iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Buster only smokes choices while listening to The Cure and The Sisters of Mercy.

Buster, a long-haired black cat, sitting on a desk in front of a keyboard and monitor.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Culling books is never easy, but it has to be done.

Four stacks of scientific and reference books that are being culled to make way for other things. Some of these books haven't been opened in more than 20 years.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

Are you interested in dairy cows? Have you ever wondered how profitable the best cow possible might be? I'll be talking about that at the International Committee for Animal Recording meeting in Verona, Italy, in a few weeks!

Five stacked bar charts, one for each breed with genomic evaluations in the U.S. (top to bottom: Ayrshires, Brown Swiss, Guernseys, Holsteins, and Jerseys). Each row shows the chromosomal breeding value for the Lifetime Net Merit selection index for each of the 29 autosomes. These values range from $175 (chromosome 13 in the Ayrshire breed) to $839 (chromosome 14 in the Holstein breed).

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

New book just arrived, "Milk: The Biology of Lactation" by Power and Schulkin.

The cover of the hardcover von "Milk: The Biology of Lactation" by Power and Schulkin. It's a photo of a meerkat.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

I love Jerseys. I got to name PEAK Burreaux-ET.

A Jersey bull calf lying in a stall with lots of straw. His name is PEAK Burreaux-ET.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

Surprised to see a power armor stand in Sioux Falls, SD.

A yellow A-frame work station on the tarmac at the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, USA, airport which resembles the power armor stands seen in Fallout 4.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

The booths for two USDA agencies sit unstaffed at World Dairy Expo today. Just across the lobby, the FBI recruiting booth was fully staffed. This is how Republicans in Washington, DC, prioritize things. Food and fiber are less important than cops, as though we don't have enough of those.

Two empty booths at Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin. The photo was taken on October 2, 2025 during World Dairy Expo, a major agricultural trade and livestock show. The booth on the left is for USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service. The booth on the rightis for USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service. Both are unstaffed because of the shutdown of the US government.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 24/08/2025

The Fullcat could be cousins with our cat!

A long-haired black cat (left) and a short-haired gray-and-white cat (right) sitting side-by-side on a rug by the back door, looking towards the camera.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

Does anyone know what kind of bird this is? Seen in southern Wisconsin.

Photo of a blue bird with a white breast and white-tipped tail feathers sitting on a fencepost in the parking lot of the Kelch Aviation Museum in Brodhead, WI.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 08/06/2025

There's three "K"s in "Cybertrukkk", boys.

A photo of the back end of a Tesla Cybertruck. The roof is blue and the tailgate is a neon orange-red. "Cybertrukk" is written on the tailgate in a style mimicking a graffiti tag. Vinyl (I guess) is peeling off the rear bumper. The license plate reads "MYTESLA" and has a US flag background.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

No Enclave activity at Project Purity.

A photo of the front portico of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 27/05/2025

These days, landing at National feels like Mordor has an airport, and DC doesn't deserve that.

Photo of the Pentagon taken on final into DCA.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 20/05/2025

Do you like selection indices? Here's the change in correlated response to selection over time for the 24 traits and trait composites in the 2025 revision of Lifetime Net Merit.

A 6-by-4 graphic showing the correlated responses of selection for 24 traits and trait composites to 12 different indices. The traits are: Row 1: Milk, Fat, Protein, Productive Life, Somatic Cell Score, and Body Weight Composite; Row 2: Udder Composite, Foot and Leg Composite, Daughter Pregnancy Rate, Calving Trait $, Heifer Conception Rate, and Cow Conception Rate; Row 3: Livability, Gestation Length, Health $, Residual Feed Intake, Milk Fever, and Displaced Abomasum; and Row 4: Ketosis, Mastitis, Metritis, Retained Placenta, Early First Calving, and Heifer Livability. The indices compared are Predicted Difference $ (1971), Milk-Fat-Protein $ (1976), Cheese Yield $ (1984), Lifetime Net Merit (NM$) 1994, NM$ 2000, NM$ 2006, NM$ 2010, NM$ 2014, NM$ 2017, NM$ 2018, NM$ 2021, and NM$ 2025. Over time, the weight on production traits (milk, fat, and protein) has decreased and more weight has been placed on fertility, longevity, and health traits. This has resulted in slower but still favorable trends for yield, with dramatically improving trends for non-production traits. NM$ 2021 and 2025 place considerable negative emphasis on residual feed intake and body weight composite while maintaining favorable trends for other traits. The goal is to produce efficient, healthy, long-lived cows that are profitable.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 19/03/2025

No clue of this is actually correct, but apparently I've actually tried to take a derivative outside of calculus class (found on the back of a page of Larry Schaeffer's animal model notes).

It's some attempted math. It looks like the partial derivative of maybe a variance component estimate?

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

More Land Grant universities need to remember that they have schools of design and do more interesting branding. Washington State's cougar logo is quite striking.

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John B. Cole @lsmsa1990.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Some of my friends wonder what I actually do for work. Here's an exciting action shot of me talking. So, basically what I've done since y'all have known me.