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Marc Robinson-Rechavi

@marcrr.bsky.social
1.8K followers 1.4K following 686 posts

He/Him. Evolution and Bioinformatics. Posts mine alone, in English (mostly) & French. Chair of @dee-unil.bsky.social, Prof at @fbm-unil.bsky.social‬, group leader at @sib.swiss. PI of @bgee.org 🦣 Main account: ecoevo.social/@marcrr

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Reposted by Marc Robinson-Rechavi
Julie Blommaert @drjulieb.bsky.social · 31m
I’m still really devastated that I never published Rotifers Of Unusual (genome) Size
static.klipy.com
Rous Rodents Of Unusual Size
ALT: Rous Rodents Of Unusual Size
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Shannon Vallor @shannonvallor.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
OK, since this thread has blown up a bit, I think it's worth clarifying in a new thread to what extent the 'GenAI is asbestos for the mind' analogy might hold up, and where it breaks down (as even useful analogies always do): 1/n
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Joel Pick @joelpick.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
🚨Exciting project alert!!🚨 Are you interested in data and code sharing in Ecology and Evolution? @eivimeycook.bsky.social and I are running a hackathon to quantify data and code availability and sharing quality across 90 society journals, and looking for people who want to be involved.
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
Welcome to Lily Fogg wholl be joining our group @dee-unil.bsky.social to study clownfish evolution! 🐠 (news in French) www.unil.ch/news/fr/1791...
unil.ch
Quatre nouvelles forces pour la recherche à la FBM grâce aux bourses Ambizione
En 2025, quatre scientifiques se sont vu·es recompensé·es par une bourse Ambizione du Fonds national suisse, leur permettant de rejoindre la communauté scientifique de la Faculté de biologie et de méd...
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Rachel Fairbank @sweetsciencewriter.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
“The children who are randomly selected not to receive the birth dose of the vaccine, those who “lost the lottery”, face in their earliest days the risk of contracting hepatitis B, which can cause irreversible lifelong damage.” No words. I am speechless. This violates all ethical boundaries.
theguardian.com
Controversial vaccine trial touted by RFK Jr gets go-ahead in Guinea-Bissau
Recommended dose of hepatitis B vaccine will be withheld from thousands of newborns by Danish researchers
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Jeremy Berg @jeremymberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Certainly seems that way
Bar graph of measles cases in US from 2000-2026 showing a large increase in 2026 as well as a decline in vaccination rates beginning in 2020.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
In other words, it is the job of scientists to devise experiments that can test their claims, to always be cautious abt what they are claiming, and to critically evaluate the claims of other scientists. By these well-established standards, no serious science is happening behind Anthropic's claims.
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Emily M. Bender @emilymbender.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Anthropic is out with new nonsense about Claude (or the collection of models called Claude) deserving moral consideration and/or be able to feel distress, so my inbox is filling up with journos asking me to comment. I've also got a day job, so here is a brief set of public comments on this: >>
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Senior men in academia: gender policies undermine meritocracy. Meanwhile, reality:
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Grant Jacobs BioinfoTools/NotJustDNA 🔬🧬🖥️✍️📚🇳🇿 @notjustdna.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Oh, so the Nikon Small World winner got disqualified – The picture is of the new winner arstechnica.com/science/2026...
arstechnica.com
AI disqualification yields new Nikon Small World in Motion winner
New winner is Nguyen Nam Nhat of Vietnam for video of a roundworm and single-celled Dileptus.
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Nicholas D Carter @nicholasdcarter.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Just like Exxon knew about the impacts of climate change, the beef industry knew too. A new PLOS Climate study documents how the National Cattlemen’s Association (NCA), now NCBA, responded to evidence linking cattle methane to global warming from 1986–1996 (study 🔗 at end of 🧵)
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
End of Nobel week: ♂♂♂♂♂♂♀♀ with a clear divide STEM / non-STEM
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Jana Helsen @helsenjana.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Looking to do a PhD in evolutionary cell biology, chromosomes & centromeres? 🧬🔬 The winter call for the UNIGE PhD recruitment is open, and my lab is among those recruiting through the Molecular Biosciences program! 🗓️ Apply by Nov 1st: lifesciencesphd.unige.ch
lifesciencesphd.unige.ch
University of Geneva - PhD School of Life Sciences | Welcome to the PhD School in Life Sciences at the Faculties of Medicine and Science
The University of Geneva Faculties of Medicine and Science join their forces to offer an outstanding study and research environment in Life Sciences. Highly motivated students with a Master’s degree o...
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trouteyes @trouteyes.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Fetch me a magnum of Champagne and summon my best pig. We leave for the meadow at midday.
Terry Pratchett drinks a large bottle of Champagne with a big pig in a meadow
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Roland Gromes @gromesroland.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Just spontaneously, big plant questions: * How to adapt agriculture to climate change? * Can climate change and biodiversity loss be mitigated in ecosystems? * Can photosynthesis be optimized? * How did the mosses/tracheophytes split evolve (e.g. what did early land plants do with their stomata)?
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DC Pierson @dcpierson.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
ONE TYPE OF PERSON ON SOCIAL MEDIA: I don’t like AI THE OTHER TYPE OF PERSON ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Pretty naïve of you to say that when it just zip zorped the gringle in less than seven kleebs. SEVEN. KLEEBS.
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Carl T. Bergstrom @carlbergstrom.com · 08/10/2026
I hate how good this is.
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Aparna Nair @disabilitystor1.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Nobel Prize winning poet Anne Carson on pain
Short Talk on Pain
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Anne Carson
1950 –
Lawns  and  fields  and  hills  and  wide  old   velvet
sleeves, green things.  They stretch, fold, roll away,
unfurl  and  calm the  eye.  Look  lush  in paintings.
Battles are fought on greens.  Or  you could spread
a meal  and  sup.  How  secretly  they  lie,  floors  of
distant forests.  Next  comes  the grave,  in  many a
poem about green. But this is not a poem. This is a
billboard for frozen green peas.  Frozen green peas
are good for pain.

Copyright © 2023 by Anne Carson. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 25, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.
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Alex Wild @alexwild.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
This puts unrealistic pressure on the rest of us to be doing something arty when the prize committee calls. I can't be "doing the laundry" or "picking my nose".
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
😬
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Day 4 of Nobel week: ♂♂♂♂♂♂♀😅
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Rebecca Sear @rebeccasear.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
A new Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology has just been published, in which it is claimed that the human species is polytypic: not only is race biologically meaningful but the races are distinct enough to be considered subspecies. Published by Elgar. In 2026.
Chapters in Part III take stock of the current state of evolutionary psychology, by casting wider attention to other social and behavioral sciences and assessing the field's influence on them. In Chapter 11 ('Evolutionary psychology and anthropology'), Heiner Rindermann identifies three major forces that oppose scientific anthropology: Religion, National Socialism ('Nazism'), and woke leftist ideology. Ironically, in this sense, woke left ideologues, who include most anthropologists themselves, geneticists, and other university academics, share much in common with the Nazis in their common opposition to scientific anthropology.
Rindermann's extensive review of the literature leaves no doubt that humans are genetically polytypic and contain different biological races or 'subspecies' At the end of the chapter, Rindermann delivers devastating rebuttals to all potential arguments against the notion of races/subspecies among humans.
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
But it’s a really important thing to think about in the context of proposals for publishing reform. Publish-Review-Curate and ‘preprint-only’ policies are currently pushed by various funders, but what do retractions look like in these workflows and who arbitrates them?
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
There are multiple strands here. 1) the general question of how we as a community handle work judged wrong (do we retract Pauling’s paper on DNA structure - is there a statute of limitations? How is the water memory paper still out there? Was it right to retract As life?)
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Oh for sure. Yet the conservation of fossilisable morphology is still an interesting observation which IMO merits attention. Example of change despite conservation of morphology: doi.org/10.1073/pnas... Good starting point IMO on the relevance of the living fossil concept: doi.org/10.1093/bios...
doi.org
PNAS
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...
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Robert "The Bobby Yaga" McNees @mcnees.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Very sad to hear that Margaret Hamilton has passed away. Here's a short thread about her role in the Apollo mission, and her lesser-known work on the simulations that led to the discovery of Chaos Theory. 🧪 👩‍🔬 ⚛️
news.mit.edu
Margaret Hamilton, computing pioneer who led software development for the Apollo program, dies at 90
Margaret H. Hamilton, a profoundly influential computer scientist best known for leading the software engineering team at MIT’s Instrumentation Lab during NASA’s Apollo program, died at age 90.
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Micah @rincewind.run · 07/10/2026
rip to one of the coolest software engineers who ever lived
Margaret Hamilton standing next to a printout of code she and her team wrote for the Apollo program, which is as tall as she is
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Gabriele Uhl @uhl-lab.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Postdoc Alert! New Postdoc Position for 3 years (max 3 more)- offers the freedom to develop your own research projects in close interaction with my group. Research on invertebrates preferred. Apply by October 31. Please RP. zoologie.uni-greifswald.de/en/organizat... 🧪
zoologie.uni-greifswald.de
Open Postdoc position (3 + max 3 years)
Universität Greifswald
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy · 07/10/2026
Cool work on slow evolving lineages, aka "living fossils". I like the contrast between the morphologically conserved lineages and control species-poor lineages. Sad not to see amphioxus included though. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/20… #EvoDevo #Phylogenetics
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Day 3 of Nobel week: ♂♂♂♂♂♂
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Day 2 of Nobel week: ♂♂♂♂
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Nathaniel Comfort @nccomfort.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Most histories take the double helix as the obvious goal of xrc on DNA fibers. If we want to honor Franklin, we need to stop trying to explain her work as almost getting the double helix. We need to understand her on her own terms. The Sponsel and Sutton paper takes us a good step in that direction
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Jacquelyn Gill @jacquelyngill.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
In the last couple of years, we've seen multiple critical collections (museums, herbaria) close. The IUCN--the global authority on the status of biodiversity--recently published on how important these kinds of facilities are in conservation. Every day, the dead are working to protect the living.
iucn.org
From collections to conservation: the indispensable role of natural history museums
The IUCN Species Survival Commission has published a Position Statement on the vital role of biological collections in biodiversity conservation: a formal acknowledgement that natural history museums,...
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Society for the Study of Evolution @sse-evolution.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
SSE is forming a new committee to develop guidelines and recommendations to reduce SSE’s environmental footprint and support sustainable research practices. Want to get involved? Appy by October 15! www.evolutionsociety.org/news/display...
Text: Society for the Study of Evolution Environmental Impacts and Sustainability Committee, Deadline extended: October 15, evolutionsociety.org.
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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
Overall mortality in unvaccinated individuals was roughly 50% HIGHER. The advantage held even after removing coronavirus-related deaths from the mix. The study has been published in JAMA. YES, it is PEER-REVIEWED. • jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... 🧪🧵⬇️
Key Takeaways
•In a French cohort, the incidence of all-cause mortality among those who received a first dose of an mRNA COVID vaccine was 0.4% after a median follow-up of 45 months, compared with 0.6% of those who were unvaccinated.
•After standardizing characteristics between the two groups, all-cause mortality incidence was 25% lower in those who had received a COVID shot.
•Vaccinated people were 74% less likely to die in a hospital because of COVID-19 compared with those who weren't vaccinated.Key Points
Question
Are COVID-19 mRNA vaccines associated with the long-term risk of all-cause mortality?
Meaning
These national-level results found no increased risk of
4-year all-cause mortality in individuals aged 18 to 59 years vaccinated against COVID-19, further supporting the safety of the mRNA vaccines that are being widely used worldwide.
Abstract
Importance While several studies have assessed the impact of COVID-19 vaccination on short-term mortality, none have compared long-term mortality by vaccination status, particularly in young individuals who are less likely to experience severe disease following SARS-
CoV-2 infection.
Objective
To compare 4-year all-cause mortality in individuals aged 18 to 59 years vaccinated with the mRNA
COVID-19 vaccine vs unvaccinated individuals.
Design, Setting, and Participants
This cohort study used data from the French National Health Data System for all individuals in the French population aged 18 to 59 years who were alive on November 1, 2021. Data analysis was conducted from June 2024 to September 2025.Exposure
Exposure was defined as receiving a first mRNA dose between May 1 and October 31, 2021. Individuals who were unvaccinated by November 1, 2021, were assigned a random index date based on vaccinated individuals' vaccination dates.
Main Outcomes and Measures
Cox models weighted for sociodemographic characteristics and 41 comorbidities were used to estimate 4-year all-cause mortality. Time to event was censored at all-cause death, COVID-19 vaccination for unexposed individuals, or study termination on March 31, 2025. Complementary analyses were performed, including a comparison of the main causes of death available up to December 31, 2023. Follow-up began 6 months after the index date in both groups to address immortal time bias. Short-term mortality within 6 months after vaccination was assessed in a separate, independent study using adapted self-controlled case series models.Results
A total of 22767 546 vaccinated and 5932 443
unvaccinated individuals were followed up for a median
(IQR) of 45(44-46) months. Vaccinated individuals were older than unvaccinated individuals (mean [SD] age, 38.0 [11.8] years vs 37.1 [11.4] years), more frequently women (11688 603[51.3%] vs 2 876 039 [48.5%]) and had more cardiometabolic comorbidities (2126 250[9.3%] vs 464 596[7.8%]). During follow-up, 98 429(0.4%) and 32662 (0.6%) all-cause deaths occurred in the vaccinated and unvaccinated groups, respectively. Vaccinated individuals had a 74% lower risk of death from severe COVID-19 (weighted hazard ratio [WHR], 0.26 [95% CI, 0.22-0.30]) and a 25% lower risk of all-cause mortality (wHR, 0.75 [95% CI, 0.75-0.76]), with a similar association observed when excluding severe COVID-19 death. Sensitivity analysis revealed that vaccinated individuals consistently had a lower risk of death, regardless of the cause. Mortality was 29% lower within 6 months following COVID-19 vaccination (relative incidence, 0.71 [95% CI,
0.69-0.73]).
Conclusions and Relevance
In this national cohort study of 28 million individuals, the results found no increased risk of 4-year all-cause mortality in individuals aged 18 to 59 years vaccinated against COVID-19, further supporting the safety of the mRNA vaccines that are widely used worldwide.
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Chise @sailorrooscout.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
WELL NOW, would you look at that? A massive, 4-YEAR-LONG study of NEARLY 30 MILLION people in France found that individuals who received a COVID-19 mRNA vaccine had a 74% LOWER risk of death from severe COVID-19 compared to unvaccinated individuals and ZERO increased risk of all-cause mortality.
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Uncle Duke @uncleduke1969.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
punk’s not dead
“Angry Bird”
Photograph: Jan Wittmer/Nikon Comedy Wildlife Awards 2026
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Min Hyoung Song @minsong.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
This is amazing satire at a time when satire is becoming nearly impossible.
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Megan Barkdull @meganbarkdull.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
I’m really happy to share that my invited review on social insect genome evolution, co-authored with @corriemoreau.bsky.social, is out now in @genomebiolevol.bsky.social 🐝🐜 This is the paper I wish I’d had when studying for quals in grad school, and was a ton of fun to write.
Greyscale illustrations of eight social taxa: the wasp Parischnogaster nigricans; the bee Ceratina calcarata; the thrips Kladothrips; the aphid Pseudoregma bambucicola; the bee Austroplebeia cincta; the ambrosia beetle Austroplatypus incompertus; and the ants and termites.
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
And your regular reminder of the innumeracy of this metric (a pseudo mean calculated from two different datasets and applied to a non-normal distribution) www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
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Richard Sever @richardsever.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Any sane academic evaluation policy would forbid mention of Impact Factor
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Marc Robinson-Rechavi @marcrr.ecoevo.social.ap.brid.gy · 04/10/2026
#SilentSunday
Mountain view. Foreground a ridge going away from the viewer. Background high mountains.
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shauna @goldengateblond.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
thank you to @mgiraldi.bsky.social, who pointed me to the insta acct for the photographer (www.instagram.com/kevinlohmanp...). the story and the other two photos are 24k gold.
kevinlohmanphotography
Santa Cruz, California
Are You Kidding Me?
Can this Great Horned Owl's eyes get any bigger?
I'm excited that my photo "Are You Kidding Me?" was selected as one of just 43 finalists in the Nikon Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards, from more than 10,000 entries representing 112 countries!
The story behind it is just as crazy. I was photographing this seven-week-old owlet when a squirrel suddenly launched from a nearby branch and landed directly on its head, knocking both of them out of the tree.
And believe it or not, a squirrel knocked this same owlet out of the tree THREE TIMES that morning! Fortunately, the owlet was fine and eventually settled down next to its mother.

(photo depicts a squirrel in mid-flight from a tree branch, apparently about to attack an owl who has the most "are you fucking KIDDING me" look in history)second photo showing the squirrel in question making contact with the owl like the lil furry-tailed (if short-sighted) badass he isthird photo showing the squirrel in question making contact with the owl like the lil furry-tailed (if short-sighted) badass he is
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Dave Levitan @davelevitan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
You're gonna need a bigger chart
Chart showing the daily sea surface temperature for the Nino region of the Pacific, with a red line for 2026 shooting off above every other year in record-setting territory, with the latest spot right at the top of the chart
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Charlotte @fireantprincess.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
if I was an ai company, burning through unprecedented amounts of cash without a clear business model, I’d also hire scientists to do PR for me, because they are extremely cheap compared to the amounts of cash I am burning.
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Vincent Granier @vincentgranier.eurosky.social · 02/10/2026
Huit ans de procédure, pour confirmer que les médecins signataires pouvaient, sans commettre de faute déontologique, signer ceci : sante.lefigaro.fr/article/l-ap...
sante.lefigaro.fr
L’appel de 124 professionnels de la santé contre les «médecines alternatives»
Des médecins et des professionnels de santé ont décidé d’alerter sur les promesses fantaisistes et l’efficacité non prouvée des médecines dites alternatives comme l’homéopathie. Ce collectif demande l...
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Vincent Granier @vincentgranier.eurosky.social · 02/10/2026
🔴INFO @apmnews.com 👇🔒[ABO]
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arXiv @arxiv.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
arXiv has updated our policy on rate limiting for all submitters. This update was made to fairly distribute moderator time & support the arXiv community of staff, volunteers, readers & authors. Please read our announcement to learn more: blog.arxiv.org/2026/10/01/updated-r…
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Olivia Guest · Ολίβια Γκεστ @olivia.science · 02/10/2026
> an increase in thin papers of narrow scope, as well as ‘salami’ papers, where a single work is broken up and submitted as a set of smaller papers. There is also a marked increase in dense, AI-written papers. AI tools are making it easy for authors to flood arXiv [and others with] low-value papers.
A histogram showing the incredible increase in submissions. 

> In September of 2016, arXiv received 9,869 submissions. In September of 2024, arXiv received 20,569 submissions. This September, arXiv received 40,363 submissions, which in turn generated almost 9,000 support tickets for arXiv staff and moderators. In only the past two years, submissions have doubled.
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SMBC Comics @smbccomics.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
That janitor just goes from building to building helping people. COMIC ◆ www.smbc-comics.com/comic/equati... PATREON ◆ www.patreon.com/ZachWeinersm... STORE ◆ smbc-store.myshopify.com
10-panel SMBC comic update. All the panels are dialogue-less. Two researchers are writing equations on a chalkboard. A janitor watches them from afar. The researchers leave as the janitor is still mopping the floor. The janitor walks up to the chalkboard and writes on it with purpose, admires what he wrote, and leave late in the evening. The two researchers return at dawn, and are shocked by what is written on the blackboard. Over their half-erased equations, the text "ChatGPT, do a breakthru, no mistakes, thankx."
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