iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 06/08/2026

Can't *really* say this shocks me. But it is shocking. 🧪 ourworldindata.org/grapher/acad...

graph showing academic freedom rankings from Our World in Data, 2014-present. All countries in Europe have slight declines starting in 2020, but the US has fallen from ~0.9 in 2020 down to 0.4 in 2026

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 02/07/2026

100% cosigned for the flume in winter. We made it, but definitely touch and go there for a bit

Snowy and steep mountain path with low pines. A line hiker with poles trudges up

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 07/05/2026

Reminds me of this print a friend gave me by artist Rosemary Mosco rosemarymosco.com

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 26/02/2026

Only 2 days left to submit your proposal for #juliacon #julialang! Consider submitting to the Biology Minisymposium if you have cool work in bioinformatics or life sciences! pretalx.com/juliacon-202... 🧪

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 25/11/2025

This construction happening right outside of my office for the past few weeks regularly shaking my entire building feels like a metaphor for something, I just don't know what.

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 21/09/2025

This was published in fucking nature. Like 4/5 figures are like this www.nature.com/articles/s41...

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 26/08/2025

~5-6 inch long mantis hanging out on some nearly blooming sedum 🌱

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 02/07/2025

But amazingly, when we looked longitudinally (microbiome at an early visit associated with VEP measured at a later visit) we saw WAY more associations. This isn't direct evidence of a causal interaction, but the reverse was NOT true - early VEP was not associated with later microbiome much. 12/x

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 02/07/2025

We then used a technique called "Feature Set Enrichment Analysis" to assess the relationship between microbial neuroactive genes and the VEP. We saw some associations when we looked at VEP measured at the same visit as the microbiome... 🧵 11/x

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 02/07/2025

VEP can be accurately assessed even in newborns. It measures a characteristic response in the visual cortex - we can use the amplitude and latency of each of the 3 characteristic peaks as readouts of brain activity structure (specifically myelination) respectively 🧵 10/x

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 02/07/2025

In the present work, we had a cohort of nearly 200 kids, most of which had at least 2, and often 3 study visits in the first 14 months of life, where we collected stool samples and / or measured their brain activity using an EEG-based technique called Visual Evoked Potential (VEP) 🧵 9/x

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 02/07/2025

🎉 New paper alert, and it's an editor's pick! Looking at the gut #microbiome #brain axis in infants using metagenomics and EEG 🧪🦠 with @emma-margolis.bsky.social, @laurelgd.bsky.social, @gfahurbottino.bsky.social, done in @mightycrobe.bsky.social 's lab. journals.asm.org/doi/10.1128/... 🧵 1/x

> Alt: Screenshot of the title "Codevelopment of gut microbial metabolism and visual circuitry over human infancy", along with an author list. From DOI: 10.1128/mbio.00835-25

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 12/06/2025

@jvl.bsky.social I am normally at least open to your "let the voters have what they asked for" theory, but not on vaccines. We're on the inflection point for measles vaccination, and screwing up means kids are going to die jamanetwork.com/journals/jam...

Figure 1A from a JAMA paper modeling reemergence of vaccine preventable diseases under declining vaccination rates. X axis is vaccine coverage relative to current levels, and y axis is cumulative cases of measles modeled for 25 years, on a log scale.

Data shows that we are on a steep curve, where 5% change in vaccination in either direction means an order of magnitude change in cases

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 09/05/2025

Well, free will *is* an illusion, but given the context I don't think that's it

Church sign that reads 'Free trip to "heaven", details inside'

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 25/03/2025

Silver lining, they at least acknowledge evolution 😓🧪https://grants.nih.gov/policy-and-compliance/implementation-of-new-initiatives-and-policies/nih-grants-and-funding-information-status

Screen grab of NIH notice, saying

Communications
Posting of new funding opportunities and policy guidance is currently on hold.
Relevant pages on this NIH Grants & Funding website are updated as information evolves.

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 18/02/2025

I was sure "obtunded" was a typo - learned something new today!

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 03/02/2025

Civil society stepping up to preserve our #data in the face of authoritarians trying to pull it down #statistics apdu.org?p=5812583 www.populationassociation.org/blogs/paa-we...

Screenshot of email from IPUMS that reads,

"Dear Kevin,

As you may already be aware, on Friday, January 31, federal agencies removed public data and documentation previously made available via public-facing federal government websites in response to administration directives. The types of data removed include large-scale population data sources that provide vital insight into the health and wellbeing of all communities.

We are writing to reassure you that IPUMS data remain available, and that IPUMS remains committed to preserving and democratizing access to the world’s population data.

We are monitoring this evolving situation closely. As part of our standard procedures, we download and preserve original data from U.S. statistical agencies that serve as the source data for IPUMS. Since last Friday, several organizations (and individuals) have downloaded many other public federal datasets. There are efforts underway to catalog and make these data available. We will share resources and guidance when we have it about how to locate or share missing data.

In the meantime, see statements from the Population Association of America/American Population Centers and the Association of Public Data Users for more information.

Use it for good!

The IPUMS Team
"

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 19/01/2025

Didn't know who "this dude" is but looks like I gave up earlier. Love this feature of bsky

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 28/12/2024

Again, take a look at this from Feynman and tell me, did he not understand the material enough to make it easy to understand?

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 28/12/2024

And since you're so enamored of Feynman, here's a clear-as-mud description from the second paragraph of a book of his lectures. Oh, the oscillators are merely quantum? 🤪 And what are the energies? Oh an equation with Greek symbols? Yeah, perfectly understandable to a lay person

Screenshot of a book of lectures from Richard Feynman, beginning "The transition to quantum electrodynamics involves merely the assumption that the oscillators are quantum mechanical instead of classical."

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 24/12/2024

Traditional German pfeffernüsse - I've been wanting to make these myself for ages, finally was able to thanks to the lebkuchengewürz my mom brought back from Switzerland 😋

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 15/12/2024

Saw this and immediately thought of @cmolanphy.bsky.social - have you done a Hit Parade on collaborations? The Marketing Hurricane of ‘Wicked’ Says a Lot About Our Culture www.nytimes.com/2024/12/14/o...

Text from a NYT article: "Around a third of the songs on Billboard's Hot 100 involve a guest feature or collab (compared with under 10 percent a generation ago). At a time when culture feels stagnant, collaborations help artists and brands generate an air of originality without having to innovate."

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 30/11/2024

Interesting, just tried it on Firefox Mobile and it looks fine. Chrome and Vivaldi (chromium-based) both have the issue. This is on android 🤷

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 30/11/2024

Thanks for this! I'm curious - is the inclusion of LaTeX code intentional or a weird rendering artifact? It doesn't seem to happen for the inline stuff. This is on Mobile (through the browser, not app)

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 29/11/2024

One thing that no one tells you about fatherhood is that sometimes you go to wash your hands after using the bathroom and are reminded by the mirror that you have a parasaurolophus sticker in the center of your forehead

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 22/04/2024

@benjaminwittes.bsky.social Hi there! I wanted to send a private note after the Trump Trials & Tribulations stream Thursday, but the email I thought you said aloud bounced, and the info here seems out of date: benjaminwittes.com/contact/

Email response saying that a particular email address does not exist

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 13/03/2024

A few weeks early, but still lovely to see 🌱. If you look closely, you can see the peonies just starting to emerge as well

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 08/02/2024

Thank you for reading that so that I didn't even have to pretend that I want to! Side note - the l and 1 footnote/reference are very difficult to distinguish - I was confused when I hit footnote l and thought it was reference 1 (and the fact that they're together at the end was happy coincidence)

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 04/02/2024

It's not limited to canines

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Kevin Bonham @kevinbonham.com · 18/12/2023

"I'm your huckleberry" may be his best line, but in terms of overall performance, I gotta go with

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