogen reservoirs and is hypothesized to drive pathogen evolution. Here, we show a positive ....

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Colin Carlson @colincarlson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

1. A basic, and massive, scientific error. David states unambiguously that Ebola outbreaks end with the last human case, and cannot re-emerge without zoonotic spillover. This is categorically false, and has been consequentially false in just the last few years.

Some human-infecting animal viruses are known to spill over into humans and spill back into nature. The Covid virus has spread somehow from human carriers into white-tailed deer across the American Midwest. But there’s no evidence that Ebola virus has ever spilled back into the forest. Under natural circumstances, the outbreak lineage comes to a dead end when the last human patient recovers or dies.

The Ebola virus doesn’t need to spill back. It abides in its reservoir host, and awaits its next opportunity. A virus can’t climb out of a bat or a monkey and fly off in search of human prey. It can only spill over. If humans left the reservoir host alone — not hunting it, not capturing it, not eating it, not exporting it live, not disturbing its forest habitat — the virus wouldn’t re-emerge in humans. It would remain where it is, harming no one. But of course that’s not what happens. And when viruses spill, they often spill into us, because the human population is such a big, busy target.

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Maryn McKenna @marynmck.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If you were transfixed by THE HOT ZONE when you were young, or then read SPILLOVER and trusted it, then as a career scary diseases reporter, I urge you to read this thread. Science moves on. People discover fresh stuff. The work careers were built on becomes outdated. Be open to the new. Please.

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Dimitri Drekonja, MD, MS @dimitridrekonja.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Long but very important thread. Ebola outbreaks will not be ended by "leaving the reservoir alone". Humans interface with nature, including in ways we don't notice. Pretending "if only people in Africa would leave the forests alone we'd all be fine" is pretty patronizing 😳

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