iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Kai Blin

Os Keyes @okeyes.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

Since we’re doing another round of “AI will destroy humanity” doom-hype, it’s a good time to announce a new paper myself and my postdoc advisor just had accepted by BioSocieties on just this. TL;DR: almost all the “AI can make bioweapons” literature comes ultimately from the Effective Altruists.

ironholds.org

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

I was in a thread on here recently discussing how editors are struggling to even get people to decline invites. I just got an invite from Food Biotech that requires me to create an Elsevier account to decline. It takes me one click to delete an email. Don't make it take > 3 clicks to decline.

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Claus Wilke @clauswilke.com · 03/09/2026

The reason Claude did well at binder design is because the prompt hardcoded that it should use ESMFold2 for scoring, and apparently ESMFold2 is really good. It's also only a few months old so not widely used yet. AI in biology keeps disappointing. blog.genesmindsmachines.com/p/anthropic-...

blog.genesmindsmachines.com

Anthropic has not solved the peptide-binder design problem, but maybe bi[o]hub has

The protein design field is getting pushed forward by human experts in protein design, who would have thought

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I’m reviewing a paper and think I just found the most “bioinformatics brain” sentence/analysis I’ve ever read. Completely correct, but if you spent a microsecond thinking about the biology, also completely useless.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 03/08/2026

Great write-up on the work my colleague Xinglin has been doing.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I just realised that all my submitted grant proposals will notify about the outcome in October, and all of a sudden, I'm way less excited about the calendar getting there.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 28/05/2026

That email peddling your grant writing support services would hit harder if you didn’t send me basically the same email twice, about calls that are fully unrelated to my work, while claiming they were a “good fit”. It makes it look like you don’t know what you’re talking about.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Think big! Oh, and also keep it at 2 years and 250,000 EUR. I'm getting mixed messages here.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 25/05/2026

HMMER is an integral part of the software my whole career is built on. Software that researchers at the DOE have run millions of times. Complete, utter bollocks.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

Oooh, @thomasfuchs.at, 2 conflicting PCRs being considered "mildly positive" wasn't on my bingo card.

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Microbetv @microbetv.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Paul Hoskisson discusses the Streptomyces genus; the soil microbes behind many of our most important antibiotics and a cornerstone of the antibiotic revolution. Excerpt from Matters Microbial 125: Antibiotics, Streptomyces and Evolution @markowenmartin.bsky.social @paulhoskisson.bsky.social

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Mark O. Martin @markowenmartin.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

A new episode of my #MattersMicrobial podcast is available! This time, Dr. Paul Hoskisson joins the #QualityQuorum to discuss Streptomyces, antibiotics, and evolution. Please spread the #GoodMicrobialWord? I truly can use views and listens to keep podcasting. Thank you. youtu.be/2w9Hll4xcFk?...

youtu.be

Matters Microbial #125: Antibiotics, Streptomyces and Evolution

YouTube video by MicrobeTV

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

I'm not looking forward to a future where all the tools are being vibe-rewritten into languages people don't want to learn. Who will maintain all this? The original maintainers won't. It's not the language they were comfortable with. Does the prompter understand the tool well enough?

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Fusion Conferences @fusionconf.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

📢Come and join us in Mexico later this year for the 5th Series of #SBNP! Registration is now open - secure your spot today! 👉 Click here to head to the conference website for more information: bit.ly/4v25JYK

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 31/03/2026

And people ask me why I don't enjoy web dev.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

The data use agreement to the new app we need to do our health and safety training in wants me to agree that they can use my picture to give me “access to the construction site”. So I guess I’m expected to read the data use notice, but nobody else read it before?

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 10/03/2026

I’m getting the impression that this brand name is a lie.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 09/03/2026

Ah, nothing like light blue text on a dark blue background in a sunny meeting room.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

Just listened to an interview with the OpenClaw dude, and this must have been the most dystopian thing I have heard in years. It had its funny parts when they were talking about security, I’ll grant you that. But overall, it was really bleak.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 20/02/2026

Thanks to @nicoleeavalon.bsky.social for leading the charge. Looking forward to another round of MIBiG annotathons

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Mark O. Martin @markowenmartin.bsky.social · 13/02/2026

I am truly grateful.

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Marnix Medema @marnixmedema.bsky.social · 12/02/2026

I am delighted and feel honored to be appointed as chair of Bioinformatics at @w-u-r.bsky.social . I look forward to working with the team and with our collaborators worldwide on keeping bioinformatics science and education flourishing at WUR and beyond. www.wur.nl/en/news/marn...

wur.nl

Marnix Medema appointed chair of Bioinformatics at WUR

Marnix Medema has been appointed Chair of the Bioinformatics Group at Wageningen University & Research as of 1 February. He aims to further strengthen bioinformatics as a connecting discipline within ...

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Oh wow. Overleaf is now pushing an AI assistant on their platform as well. It just gave me a "grammar/style suggestion" that changed the order of magnitude of a number. 1024 is not 10,024, thank you very much.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Ok, who of you jokers wrote this app that thinks -56 minutes is a transfer time that OSS fine not to spite alternative connections for?

A screenshot from the Deutsche Bahn app showing a connection with a negative 56 minute changeover time between two trains. The first train is delayed and can’t reach its intended connections.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Feels funny to sit in a train from Stuttgart to Cologne again after over a decade. I’ve been doing that every Monday morning for over a year as a postdoc. Sprinting to catch my connection from Tübingen was on brand, too. I’ll just go on to our MAGIC-Molfun conference in Belgium this time around.

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Steven Salzberg @stevensalzberg.bsky.social · 16/01/2026

very sad news. Peer Bork was one of the leaders of our field, a wonderful scientist, and he's much too young to be gone. www.embl.org/news/embl-an...

embl.org

In remembrance of Peer Bork | EMBL

EMBL and its community are deeply saddened by the death of Peer Bork, the organisation’s Interim Director General.

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Anthony Moser @anthonymoser.com · 12/01/2026

i do not recommend allowing your children to play fortnite. this is not the only reason but you shouldn't need others

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

Made the rookie mistake of opening linkedin. Saw a professor from Princeton claim that the step from manual coding to vibe coding is the same control vs. productivity tradeoff as C to Python, assembler to C, or machine code to assembler. 1/n

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

Dear journal editor: Inviting me to review a paper on Christmas Eve and then sending a nag email about that on the 26th is the best way to get me to decline that invitation. If your system is being stupid automatically, get a better automated system. Tell the publisher to use those APCs for it.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 26/12/2025

Welcome to another member of the antiSMASH ecosystem of tools. When @marnixmedema.bsky.social and I were putting together antiSMASH version 1.0 15 years ago, I don't think our wildest dreams would have predicted where our little tool would go.

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Morten Kam Dahl Dueholm @mkddueholm.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Once in a while, you publish an article that fundamentally redefines your research area. I believe this is one of those moments. I huge thanks to all contributors. 🎉

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Morten @norholm.bsky.social · 24/12/2025

A little Christmas gift for the molecular biology nerds! I love the simplicity of this idea: very useful (and small) plasmid selection system that alleviates the need for antibiotics in molbio and bioprocesses. Elegant work by my former PhD student, lab, and colleagues: doi.org/10.1021/acss...

doi.org

tRNA-Mediated Plasmid Stabilization for Antibiotic-Free Applications in Escherichia coli

Plasmids are essential tools in molecular biology and biotechnology. In research laboratories, it is common to use antibiotic selection markers to ensure that plasmids are stably maintained in a cellu...

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Apparently, all my Sonos speakers at home decided some days ago to automatically crank their volume up in the middle of the night to make sure that you really wake up in the morning. A bit of digging shows that there's a log file on a device web page to debug which source is responsible. 1/?

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Our old, stupid on purpose robot vacuum died. It's been hard to resist the urge to buy a more fancy, feature-rich model. But while I don't share the complete disdain of many people in tech have for "smart" devices, local control of those devices is important for me. 1/2

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Ah, Monday morning emails. Occasionally, they come with problems that are already solved. Friday evening: got invited to review a paper. Sunday evening: got uninvited for not responding within 48 hours. I'm aware editors have a hard time finding reviewers, but some clearly aren't really trying.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

I'm being pulled into a medical discussion that is a bit outside of my horizon, but maybe someone here can point me at some papers. A family member is hospitalised with pneumonia and seems to show adverse reactions to some of the antibiotics used. 1/?

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Tue Sparholt Jørgensen @tuesparholt.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Bacterial telomeres are common, just not so much in RefSeq 'complete' genomes. But they can be added by the new tool David Faurdal wrote. I am thrilled to see this out as a preprint here: www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1... @tilmweber.bsky.social @thombooth.bsky.social

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Reposted by Kai Blin

Rob Patro @robp.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

Hi bioinformatics, genomics and CS friends! Please help me spread the word. I'm hiring a postdoc! Come work on cutting edge method development in algorithmic genomics with me and my group at @umdscience.bsky.social! 🖥️🧬

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

The joy of being a bioinformatics person I'd that you'll get both of these

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Ewan Birney @ewanbirney.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Bioinformaticians / computational biologists take note - know where you should take your OS tool chain from and do not introduce backdoors.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Manuscript submitted. Now we only need to get that grant proposal done, and then I’ll just stay in bed for a week to catch up on all the sleep I lost in the past weeks.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Dear Microsoft, I open your tools when I absolutely have to. When I do, I need to get work done. I never, ever want to leave a review on how much I’m enjoying that experience. Just sod off with that irritating pop up.

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Thomas Fuchs 🫯 @thomasfuchs.at · 08/09/2025

So the LLM synthesizes a result from various sources (that may be made up or misquoted) and then you "double-check" the sources? Sounds like the LLM is using you as research assistant.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Oh, look, the mandatory cybersecurity training that makes us log in via our SSO solution that enforces MFA is coming up with a threat scenario that only works if we weren’t using SSO with enforced MFA…

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

The recent video about DeltaDB by @t3.gg makes me realise how much I'm older than Theo. While the gripes about git are certainly valid, it's clear to me that Theo didn't work pre-git, and how much worse merge conflicts were back then. The line about svn being proprietary tells me he never used it.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

This is one of my favourite genres of social media comedy.

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Kai Blin @kblin.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Sure, Journal of Stem Cell Research and Therapy, I would love to be on your editorial board, seeing how I have no clue about the topic at all….

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