iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

lexy @lvdlab.org · 31/07/2025

Reworking my "intro to single-molecule" slides and tried/failed to find the old Betzig/Hess/JL-S era PALM flowchart with all the ways to fail ("Can you clone? Can you do MATLAB? cell culture?...") Does anyone else remember that? 😄 @weisslab.bsky.social @juliebiteenlab.bsky.social @lewlab.com

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 22/04/2025

love this for us

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Tom Scocca @tomscocca.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

"Premature" and "circulated among the task force members" are not exactly disavowals of the demands!

Screenshot of text:

It is unclear what prompted the letter to be sent last Friday. Its content was authentic, the three people said, but there were differing accounts inside the administration of how it had been mishandled. Some people at the White House believed it had been sent prematurely, according to the three people, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal discussions. Others in the administration thought it had been meant to be circulated among the task force members rather than sent to Harvard.

But its timing was consequential. The letter arrived when Harvard officials believed they could still avert a confrontation with President Trump. Over the previous two weeks, Harvard and the task force had engaged in a dialogue. But the letter’s demands were so extreme that Harvard concluded that a deal would ultimately be impossible.

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Joe Allen @joeallenjoe.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

Harvard with an evergreen quote for this first 100 days👇 —> “It remains unclear to us exactly what, among the government’s recent words and deeds, were mistakes or what the government actually meant to do and say.”

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Julia Carrie Wong @joolia.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

The only appropriate response to this is impeachment and removal from office. Every moment the political press spends spinning out theories about 2026 and immigration polling is a minute they are not spending asking Republicans in Congress about their plans to enforce the rule of law

A screenshot of a tweet by the official White House account.

Text: “Fixed it for you, @NYTimes.
Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen - he's NOT coming back.”

There is also a screenshot of the front page of the NyT with a large headline and photo about Van Hollen meeting with Abrego Garcia. They have edited the headline with red ink handwriting to say “ Senator meets with deported ms-13 illegal alien in El Salvador who’s never coming back.”

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Sam Wang @samwang.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

At Princeton University we are being clear about our continued commitment to diversity and nondiscrimination, in full compliance with law (as opposed to executive order) and consistent with our ethical responsibilities as educators for the entire nation. www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2025...

dailyprincetonian.com

University websites updated to reflect commitments to diversity, non-discrimination

Many University websites, including those affiliated with admissions, academic departments, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, have been updated to reflect Princeton’s ongoing com...

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mtsw @mtsw.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

I think saying "in America, everyone is innocent until proven guilty" works better for low-info normies than saying "due process" does

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Angus Johnston @angus.bsky.social · 17/04/2025

Lot of people dunking on this clip, but Murkowski, asked for advice for people who are afraid to speak up, acknowledges that she shares that fear. But she then says it's "not right" that people are made to be afraid of retaliation for speaking up, and says it won't stop her from doing her job.

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 16/04/2025

yes! this dude will back down to anyone who tells him to fuck himself! this is the only response worth having!

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Stephen Nuñez @socio-steve.bsky.social · 15/04/2025

Feels like we are in a threshold cascade: I will join as long as X percent of my alters join. You will join as long as Y percent of your alters join. These sorts of things can domino through networks but they can also come to an abrupt halt if a pivotal node does not reach its threshold.

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 14/04/2025

technically, it's a crop of this image, so I have to assume it's trying to parse the nuclei

figure 1 from our 2024 paper - not much that looks like a face tbh

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 14/04/2025

wow... AI really is so powerful

me posting a subpanel with two graphs into powerpoint. suggested alt text at bottom: "A collage of images of a person's face" with approve/edit buttons for my consideration

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 13/04/2025

Rubio justifies deporting these students in generalities because once you look at the details, they are indefensible donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-attack...

Why are these students being kicked out of America? When pressed by reporters, Rubio said:

We are not going to be importing activists into the United States. They're here to study. They're here to go to class. They're not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine the — our universities. I think it's lunacy to continue to allow that.

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Paul Gowder @gowder.io · 11/04/2025

LET THIS BE A LESSON TO ALL OF YOU. As I've been saying (most recently to the northwestern student behavior) you fight authoritarianism by collectively imposing costs on every dictator move. File all the lawsuits, give ZERO INCHES dailynorthwestern.com/2025/04/10/c...

dailynorthwestern.com

HHS confirms NU’s funding freeze due to antisemitism

After reports first surfaced Tuesday that the Trump administration had frozen $790 million in federal funding from Northwestern, even the University’s top officials said they’d been left in the dark o...

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 13/04/2025

*excuse me, to see a win even when they are literally (nominally) suing their own institution 👀👀👀

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 13/04/2025

delighted to see a win without needing the trustees' say so, tbh

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 13/04/2025

I recently joined the nat'l AAUP and my local chapter - it's a great way to contribute, hear about what people are doing, and get involved!

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Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD @arghavansallesmd.medsky.social · 12/04/2025

The government doesn’t want researchers to use these words, but we wrote “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” 31 times in this manuscript. We didn’t want there to be any confusion as to what we’re talking about.

thelancet.com

Why and how academic medicine must champion diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility

US President Donald Trump has launched a series of Executive Actions1 to dismantle diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility efforts; defund scientific research; and freeze federal funds and pro...

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Jess McLaughlin, PhD (they/them) @jfmclaughlin92.bsky.social · 12/04/2025

alright i have my laptop, guess i'm livetweeting the dire wolf preprint. so a quick reminder: this is not yet peer-reviewed, so there's some different expectations re: quality. also let's be clear, i'm a hella biased reader, bc i don't trust the hype they're courting

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 10/04/2025

Shared governance is all. ❤️‍🔥

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Genevieve Lakier @genevievelakier.bsky.social · 10/04/2025

AAUP has written a letter to NW U explaining why it has no legal obligation to comply with the request from Congress to hand over an incredible amt of info—including a professor’s performance reviews!—about its legal clinics 🧵https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/AAUP_Letter_to_Northwestern.pdf

aaup.org

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Kate Starbird @katestarbird.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

The only way forward, that I can see, requires both courage and collective action. If we’re not going to fight for our students and our scholarship, then what the hell are we doing anyway?

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 09/04/2025

Even still, Spring is beautiful.

Sunset from the East Bank campus last night, with a view of an art museum and train tracks running across the Mississippi. A thin (cirrus?) cloud cuts across horizontally.

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 05/04/2025

Good to know. Thanks!

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 05/04/2025

#handsoff the next generation of scientists!

Francesca Walsh, 28, is in the last six months of earning her Ph.D. in neuroscience and behavior. She wants to study how the brain functions when making economic decisions, in an effort to protect economic markets and consumers from financial harm. The postdoctoral jobs she planned to apply for have suddenly disappeared. “I felt the door of an entire sector of jobs, including federal research jobs, slam overnight,” she said. “It’s very disheartening, and sometimes I wish I just became an accountant.”

Young scientists’ careers are inextricably tied to the grant application cycle. Carole LaBonne, a molecular biologist at Northwestern University, recently told the podcast “Odd Lots” to think of labs as small businesses that run on very tight operating margins. A grant that provides funding for, say, four years would need to be renewed in the third year. And if they can’t do that, people must be let go quickly — which almost always means junior members of the lab. Peter Jacobs, a senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, is unsure whether Department of Energy and National Science Foundation grants that help fund his program will be renewed; he’s not certain he can keep on his three postdocs, all of whom are already looking at other positions, including in Europe or Asia.

At Fort Lewis College in Colorado, where nearly 40 percent of the student population identifies as Native American, one researcher said he and his colleagues were told not to bother submitting a renewal application for an N.I.H.-associated grant that funds increased representation in the biomedical sciences and that has helped at least a dozen Native Americans earn Ph.D.s in the past 15 years. The Frist Center for Autism and Innovation at Vanderbilt University was expecting $7 million in National Science Foundation funding meant to train scientists and engineers with autism, but those awards have been rejected or are in limbo. “It is heartbreaking having to tell these students — who have persisted through challenges throughout their lives for the opportunity to apply their talents for their own careers but also for their country — that they aren’t so valued after all,” said Keivan Stassun, an astrophysics professor and the center’s founding director.

America had also been an attractive destination for science because of its express support for free inquiry — the ability of researchers to study what mattered most to them, even if there wasn’t a straight path to success and profit. That commitment appears to be crumbling. “I mourn a world in which science must defend itself through its end products, rather than its underlying search for truth and beauty,” said Daniel Bauman, a 25-year-old Stanford University graduate student studying evolution. “When efficiency is mandated, current and future careers are lost or abandoned. If science funding is made contingent on immediately beneficial results, who will be left to tell the story of nature? Will anyone even be listening?”

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Carl Quintanilla @carlquintanilla.bsky.social · 05/04/2025

It’s. 👏🏼 Not. 👏🏼 Just. 👏🏼 About. 👏🏼 The tariffs. 👏🏼 (via Apollo’s slide deck this am)

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 05/04/2025

Thanks for writing the open letter. Do you think there's a chance the escalating situation in the US might put any more pressure on them? It feels like the winds are shifting - why *shouldn't* they push back?

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Brian Merchant @bcmerchant.bsky.social · 21/03/2025

This is what happens when you push back on overt fascist creep with strength and a spine

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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 19/03/2025

1. For the past thirty years I've had the best job in the world.  I've had the opportunity to follow my curiosity; explore the workings of nature and society; mentor students and junior colleagues in the same process; and teach generations of students about it all.

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News Eye @newseye.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Extraordinary scenes in Serbia’s capital Belgrade right now. Around 500,000 people are on the streets in what may be the biggest protest in Serbian history. All demanding the resignation of President Vučić & his government. What began as a student protest is now a full democratic uprising. 🇷🇸

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Anton Gerashchenko @antongerashchenko.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Budapest today. People are demanding that PM Orban resign.

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Josh Pasek @joshpasek.com · 15/03/2025

This! For most people, most of the time, it simply doesn’t matter whether a country is a democracy or an autocracy; and the immediate dangers of an autocracy fall on a disfavored few. But the costs of being an autocracy scar countries and swindle opportunities for decades.

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Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

Again: if there is *de facto* no longer such a thing as being a permanent resident of the US, there is no responsible way for learned organizations or universities to ask visa holders based in the US to leave for the sake of a conference talk or an interview.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

The Times defense of higher education, while welcome, still engages in a lot of the tropes that Trump is using. I would love if there was some reflection on the role the Times has played, especially on its opinion page, which has been blasting higher ed for a decade. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/15/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | Colleges Are Under Attack. They Can Fight Back.

This is a moment to trumpet the strengths of higher education and address its weaknesses.

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cait (and adonis) @cait.bsky.social · 15/03/2025

i keep seeing responses to this from non-Americans saying "we already know this and we're all laughing at you". like, fair enough, but i am telling you you don't actually know the extent of it, as evidenced by the fact that every day i see someone learn about the pledge of allegiance to the flag

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 15/03/2025

Yes!! Teach-ins as positive action! I also wonder about how to speak out with the authority our institutions are abnegating. UMN just limited departments' ability to speak on "public concerns"; well, how about societies or larger collectives? www.startribune.com/attack-on-fr...

startribune.com

Some University of Minnesota faculty oppose regents' resolution limiting public statements

Universities nationwide have been debating issues related to academic freedom.

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 14/03/2025

Absolutely. Been watching @aaup.bsky.social on the faculty side and wondering what it would look like to mobilize even more broadly - with grad student unions, admin... a general education strike?

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AAUP @aaup.org · 14/03/2025

We condemn in the strongest possible terms any university that would sacrifice its own students to the demands of an authoritarian government. This is absolute cowardice & capitulation to an administration hellbent on the destruction of American higher education. www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/n...

nytimes.com

Columbia Disciplines Students Who Occupied Campus Building Last Year

Sanctions for the Hamilton Hall occupation include expulsions and suspensions.

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 14/03/2025

this is the big question for me. I feel like scholarly work is so abstract, admin wouldn't even notice research labor being withheld. what does a strike matter if you don't have a timecard on thinking? teaching, on the other hand...

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lexy @lvdlab.org · 13/03/2025

Whatever else is going on, we've been getting some great data, and the world outside looks golden. Feeling grateful.

photo of the sunset in Minneapolis. an art museum, classroom, and the west bank skyline are visible.

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Sherry Pagoto, PhD @drsherrypagoto.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

New report shows that NIH grants fueled $95 billion in economic activity and 407,782 jobs in 2024. That's not to mention the countless lives that biomedical research has saved. Show me a better investment than that. www.forbes.com/sites/michae...

forbes.com

NIH Grants Fueled $95 Billion In FY 2024 Economic Activity, Finds New Report

National Institutes of Health grants generated almost $95 billion in economic activity nationwide in FY 2024 according to a new report by United for Medical Research.

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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 06/03/2025

Pitch-perfect response to Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin from @georgetownlaw.bsky.social Dean Bill Treanor. It’s always a privilege and honor to be part of the GULC community (and to be Bill’s colleague), but *especially* today.

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